Free Three Weeks in Paris by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page B

never found, either living or dead.
    That spring of 1994 Lucien Girard had disappeared off the face of the earth. He might never have existed. But she knew very well that he had.…
    Suddenly jumping up, Jessica hurried across the office to the large French armoire where she kept fabric samples, opened the drawer at the bottom, and pulled out a red leather photograph album. Carrying it back to the desk, she sat down, opened the album, and began turningthe pages. It was a full and complete record of her three years in Paris studying interior design. Almost everyone she had met and cared about was in there.
    There we are, Lucien and me, she thought, staring down at the photograph of them on the banks of the Seine, just near the Pont des Arts, the only metal bridge in Paris. She peered at the picture, instantly struck by their likeness to each other; Lucien had been tall and slender also, with fair coloring and bluish-gray eyes. The love of my life, she thought, and swiftly turned the page.
    Here were she and Alexa, Kay, Maria, and Anya, in the garden of Anya’s house. And here was a fun picture of Nicky and Larry clowning it up with Alexa, and Maria Franconi looking mournful at the back.
    Jessica experienced an unexpected feeling of great sadness … Lucien had disappeared and everything had gone wrong after that. “
Les girls,
” as Nicky Sedgwick called their quartet, had quarreled and disbanded. And it had all been so … so … silly and juvenile.
    Jessica closed the album. If she went to Anya’s birthday party she would undoubtedly run into her former friends. She shrugged mentally … not knowing how she really felt about them. Seven years. It had all happened seven years ago … a long time, a lot of water under the bridge.
    And could she actually face being in Paris? She didn’t know. Paris was Lucien.
    Lucien no longer existed.
    That had to be true, because he had never surfaced, never reappeared. She still heard from Alain Bonnal occasionally, and he was as baffled as she continued to be; they had come up with every scenario they could think of, and were never satisfied with any of them, never sure what could have happened.
    Accept the invitation. Go to Paris, just for the hell of it
,
    she told herself. Then changed her mind instantly.
No, decline. You’re only going to open up old wounds
.
    Jessica closed her eyes, leaning back in the chair … her memories of Paris and Lucien were golden … filled with happiness and a joy she had not experienced since her days with him.
    Better to keep the memories intact.
    She would send her regrets.
    ————
    GARY SAID FROM the doorway of her office, “So, you finally decided to come home.”
    Startled, Jessica swung around in the chair and stared at him. He was leaning against the doorjamb, wearing crumpled clothes and a belligerent expression.
    He’s an angry drunk, she thought, but said, “You look as if you’ve been ridden hard and put away wet.”
    He frowned, never having liked her southern Texan humor. “Why did you get back so late?” he demanded.
    “What difference does it make? You had passed out dead drunk on my sofa.”
    He let out a long sigh and slid into the room, came to stand by her chair, suddenly smiling down at her. “I guess we got to celebrating. Harry and Phil were crazy about the first draft of the script, and after making our notes, a few changes, we were pretty sure it was almost good enough to be a shooting script. So … we decided to celebrate—”
    “I guess it just got out of hand.”
    “No. You just got back very late.”
    “Nine o’clock isn’t all that late.”
    “Why
were
you late? Did Mark Sylvester detain you … in some way?” He cocked a dark brow and glared.
    “Don’t be ridiculous! And I don’t like the innuendo. He wasn’t even there. And I was late because there was alot of traffic on the Santa Barbara Freeway. And how was Gina?”
    “Gina?” Gary frowned, then sat down on the