The Last Time I Saw Paris Read Online Free Page A

fancied. She stared out the kitchen window at the surprisingly blue San Francisco afternoon. Of course Minnie wouldn’t be coming home any time soon. Both her children were out of the nest. Josh was inundated with work and Minnie was wallowing in sunshine and glamour. She wished the best for both of them.
    Dexter nudged her hand and she glanced down at him. Unconditional love shone in his golden eyes and she bent and kissed his soft head. “You know what we’ll do, you and I, Dex?” she said. “We’ll go to the beach house. I’ll take you for long walks every day and in the evenings we’ll just snooze by the fire and listen to the ocean.” He gave a couple of excited barks and she laughed. There was no doubt
beach
and
walk
were in Dexter’s vocabulary.
    She raced up the stairs with the dog at her heels, flung a few things into a bag, grabbed some supplies from the refrigerator and put them in a box in the trunk of her white convertible. Dexter was already in the passenger seat and she climbed in beside him,ramming a Forty-Niners cap on her head.
    Her heart seemed to lighten as they drove south out of the city toward Carmel and Big Sur with the radio blasting old Beach Boys and the wind blowing her hair. She would feel better out at the beach. She always did.

CHAPTER 3
    T he house stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the Pacific and was their private haven. They had seen it, a cheap tumbling wreck of a place, fallen in love with it, and bought it in the space of a weekend twenty years ago when they certainly could not afford it. Over the years they had fixed it up and now they liked to think it had been the biggest bargain of their lives. It had given their children long summers of pleasure, been Bill’s escape from his all-consuming work, and had been Lara’s refuge in times of trouble and loneliness. Like now.
    It was a small gray-shingle Cape Cod with white shutters, a rough little garden, and a large wooden deck with steps leading down to the beach. Everything about it was simple and easy. “Beach style,” Lara called it, meaning “low maintenance.” Squishy old sofas with cream linen slipcovers; big cushions in shades of blue; seagrass rugs on the pale wood floors; a generous fireplace with a bleached-pine antique mantel taken from a genuine Nantucket sea captain’s house, and wooden plantation shutters instead of curtains. The kitchen was airy and spacious and up-to-date, and the master bedroom had sloping ceilings, a fireplace, and a balcony overlooking the rocky ocean. The bed was covered in a simple white matelassé spread, and a comfortable old chaise was placed near the window. It was easy and comforting and fittedLara like an old glove. She was more at home here than at the big house in Pacific Heights.
    And so was Dex. He was out of the car and over the gate at the side of the house, racing across the deck and down the steps to the beach before Lara had even opened the car door. She was laughing as she carried the bags into the house.
    The sun was just going down. She opened a bottle of Duboeuf Morgon and put it on a tray along with a glass and the French Vignotte cheese and crusty baguette she had bought in Carmel, then carried the tray out onto the deck. Dex came bounding back up the steps, shaking seawater all over her from his dip in the ocean. He sat, panting, beside her as she sipped the red wine and ate her bread and cheese watching the sunset. It reminded her of picnics with Bill, driving through the French countryside on their honeymoon—twenty-five years ago, when she was just a girl. How happy they had been then, and how wonderful every day had seemed in France, that magical country …
    Sighing, she carried the tray back into the kitchen, stoppered the wine, rinsed out the glass, and put the plate in the dishwasher. A cold wind gusted in at the windows, so she closed them, then crumpled newspapers in the grate, piled on