It hit her like a jolt. She’d never felt this much in control of her life. She was alone, she was broke, but she was in charge and something close to happy, no longer the unsophisticated little Texas urchin rescued by the prince.
“Damn, you look lovely.”
She’d forgotten how she liked his voice, the passion with which he addressed everything from the marmalade on his toast to children at a school he was visiting. She steeled herself and looked up.
He was dressed so that no one would recognize him, and she could see Christopher’s guilty hand at work. Light-toned pants and a matching zip-up jacket, trimmed in black, no tie. His face was the same, though. The dirty-blond hair, like hers without the frizz, parted in the middle. His eyes, the color of the ocean when it goes gray at twilight, revealed, as always, little of what he was thinking.
“Someone will recognize us,” she said, as much to cover her nervousness as anything else. “We shouldn’t have risked this.”
“Last I heard, you were still my wife.” Alain pulled out the chair across from her and sat. “We could always move to a booth, or to my room, for that matter.”
“I think I expressed myself to you on the phone yesterday.”
“You told me, as your grandmother would say, how the cow ate the cabbage.”
Hearing his accent wrap around her grandmother’s words both pleased and saddened her.
“I miss her.”
“She knows you’re okay. She lived long enough to see that you were going to be fine.”
Gabriella felt her hackles rise. “I was fine to begin with, Alain. I just fell in love with a man who betrayed me.”
She hoped for a reaction, an admission, a begging of forgiveness. Instead, she saw only his cold gray eyes of hostility.
“She’s waiting,” Alain said, and Gabriella realized why he’d suddenly shut down. She looked up to see whoshewas.
The waitress stood at the table, her slender hips hitched beneath a long black skirt. A server, waiting for an order. Gabriella had screwed up again.
“I’ll need a moment.”
She could swear she heard the waitress sigh. Before she was certain, the woman spoke, but not to her, of course.
“Could I get you anything?” Her glossy lips cracked into a smile.
“One of those.” Alain pointed at Gabriella’s glass. She decided to take a swallow. Not bad, a frenzied, flowery scent, before the cold teeth of booze bit into her.
As she clicked off to fill the order, Gabriella said, “She’s going to call someone. She recognized you, I’m sure of it.”
“All of this publicity has made you paranoid.” He leaned forward on the table. “I like that thing you’re doing with your hair now. Sixties, right?”
“It was Christopher’s idea. Hide a bad feature with a current trend.”
“Your hair’s wonderful. Why do you buy into that rubbish that everyone has to have a spiky little Tania Marie flip? What good did it do her?”
“Don’t put down Tania Marie. She’s sweet, actually.” Goodness, had she said that? Did she feel it? Indeed, she did.
“She doesn’t have a chance at the Killer Body job, does she?”
“I don’t know. Bobby Warren’s behavior isn’t easy to predict. But the Killer Body job doesn’t matter anymore.” Relief flooded his face, and he couldn’t control the smile that spread across it. She felt cruel delivering the rest of the blow, but that was crazy. She owed him the truth, and now. “I’m going to be taking over John Crosby’s show while he’s on vacation. If it works out, I may get my own show without having to detour through Killer Body Land.”
“And if you don’t?”
“I’ll keep trying. I have an agent who believes in me. I have John Crosby’s support. The more I think about it, I don’t believe Killer Body is for me.”
“I won’t quarrel with that.” Alain looked stunned, unaware that the drink had arrived and the server had departed. Gabriella knew that astonished, bewildered feeling, had lived with it from the moment those photographs of her had hit the tabloids. She hurt for Alain, but she knew what she had to do. She pulled out her chair and stood.
“I’ve dealt with my weight problems as honestly as I know how, but I don’t want to make a career out of them. I’m going to tell Bobby Warren that.”
