Chapter 1

If anyone had asked small, delicate, beautiful blond Amanda Delanoe, she would have said she had the perfect life.

She had a stylish look, a kind of natural chic which was partially inherited from both her parents, and she also had her own talent for giving everything she touched a special, very individual twist.

She had an eye for beauty, fashion, and art, due to the milieu she had grown up in.

Her father, Armand Delanoe, had a gift for business and fashion, and had started several very successful luxury brands, then acquired other established but failing companies and breathed new life into them.

He had a talent for hiring the right people to bring his visions to fruition.

Amanda's mother, Felicia Farr, had been a famous model.

Armand had fallen in love with her the first time he saw her on the runway at the fashion show of one of his brands.

They married soon after.

She was American and had the same striking blond looks as their daughter, although Felicia was tall and willowy.

She had retired soon after Amanda was born, content to be Armand's wife and give up her modeling career.

She had an elegant, classic style and became a showcase for many of the brands he owned by wearing their clothes to important social events and being photographed in them.

Amanda's taste was more unusual and more personal.

She had her father's eye for new fashions, but had chosen art as her career.

At thirty-nine, Amanda had an apartment she loved on the Left Bank in Paris, with a terrace that gave her a front-row seat to view the Eiffel Tower.

The apartment reflected her eclectic taste, her travels, and her many passions.

She had an important collection of contemporary art, and was part owner of a contemporary art gallery, Galerie Delanoe, which represented several well-known artists and a number of new unknowns whose careers she was shepherding carefully, with very satisfying results.

She was a warm, caring person, who had been much loved as a child, and she lavished attention and affection on her artists.

For now, they were her children, and they soaked up her generous praise like sponges.

She never resented spending hours with her artists, listening to all their problems, and visiting them in their studios often to encourage them and see what new themes and techniques they were experimenting with.

She was always willing to give advice or direction when asked.

Born in France, Amanda had also spent considerable time in the States and was a product of both cultures.

She had the warm, passionate nature of the French and the cooler, more practical side of her American blood, plus a solid head for business, which her business partner, Pascal Leblanc, appreciated enormously.

They were the perfect complement to each other.

Pascal was more traditional in his training and outlook, and Amanda was more adventurous, willing to take a risk with an unknown artist.

She had started the gallery herself in her twenties, and Pascal had joined her a year after she opened.

It was a solid relationship and friendship, born of mutual respect.

Pascal was forty-four, five years older than Amanda.

Neither of them was married, and their working relationship had never been confused or polluted by romantic overtones.

They frequently gave each other advice of a personal nature.

Amanda was given to serious relationships and spent long periods on her own between the men she loved, after the relationships failed for whatever reason.

Pascal's romances were brief and passionate.

They rarely lasted more than a few months.

There was always a new woman to fall madly in love with around the next corner.

His relationships were like summer fireworks and burned out just as quickly.

He had an aversion to the concept of marriage.

It sounded like a prison sentence to him.

It wasn't a goal for Amanda either.

She didn't seek it but wasn't as opposed to it as Pascal.

She had watched her parents' once happy marriage deteriorate and eventually implode, so she was cautious.

And so far no one had made her feel that she wanted to be married, and children weren't a strong lure for her either.

She was blissfully happy as she was, unattached for the moment, and happy with her friends, her work, and her dog.

Her education had been as evenly divided as her nationality.

She had grown up in Paris until her parents divorced when she was twelve, and her mother took Amanda back to New York with her.

It had been a big adjustment for Amanda, leaving France and going to an American school.

Her father had always been her hero.

She spent holidays and summers with him after the divorce and loved going back to France to be with him and her old friends.

Neither of her parents had ever precisely explained to her the reason for the divorce.

She had been mildly aware of the dissent between them for a year or two, and saw some serious turbulence and angry fights.

It was only later that she realized that her father's frequent infidelities had been the reason for it.

He loved his wife, but he could never resist the beautiful women, mostly models, who crossed his path.

Her mother had been deeply unhappy when they left Paris.

Armand visited Amanda frequently in New York, since he had business there.

Her parents had divorced when Amanda was at an age when adolescence quickly took over, and in her early teen years, she and her mother argued more than they ever had before.

Amanda was constantly at war with Felicia and blamed her for the divorce, since she couldn't imagine her father causing it, nor any reason for her mother leaving him.

Felicia never told Amanda her reasons, out of respect for Armand.

And Amanda was too young to know.

Armand had taken responsibility for it, and tried to explain to Amanda that her mother wasn't entirely wrong, but she didn't believe him, and continued to blame her mother.

And then, disaster struck.

Armand had been generous with his ex-wife, mostly out of guilt, and Felicia had lived a very comfortable life.

Amanda went to one of the best private schools in New York and they lived in a very pretty apartment.

Felicia was on her way to a party in the Hamptons with friends on a helicopter they'd chartered when a flash storm hit, the helicopter crashed, and everyone on it was killed, including Amanda's mother.

Amanda was at a friend's house for the weekend, and the friend's mother tearfully told Amanda what had happened.

Amanda was fourteen then.

It was two years after she and her mother had left Paris.

Her father arrived immediately to bring her home after the funeral in New York three days later.

He was almost as devastated as his daughter at his ex-wife's death.

Amanda was consumed with guilt about their teenage battles, and Armand for the many affairs he'd had, which had driven Felicia away and broken her heart.

He took Amanda back to Paris, and lavished love on her.

There was always a woman in his life and on his arm, rarely the same one for long, and he assured Amanda that she was the love of his life.

Amanda went back to her old school in Paris and lived with her father.

She missed her mother fiercely, but she and Armand had a good life, and she never lacked for attention.

She felt more French than ever when she went home.

Until then she had always felt a little American in France and a little French in New York, and in fact, she was both.

Maybe subconsciously, to maintain her tie to her mother, four years after her mother's death, Amanda decided to go to college in New York, and attended New York University, majoring in art history.

She went back to France after she graduated.

She enjoyed her college years, but also realized that culturally she was more French than American and was ready to go home.

Her time in New York reminded her of her life with her mother, but she had grown up French, and Paris was home.

She had gotten a job at an excellent art gallery in Paris, and was thoroughly enjoying her life there, when disaster struck again.

Her father fell gravely ill six months after she moved back.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was dead in five months.

He was only sixty-two.

It left Amanda alone in the world, without parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins or aunts and uncles, at twenty-two.

But her father had also left her a sizable inheritance and had left his affairs in good order.

He had partners in his businesses, but his estate enabled Amanda to do what she wanted and start a business of her own.

She had kept her gallery job very reasonably for three years after her father died, and had bought the handsome apartment she still lived in.

And at twenty-five, she started her gallery, and was joined a year later by Pascal Leblanc.

She had realized by then that she needed a partner to help her run the business, and he was the perfect one.

Talented, conscientious, and reliable, he had more experience in the art world than she did, and they got along well.

At thirty-nine, she had been without a family for seventeen years now, and was a highly responsible woman, with a good head on her shoulders.

She missed having a mother and father, or any relatives, but she had adjusted to it, and Pascal had several times invited her to spend holidays with him and his parents.

In recent years, she had gone skiing with friends at Christmas, and paid as little attention as possible to the holiday.

It was easier for her that way and made her feel less like an orphan.

There was nothing pathetic about her.

She was a beautiful, successful woman with a career and a business she loved, and artists whom she represented and treated like her own children.

She had an active social life, a home she loved, and a toy poodle named Lulu she said was her soulmate.

She took Lulu everywhere with her.

She was a small white ball of fluff, who was fierce when she defended her mistress, and very possessive of her.

Amanda never really thought about having children or a husband.

She felt that it would happen someday if it was meant to, and in the meantime, she was enjoying her life to the fullest.

She didn't feel as though she was missing anything she desperately needed.

She was startled to realize that she was turning forty.

It seemed like a major milestone to her, and she couldn't believe it had come so fast.

It seemed like only yesterday when she had graduated from college in New York, and then, so few months later, she had found herself entirely on her own.

That had been a hard time for her.

But her life now was easy in comparison, and in perfect order.

She'd had a series of predictable relationships in her twenties, a penchant for sexy bad boys, which had cured her of men like them forever.

They no longer held any allure for her by the time she was thirty.

Pascal had always sounded the alarm bells when he spotted a particularly bad one, and there had been several.

Amanda had always managed to extricate herself with grace, and was wise about it.

Her inheritance, no matter how discreet she was, had attracted a number of fortune hunters.

Most of them were obvious enough for her to see them clearly.

She had been taken in once or twice, but not for long.

At thirty-three she'd had a painful affair with a married man, her first and only relationship of its kind.

He had insisted that he and his wife were "almost"

divorced, and had an "understanding,"

although they still lived in the same apartment, for "the children's sake"

and for financial reasons.

He wasn't eager to lose half of everything he had in a divorce.

The affair had gone on for three years, despite Pascal's warnings.

Amanda's married lover had never left his wife, as their alleged understanding was apparently unilateral.

His wife had hired a private detective, who had taken photographs of Amanda with her married lover.

His wife had threatened to take everything he had, not just half, and Amanda had finally left him with a broken heart and shattered illusions.

It had been three years since it ended, and she hadn't had another deeply serious relationship since, and didn't really want one.

She wasn't bitter, she was cautious, and she no longer fully trusted her own judgment.

She'd gone out with several other men but hadn't fallen in love again.

She enjoyed the fact that her life was pain-free now.

She wasn't suffering, sad, or disappointed.

She liked having an orderly life, and a man she could count on.

There were no candidates offering her that at the moment, and she didn't really care.

In sharp contrast, Pascal had been in love eight or ten times during Amanda's three-year hiatus from serious romance.

She said she loved how easy her life was now, and Pascal believed her, and envied her light, untroubled heart and calm demeanor.

He was always in the throes of some unbridled agony involving a woman who either didn't love him enough, was stalking him, or had another lover and was cheating on him.

Amanda knew all the standard scenarios by heart.

But he was a great and reliable business partner and a good friend, though he seemed to have a need for chaos in his personal life.

She forgave him, as long as his distractions didn't hurt the business.

She was very clear about that, and so was he.

She didn't even know what sort of man she'd want now, but definitely not a married one.

She had a dream about having an equal relationship of some kind with a man, but so far it had never happened.

There was always some form of glaring inequity that kept her from any desire to make the alliance permanent.

She was much too comfortable as she was to let any man ruin it for her, no matter how attractive he was.

No one seemed worth that to her.

Pascal was sorry for her on that score, but no other.

He admired her unfailing ability to keep her life in good order.

She'd been doing it for a long time, and her father had prepared her well.

He left her the means to be secure forever, if she kept what she had and invested wisely.

She was always sensible about money.

Pascal's parents were comfortable, with the remains of dwindling family fortunes, but they weren't wealthy.

They were the fairly typical descendants of people of a respectable bloodline, and he worked hard to compensate for what he didn't have and wouldn't inherit.

He had no illusions about it and was a hard worker.

He and Amanda both were.

Amanda worked harder than anyone he knew.

He respected her a good deal for it, since she didn't have to.

She was set for life, especially now with a successful gallery.

Her business had grown exponentially since she started it.

They did well and had several important clients.

Pascal's main contributions had been his training and talent, a little money he had saved, and several solid gallery and museum jobs to his credit.

Amanda had had only dreams and talent when she started, and her inheritance, and now she had fourteen years of experience and the self-confidence that came withit.

She sat on the terrace of her apartment, drinking her morning coffee and enjoying the view of the Eiffel Tower, as she did every day.

Lulu was sitting politely at her feet, waiting for her ritual piece of toast, which Amanda handed her in small bites.

The weather was beginning to turn warm in the early days of spring.

Amanda loved Paris at any time of year, even when the weather was gray and dark, which made the first of the spring weather even more enjoyable.

She couldn't imagine living anywhere else now.

Her six years in the States, between twelve and fourteen and then for college, seemed like a distant dream now, part of another life.

She went to New York on business from time to time, which reminded her of her mother and made her nostalgic, but it seemed foreign to her.

Paris was part of her soul, New York her history.

She had made friends in college but had lost touch with most of them over the years once she went back to France.

One or two of them would look her up occasionally when they came to Paris, and she would have lunch with them.

All of her college friends were married now and had children of nearly college age themselves.

Amanda couldn't imagine what that must be like.

Many of her French friends were married too, but most of them married later, or had children and didn't marry at all, particularly among her artists, who were indifferent to what they considered old-fashioned traditions, which they thought were meaningless in today's world.

Personally, Amanda didn't think that marriage was "necessary,"

but she thought it must be more reassuring to children if their parents were married.

Whenever she said something like that, Pascal accused her of being American, since he assumed that Americans were more puritanical than the French.

He wasn't entirely wrong.

It was a pet peeve of Amanda's that when she said anything men didn't agree with they called her American.

She had certain standards, some of them old-fashioned, which she believed in.

Like being faithful to one's spouse, which wasn't always the case in France.

She had had ample opportunity to see how her father's infidelities had damaged and finally destroyed her parents' marriage and broken her mother's heart, and she had had a taste of that herself with her one married lover.

Someone always got hurt if one spouse cheated on the other.

Even though it had been legal in France now for many years, most Frenchmen shied away from divorce and the financial impact of it.

They preferred to stay with a spouse they no longer loved, and work around it.

Having a mistress was still a common occurrence in France, and Amanda had a particular aversion to it, although she knew that many of her friends weren't faithful to their spouses.

She'd had the same argument with the married men who asked her out.

They all insisted that they had an arrangement with their wives, which rarely was as neat and tidy and simple as they claimed.

Pascal accused her of being American on that subject too.

"It's not about being ‘American,'?"

she always insisted.

"It's about being decent and honest.

If you date married men, someone always gets hurt."

"Love is dangerous, that's half the fun,"

Pascal said, and she knew he had had affairs with several married women.

But he hadn't been in love with them, so he didn't get hurt.

It was just for fun.

"Besides, you're missing opportunities.

At our age, everyone we know is married.

You might meet someone you really love, and he can always get divorced later."

"Which makes me the bitch who broke up his marriage, so his children hate me.

And most of those guys don't leave their wives.

I don't like complications, or getting tangled up in a mess."

"That's what I mean,"

he had often said smugly, "you're American.

Americans get divorced, and then they fall in love with someone else, most of the time anyway."

"Fine.

Then I'm American,"

Amanda said, exasperated.

"But that makes much more sense to me."

"Why should they get divorced if they have no one else to go to? Why disrupt everyone for nothing? And spend all that money on a divorce?"

"Because it's cleaner.

My mother never forgave my father for the times he cheated on her, and he wasn't looking for another woman, he was just having fun.

He told me that himself when I was in college.

She never forgave him, and he always regretted it.

He said he never met another woman as wonderful as she was.

She was pretty terrific.

And I don't think she was ever unfaithful to him."

"I don't think my parents have ever been unfaithful either,"

Pascal admitted to her.

"But they lead a very small life."

His father was a retired banker, and his mother had never worked.

They lived in Normandy now, in a cozy, pretty house, an eighteenth-century cottage.

"I can't imagine being faithful to anyone,"

Pascal had admitted to her for years.

"I would die of boredom."

"I wouldn't marry you either,"

Amanda said firmly, laughing.

The idea had never appealed to either of them.

Their philosophies about love and marriage were at opposite extremes.

"I don't understand you.

You're the most independent woman I know, and you have absolutely antiquated ideas about relationships."

"That's probably why I haven't had a serious date in three years.

I only go out with single men, and at my age there are none left, except the weirdos no one wants."

But she wasn't unhappy with her lot in life, which he knew too.

She seemed perfectly content, while he was always looking for someone better than he already had.

He'd been that way for all of his dating life.

He loved his parents, but he didn't want to end up like them, with a dreary, unexciting life.

Spending a weekend with them made him nervous, as though their lifestyle was contagious, or some sort of family curse.

He hated the thought of being with the same person forever.

Amanda was somewhat leery of that concept too, which was why she was happy as she was, and she didn't want to make a mistake.

Her worst nightmare was another married man like the one she'd had.

She was careful not to fall into that trap again.

But other than their ideas about romance, she and Pascal got on extremely well, and he was a hard worker, as she was.

Amanda left the terrace, put her cup and plate in the sink for the daily housekeeper to find later, and went to dress for work, while Lulu followed her to the bathroom and waited patiently while she showered and dressed.

She wore black jeans to work, a big soft pink sweater, a black peacoat, and black cowboy boots she'd had since college and loved.

She carried Lulu in a Birkin and walked to work.

She went straight to her office to check her emails, while the tiny white poodle climbed into her pink bed next to Amanda's desk, curled up, and went to sleep, and Amanda continued reading, after hanging up her jacket.

Her office was big and bright and cheerful with some of her favorite paintings on the walls, including a big Damien Hirst across from her desk, and an easel to show clients paintings in her private office.

Her assistant, Margo, brought her a cup of coffee and set it down next to her, while Amanda smiled, waved, and continued reading, and frowned when she read the last email, just as Pascal walked into her office.

They looked like brother and sister.

He was tall, but just as blond as she was, with deep blue eyes, and he sprawled out in the chair across from her desk.

His hair was tousled, which gave him a boyish look, and he looked a dozen years younger than forty-four.

He was wearing jeans with a well-cut tweed jacket, a pale blue Hermès shirt, and brown suede shoes.

He had a sexy casual look, and women of all ages melted when they saw him, which Amanda thought was amusing and teased him about.

"That's not a happy face,"

Pascal said, smiling at her.

"Is someone returning an expensive painting?"

"Worse than that."

Amanda looked at him.

He had become the closest thing she had to family in the years they had been working together.

He was the brother she'd never had.

"The de Beaumonts are giving one of their impromptu dinner parties."

He frowned in response.

"Oh, that is bad news. For you."

He grinned.

"As I recall, it's your turn.

I went to the last one.

Inedible food, deadly guests, and accordion music.

Put your party shoes on."

The de Beaumonts were among their best customers and had an important art collection they added to constantly.

They also gave the worst dinner parties in Paris, usually on the spur of the moment, but considered them command performances despite the short notice, and expected everyone to come.

And because they were rich and important, most of the people they invited accepted.

They were nice people, but served terrible food, and the accordion music was the icing on the cake.

Mr.

de Beaumont joined the accordionist with an accordion of his own after dinner, if he had too much to drink, which he usually did.

"I can't.

The dinner party is tonight.

I'm probably an add-on anyway, to even out their numbers if they need a single woman.

Someone must have canceled.

I'm taking Peggy and Brad Abloff to dinner,"

she said.

They were a young American couple, talented artists, and fun to be with.

The gallery had been representing them for the last year, with great results.

"I don't want to disappoint them and cancel at the last minute."

"You have to,"

Pascal said without hesitating, and stood up.

"You can't turn the de Beaumonts down.

Even if you're an add-on, they'll be insulted if you don't go."

"If you go tonight, I'll go to the next two,"

Amanda bargained with him in a pleading tone, and he shook his head and stood up with a boyish grin.

"No way.

That's worth at least four dinners.

I have a hot date with a lingerie model tonight.

I've been trying to get her to go out with me for a month, and she just broke up with her boyfriend.

I'm taking her out to console her."

"Poor girl.

Talk about a wolf in wolf's clothing."

"Her boyfriend was a jerk.

I'm a vast improvement.

And I'm taking her to the Voltaire,"

one of the best and fanciest small restaurants in Paris.

Pascal was generous with his dates.

"She's a lucky girl,"

Amanda said with a sigh.

"And I'm screwed.

What'll I tell Peggy and Brad?"

"That you're going to have dinner with the people who are going to buy their next pieces.

Give them another night, they won't mind."

Amanda was more motherly with their artists.

Pascal had less patience with them.

"No, but I do.

I nearly fell asleep at the last one, and Francois de Beaumont played the accordion until one a.m. ,"

Amanda said, mournfully.

"It's for a good cause,"

Pascal assured her as he left her office, excited about his own plans for that night.

The lingerie model was the prettiest woman he had met in years.

He loved the beginning of a romance more than anything in the world.

Amanda emailed Virginie de Beaumont and accepted "with pleasure"

despite the last-minute invitation, which botched up her plans for an evening she had been looking forward to.

And then she wrote to the two young artists, apologized profusely, and asked them to suggest another night, which they did five minutes later, for a night Amanda was free anyway.

But she dreaded another painfully boring evening at the de Beaumonts', with their equally tedious friends.

It was one of the few things she disliked about her job, but they were sweet people.

They just served bad food and had boring friends, and Amanda hated accordion music.

But as Pascal said, it was all for a good cause.

The success of the gallery was based on the high quality of the work she and Pascal sold, their skill in finding new artists, and their warm relations with their clients.

And if she had to listen to accordion music in the process, so be it.

It was a small price to pay for the success they enjoyed.

The rest of the day she reviewed slides of new artists' work.

She often found new undiscovered talent in those slides and went over them carefully.

At six o'clock she went home to dress for dinner, and Pascal sent her a text.

"Have a great time tonight!"

he gloated, and she shot back an answer.

"I hate you! I hope your hot date is more boring than the de Beaumonts."

"Not humanly possible,"

he responded, with an emoji of a man falling out of his chair, laughing, and she went to pick out something to wear and hoped she didn't fall asleep at dinner.

She almost had the last time she went.

Lulu gave her a dirty look and climbed into her bed, when she saw that Amanda had put her coat on and was going out without her.

And all Amanda wished was that she was staying home with her, or going to dinner with the two young artists at one of their favorite bistros.

She softly closed the door behind her and headed out for an evening of the dreaded accordion music, trying to think of something suitably rude to text to Pascal.