There's Something About St. Tropez Read Online Free Page B

don’t want you to catch pneumonia on my watch.”
    She hugged Tesoro closer. The dog whined, not liking being pressed to her cold wet bosom. She said reluctantly, “I guess I can’t just sit here all night dripping water all over your floor.”
    â€œ
Our
floor.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSeems like this house may be yours
and
mine.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI’m willing to bet the rental agent has made a mistake and she’s rented the property twice for the same month.”
    Sunny fished in her red bag until she found Mac’s signed contract. She handed it over. “Doesn’t that say ‘for the month of June’?”
    Nate read it, then got up, went to the sideboard and took out his own contract. “Ditto,” he said, handing it to Sunny.
    She read it, then read it again, stunned. She shoved her wet hair out of her eyes and glanced wearily up at him. “Now what?”
    Nate checked his watch. “In the morning, which is only a few hours away, I think we should pay a visit to Madame Lariot in Cannes and ask her what she’s going to do about it.”
    Sunny groaned.
Mac
should have been here to deal with this. What if Madame Lariot gave Nate Masterson custody of Chez La Violette? That would mean she and Mac—whenever he appeared that is—would be stuck in St. Tropez without a villa for a whole month. And this late in the Riviera summer-vacation game who knew what might be available. If anything. They would probably end up back in Malibu, with no vacation, no holiday romance, and no wedding.
    Nate was still wishing she would change out of her wet clothes. She looked like a demented mermaid with her trails of long wet hair. Besides he didn’t want a sick woman on his hands along with everything else. He said, “What are you doing here alone, anyway?”
    Sunny twirled the pink diamond ring around her finger. “My fiancé was supposed to be here. He got delayed so I came on alone. He’ll be joining me in a couple of days. I think,” she added gloomily. Right now she was decidedly off Mac Reilly.
    â€œLook here, Sunny Alvarez,” Nate said, “you really have to change out of those wet clothes. For God’s sake, what do I have to do to convince you I’m not about to attack you?”
    Their eyes met across the table, his impatient, hers defensive. Then Sunny began to laugh. “All I need to do is take a look in the mirror, I guess.”
    He grabbed her two suitcases and led her across the hall into a large bedroom suite that made up the entire east wing.
    â€œViolette’s own boudoir,” he said. “I preferred the gallery room at the top of the stairs.”
    He turned on a lamp then walked to the French doors and closed the curtains. Sunny took a look around.
    It was a Hollywood movie set from the thirties, Busby Berkeley gone wild, all pale paneled walls, white-on-white silk and dove gray velvet, glimmering with chrome tables and mirrors and silver sconces. It evoked images of slender elegant women in bias-cut satin evening dresses, holding long cigarette holders and flirting with handsome tuxedoed men.
    An enormous four-poster was made of a mosaic of tiny pieces of mirror glass, like an Indian maharaja’s, so high, a set of wooden steps had been made to climb up to it, and the shredding silk coverlet was monogrammed with an oversized white
V
, for
Violette
.
    An old desk in one corner was the only piece that looked real, as though someone, probably Violette herself, had designed it, or perhaps she had even made it, because all it was, was old planks, driftwood probably, weathered to a pale gray like the velvet sofas. It still held a white leather blotter and a letter stand with writing paper in that same pale gray stamped in white with the address, Chez La Violette, St. Tropez.
    But a layer of dust lay over everything, the silver was tarnished, the once-elegant silk drapes