Her bodyguard Daniel came back to work that day, and she was happy to see him when she got home. He said he was feeling better. He’d had one dizzy spell that weekend, but since then he’d been fine.

She had brought home some work that night, and waited for Mike to call her after midnight, as he always did now, at the end of his workday. He sounded tired and distracted when he called, and she told him about the four prospective buyers set to look at the château. She was sending a bodyguard to protect the house, to each appointment, so no one damaged anything or stole something as a souvenir.

“I hope you sell it if that’s what you want, Theo,” he said, tired but happy to hear her.

“I think it is.” She sounded quiet.

“Did you take one of the DGSE guys with you to work today?” he asked her.

“Yes, he sat outside my office and made everyone nervous.” There was a feeling of tension having him there, as though they were expecting an attack any minute. There was the heavy sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. It reminded her of when they were waiting to pay the ransom a year before, and every minute felt like an hour. She tried not to think about it after she and Mike hung up. The nights seemed empty without him after he left. She was used to filling her life with work, but now it no longer seemed like enough.

They were going to open pop-up stores in Paris and London before Christmas, and she had plenty to do, making plans for them. To make it exciting, they had rented a fabulous private house in London, and a big space that had just opened up on the Avenue Montaigne after being vacated by a store that had closed. They were hoping to catch the wave of Christmas sales, people wanting clothes for parties and as gifts. It was fun working on it, and made her miss him less, and filled her nights when she couldn’t sleep. But she was sleeping better now since Mike had come into her life.

What she had to get used to was no longer having a family, no husband to take care of, no child. It had left an enormous void in her life that she still didn’t know how to fill except with work.

Mike was like a shooting star in her life, a comet across her skies. His visits had been brief and very bright. But he couldn’t get away as often as she would have liked. He had only been in her life for a month, and it already felt as though he had been there forever, but in fact it was all very new, and they hadn’t figured out how to spend time together yet, with both their jobs. His was even harder to get away from than hers. He’d managed to come to Paris twice in the last month. He wanted her to come to New York, but she hadn’t been able to figure out when yet, and she was busier than ever at the office, since she had spent a week in the hospital. She hadn’t been able to work at full speed while she was there. The remnants of the poison in her system had made it hard to concentrate, which was one of its effects.