asked what time they land in Vancouver.”
They: her aged parents who thought their only surviving child was blissfully happy with the grandson of a man they revered more than God! What if they saw past the subterfuge so carefully constructed for their benefit? What if her world-famous smile cracked, and she couldn’t disguise the misery?
Suddenly, when it was too late to change anything, she wondered why she’d ever encouraged them to leave their native Hungary and visit Canada, or why she thought she could pull off such a monumental deception. “Three o’clock tomorrow.”
“And you’re in Los Angeles now?”
“Yes. I stayed with a friend last night but I’m flying out at ten. I expect to be at the penthouse by early afternoon.”
“That should leave you enough time to unpack and reacquaint yourself with the place. And while I think of it, you might want to pick up a few supplies. The stuff in the refrigerator’s pretty basic and unlikely to measure up to your gourmet standards.”
Why did he do that? she wondered. Why imply that she was impossible to please and needlessly extravagant? Whatever else she’d contributed to the failure of their marriage, overspending his money was not on the list, for all that he’d been convinced his bank account was what had made her chase him to the altar.
But taking issue with him now would lead only to more acrimony and she already had enough to handle. “Grocery shopping’s at the top of my list of things to do,” she said, then waited, hoping he’d volunteer the information she most needed to learn, and so spare her having to be the one to raise a topic he surely hadn’t overlooked.
Once again, though, he disappointed her and with obvious relief said, “I guess that’s it, then. If I don’t see you today, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow at breakfast.”
“Before you go, Max…”
“Now what?” There it was again, the weary impatience she so easily inspired in him.
“Where am I… I mean…um, which room is…mine?”
So clearly taken aback by the question that she could practically feel his incredulous stare zinging down the phone line, he let a full thirty seconds of silence elapse before replying, “I thought the whole idea here is to convince your parents we’re still happily married, despite what the tabloids say.”
“It is.”
“Then which room do you suppose, Gabriella?”
Feeling like a none-too-bright child being asked to put two and two together and come up with four, she muttered, “The master suite?”
“Bingo! And since all my stuff fits easily into one closet, I hope you’re bringing enough clothes to fill the other, unless you want it to be patently obvious that, like your parents, you’re merely visiting. I don’t imagine, given your extensive wardrobe, that’s a problem?”
“None at all,” she said, recovering a trace of the haughty composure that had made her an overnight sensation as a model. “I have three large suitcases packed and waiting.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. Any more questions?”
Indeed yes! But nothing would persuade her to come right out and ask, Will we be sharing the same bed?
She’d find out the answer to that soon enough!
She’d grown up in a palace—a small one, to be sure, and rather shabby around the edges, but a palace nonetheless. The Tokyo apartment she’d bought eighteen months ago, when she left Max, was small but exquisite. Her most recent acquisition, a house with a lovely little walled garden on the outskirts of Rome, was a gem of seventeenth-century elegance.
Still, as she stepped out of the private elevator on the twenty-first floor and stood under the hand-painted dome in the vestibule, the magnificence of Max’s two-story penthouse took her breath away, just as it had the first time she’d set foot on its hand-set marble floor.
Leaving her luggage and the sacks of groceries in the foyer, she crossed the vast living room to the right of the winding staircase and slid back the glass doors to the terrace. Tubs of bougainvillea, hibiscus and tibouchina in full flower lent splashes of exotic color to the sprawling rooftop garden. Yellow roses climbed up the south wall. A miniature clematis with flowers the size of bumblebees rambled along the deep eaves. The raised swimming pool and hot tub shimmered in the drowsy heat of the late June afternoon. People who didn’t know her real reason for taking up residence here again could be forgiven for thinking she’d entered paradise.
Beyond the parapet, the Vancouver skyline showed itself off in all its summer glory. Sunlight bounced off the glass walls of newly built office towers. Sailboats drifted on the calm waters of Georgia Strait. The graceful arc of the Lion’s Gate Bridge rose from the green expanse of Stanley Park to span the First Narrows as far as the North Shore where snow-kissed mountain tips reared up against the deep blue sky.
It had been just such a day that she’d come here as a bride, with the air so hot and still that the tears she couldn’t keep in check had dried on her cheeks almost as fast as they’d fallen. She’d been married all of forty-eight hours, and already knew how deeply her husband resented her. She’d stood in this very spot, long after sunset, and prayed for the hundredth time that she could make him love her. Or, if that was asking too much, that she could stop loving him.
Her prayers had gone unanswered on both counts, and remembering the weeks which had followed left her misty-eyed all over again.
Annoyed to find herself so soon falling back into old, bad habits, she gave herself a mental shake and returned to the cool, high-ceilinged living room. Like the city, it, too, had undergone some change, not by new additions but by the complete removal of anything that might have reminded Max of her.
“Do what you like with it. I don’t care,” he’d flung at her when, as a bride, she’d suggested softening the austerity of the decor with various wedding gifts and dowry items she’d brought with her from Hungary—lovely things like the antique tulip lamp, hunting prints and painted wall clock handed down from her grandparents, and the brass trivets and finely stitched linens from her godmother, all of which she’d left behind when she fled the marriage.
Now, the cherrywood accent pieces Max had chosen before he met her provided the only contrast to the oyster-white couches, carpets, walls and deep, carved moldings. Even the classic fireplace, swept scrupulously clean of ashes, looked incapable of warmth. He had erased every trace of her from his home as thoroughly as he’d erased her from his life and, while some might admire the severe elegance of the room, without the reminders of her childhood home and family, Gabriella found it cold and hostile.
Surely, he hadn’t thrown away those treasures her family had managed to save from the ravages of the political upheaval which had reduced so many once-wealthy families to poverty? Surely, as she went about the business of—how was it he’d put it, when they’d spoken on the phone that morning?—reacquainting herself with her former home, she’d find they’d just been stashed away somewhere?
Returning to the foyer, she averted her gaze from the stairs which led to the bedrooms, and carried the grocery bags to the equally barren-looking kitchen. Max’s claim that he had only basic supplies in stock had been, she shortly discovered, a masterpiece of understatement. Although the temperature-controlled wine cellar at one end of the room was well stocked, the refrigerator contained
