“Yeah,” Mort said, meeting her gaze and nodding sadly. “I don’t remember what the wife died of, but I think she was sickly from the get-go. They couldn’t have been married for much more than a year before she got ill, and then she was gone by the time their graduation date arrived.”

His words pounded in Emma’s stunned brain with the pulse of her blood. “Just goes to show you, I guess. Someone might look at Montand and think he’s got it all—money, good looks, success, glamorous businesses and yet—”

“It’s like life is playing some kind of sick joke on him,” Emma finished dully, recalling Vanni saying similar words that night on Lookout Beach when they’d differed on the topic of death.

“Yeah,” Mort said, taking a sip of coffee. “There’s no fortune big enough that could ever tempt me into that young man’s shoes.”

“Amen,” Jamie agreed fervently.

Mort blinked, seeming to come to himself. He gave his daughter a fond glance and patted her hand that sat on the table. “It was just a much too spicy cheeseburger,” he reassured her under his breath. Jamie grinned up at him wryly and Mort winked.

“So that’s the man who now owns your apartment complex, Emma,” Mort said, dropping his hand. “I hadn’t heard he’d ventured into real estate, but with money like his, I suppose it’s smart to diversify. I’m glad he’s taken care of things so quickly at your place. That bodes well. Maybe Montand has overcome all his adversities and become a decent man. I’d like to think so, anyway. I’ve heard good things about his business dealings. And I liked him as a kid.”

“Emma?” Jamie asked, a strange expression on her face. She set down her cup and placed her hand on top of Emma’s frozen one where it rested on the table. “Are you okay? That glow I was talking about earlier seems to have made a run for it. Your fingers are freezing,” she said, concern etching her face as she chafed Emma’s hand with her own.

Emma forced a smile. “I’m fine,” she lied. “It’s just the air-conditioning.” She squeezed her friend’s hand to reassure her and changed the subject to a safer one. In her head, however, she never left the topic of what Mort had revealed about Vanni. Her attention kept going back to it like it would a sharp wound.

That afternoon when she got home, she received a call from Dr. Parodas’s office. Neil Parodas himself was on the other line, calling to give her the test results from Vanni’s and her exam. He gave the information in such a friendly, amiable manner, it was difficult to be uncomfortable about his knowing the reason for the tests. He proclaimed both of them to be in excellent health. She hung up the phone and stood in her empty kitchen.

Another barrier of intimacy between Vanni and her had been removed. She’d agreed to have sex with him without protection.

She recalled what Mort had told her today about Vanni’s young wife dying. Surely the sympathetic pain she experienced at the information was beyond what it should have been, given how long she’d known him . . . given their agreement? It worried her, that sharp ache when she considered his suffering. His loneliness.

She stared out the window over her kitchen sink and also remembered the other shocking information Mort had given her. Vanni was the one responsible for making sure every item on her punch list was completed with the highest efficiency. He owned her home. He didn’t own her, though. Not if she could help it.

Surely she was a fool for not grasping at every little tidbit of protection she could get in this affair with Vanni Montand?

Chapter 23

Vanni spoke to Niki using a hands-free headset during his very swift drive between his villa near Saint-Jeannet and the airport on Sunday morning. An emergency had called him away from a planned meeting with some top officials in regard to the race in two weeks’ time.

At least if felt like an emergency to Vanni. Others might disagree.

“Just smooth things over for me, won’t you? Make something up. You’re good at that,” Vanni was saying as he took a hairpin mountain turn with the ease of long practice.

“I resent that,” Niki told him, his unconcerned, mild tone at odds with his words.

“Only because you assumed I meant making up stories to your various women,” Vanni said with a distracted smile. “In fact, I meant you’re a natural diplomat. It’s in your genes.”

“We are talking about smoothing royal feathers here. That’ll cost you double for the favor,” Niki replied, referring to one member of the Montand French-American Grand Prix planning committee who was a relation to the neighboring state’s monarchial family.

“You can do it. You’re part of their family, after all.”

“I’m a tacked-on leaf of a very disreputable branch,” Niki replied dryly. “And I can think of one non-royal bird who is going to be extremely ruffled by your absence. No amount of Dellis diplomacy is going to smooth that over.”

“I have complete faith you’ll make her forget I even exist,” Vanni said drolly as he plunged down the mountain, the sun-infused Mediterranean sparkling like liquid turquoise beneath a sky as smooth and blue as a robin’s egg. The particular committee member Niki was referring to was a very beautiful, married socialite who had been vying for Vanni’s attention since he was first introduced to her at her own wedding six years ago.

“You must give Estelle credit,” Niki mused, and Vanni could almost see the glimmer of humor in his friend’s black eyes. “She remains convinced after all these years she can change your mind about taking a married woman as a lover. I myself was always a little confused by this American fastidiousness of yours.”

“You know it’s got nothing to do with being American. It’s got everything to do with being Michael Montand’s son.”

He didn’t recognize how bitter he’d sounded until he noticed the silence on the other line. He’d seen firsthand what his father’s frequent infidelities—what the ultimate betrayal—had done to his mother. No, Vanni was selfish, but he wasn’t cruel like Michael Montand.

“What is this emergency, Van?” Niki asked, his Greek accent almost disappearing with his sudden, focused concern. “Does it have to do with that lovely nurse you brought to Cristina’s funeral? I recognized what she was wearing around her neck. How did you manage to get Prisatti to give her one? Or did you mislead him somehow as to the identity of the receiver?”

“Do you think Angelo Prisatti thought it was for me?” Vanni asked sardonically.

“No, not a chance,” Niki chuckled. “I’m just desperate to know what in the world you told him in order to get him to part with it. That’d be excellent knowledge for any single man.”

“Only you would use a Prisatti angel to get a woman into bed.”

“I don’t need to. But isn’t that why you used it?” Niki challenged glibly.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?”

“You sort of are my business, unfortunately. Are you sure you’re not more . . . unsettled by Aunt Cristina’s death than you’re letting on?” Niki asked.

“It has nothing to do with Cristina,” Vanni said in a hard tone. “As for the reason I’m leaving, it relates to the fact that I can’t sleep, and leave it at that,” Vanni said, rounding a mountain pass.

“You never can sleep,” Niki said with an air of stating the obvious.

“Now it’s for a different reason, though.”

He was telling the truth. He’d hardly had a moment’s rest since landing in France. Memories of making love to Emma would pop up at the most inopportune moments—on a walking tour with the rest of the grand prix committee of the race circuit, at a luncheon hosted in Cannes for the press, at an exclusive dinner he’d hosted at La Mer for the drivers that had started to dribble in from all over the world.