by Susan Napier
Typically for Karen—who consistently spent more than she earned—she hadn’t factored cost into her blithe suggestion of a taxi. It probably hadn’t even occurred to her that her sister might be on a strict budget, Veronica had thought, her accountant’s soul cringing as she mentally translated the quoted fare into New Zealand dollars. In spite of her creeping jet lag, she had decided to take the cheaper option of the underground, emerging battered but triumphant from the thick of the morning rush hour, within walking distance of the address marked on her pocket map.
When her sister had thrown open the door of the flat and welcomed her with the much-delayed hug, all petty annoyances had fled…for a while.
‘At last!’ Karen declared, her green eyes bright with suppressed excitement as she helped carry in the bags. ‘What took you so long?’
‘It’s rush hour,’ Veronica pointed out wryly.
‘I meant to fly from Auckland,’ laughed Karen. ‘You should have come via Los Angeles, the way we did, instead of making all those stops…no wonder you look like a limp dishrag!’
Veronica immediately felt the savage burden of her twenty-four years.
‘It was the best deal I could find,’ she said mildly, knowing that her sister would naturally have been flying all-expenses-paid, in business class.
She collapsed on the soft couch in the light and airy living room, and gratefully slipped her shoes off her aching feet as she accepted the offer of a cup of tea.
Karen, of course, was looking as beautiful as ever—her stretchy tube-top and denim miniskirt accentuating her concave belly and long, skinny legs as she chattered around the kitchen. Not having seen her for nearly a year, Veronica wondered when she had become so sophisticated. No one looking at her now would guess she had been born on a farm.
Although they had both grown up to be exactly the same height, curvaceous Veronica had always felt like an ungainly giantess when she stood beside her little sister. Karen’s body was wafer-thin, supple and graceful, her flawless skin without a single, disfiguring freckle, her artfully streaked hair falling halfway down her back in a smooth and shining blonde waterfall. Her long, oval face could have come straight from a painting by Modigliani, her fly-away eyebrows and high cheekbones giving her a haughty look, which dissolved into elfin mischief when she smiled.
People were willing to forgive her a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile. It was no wonder she had lived something of a charmed life, and had consequently ended up a little spoiled and thoughtless.
How thoughtless Veronica discovered a little later, when, the welcoming flurry of greetings and family news dispensed with, Karen admitted the reason for her non-appearance at the airport.
She was busy packing, all right, just not for France!
‘The Caribbean?’ Veronica was thunderstruck. ‘Leaving on Sunday?’ she repeated dumbly. ‘B-but—that’s the day before we go to Paris!’
Karen flipped her hair back over her shoulders, her brilliant smile a mixture of defiant excitement and shamefaced guilt. She pressed her manicured, be-ringed hands together in an exaggerated mea culpa.
‘I know! I should have told you about it, but it was only confirmed in the last few days, and you had already prepaid for everything by then and were practically on your way…but, oh, Ronnie, isn’t it fantastic?’ she gushed, as if her sheer enthusiasm could roll back her sister’s bewildered shock.
‘I…didn’t even know that you were interested in modelling,’ Veronica said hollowly. She felt physically sick with disappointment, the light-headedness that had dogged her since her flight increasing exponentially, until she felt as if her head were a hot-air balloon, floating off her shoulders.
Karen was gabbling now: ‘I met someone who said I should give it a go, so I had my portfolio done in Auckland and I’ve been taking it around the agencies here on my days off. I even managed to get a couple of little jobs—just a few hours each. Do you know how hard it is to get a break into the modelling scene in London? Especially the fashion side of things—so this is, like, a chance in a zillion! Ronnie, it’s a week in the Bahamas for a series of fashion spreads, not just once in one magazine! I’m substituting for a girl who broke the terms of her contract by putting on too much weight—which I guess makes it my big, fat break,’ she joked with artless cruelty, skipping swiftly on when she saw it didn’t raise a smile.
‘The agent said that the clients said that if they’d seen my portfolio before, they would have picked me over the original girl in the first place. They wanted an unknown for a totally new look and I’m it!’ She ran her hands down over her hips in a self-consciously preening gesture, which Veronica watched with dazed grey eyes.
‘But you already have a job,’ she murmured blankly.
Since she was seventeen, her sister had worked for internationally successful New Zealand food author, Melanie Reed, first as a child-minder, then full-time nanny to her youngest daughter—graduating to live-in personal assistant when nine-year-old Sophie had gone off to boarding school. Melanie and her husband had a lavish home-base in Auckland, but, to Veronica’s great envy, Karen had travelled extensively with her employer, and for the last two months had been staying in London while Melanie had been working on a new book deal, researching, and taping segments for a television lifestyle programme.
The Reeds had planned a four-week family break in the South of France following Melanie’s London engagements, and, when they heard that Veronica was thinking of flying over to holiday with her sister, had offered Karen cheap rent on their Paris apartment and free use of a small lodge in the grounds of their villa in Provence.
‘I thought you enjoyed working for Melanie,’ Veronica added, thinking of all the other generous perks and privileges that Karen had taken advantage of over the years.
‘I did—I do, but it’s not what I want to do for the whole rest of my life,’ Karen declared. ‘I mean, I never really chose it, did I? It just sort of happened. And it’s not as if I’ve got a lot of choices—I’m not clever like you—’ the way she tossed off the compliment made it sound almost like an insult ‘—but, well—modelling—I know could do that, and it’s got to be loads of fun. I might become a famous supermodel and make wads of cash!
‘Oh, Ronnie, this is my dream—like, like going to France has always been your dream!’ she burst out, seeming not to see the irony in her words. ‘I’m not going behind Mel’s back, she’s totally OK with it—you wouldn’t want me to turn down my big chance, would you?’ She pinned a mournful expression on her long face as her shoulders slumped.
It was such a patently silly thing to say that Veronica rolled her eyes. Of course she wouldn’t selfishly stand in the way of her sister’s newly minted ambitions—and Karen knew it!
‘Stop looking so tragic,’ she ordered, and Karen instantly obeyed, obviously sensing victory in the snappish words.
‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she begged earnestly. ‘I know it’s incredibly bad timing, but when destiny calls, what can you do?’
Veronica was tempted to roll her eyes again, but controlled herself. Her head had now recovered from its weird floating sensation and had settled to a painful throb.
‘You were the one who persuaded me it was such a great idea for us to spend our holiday together—’ She sighed, thinking of the whirlwind weeks of excited organising that had followed her late-night phone call to London on her sister’s birthday.
‘Yes, but you were the one who first brought it up,’ Karen pointed out. ‘You wanted me to persuade you, and once France was mentioned there was no stopping you. You said it would be a great chance for you to pick up some ideas and contacts for your little gift thing.’ Her voice became bubbly and teasing again: ‘You also had a pret-ty good reason for wanting to be out of New Zealand right now, if I remember rightly—’
‘Well, that’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?‘ Veronica cut her off hurriedly. The ‘little gift thing’ that Karen dismissed so lightly was the new business she was starting up—a corp
orate and personal gift-buying service, which she was intending to expand from what had been until now a thriving sideline into a fully-fledged company.
She throttled another upsurge of choking disappointment as she faced the full impact of her sister’s defection. ‘What are we going to do about all our bookings?’
But Karen had it all worked out. She didn’t care about losing her half of the expenses—she was going to make all that and more from her modelling, she said. Since everything was prepaid, Veronica should simply stick to the plan—go to Paris for five days, then on down to Provence. When Karen got back from her week or so in the Bahamas, she would get a cheap flight down to Marseilles—and join her sister for the rest of the holiday.
And when Veronica expressed reluctance about imposing herself on the Reeds, Karen scoffed.
‘Oh, don’t talk rot! They’re already down there and expecting you to turn up. It’s a self-catering cottage in the garden, not a guest suite in the villa. You’ve met Melanie and Miles before, and others are just family, so it’ll be all very laid-back and casual. Mel likes you, you know she does. She thinks your working for Mum and Dad’s organic farm business makes you a kindred spirit. I’ve been to France before, so it was more for your sake than for mine that she made the offer…after I told her all about your secret passion for all things French and how you drooled over her books set there—’
‘Oh, you didn’t?’ Veronica groaned, not fooled by her sister’s innocent look. Had Melanie recognised the manipulative ploy? ‘That just makes it even more awkward—you made me sound as if I was a freeloader, angling for an invite. Maybe I should at least suggest some kind of payment—’
‘Oh, well,’ said Karen meekly, instantly raising Veronica’s suspicions. ‘I suppose there is something you can do that they’d appreciate much more than money…’
Melanie, it transpired, had broken her right elbow in a fall on the day of her arrival in Provence, and was going to be wearing a sling for the next four to six weeks. Consequently, she had rung to warn Karen that she might be asked to do a little bit of work during her holiday stay. Of course Karen had agreed, but with her arrival delayed, perhaps Veronica offering her help would be a clever way to repay the Reeds for their generosity without risking offence? Melanie might not take her up on it, after all she had her family there for all her personal needs, including her widowed mother, but if she did require assistance on something relating to her work, it was bound to only be the occasional errand or bit of note-taking—the sort of thing that Veronica could dash off in a jiffy without even breaking a sweat!
Melanie hadn’t been the only one who had ended up being manipulated in that little scenario, Veronica thought wryly as she looked out the window at the late-comers to the first-class carriage hurrying to board before the doors began to close.
As for sweating—plenty of that had broken out when what Veronica had dismissed in London as a bad case of jet lag and tried to sleep off with regular doses of paracetamol had been diagnosed as a nasty case of flu by the emergency doctor she had called in a panic when she had staggered into the apartment in rue de Birague with a raging temperature and only a hazy memory of her trip through the Chunnel.
Fortunately the information sheet in the apartment had provided a number that guaranteed a home visit within thirty minutes, but, regretfully, all the sympathetic doctor could do for ‘la grippe’, he explained in broken English that was far better than her French, was to prescribe double-strength paracetamol to bring down the fever. She had spent two days languishing in her sickbed, alone, miserable, and heartily sorry for herself.
It was no wonder she had gone crazy when she had finally recovered enough to venture out!
She turned her flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window, and when she opened her eyes she saw the last of the stragglers heading towards the front carriages. One of them was a man carrying a laptop, accompanied by a porter wheeling his suitcase on a trolley. Probably heading for one of the other first-class carriages, she deduced with amusement, since everyone else seemed to be carrying all their own luggage.
He was tall, and walked with a loose-limbed stride, which looked lazy, but which had the stout porter trotting to keep up. A white panama hat with a turned-down brim covered most of his head, but it was the short black pony-tail, almost invisible as it tucked down inside the loosely flicked-up collar of his shirt, along with a certain set of his shoulders, that suddenly caught her eye and made her heart jump into her throat.
No. No, it couldn’t be!
There were millions of dark-haired men in Paris, and any number of them with hair long enough to be worn in a pony-tail.
She leaned forward, her own pony-tail tickling her collarbone, her gaze fixed on the back of his head, but he continued to look straight ahead, giving her not even a hint of a profile.
Her scrutiny shifted, drifting down over the loose, dark olive shirt hiding the waistband of his straight-legged jeans, to settle on the tight backside encased in the faded denim, throwing a sexy hitch with every striking stride.
It was absurd to think that she recognised it.
She only had a brief moment to judge its familiarity before he suddenly turned and stepped up onto the train. She wrenched her eyes back up to his face just in time to see a hawkish nose and unshaven jaw flash out of sight.
Veronica pushed back in her cushioned seat, sliding her hips forward so that her head sank below the height of the row. She wasn’t hiding, just getting comfortable for the trip, she told herself.
Of course it wasn’t Lucien. Maybe it was just someone who looked a little bit like him, and her guilty imagination had sketched in the rest.
She turned her eyes back to the window as the train slid smoothly out of the station. It was the country she had come to see, and she intended to sit back and enjoy every single moment of her ride to Avignon!
CHAPTER TWO
HERsexy, dark-haired Frenchman was there again.
Veronica knelt on the window-seat and peeped down at the bar across the street, keeping back at the edge of the curtains so that if he glanced up he wouldn’t see her face at the open window.
Not that it was likely. He was sitting at his usual table against the wall, just inside the bank of glass doors that had been folded back to open up the quirky little bar to the street, his back to the strip of pavement shaded by the green canvas canopy, his neat pony-tail a glossy black comma on the white collar of his shirt. A half-full glass of beer sat by his hand, and he was dividing his attention between his newspaper and the attractive brunette polishing glasses behind the bar, who was having a lazy disagreement with the Patron re-stocking the bottles.
Business was slow, with only one other customer further inside. The bar didn’t really hot up until after dark, then it would be jammed with people and throbbing with Latin American music until exactly midnight, when the shutters went up and the patrons were shooed away in a chorus of happy farewells—much to Veronica’s relief, for in the narrow rue de Birague the trapped sound was funnelled upwards on the hot air, and she had found that without the windows open the second floor apartment was unbearably hot, especially for someone suffering a 101-degree temperature.
Her first two days in Paris had been an exercise in frustration. Confined to her apartment except for brief, wobbly forays to la pharmacie around the corner and the tiny convenience store a few doors up from the bar, Veronica had had little to do but swallow pills, sleep, drink gallons of water, watch the wonderful world of cable television and gaze out her window at her truncated view of Paris.
Her wistful eye had first spied the sexy, dark stranger after she had returned from a cautious, exploratory expedition to test her recovery. He had been sitting at the same table he was at now, lounging sideways in his seat, sipping a bowl of coffee, idly turning the pages of a French newspaper, a pair of wraparound sunglasses dangling from the chest pocket of his polo shirt.
He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties, suntanned, fit and
healthy, and she had envied him as she had leaned against the side of the window, gulping down the fruity yoghurt that had been all her stomach could handle for the past few days. As she had brooded on his slashing profile she had also felt a purely feminine tug of attraction, a sexy little tingle that had followed her down for her nap.
She had quickly realised the futility of trying to compress a week’s worth of sightseeing into her remaining few days, and had pared down her meticulously planned schedule to simply hit the highlights on her wish-list, but as her appetite and energy had returned in full measure she had ramped up her expectations and thrown herself wholeheartedly into the pursuit of Paris, hungering for more even as she gorged herself on the sights and sensations.
And every time she had passed the bar in rue de Birague, or looked out the apartment window, she couldn’t help glancing at a certain table with a little flutter of anticipation.
She hadn’t really expected to see him again, but he had been there several times now, usually in the morning, with a coffee, and at various times of the afternoon or early evening with a beer, or glass of wine and a newspaper. She didn’t think he was a tourist, she never saw him with a camera, or water-bottle or pocket guidebook—those ubiquitous supplies that every visitor to Paris had grafted to their person—and he seemed to prefer facing away from the street, uninterested in the passing parade. Yet, given the different times of the day she had seen him there, he didn’t seem to work, either…at least, not regular hours, anyway. And he was always alone.
Like Veronica…
Her palms dampened as she contemplated what she was about to do.
Bastille Day was her swan-song in Paris and she wanted to see it out in style. Last night she had danced with the thousands at the official party in the Place de la Bastille. This morning she had joined the crowds watching the traditional military parade along the Champs Elysées, and paid her respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior under the Arc de Triomphe. She had lunched in the Latin Quarter and strolled home across the Île de la Cité.
