Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

“Does it look great?” She seemed excited, and he took the key out of his pocket and grinned at her.

“Come and look. Someone’s checking in tonight, but it’s empty right now.” He took her by the hand, and they ran down the service stairway to the ninth floor, and he let her in. Hugues let Heloise go first, and he heard her literally gasp as she saw what had been done.

“Ohmigod, Papa! It’s fabulous! It’s soooo terrific, and just what we needed. It looks young and happy and elegant, and the new paintings are fantastic. And I like the lamps and the rugs.” She ran from the living room into the bedroom and liked it even more. “The decorator must be amazing. She did a gorgeous job.” He had mentioned Natalie to her in the past four months but had been careful not to do so too much, so he didn’t arouse her suspicions that there was something going on between them. And he had been artful about it, because he saw no hint of a question in her eyes. All she saw was the decor. “I love it, I just love it,” she said as she sat down on the couch and looked around some more. And as he did, she loved all the little touches and accessories Natalie had added, and the things she had brought from other rooms that suddenly looked so much better here.

“And she came in under budget. I just gave her the other three big suites to do. And she’s been tweaking some of the other rooms.”

“She’s very, very good,” Heloise said admiringly. “I’d like to meet her sometime. Is she young? There’s a really nice fresh feeling to what she does, while staying in the whole tone of the hotel,” which was old-world elegance with a new touch.

“She’s young to me. Not to you,” Hugues said, referring to Natalie’s age. “I think she’s thirty-nine.” He knew exactly how old she was but didn’t want to look too sure, or appear to know too much. It would have been the perfect opportunity to tell her he was dating Natalie, and in love with her, but he didn’t want to tell her so soon and risk upsetting her on her first night home. He wasn’t sure. So he didn’t say a word, except about Natalie’s decorating and her age.

“I’ll bet she’s cool,” Heloise volunteered.

“She is,” he said quietly, and then Heloise wanted to go back upstairs. They had room service in their apartment that night, and she told him everything about the school, and Francois, the boy she was going out with.

“Are you in love with him?” her father asked her nervously, afraid of what he’d hear.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t want to get distracted from school and screw it up. It’s pretty hard. But we’re both applying for internships next summer for our hospitality year. We’re applying to the Ritz, the George V, and the Plaza Athenee.” Hugues looked crestfallen the moment she said it.

“I thought you were going to do your internship year here with me,” he reminded her.

“I can do both,” Heloise said sensibly. “I can do six months in Paris, and the rest with you. That way I’d be home by Christmas next year.” But he had been expecting her return six months earlier, in June. It meant she would be gone for another year, and the last four months had already felt like an eternity to him. But not to her. It was obvious that she was having a ball in Lausanne, with Francois, the school, and all her new friends there. She said there were going to be ten of them staying at Francois’s parents’ chalet in Gstaad over New Year’s. They were very successful and owned a hotel in the South of France. So they had that in common and a lot more. It was her first affair, and whether she admitted it or not, her father could see that she was in love.

She went downstairs after that to visit her old friends all over the hotel. She knew all of the night staff, stopped to visit the phone operators and the front desk, and kissed the concierge on duty before she came back upstairs again. Hugues was talking to Natalie when she came in. And once Heloise was in the room, he said good night and hung up.

“Who was that?” Heloise asked with a smile. To her father, she was still a child, whether or not she really was. And it was difficult to explain to a child that he was in love with Natalie. Saying it made him feel uncomfortable and disloyal to her somehow. He knew that that was foolish, but that was how it felt.

“Actually, it was Natalie Peterson, the interior designer who did nine-twelve. I told her how much you love what she did. She says she’d love to meet you. Maybe in a couple of days.”

“Sure.” Although she’d noticed it, Heloise didn’t comment on the fact that he had called her at ten o’clock at night. Heloise assumed they’d probably gotten to be friends while she did the work. “That would be fun,” Heloise said with a smile, and went to their kitchen to help herself to some wine. Her father noticed it and was surprised. That seemed grown-up to him too, although he had always let her drink wine at table if she wanted to, which she rarely did. He hoped she wasn’t drinking to excess with her friends at school. There was so little he could control now, or even influence, from so far away, which was the plight of all parents in his shoes. Once they grew up, they were on their own, with all their good and bad decisions and consequences thereof. All you could do was hope that what they did wasn’t too high risk and the consequences weren’t dire.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” she asked him, as she sat cross-legged on the couch, sipping the wine, while he tried to get used to the idea.

“Whatever you like. I’m at your full disposal for the next two weeks.” He still had to work, but he had let everyone know that he would be in and out of the office while his daughter was in town. And he had warned Natalie that he would see very little of her too. She was going to Philadelphia on Christmas Eve for a few days, to stay with her brother and his family. She was going by train with her older nephew, who had just started law school at Columbia.

“I have to do my Christmas shopping tomorrow,” Heloise explained. “I didn’t have time to do it in Lausanne. I had exams till yesterday.”

“How did you do?” he asked with a look of concern. He was afraid that Francois might be distracting her.

“Okay, I think. I know a lot of the stuff we’re studying, from being here,” she said, looking relaxed.

They chatted for a little while, about school, Switzerland, and what the school had been like when Hugues had gone there, and eventually Heloise yawned and went to bed. On Swiss time for her, it was very late. And just as he had for nineteen years before she left, he kissed her and tucked her in.

“Night, Papa … it’s so good to be home,” she said sleepily. She blew a kiss in the air, turned on her side, and was almost asleep by the time he left the room.

He went to his own room then, sat pensively for a minute, thinking about her and how good it was to have her home, and then called Natalie again. She was still awake and wondering how it had gone.

“How is she?”

“In love with that boy, I think. But she seems happy to be home. Now she says she wants to do an internship at a hotel in Paris next year before she comes back. That means she’ll be gone for another year from now.” He sounded disappointed as he said it, and Natalie felt sorry for him. He was having a difficult time letting her go.

“It will go by very quickly,” Natalie reassured him, “and you can go over and visit her anytime.”

“It’s hard to get away from here.” She knew that was true too. He was so attentive to the hotel and on duty and available almost all the time. He always left his cell phone on when he was with her, even at night. And it was rare for him to let it go to voice mail, except when they were making love. Any other time, he answered.