Pride After Her Fall

The place overlooked the bay—nice and exclusive. But what address wasn’t exclusive in this town? The house had a little fame for being a silent-film actress’s hideaway in the twenties and he was a little curious to see it. He’d driven past many times, but this was the first occasion he’d had to turn in, idling at the gates—which, to his surprise, were wide open. Security was usually pretty tight in this neck of the woods.

As he eased the sports car down the linden lined gravel drive he slowed to a creep, taking in the state of disrepair. Masses of flowering bougainvillaea couldn’t hide the fact that the old place needed a face-job.

And then he saw her.

Nash barely had his car at a standstill before he was out, slamming the door, advancing on the object of his desire.

Sticking out of a flowerbed.

A 1931 Bugatti T51, currently upended in a parterre of small flowered bushes. As if to add to the indignity one of its doors was hanging open.

Every muscle in his body stiffened. He wasn’t angry. He was beyond anger.

He was appalled.

But he was a man who had made self-control a byword. He reined in the fury—knew it needed to be directed where it could do some good.

Coming towards him was a rotund man in garden greens, shaking his arms towards the sky as if inviting divine intercession.

‘Monsieur! Un accident avec la voiture!’

Yeah, that was one way of putting it.

And that was when the shouting started.

CHAPTER TWO

LORELEI St James came awake with a languorous stretch, sliding her bare arms over silken sheets, revelling sensuously in the luxurious comfort. She made a ‘mmph’ sound, rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, prepared to sleep away the day, if that were possible—only to hear a deep male voice raised in anger somewhere outside her bedroom terrace.

Ignore it, she decided, snuggling in.

The voice lifted.

She snuggled a bit more.

More shouts.

She wrinkled her nose.

A crash.

What now?

Sighing, Lorelei pushed her satin sleep mask haphazardly up her forehead and winced as she copped an eyeful of bright Mediterranean sunshine. The room did a rinse-cycle spin around her—no doubt the product of too much champagne, inadequate sleep and enough financial trouble to sink this house around her ears.

She shoved thoughts about the latter to the back of her mind even as her heart began to beat the band, and she felt about for a glass of water to ease the Sahara Desert that was her throat this morning. She was greeted by a clatter as she clumsily knocked her watch, her cell phone and a tangle of assorted jewellery to the stone floor.

Easing herself into a sitting position, pushing the fall of chin-length blond curls out of her eyes, Lorelei wrinkled her nose and held on to the mattress as the room did another gentle spin.

I will never drink again, she vowed. Although if I do, she revised, only champagne cocktails … and at a pinch G&T’s.

As if sensing she was at her most vulnerable, the phone on the floor gave a judder and began to vibrate. Her heart did that annoying leap and race thing again. She made a pained face. When the phone rang nowadays there was usually somebody angry on the other end …

To dissuade her from getting out of bed it stopped, but the muted sound of male voices coming up from below her terrace lifted to a crescendo. This was what had woken her. Men shouting. Some sort of altercation going on.

Surely she didn’t have to deal with this, too? Not today …

But without the catering staff from last night there was only Giorgio and his wife, Terese, and it was unfair to expect them to deal with interlopers. They’d had a lot of them in the past few weeks—all of them creditors, hunting her down now that her father Raymond was banged up in a low-security prison.

As if she had a cent to her name after two years of legal fees.

It wasn’t that she was exactly ignoring her problems—she preferred to think of it as delegating responsibility. She’d deal with the phone calls later, and the emails and the lawyers who wanted her signature on a mountain of documents. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. It was just such a nice day. The sun was shining. She shouldn’t ruin it. One more day in paradise and then she’d pay the piper.

Just one more day …

And then she remembered. Not only did she have a client booked in at noon, she had an appointment this afternoon at the Hotel de Paris. It was about her grandmother’s charity: the Aviary Foundation. Every year they hosted an event to raise money for cancer research.

This year the feature was a one-day vintage car rally, and a famous racing driver would be giving kids struggling with cancer the pleasure of a spin around the track in a high-powered vehicle. Their usual publicist was ill, and the foundation’s president had personally asked her to do the meet-and-greet with their guest celebrity.

She squeezed her temples. She hadn’t even done any research. What if he expected her to know his stats? She could barely balance her own chequebook …

Last year they had lined up a Hollywood actor who famously had a home here in Monaco. Now, that one would have been easy—watch a few films, gush … Everyone knew actors had egos like mountains. Frowning, she contemplated racing-car drivers. Weren’t they kind of like cowboys? She pictured swagger and ego in equal dimensions. Blah.

Reaching for the eau de nil silk evening gown crumpled at the foot of her bed, Lorelei tugged it over her head. Really, she was happy to do the meet-and-greet—she’d do anything the Aviary Foundation asked of her—just not today …

She gave a shriek as something small and furry tunnelled its way onto her lap, claws digging into her flesh.

‘Fifi,’ she admonished, pulling the silk to her waist, ‘behave, ma chere.’

Lifting her beloved baby, she buried her face in a ball of white fluff.

‘Now, be good and stay here. Maman has things to attend to.’

Fifi sat up expectantly in the pool of white silk sheets, curious eyes on her mistress as she opened the French doors and went to step outside. Lorelei doubled back as she remembered she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She wasn’t prudish about her body, but she knew Giorgio was conservative and she didn’t want to embarrass him unnecessarily.

Belting her robe at the waist, Lorelei wandered out onto the terrace. It was going to be another one of those perfect early September days, and she inhaled the briny breeze filled with lavender and rosemary scents from the garden. She most definitely didn’t want to go and sort this out. As she weaved her way down the stone steps, pulling her sunglasses into place, she told herself that whoever it was couldn’t do anything worse than yell at her.

But it wasn’t easy being shouted at, and she wondered if she was ever going to become inured to other people’s anger. In her defence, she’d been facing more than her fair share lately—and it wasn’t getting any easier. Maybe she was suffering from overload, because this morning it felt harder than ever. But Giorgio didn’t deserve this either, and the buck had to stop somewhere.

It would just be nice if for once it didn’t stop with her.

Lorelei saw the Bugatti first and her heart sank. How on earth had it ended up in the garden? On second thoughts, she had a pretty good idea …

And then she saw the man who had disturbed her slumber.

He was … She was …

Lorelei was vaguely aware that her mouth had formed a little ‘oh’ of wonder. In the next instant she remembered that she hadn’t run a brush through her hair, she wasn’t wearing any make-up and her panties were upstairs.