When Pierre got back to his room, and the agent left, Mike was asleep in his comfortable bachelor pad. It had all the technology and comforts he needed for the life he led. And Theo was just waking up at the Carlyle. She was still on Paris time, and it was five a.m. in New York, eleven in the morning in Paris. She had fallen asleep at midnight, in her clothes, with all the lights on, and five hours was enough sleep for her.

She stood looking out the window of her suite, at Central Park still shrouded in darkness, and she remembered all the times she had been there with her husband and Axel. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that they were still there, asleep in the bedrooms of the suite. Then reality hit her, as it always did. They were gone, and all she could do now was keep going. She could hardly wait for the city to wake up, so she could go back to their store location and get to work again.

They had today to work on it before the party the next day. As it had in the past, work had always saved her. She couldn’t afford to let the memories flood in. Their marriage hadn’t been perfect. Matthieu was difficult at times, and there had been power struggles between them, but they had been happy enough. The only thing she couldn’t forgive him for was that he had had their son with him when they took him, and no protection. She had begged him for years to get private security, particularly at the château, which was fairly isolated, but he insisted he didn’t need it. He liked having no help in the house on the weekends, and he thought no one would ever dare attack him, but they had, and none of the happy memories changed that. Their dream life had turned into a nightmare, and she was left to live it alone.

Chapter 3

Theo was back at the store with her bodyguard at eight-thirty that morning. They had given her a key and the alarm code the night before, and she was already hard at work draping fabric on the walls and using the staple gun with her security guard’s help. He wasn’t adept at it, and she was relieved when Valentina and Bella walked in together and were stunned by the progress Theo was making. The rest of the furniture was delivered that morning, and by the afternoon, it was beginning to look like a real store. Two Damien Hirst paintings had been dropped off that morning, on loan from a well-known gallery. They had the proper insurance that Theo had paid for. When she saw them, she was tempted to buy one of them. She could afford them, but she hadn’t bought anything in the past year, not even a pair of shoes. She just didn’t care. But she loved the paintings, it was a small sign of her coming back to life. Working on the store had been good for her.