Hotel Vendome

by Danielle Steel

  Hugues wanted that for his wife as well. He was staying at the hospital with her, and taking care of her through the night, which made Heloise grateful too, that he was well enough to do that. They’d both been through a lot in the past two months, between the heart attack and the babies.

  It was a hectic week while Natalie was in the hospital. Everyone wanted to see her and the babies, but she wasn’t up to it yet. And she was still mourning the baby girl that died. And it was a tragic day when they buried the baby girl after Natalie got home. Only she, Hugues, Heloise, and Brad attended the small service, and it tore Heloise’s heart out to see a casket so small. It was white with pink flowers on it, and Natalie sobbed uncontrollably, and then at Hugues’s insistence they stopped at the hospital to see the others, to remind them of what they had. They had named them Stephanie and Julien. And Julien made funny faces at them as they looked at him in the incubator. Stephanie just lay there and looked peaceful and dozed off to sleep as they watched her. They looked like little angels. Brad and Heloise were mesmerized by them, they were so small, and Heloise had forgotten all about feeling displaced. They were part of her family now and had won her heart when they were born. She’d been buying little presents for them all week, and Brad teased her about it.

  All four of them went home to the hotel and they had dinner together in Hugues and Natalie’s apartment. It had been another exhausting day, with the burial and all the emotions of that. Natalie went to bed before they finished dinner.

  Once Natalie was home from the hospital and settled in, Hugues went back to work in his office for the first time in over a month, and it felt wonderful to him. And they went to the hospital together when Natalie went to feed the twins. Her milk had come in, and she was nursing, and leaving breast milk at the hospital for them. And she was worried about Hugues working too hard. She still wished he’d sell the hotel before it killed him. They were talking about it one night as they lay in bed together.

  Natalie shook her head as she looked at him lying next to her. He seemed more content now that he’d gone back to work. “I’m not going to convince you to sell this place, am I?” She felt closer to him than she ever had, after all they’d just been through, and he felt the same way about her.

  “Never.” He answered her question with a smile. “I almost made that mistake once. I won’t do it again. One day Heloise will run it, and maybe even Julien and Stephanie. And then you and I will travel the world and have fun.” He made it sound like it was just around the corner, but Natalie knew now that it was years away. She couldn’t even imagine him turning over the reins of the Vendôme. Sharing it with Heloise perhaps, but he wasn’t ready to retire, and she wondered if he ever would be. The hotel he had devoted his life to for twenty years was still his passion, and now so was she.

  “All right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “I concede. You’re all crazy. Heloise works as hard as you do. She was doing double shifts the whole time you were sick.” And she had done it again that week. “Just don’t kill yourself doing it,” she warned him. “I need you for a long, long time, Hugues Martin.”

  “I need you too,” he said as he pulled her close to him to kiss her. “You’re the woman I love, and the mother of my children. And one day, I promise you, we’ll get out of here, when Heloise is ready to take it on.” It was a promise she didn’t intend to hold him to, but she had finally understood that he was never going to sell and probably shouldn’t. The Hotel Vendôme was his life.

  Chapter 24

  IN MAY THEY all attended Brad’s law school graduation. His parents and siblings came up for it, and everyone was excited for him, Heloise most of all. She had watched him study every night and knew how hard he had worked. She was proud of him, and really thrilled. His parents had given him a trip to Europe, and he was taking Heloise with him in August. They were going to Spain and Greece and winding up in Paris. They could hardly wait. He was going to take the bar in July and was already preparing for it.

  He had been interviewing for jobs at law firms for three months and finally realized that both antitrust and tax law bored him. He had gone through a brief phase of thinking that he wanted to do criminal defense work, but he didn’t want to work in the public defender’s office. What he really wanted to do was labor law. He found it fascinating and talked to Hugues about it, who arranged an interview with the law firm that handled all their labor disputes at the hotel. And the week before graduation they had offered him a job. He was starting at the end of August, when he and Heloise got back from Paris, and he was really excited about it. He knew it was the right line of work for him, and he teased Heloise that maybe one day he would be the labor lawyer for the hotel. She hoped he would be.

  He was giving up his apartment near Columbia before they left for Europe, and Hugues had given his blessing for him to move into the hotel with Heloise. He stayed there every night anyway, and her schedule was so intense that they saw more of each other that way. And they’d been dating for a year. They complemented each other well. And Brad’s parents were pleased too. They were too young to decide on their future, but they seemed to be heading that way. They were just starting out on their careers, had much to learn and a long way to go. She was about to turn twenty-two by then, and he had just turned twenty-six. Still babies, as their parents said.

  Hugues hosted a beautiful graduation dinner for him that night at the restaurant at the hotel, for both families and a few of Brad’s friends. It was a beautiful celebration. Heloise had worked on the menu with the chef and picked all the wines, and everyone loved the selections she’d made.

  The twins were home by then, and thriving. Natalie had taken a three-month maternity leave to be with them full time. And she was loving every minute of it, and nursing them both. They still remembered and often thought of the baby they had lost, but they were enjoying the ones they had. And she was trying to figure out how to work part time and take fewer projects when she went back to work.

  Natalie took the babies out in a double stroller every day, while Hugues went for his walk in the park. He was giving Heloise more and more responsibility, and he was taking Natalie and the twins away for their anniversary in July. They had rented a house in Southampton for the week. He had just given Heloise the title of Assistant Manager. She had completed her internship for him, in addition to the one she had done for the École Hôtelière, and she had earned her stripes. At twenty-two, she was a supremely competent young woman, and her father was very proud.

  Brad and Heloise stood on the sidewalk and waved when her father and Natalie left for the Fourth of July weekend to celebrate their first anniversary. They had their babies with them, and a mountain of equipment. And Brad reminded her that it was their anniversary too, they had met exactly a year before at Hugues and Natalie’s wedding, and so much had happened since then. Their lives had grown and changed, she looked very official in her navy uniform as they walked back into the hotel and he went upstairs to finish unpacking. He had just moved in. And their trip to Europe was a few weeks away. They could hardly wait.

  Chapter 25

  HELOISE LOOKED AT her watch and decided to run by the ballroom for five minutes. Sally had stunned them all by taking a job at a hotel in Miami and had left a few months before. The salary had been irresistible, and they had a new catering manager that Heloise wasn’t sure of yet. Everyone had been heartbroken when Sally left, and she said she might come back one day. So now Heloise was diligently overseeing all their catering events. And this was an important event. It was her father’s sixtieth birthday party, and they were expecting over a hundred guests for dinner and dancing. He and Natalie had been married for seven years, and the twins had just turned six.

  When she got there, the ballroom looked just the way she wanted it to, with topiary trees, and flower arrangements on every table, and the ceiling was covered with balloons. The new catering manager loved balloons, a little too much for Heloise’s taste, and worst of all, Jan had left too. She had opened
her own florist shop in Greenwich, but she came to visit often, and she and Heloise had lunch every few weeks. So they had a new florist, Franco, too. He had trained with Jeff Leatham in Paris at the George V, and he was very good. His topiary trees and large arrangements were exquisite, and already causing comment at the hotel.

  She checked everything, and once she was satisfied, she went upstairs to dress. Brad had just come home from his office. He’d been working on a strike all week for one of his clients, and he kissed her as she flew through the door, took off her uniform jacket, and pulled out the dress she was planning to wear. They had just updated the uniforms that year, and she’d picked the design. It looked younger, and fresh.

  “How does it look?” Brad asked her, knowing she must have just checked the ballroom. She was as attentive as ever to detail, and he knew her well after seven years.

  “Perfect.” She beamed at him, and then hopped into the shower, and a minute later popped her head out again. “I meant to call you. I have a guest who slipped in the shower and is threatening to sue.” He still worked for the hotel’s law firm, and he did more and more work for the hotel.

  “Your father called me about it,” he reassured her. “I already contacted the guest. They’re coming back for Thanksgiving with their kids. They want three suites and a free stay for four days. It’s cheaper than litigation or a settlement.” Heloise nodded, relieved. The woman had broken her collarbone and arm, and it could have been expensive. Brad had handled it well. He always did. He was terrific with all their labor issues. He was a partner of the firm now.

  Brad and Heloise arrived at the ballroom just before her father, Natalie, and their children, and Stephanie looked up at her with a toothless grin. She looked surprisingly like Heloise, except that her hair was blond instead of red. And she said that she wanted to work at the hotel one day. She wanted to be the hairdresser or the florist, and Heloise had told her that there were even more fun things to do if you ran it. Stephanie said she didn’t want to wear a uniform. She wanted to wear pretty dresses to work and sparkly shoes. Julien wanted to be a baseball player and had no interest whatsoever in the hotel. And they both went to the Lycée, just like Heloise. Natalie was working as hard as ever at her design business, although only three days a week, and Jim, her design assistant, had become her partner, which took the pressure off her. She had just redone all their suites at the hotel, and given them a whole new look, although this time Hugues had grumbled at the expense and was constantly looking to cut costs. And she had redone the presidential and penthouse suites too.

  Hugues’s birthday coincided with the hotel’s twenty-fifth anniversary, and it was a double celebration for the hotel and for him. And Franco had ordered all silver balloons. And within half an hour the celebration was under way. The band was playing, people were dancing, and everyone was gathered around the buffet. All the familiar faces were there, even Jan who had come in from Greenwich. Hugues looked ecstatic as his dedicated employees circled around him. And the pastry chef had made him an enormous cake. Heloise smiled at Brad across the table when her father stood up to make a speech. He rapped a knife on his champagne glass and held it high as he looked around the room at his wife, his three children, his employees, his favorite guests, and his friends. Everyone he cared about was in that room.

  “I’d like to thank all of you for your loyalty to me, to this hotel, to my family, and for making the last twenty-five years here a joy for me in every way. If I named you all, we’d be here all night.” He smiled. Heloise rolled her eyes as she listened. It sounded like a retirement speech instead of an anniversary speech, and she saw that Brad was thinking the same thing. Her father had been very emotional about the anniversary and this birthday. “I’ve had fun here,” he went on, “I’ve had headaches here, I’ve had children here. Twenty-five years ago Heloise was almost three years old when I started to renovate this hotel. And when we opened she was almost five. She’s been terrorizing most of you for the last twenty-five years, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching her grow into the lovely and extremely competent woman she is, and as some of you know, she keeps me in line. I was almost foolish enough to sell the hotel a few years ago, and she stopped me, because she loved this hotel so much. She was right, of course, and it would have been a terrible mistake.

  “So, my friends, I won’t bore you any longer. I am here to thank you for these extraordinary twenty-five years, to celebrate my birthday, and to make an important announcement. I will be retiring later this year, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to our new general manager tonight, and I ask you to raise your glasses to congratulate her and wish her well. I give you Miss Heloise Martin, the general manager of the Hotel Vendôme.” He stood there holding his glass up to her, as Heloise stared at him in disbelief, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She had had no idea that he would do that, and as she glanced around the table she could see that Natalie hadn’t known about it either. She looked just as shocked, and so did Brad. Jennifer didn’t look as surprised and had a wistful expression as she sat next to Bruce. And Heloise realized that she knew and hadn’t said a word.

  And as she looked at her father, everyone had risen to their feet and was toasting her. Heloise walked across the room and kissed him then.

  “What are you doing, Papa?” she whispered.

  “It’s your turn, darling. You’ve earned it. I always knew you would one day. And after you, maybe someday one of the twins.” Heloise knew that it would be Stephanie, and not Julien.

  She raised her glass to her father then and toasted him. “I have to tell all of you, I’m quite stunned. My father didn’t warn me that he was going to do this tonight, or ever. I always wanted to run the hotel with him, not after him,” she said, fighting back tears. “I will never be able to live up to the legend he has been here, nor to be the general manager he has been. But I promise you, Papa, solemnly, and all of you whom I’ve known for most of my life, that I will do my best, and I will try. Happy birthday, Papa! Here’s to you!” She kissed him, and there rose a cheer in the room as she went back to her seat. There was a huge clamor everywhere as people exclaimed over what he’d done.

  “You didn’t know?” she said to Natalie across the table, who looked as surprised as she did.

  “I had no idea.” She was stunned. She wondered what he was going to do now. She couldn’t imagine him doing nothing.

  “Neither did I,” Brad said as he joined in, but he thought it was a great idea. Heloise was twenty-seven years old; she had prepared and trained for almost ten years and grown up in the business. At Stephanie’s age the hotel had been her playground, and in the years since, it had become her life. And in subtle ways she had improved and modernized it and enhanced her father’s original vision. It was an exceptional hotel and a legend in New York.

  Hugues took his wife out on the dance floor then, while he told her about the travel plans he had for them, the things they were going to do, the year in Paris he wanted to spend with her and the children, if she was willing to let Jim run her business for that long, and he hoped she might. He was full of excitement and ideas, as Natalie spun around the floor with him, dizzy with what he said, but excited by it too. His enthusiasm was contagious, and she loved the idea of spending a year in Europe with the twins. The best part of his retiring was that he was still young enough to enjoy it, and so was she. She had just turned forty-eight, and Hugues was a handsome, sexy, youthful sixty. She and the children had kept him young.

  “What did Papa just say?” Stephanie asked as she came up to Heloise with a puzzled expression. Her hair was in long blond pigtails with ribbons.

  “He said that I’m going to run the hotel and Papa will have more time to play with you.” Heloise smiled at her. She was crazy about them both.

  Stephanie looked annoyed when her older sister explained it to her. “I want to run the hotel too.”

  “Then you have to work very hard and spend a lot of time here, and one day you can work with me.” Stepha
nie looked satisfied with the suggestion, and Brad took Heloise out on the dance floor and smiled as he looked down at her.

  “Well, that was certainly a big surprise. Do you think he’ll actually be able to relax?” He couldn’t imagine Heloise doing that either. They lived for the hotel. But Brad enjoyed his work too, and what he did for her and the hotel, among other clients.

  “Natalie and the twins will keep him busy,” she said as Jennifer and Bruce danced past them and waved.

  Heloise was still having trouble absorbing what her father had just done as she and Brad talked and danced. He was smiling down at her proudly.

  “He did a smart thing,” Brad complimented her. “You’ll be a wonderful general manager, if you don’t let it kill you.” It was a family trait, they both worked too hard. But she loved it, just as Hugues did. And she was tireless. She worked all the time, except when Brad could get her out for an evening, or away for a few days, which was rare.

  They were still talking about her father’s big announcement when they ran into Jennifer and Bruce at the buffet a little while later. Julien was hiding behind it, throwing bread balls at his twin, and Heloise discreetly signaled to him to stop. He was full of mischief and more naive than Stephanie, who seemed much more grown up. She was more like Heloise’s twin than his. He was more easygoing, and Stephanie loved knowing everything that went on in the hotel. She had loved following Ernesta around with the turn-down cart, until Ernesta had retired the year before. But she was there that night for Hugues’s birthday, and Heloise had given her a big hug. She was one of the treasures of her childhood, and Ernesta’s eyes always lit up when she saw her, and she had cried when Hugues announced her as the new general manager.