Danielle laughed shakily. ‘Val, listen, I can’t just—’
‘The company’s put us all up—I have two rooms in a beautiful old auberge, it’s more than big enough for the both of us. And I can’t even put a dent in my per diem meal allowance. Come on, Danielle, say you’ll do it. We’ll have such fun together—it’ll be like old times.’
Like old times. Danielle’s cramped bedroom seemed to shimmer in the pre-dawn greyness. For a moment, the pine-panelled walls glowed with a pale pink light, the dark furniture turned gold and white, and the room was transformed into the one she’d shared with Valerie after Aunt Helen and Uncle John had taken her in following the deaths of both her parents in less than a year.
‘You girls are sisters now,’ Aunt Helen had said, clasping their hands together. ‘Won’t that be lovely?’
But they’d barely been friends. Not that Danielle hadn’t tried. Always a shy child, she had been devastated by the sudden loss of her parents, and she’d longed to get close to her beautiful cousin. But they had been worlds apart. At twelve, Val had been caught up with boys and clothes and make-up; Danielle had been too shy for boys and too plain to worry about make-up and clothes. In fact, the only thing they’d really had in common, aside from their shared bedroom, had been their classes and their chores, and eventually it had been Danielle who’d borne the responsibility for most of those.
‘Danielle? Danielle—for goodness’ sake, have we got a bad connection or something? I can’t hear you at all.’
Danielle blinked and swung her legs to the floor. ‘Thanks for asking me, Val,’ she said slowly. ‘But I really don’t think—’
‘Come on, say you’ll come.’ Val’s voice grew soft. ‘Aren’t you my favourite cousin?’
‘I’m not just your favourite cousin,’ Danielle answered automatically, ‘I’m your only—’
That’s right. You are. And it’s time we spent some time together, the way we used to.’
Danielle drew a breath. ‘Val?’ she said slowly. ‘Is there some kind of problem there? I mean, is something wrong?’
‘For heaven’s sake, nothing’s wrong. Haven’t I already said that? Mother is fine. Her latest tests were all negative. Daddy’s fine, too. I just called because you’re my favourite—’
‘Come on, Val. What is it?’
There was a brief silence, and then the whisper of Val’s transatlantic sigh. ‘There is a little favour you could do for me if you came for a visit. You see, somehow or other, Barney—Mr Wexler, my boss?—well, somehow he got the idea I speak French better than I really can. I mean, he deals with a lot of French people here.’
‘I thought you said all you had to do was post notices.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought. But other things keep cropping up, and Barney’s interpreter isn’t always here. Sometimes he’s in Nice on business, or—’
‘Did you tell this Mr Wexler you were fluent in the language?’
There was another silence. ‘No,’ Val said finally, ‘not exactly. I just told him the truth, that I’d done very well in my French classes.’
Despite herself, Danielle began to laugh. ‘Val,’ she said patiently, ‘I did very well, remember? You used to copy my homework. And I drilled you like crazy before each exam.’
‘And you could do that now,’ Val said eagerly. ‘Well, not drill me, but you could help me deal with some of the office work. And you could field some of the calls that come in—honestly, French people talk a hundred miles an hour. It’s so hard to understand a word they say.’ Her voice softened. ‘Mom thinks it’s a terrific idea.’
‘You already spoke to Aunt Helen about this? But—’
‘She says you could use a change of scene. She says the accident upset you a lot.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I really meant to call you, Danni. Was it very awful?’
Danielle closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered finally. ‘It was terrible.’
‘What was his name? Teddy?’
‘Eddie. Eddie Chancellor. You knew him, Val. He was two years ahead of us in school.’
‘Was he on the football team or anything?’
Danielle smiled at the thought. ‘No. He was on the debating team.’
‘I wouldn’t remember him, then.’ For a moment, the offhand carelessness of the remark angered Danielle, but then Valerie sighed and her voice filled with concern. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘When did it happen?’
‘Eight months. It’s been eight months since—’
‘Getting away would be good for you. And you’d save my life. Really.’
Danielle smiled again. ‘You always were too dramatic.’
‘Well, it’s true.’ Valerie’s voice grew soft. ‘I really need you here.’ There was a sudden crackle of static. ‘Listen, I have to get off the phone now. I’ll send you the directions to Ste Agathe, OK? You won’t have any trouble finding it. There’s this road that goes straight from Nice into the mountains—’
‘I haven’t said I’m coming,’ Danielle said quickly.
‘Of course you’re coming.’ Static crackled again, and then Danielle thought she heard the distant sound of a man’s deep voice, followed by husky laughter. She hunched over the phone, straining to hear.
‘Val? Are you still there?’
‘I’m here,’ Val said in a sort of breathless whisper, and then she laughed softly. ‘In a minute. Yes. Well, I’m asking her now.’
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘Danielle, listen, I really have to run. You just make your flight reservations. Do you have a passport? And you’ll need a visa. Oh, and I guess you’ll need a rental car to get here from the airport. And—’
‘What’s your number there? How can I reach you? Val?’
The phone went dead. Danielle hung up slowly, then leaned back against the pillows and tried to imagine Val as an administrative assistant on a film set. The locale sounded glamorous enough, but the job sounded stodgy—nothing like the things her cousin had tried so far: modelling, commercials, even summer theatre once. Val had always been beautiful, and she’d gone easily from high school graduation into a world where that beauty, rather than the ability to conjugate verbs or add a column of figures, had been all she needed to succeed. An administrative assistant, Danielle thought again. Well, that only proved how out of touch they were.
She yawned, got to her feet, then walked to the window and opened the curtains. The June morning was painting the sky with gold. The day was already warm, and the air smelled faintly of the cornfields that stretched away to the Missouri horizon.
Lazily, Danielle stretched her arms high over her head. She was tired, but there was no sense in trying to go back to sleep now. She’d shower, dress, have her breakfast—and think about Val’s invitation.
A whole summer in France, she thought as she pulled off her nightshirt and dropped it on the bed. What a vacation that would be! She’d never really done any travelling, except for last winter’s trip to visit Aunt Helen and Uncle John in their new retirement home in Arizona.
And Val was right—she really could do with a change. The winter had been long and harsh. And the accident had taken a terrible toll. She still had visions of Eddie lying in the road, his blood turning the rain-slicked tarmac red as his life had drained away.
Danielle shook her head and marched to the bathroom. No. She wouldn’t think about that awful day any more. Quickly, she stepped into the bath and turned on the shower. Brooding about Eddie wouldn’t bring him back. And, now that she thought about it, a trip to Europe wouldn’t do it, either. What it would do was exhaust her bank account—room and board might be free, but the fare wasn’t.
The more she thought, the more negatives there were. Val might be comfortable on a glitzy film set, but would she? And then there was Val herself—could they even get on together for a whole summer? They’d been dissimilar enough when they were teenagers; what did they have in common now?
Danielle lathered a facecloth and began scrubbing her
self. She’d call Aunt Helen this evening and get Val’s phone number, and then she’d call her cousin and tell her thanks, but no thanks. And that would be the end of that.
But it hadn’t been. ‘Are you nuts?’ Ginny had demanded when she mentioned Val’s invitation in the faculty room at lunch. ‘A free trip to France, and you’re turning it down?’
It had been useless to keep repeating that the trip wasn’t free. It was almost free, her friend had insisted. And not even an explanation of why Val had really tendered the invitation was enough to dim her friend’s enthusiasm.
‘Maybe she’s changed. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if she really wanted the two of you to get close?’
Danielle’s eyes had clouded for a second, but then she’d shaken her head. ‘I’m too old to believe in miracles, Ginny.’
‘Well, then, let her think she’s getting some mileage out of you, the same as when you were kids.’ Ginny had grinned impishly. ‘You’ll be getting yours, too. A summer abroad—on a film set, no less!’
But the final straw had fallen that afternoon. The phone had been ringing as Danielle came in the door. It had been Aunt Helen, calling from Arizona. Her aunt hadn’t let her get a word in before she’d started saying how happy she was that her two girls were going to spend the summer together, and then Uncle John had got on the phone, saying how pleased he was that his girls were still pals, that he hadn’t seen Helen look so bright and chipper since her heart attack.
‘You have to go now,’ Ginny had said innocently. ‘I mean, how can you let your aunt down?’
‘I can’t, I guess,’ Danielle had said.
But she could have, she thought now, shifting in the hard plastic chair at New York’s Kennedy Airport. The simple truth was that she’d hidden behind Ginny’s urgings and Aunt Helen’s delight—she’d wanted to accept Val’s offer all along, she just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself. Teachers were as underpaid in Missouri as they were everywhere else. This might be the only chance she’d have to spend eight weeks in France, at least in the foreseeable future.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, good day. We are now ready to begin boarding Air France’s Flight 010 direct to Nice. Will first-class passengers kindly…’
Danielle’s heartbeat quickened in anticipation. She rose, clutching her shoulder bag in one hand and her carry-on in the other. Her ticket was for a seat well in the rear of the plane, but it didn’t hurt to begin moving towards the gate. The flight would be crowded, she could see that. There were hordes of vacationers jostling each other, lots of squalling babies and—
She stumbled to a sudden halt, her gaze inexorably drawn to the first-class passengers as they moved towards the gate. There was only a handful of them, but the man who’d shared the lounge with her earlier stood out clearly.
Perhaps it was the way he held himself, with a reckless kind of arrogance, or the angle of his shoulders, squared as if he were ready to take on the world. Or was it something far less obvious, some subconscious awareness that drew her to him as it had from the start, some message carried in the darkness of her blood?
Danielle’s breath caught as he came to a sudden stop. The crowd parted and surged past him as he stood still, his head cocked as if listening. He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the huge room, and an electric tingle danced along her spine.
She knew, without question, why his eyes searched every face. He was looking for her, waiting for her.
She took a step back, blending quickly into the crowd. Her heart raced as she watched him.
‘Mesdames et monsieurs…’
The crowd surged past her, blocking him from view. When she looked again, he was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
THE plane was as crowded as Danielle had expected. Passengers jammed the tourist-class aisles, some peering at seat numbers, others elbowing each other aside as they tried to get at the overhead storage hatches.
Her seat was in the rear of the plane, the centre seat in a group of three, and the other two were already occupied.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the heavyset woman on the aisle side. The woman glanced up, then nodded. Her face was shiny with sweat.
‘Are we going to take off soon, do you think?’ she whispered as Danielle struggled past her.
Danielle smiled politely. ‘I hope so.’
The man in the window seat grumbled something. ‘We’d damned well better,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a connection to make at Nice.’
But their take-off was delayed for almost an hour. Technical problems, the captain announced over the loudspeaker. The phrase sent the heavyset woman into little gasps of anguish and the irritated man into even louder grumbles. By the time the plane was finally airborne, he was fairly twitching. But as soon as the ‘fasten seat belt’ signs blinked off, he put back his seat, closed his eyes, and fell soundly asleep.
To Danielle’s surprise, her white-knuckled companion on the aisle side did the same. The woman’s head lolled back and, within minutes, she was snoring delicately.
Danielle sighed with relief. She’d been afraid the woman’s nervousness would make her want to chatter, and the last thing she felt like doing was making small talk. There was a dull pain in her temple that threatened to work itself into a full-blown headache. And she was as tense as a coiled spring. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at the boarding gate. The scene kept playing in her mind like a loop of film that would run over and over until it wore out.
There had to be a way to make sense out of it. She knew what seemed to have happened: the man she’d met in the lounge had expected to see her at the boarding gate. When she hadn’t appeared, he’d looked for her.
End of story.
But she knew that it hadn’t been that simple. She’d felt the intensity of his gaze across the room. And then there had been her own reaction, that thrumming pulse of her blood—
‘Excuse me.’
The low-pitched masculine voice startled her. Her pulse leaped as she looked up. But it was only the man from the window seat, apologising as he made his way past her to the aisle. Danielle sighed and laid her head back. Who else would it have been? The stranger wasn’t going to come looking for her. He was hidden behind the curtains that separated first-class from the rest of the plane. And anyway, why would he want to find her? He’d probably forgotten the whole thing by now.
Which was precisely what she would do, she told herself firmly as she dredged the Frommer’s guidebook that Ginny had given her from the depths of her shoulder bag. She’d be in France soon, and seeing all the lovely old places she’d read about would be a dream come true.
She was deep in a description of Versailles when the woman beside her yawned loudly.
‘My goodness,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘did I fall asleep? I didn’t think I’d—’ Her breath caught. ‘Excuse me,’ she whispered as she leaned heavily across Danielle and stared out of the window, ‘do you see that wing? Is it supposed to look like that?’
Danielle followed the woman’s trembling finger and then she smiled. ‘It looks fine to me,’ she said gently.
Her neighbour touched her tongue to her lips. ‘Are you sure? I—I know it sounds silly, but I thought it looked loose. Just at the end there, you see? Where the metal is so thin.’
Danielle smiled again. ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’
‘Well, if you think so…’ The woman touched her tongue to her lips again. ‘I won’t bother you any more. I’m sure you’d rather read your book.’
Danielle sighed. ‘You didn’t bother me at all,’ she said, closing the Frommer.
‘Are you sure? Well, that’s nice to hear. I’m Alice Davis. Have you been abroad before? I have. One time. Two, really, if you count the trip I took to Bermuda. But that’s not going abroad, is it? Not like Europe, I mean. I always say…’
* * *
Hours later, when the plane finally touched down at the Nice-Côte d’Azur Airport, Danielle almost groaned with relief. Somehow she managed to smile at A
lice, who’d talked, almost non-stop, across the entire Atlantic.
‘Aren’t you getting off?’ Alice asked as she eased her bulky self into the aisle.
Danielle looked at the passengers already crowding the narrow space and shook her head.
‘I’ll wait,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone’s going anywhere for a while anyway.’
Alice laughed. ‘You’re probably smart to avoid the crowd. But I can hardly wait to get my feet on solid ground again. And my niece is waiting—I haven’t seen her in a year. You understand.’
Danielle smiled and waved her hand as Alice moved into the queue, and then she settled back into her seat. The man in the window seat had already trampled her toes in his rush to disembark, muttering that he’d never make his connecting flight, thanks to the delay back in New York.
Everyone was in a rush to go somewhere, she thought with a sigh, everyone except her. She had no plane to catch, no one waiting for her at the gate.
‘I won’t be able to meet you, Danni,’ Val had said when Danielle had phoned to confirm her arrival. ‘It’s a working day. But you won’t mind, will you?’
Danielle had said she wouldn’t. But the truth was that there was something awfully lonely about stepping off a plane in a strange country with no one to greet you…
Unless he was waiting, unless he was, even now, watching eagerly for her, scanning each face with those dark blue eyes.
Quickly, Danielle rose and picked up her carry-on and shoulder bag. Alice had been right, she thought as she pushed into the aisle, there was really no sense in sitting here. She might as well get going.
The Nice-Côte d’Azur terminal was disappointing. It was foolish, she knew, but she’d expected something more exotic than this crowded, noisy place that reminded her of airport terminals everywhere. People were jabbering at each other as they lined up around the baggage carousel, but the jabbering was all in English. Well, this was the height of the tourist season, that was what it said in her Frommer—the little she’d managed to read of it, anyway. And the Côte d’Azur was Mecca to both the British and the Americans.
The Ruthless Billionaire’s Redemption Page 2