Betrayals

“I would never presume to judge you,” he told her softly. “I hope you know that.”

A

He grimaced, but there was a gleam in his intensely blue eyes. “You’re saying I’m a critical old fart.”

She smiled for the first time in hours. “Not that old. Let’s just say people always know where they stand with you-and you’re a better man than most. Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

To her surprise and relief, Thomas let her go without another word.

Taking a gaggle of children flower-picking wasn’t something A

The children’s zeal for flower-picking waned faster than she’d hoped, but her nephew Jared, the eldest at nine, launched a game of tag. Quentin was reluctant and terrified, his mother suspected, the girls would beat him. He was seven, a sturdy, towheaded boy with a quiet ma

The game got off to an aggressive start, and A

“Bon matin, ma belle.”

She hadn’t heard his approach. She twisted around, but he was concealed behind the knotted trunk of an olive tree, out of the children’s view. Their game was already getting out of hand. Quang Tai’s six-year-old daughter, Tam, a mite of a girl, was beating the socks off the two boys and loving every minute of it, teasing them in her mixture of English, French and Vietnamese. Jared boasted he’d get her next game, but Quentin, ever the sore loser, accused her of cheating. Tam was having none of it. Jared remained neutral in the ensuing squabble, but then they both turned on him. Four-year-old Rebecca Blackburn amused herself by throwing grass on the three older children, becoming more and more daring until they finally paid attention to her.

“You can’t catch me,” she cried jubilantly as the two boys and Tam chased her.

Blue-eyed, chestnut-haired Blackburn though little Rebecca was, A

Mercifully, Tam’s father called from the edge of the field, and all four little monsters scrambled toward him. A

“You can come out now, Jean-Paul,” she said.

He ambled out from behind the tree and squatted down, dropping a daisy into her basket. A

She hated to give him up.

She noticed the sun-whitened hairs on his ta

“Jean-Paul…” For nothing at all she’d strip herself naked and make love to him right there in the grass under the olive tree. The children and her caretaker and Thomas Blackburn and her entire future be damned. She licked her lips, parched to the point of cracking, and squinted at her lover, sitting in the shade with the bright morning sun at his back. “Have you seen the papers?”

Nodding, he sighed and sat back in the grass.

“That’s why I called you.” Her voice quavered; she didn’t like that. She cleared her throat and forced herself not to look away. “Last night I became Le Chat’s latest victim. I was at the roulette wheel, wearing a Tiffany diamond-and-pearl bracelet-”

He looked pained. “Ma belle…”

“No, don’t. Let me finish. The bracelet was a gift to me from my husband on our fifth a

Jean-Paul accepted her words without apparent surprise or concern. “What else did you tell the police?”

A

He looked away from her, his soft eyes lost in the shade.

“They’ve gone to your house, Jean-Paul. I would expect they’re there now and have already found my bracelet-”

“You used the key I gave you?”

“Yes. Last night, while you were asleep.”

He turned back to her, assessing her with the same alertness and intensity that had made him one of the finest race-car drivers in the world. This time, his craving for excitement and danger had led him astray.

“I don’t blame you,” A

“I should kill you,” he said calmly.

“Perhaps. But then you’d be a murderer as well as a jewel thief.” She dug beneath the flowers and pulled back the calico cloth, removing the gun and a leather pouch. The automatic she held in her right hand, awkwardly; the pouch she handed to Jean-Paul. “I decided to warn you because I don’t want you to be arrested and sent to jail. Here’s twenty thousand dollars. A generous amount under the circumstances and enough, I should think, to get you out of the country and settled elsewhere.”

He bit down on his lower lip, the only outward sign of the effect her words were having on him. “And if I choose not to go?”