Free The Last Time I Saw Paris by Elizabeth Adler Page B

back.
    He said, “It’s going well.” There was silence, then he said, “Lara.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWhen I get back there’s something we have to talk about.”
    His voice was low, kind of subdued, and Lara wondered if Melissa was standing next to him, urging him on.
    â€œAbout Melissa Kenney?” She was astonished by how calm she sounded.
    There was a stunned pause, then Bill said, “I didn’t realize you knew.”
    Don’t you know, you fool, that after twenty-five years of being married to you, I know everything about you? Every thought, every move. I could
be
you, I know you so well.
    She said, “I’m going on that trip to France alone.”
    â€œLara, I don’t think you should do this. Not the French thing, not—”
    â€œNot our Second Honeymoon?”
    â€œTake a vacation, by all means. But go somewhere else. A cruise … Take one of the Girlfriends with you.”
    A cruise,
she thought bitterly.
The divorcee’s reward.
    â€œI’m going alone, Bill,” she said coldly. “And I’m going to Paris. I’ll talk to you when I get back.” And she hung up on him.
    She slumped into a chair, trembling. Tears stung her eyes. The phone rang again a few seconds later. She willed herself not to answer. After a minute or two, it stopped.
    That lonely silence that Lara knew so well settled over the house. Last night’s ashes were dead in the grate, the candles had burned down, the flowers drooped. She leapt to her feet, ran upstairs, and quickly packed her bag. Her crumpled white skirt andshirt lay on the floor of the closet. She picked up the shirt and held it to her face, seeking his scent, but there was nothing. She flung it into the laundry basket, grabbed her bag, called Dex, locked up the house, and put the top up on the white convertible.
    She drove back to San Francisco, speeding along the darkened roads, hardly thinking about what she was doing. Only that she had to get away from here.
    The big house in Pacific Heights where she had lived with Bill for so many years, where they had brought up their children, had a life together, seemed cold, alien, hostile as she wandered listlessly through it. What use was a family room with no family? No kids bickering and threatening each other with extinction; no mayhem, no tears, no laughter. No TV with loud cartoons, no boom box blasting, no teenagers devouring pizza and Cokes.
    When the children had left, she had lost her job. And now Bill was gone. And so was her lover. In the space of a week, her life had been turned upside down.

CHAPTER 12
    â€œF rom this point on it can only get better,” Susie said firmly.
    The Girlfriends were sitting around the pine breakfast table in the kitchen of Susie’s spacious ranch with its view of horses grazing in the meadow, drinking their fifth cup of coffee—with caffeine because Delia had said, “What the hell, today we need it.” They were having a “meeting.”
    â€œMen suck.” Delia swallowed a handful of vitamins and washed them down with the caffeine.
    â€œEspecially Bill Lewis.” Susie stared at Lara, who was slumped over her blue coffee mug, elbows on the table, chin in her hands, no makeup, dark hair dragged back any-old-how, looking bleak and miserable. “That cheating bastard has put years on you in the space of a couple of weeks.”
    â€œMust you go on this trip?” Vannie asked gently. “It’s so full of memories for you, it will only hurt you more.”
    â€œI haven’t told you everything.” Lara stared into her coffee as though she had not even heard Vannie. “I met a man. I had sex with him on the beach the other night. It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.”
    There was a stunned silence; they looked at one another, then back at Lara.
    She was talking like a woman in a dream. “I didn’tknow it could be like that. It