Maybe if she poured enough in there, she would forget that her husband hadn’t made it to the honeymoon suite for their wedding night.
Not that either of them would have been in any shape to consummate it, and not that consummation was particularly important. It wasn’t like they hadn’t already doneitmany times before. Flicka wasn’t an eighteenth-century, virgin-princess prude.
Maybe it was today’s champagne warring with last night’s, or maybe it was exhaustion from a week of not sleeping more than a few hours a night, but when Flicka turned her bleary eyes to the room and looked over the crowd of women glittering with jewels and satin and men wearing blue, black, or gray suits with shining ties as the morning sun bounced around the crystal and brilliant tablecloths, she found the one woman who was out of place.
What?
Flicka rubbed her eyes and looked again.
A door to Flicka’s past opened, and that woman walked out of it and into the Parisian sunlight streaming through the windows along the far wall.
The woman had been sixteen, just like Flicka, that summer at Tanglewood, the elite music program for young musicians who had world-class aspirations, but they had known each other for years. She had matured, too, the baby fat melted away to reveal stunning beauty. Her hair was knotted too severely on the back of her head, and for some reason, she was wearing evening makeup at brunch. Knowledge of this woman jolted Flicka.
She stood and brushed off questions from her friends and her husband and chased the woman.
Flicka pushed through the crowd, reached the woman in the black dress, and called out, “Georgiana Oelrichs?”
The woman cringed, but she turned toward Flicka. “Um, yeah, but it’s Georgie Johnson now.”
She was holding four champagne flutes in her long fingers, and she shoved them at Rae Stone and a tiny blonde who had been at the wedding that morning, too. The girls plucked the wine classes out of Georgie’s hands just before she dropped them.
Georgie turned and stared right at her. “Hi, Flicka. Can we talk somewhere?”
Flicka wound her arm in Georgie’s, just like they had when they had strolled the fields around Tanglewood together, and guided her toward the hallway outside.
Her heart warred with her head. She shouldn’t be alone with a person from her past, and she shouldn’t go off alone with anyone. Flicka was better at operational security than that.
Outside the double doors, Flicka sat with Georgie on a velvet settee bench, and they bent their heads together. So close, Flicka could see that Georgie must have been trying to overdo her makeup.
Her heart hurt more.
Georgie said, “I am so sorry.”
Flicka whispered, “I was so worried. You just disappeared. I couldn’t find you.”
“My father, what he did, it was so awful, and I got you involved. I am so sorry.”
Flicka rolled right over what Georgie was saying, “When I emailed, I got a bounce from the lawyers. I couldn’t find you. I wanted to help you.”
They murmured to each other, talking about the past.
When Flicka looked up in a belated attempt to be aware of her surroundings and watch for danger, Dieter Schwarz was again standing a few feet away, watching over her.
His suit bulged under his arms where he holstered his guns, but his shoulders were broad under his suit.
When she had seen him stripped to the waist in the hospital yesterday morning, his chest had been more defined and ripped than the last time she remembered seeing him without a shirt, two years before.
That suit looked good on him, too. Really good.
Georgie was nearly crying, explaining why she had run away years before and how the lawyers wouldn’t let her call anyone, and then she just couldn’t.
Flicka told her, “Oh, Georgie. It was nothing. It was a pittance. I missedyou.I wantedyouback. Are you okay?”
Georgie twined her arms around Flicka’s neck and sobbed. “I’m not.”
Flicka had been sobbed on many times. Again, one of the hazards of visiting disaster zones and of building schools and giving out micro-loans that changed people’s lives.
She held Georgie carefully. “I don’t care about the money, Georgiana. I care about you. I would have helped you, and I want you back in my life. Do you still play?”
