Simon opened the door for Lucy. She fell into the passenger seat, wet and exhausted. He closed her door and went around to the driver’s side. “I’ll leave it at the airport,” he said to Jojo. “Keys in the fender.”
“First place anyone will look.”
“Get there early.”
“Tomorrow’s my day off.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to take your chances.”
“Hey,” said Jojo, looking back toward the Eden-Roc. “How much do you think I can get for the tender?”
D’Artagnan Moore called as they left the hotel lot and drove along Boulevard J. F. Kennedy toward Antibes. “Get it?”
Simon handed Lucy the phone. “Tell him—”
He saw the car for a second, maybe less. Far too short a time to react. It was a Citroën panel van, the driver intoxicated, blowing through the red light, striking Simon’s car on the passenger side at a speed of 70 kilometers per hour. Simon’s last thought was for Lucy. She had not put on her safety belt.
He felt the blow, heard the sickening crash of metal colliding with metal, saw the lights of the van inside his car, the world suddenly a terrible blinding white.
Then darkness.
Chapter 2
Ko Phi Phi
Andaman Sea, Thailand
Six thousand miles away, overlooking another fabled beach, this one situated on an island off the southwestern coast of Thailand, Rafael de Bourbon was suffering his third nervous breakdown of the day.
The first had come shortly after he arrived at the hotel, a few minutes past seven, and involved a malfunctioning septic tank. The second was brought on by a faulty air-conditioning unit. The third had as its cause a loose gasket that had cut all water pressure in the kitchen and was the most serious, for this was the first thing the inspectors would check upon their arrival. Hotel inspectors always started in the kitchen. Should he be unable to bring back the pressure, any chance of receiving a permit to operate the Villa Delphine in time for its first guests’ arrival would go out the window.
“How long?” shouted Rafael from beneath the industrial sink.
“Thirty minutes,” responded his wife, as calm as a Sunday morning.
“You’re sure?”
“It’s only a pipe. No one keeps a hotel from opening because of a gasket.”
Rafael finished tightening the gasket and slid from beneath the sink. “I’m not taking any chances. This time we’re going to do things the right way.”
“By the book,” said his wife, as if reciting a family rule. Her name was Delphine—a French name for an English rose, he liked to say. Delphine was thirty-four years old, lean and blond, an intelligent beauty, and holder of a First in economics from Cambridge.
“By the book,” said Rafael, sealing his declaration with a kiss to his wife’s lips.
Rafael Andrés Henrique de Bourbon—“Rafa” to anyone who’d known him long enough to share a beer—was six years his wife’s senior, a tall, rangy Spaniard with cropped black hair, eyes that glittered like obsidian, and a trimmed beard he’d borrowed from Satan himself. In fact, “devilish” was an adjective often connected with his name, for better or worse. Stretching, he toweled the sweat from a torso covered with tattoos. There was a Madonna and child he’d gotten after a night of carousing in Rome. A Maori war band around his left arm he’d gotten in Christchurch. And a Russian Orthodox crucifix on his back he couldn’t remember where he’d gotten, or why. There were sixteen in all, and he was eager to find a reason to add another.
“Watch out, darling,” he said as he freed the cleaning nozzle. A torrent of pressurized water shot into the sink, spraying them both. Rafa shouted with joy. “Strong enough to strip a barnacle from a ship’s hull. The Villa Delphine will have the cleanest plates on the island.”
He switched off the water and replaced the nozzle in its holder. “Time to shower. A filthy hotel owner does not make a good impression.”
“Stop,” said Delphine, taking his hands in her own. “I want to tell you something.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No,” she said, giving his hands a tug. “It cannot.”
Rafa stepped closer, looking into her clear blue eyes, amazed as always that a woman as beautiful, educated, kind, and selfless had decided to marry a man like him. A man far from beautiful, hardly educated, kind when it suited him, and selfless never.“Sí, mi amor.”
