Free Satin Dreams by Maggie; Davis Page A

elegant street. From the Arc de Triomphe to the end of the Champs Elysees, it housed some of the world’s most patrician names: the Prince and Princess de Polignac, several branches of Rothschilds, the Bourbon Count of Paris, pretender to the French throne. Princess Caroline of Monaco kept up the luxurious residence that had been a favorite of her mother, the former movie star Grace Kelly. Even the notoriously secretive billionaire Greek shipping magnate, Socrates Palliades, had kept an apartment at number 29 since before World War Two.  
    The street was slippery with several inches of snow. Nicholas Palliades quickly escorted Alix from the limousine into one of the avenue’s palatial nineteenth-century town houses. In the lobby, a plainclothes security guard let them into a tiny jewel box of a brass elevator that whisked them to the top floor, where an elderly manservant in what looked like a ship’s steward’s uniform let them into a vast, dimly lighted apartment, then discreetly disappeared.  
    Rigid with nerves, Alix braced herself for another conspicuous display of wealth. A marble-floored foyer led to a gloomy grande salon decorated in 1940s chrome and glass moderne, with dark mahogany wood veneer covering the ceiling and walls.  
    Nicholas Palliades slipped the green satin evening coat from her shoulders and dropped it onto a brown velvet overstuffed chair. “My family has had this flat for over fifty years.” He looked around, frowning. “It’s a little out of date.”  
    “A little out of date,” hardly described the apartment, which resembled the interior of a luxury ocean liner of the thirties. A waist-high dado rail of polished aluminum ran around the room. There was a brown and beige geometric carpet underfoot. On the dark, varnished walls, chrome sconces projected pools of light onto the equally dark, varnished wood ceiling. When this room was first decorated, salt-water Art Deco was undoubtedly the last word in chic, Alix couldn’t help thinking. At least for people who made their money in ships.  
    She wrapped her arms around her suddenly chilly white shoulders exposed by Mortessier’s glittering dress. She was feeling more and more trapped. This won’t take long, she thought desperately, only an hour or so. She didn’t think she could hold herself together any longer than that.  
    Nicholas Palliades moved to open the brown velvet drapes that covered the windows at the end of the salon. As the velvet rolled back, the huge, plate-glass window presented a panoramic night view of the city of Paris.  
    In spite of herself, Alix stood transfixed. The view was extraordinary, even for the famed City of Lights. The floodlit fantasies of the Trocadero and the Palace of Chaillot were in the foreground, the glimmer of the wintry River Seine edged with streetlights beyond. Above them rose the black, spraddling ghost of the Eiffel Tower, mysteriously veiled in whirling snow.  
    Nicholas turned to face her, his face in shadows. “Would you like a drink?”  
    Numbly, Alix shook her head. She couldn’t drink any more; her head was already swimming with champagne.  
    “Well, then,” he said.  
    Keeping his black eyes on her, he lifted his hands and undid his tuxedo tie, then the top buttons of his shirt. He dropped the black tie on the chair letting it fall on top of her evening coat.  
    Alix closed her eyes. She’d sat through supper, she’d endured the awful Russian nightclub, and most of all, she’d endured Nicholas Palliades himself. If this didn’t take more than an hour or two, she was sure she could stick with it long enough to become Nicholas Palliades’s lover. Or mistress. Or whatever you wanted to call it.  
    When Alix opened her eyes a second later, he was striding purposefully across the room. She tried not to flinch as he stopped in front of her, tall, darkly inscrutable, and put his hands on her waist to draw her to him. Through the front of his evening trousers Alix could