Three Weeks in Paris Read Online Free

out there after all. When I spoke to him last week he sounded very high on Los Angeles, and his new job at NeverLand Productions. He told me he was born to be a moviemaker.”
    Diane laughed. “Well, I suppose that’s true. Remember what he was like when he was a kid, always wanting to go with your father to the television studios, to be on the set. And let’s not forget that Grandfather Gordon was a very highly thought of stage director, and for many years. Show business is in Tim’s blood, more than likely.” Diane took a sip of water, then asked her daughter, “Do you want a glass of wine, darling?” a blond brow lifting questioningly.
    “No, thanks, Mom, not during the day. It makes me sleepy. Anyway, it’s fattening … all that sugar. I prefer to take my calories in bread.” As she spoke, she reached for a piece of the baguette that her mother had cut up earlier and placed in a silver bread basket. She spread it generously with butter and took a bite.
    “You don’t have to worry about your weight, you know, and you look marvelous, really well,” Diane remarked, eyeing her daughter. She couldn’t help thinking how young she looked for her age. It didn’t seem possible that Alexandra was
thirty
. In fact, in the summer she would be thirty-one, and it seemed like only yesterday that she was a toddler running around her feet. My God, when I was her age I had two children, Diane thought, and a husband to look after, and a growing business to run.
Thirty-one
, she mused, and in May
I’ll
be
fifty-eight
. How time flies, just disappears. Where have all the years gone? David will be fifty-nine in June. What is even more incredible is our marriage. It’s lasted so long, so many years, and it’s still going strong. A record of sorts, isn’t it?
    “Mom, what
are
you pondering? You’re looking very strange. Are you okay?” Alexa probed.
    “I’m fine. I was just thinking about your father. And our marriage. It’s amazing that we’ve been married for thirty-three years. And what’s even more staggering is that the years seem to have passed in a flash. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers and shook her head in sudden bemusement.
    “You two have been lucky,” Alexa murmured, “so lucky to have found each other.”
    “That’s absolutely true.”
    “You and Dad, you’re like two peas in a pod. Did you start out being so alike? Or did you
grow
to resemble each other? I’ve often wondered that, Mom.” Her head on one side, she gazed at her mother, thinking how beautiful she was, probably one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen, with her peaches-and-cream skin, her pale golden hair, and those extraordinary liquid blue eyes.
    “You’re staring, Alexa. You’re going to see all my wrinkles!”
    “Oh, Mom, you don’t have one single wrinkle. I kid you not, as Dad says.”
    Diane laughed and murmured, “As for you, my girl, you don’t look a day over twenty-five. It’s hard for me to believe you’ll be thirty-one in August.”
    “It’s my new short haircut. It takes years off me.”
    “I guess it does. But then, short hair makes most women look younger, perkier. And it’s certainly the chic cut this year.”
    “You once told me short hair was the only chic style, and that no woman could be elegant with hair trailing around her shoulders. And you should know, since you’re considered one of the chicest women in New York, if not
the
chicest.”
    “Oh, I’m not really, but thanks for the compliment.
    Although I should point out that the whole world suspects you’re a bit prejudiced.”
    “Everyone, the press included, cites
you
as a fashion icon, a legend in your own time. And your boutiques have been number one for years now.”
    “We’ve
all
worked hard to make them what they are, not only me, Alexa. Anyway, what about you, darling? Have you finally finished those winter sets?”
    Alexa’s face lit up. “I completed the last one of the snow forest earlier this week, on