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Panic gripped her. She needed money. With money, she could hide someplace where she’d be safe from Alexi and where no one would recognize her, someplace where Fleur Savagar could cease to exist. But that wasn’t possible now. As she hurried through the streets of Nîmes, she tried to shake off the feeling that Alexi was watching her. She saw him in the doorways, in the reflections of store windows, in the faces passing her in the street. She fled back to the train station. Run. She had to run.
When Alexi saw the wreckage of the Royale, he felt his own mortality for the first time. It took the form of a slight paralysis in his right side that lasted nearly two days. He closed himself in his room and saw no one.
All day, he lay in bed, holding a handkerchief in his left hand. Sometimes he stared at his reflection in the mirror.
The right side of his face sagged.
It was almost imperceptible, except for the mouth. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t control the trickle of saliva that seeped from the corner. Each time he lifted his handkerchief to wipe it away, he knew that the mouth was what he would never forgive.
The paralysis gradually faded, and when he could control his mouth, he called in the doctors. They said it was a small stroke. A warning. They ordered him to cut back on his schedule, stop smoking, watch his diet. They mentioned hypertension. Alexi listened patiently and then dismissed them.
He put his collection of automobiles up for sale at the beginning of December. The auction attracted buyers from all over the world. He was advised to stay away, but he wanted to watch. As each car went on the block, he studied the faces of the buyers, printed their expressions in his mind so he would always remember.
After the auction was over, he had the museum dismantled, stone by stone.
Fleur sat at a battered table in the back of a student café in Grenoble and stuffed every cloying bite of her second pastry into her mouth until nothing was left. For nearly a year and a half, food had provided her only sense of security. As her jeans had grown tighter and she’d been able to pinch that first definitive fold of fat at the base of her ribs, the thick fog of numbness had lifted long enough for her to feel a brief sense of accomplishment. The Glitter Baby had disappeared.
She imagined Belinda’s expression if she could see her precious daughter now. Twenty-one years old, overweight, with cropped hair, and cheap, ugly clothes. And Alexi…She could hear his contempt tucked away inside some honeyed endearment like a piece of candy with a tainted center.
She counted out her money carefully and left the café, pulling the collar of her man’s parka tighter around her neck. It was February, and the dark, icy sidewalk still held remnants of that morning’s snow. She tugged her wool hat further down over her head, more to protect herself from the cold than from fear that anyone would recognize her. That hadn’t happened in nearly a year.
A line had already begun to form at the cinema, and as she took her place at the end, a group of American exchange students fell in behind her. The flat sounds of their accents grated on her ears. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken English. She didn’t care if she ever spoke it again.
Despite the cold, the palms of her hands were sweating, and she shoved them more deeply into the pockets of her parka. At first she’d told herself she wouldn’t even read the reviews of Sunday Morning Eclipse, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. The critics had been kinder to her than she’d expected. One called her performance “a surprisingly promising debut.” Another commented on the “sizzling chemistry between Koranda and Savagar.” Only she knew how one-sided that chemistry had been.
Now she simply existed, taking whatever job she could find and sneaking into university lecture halls when she wasn’t working. Two months ago, she’d gone to bed with a sweet-natured German student who’d sat next to her in an economics lecture at the Université d’Avignon. She hadn’t wanted Jake to be the only man she’d made love with. Not long afterward, she’d imagined Alexi’s presence breathing down her neck, and she’d left Avignon for Grenoble.
A French girl standing in line ahead of her began to tease her date. “Aren’t you afra
id I won’t be interested in you tonight after I’ve spent two hours watching Jake Koranda?”
He glanced over at the movie poster. “You’re the one who should be worried. I’ll be watching Fleur Savagar. Jean-Paul saw the film last week, and he’s still talking about her body.”
Fleur huddled more deeply into the collar of her parka. She had to see for herself.
She found a seat in the last row of the theater. The opening credits rolled, and the camera panned a long stretch of flat Iowa farmland. Dusty boots walked down a gravel road. Suddenly Jake’s face flooded the screen. She’d once loved him, but the white-hot fire of betrayal had burned up that love, leaving only cold ash behind.
The first few scenes flicked by, and then Jake stood in front of the Iowa farmhouse. A young girl jumped up from a porch swing. The pastries Fleur had stuffed down clumped in her stomach as she watched herself run into his arms. She remembered the solidness of his chest, the touch of his lips. She remembered his laughter, his jokes, the way he’d held her so tight she’d thought he’d never let her go.
Her chest constricted. She couldn’t stay in Grenoble any longer. She had to leave. Tomorrow. Tonight. Now.
The last thing she heard as she rushed from the theater was Jake’s voice. “When did you get so pretty, Lizzie?”
Run. She had to run until she disappeared, even from herself.
Alexi sat in the leather chair behind the desk in his study and lit a cigarette, the last of the five he permitted himself to smoke each day. The reports were delivered to him at exactly three o’clock every Friday afternoon, but he always waited until nighttime when he was alone to study them. The photographs before him looked much like the others that had been sent to him over the past few years. Ugly barbershop hair, threadbare jeans, scuffed leather boots. All that fat. For someone who should be at the apex of her beauty, she looked obscene.
He’d been so certain she would go back to New York and resume her career, but she’d surprised him by staying in France. Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Montpelier—all towns with universities. She foolishly believed she could hide from him in anonymous throngs of students. As if such a thing were possible.
After six months she’d begun to take classes at some of the universities. At first he’d been mystified by her choice of courses: lectures in calculus, contract law, anatomy, sociology. Eventually he’d discerned the pattern and realized she chose only classes held in large lecture halls where there was little chance of anyone discovering she wasn’t a registered student. Officially enrolling was out of the question, since she had no money. He’d seen to that.
His eyes slid down the list of ridiculously menial jobs she’d held to support herself for the past two years: washing dishes, cleaning stables, waiting tables. Sometimes she worked for photographers, not as a model—such an idea was ludicrous now—but setting up lights and handling equipment. She’d unwittingly discovered the only possible defense she could use against him. What could he take from a person who had nothing?
He heard footsteps and quickly slipped the photographs back into the leather folder. When they were tucked away, he walked over to the door and unlocked it.
Belinda’s hair was sleep-tousled and her mascara smudged. “I dreamed about Fleur again,” she whispered. “Why do I keep dreaming about her? Why doesn’t it get better?”
“Because you keep holding on,” he said. “You will not let her go.”
