“You mean it?” she cried out.
“
Lee jumped up from the chair and rushed around to hug the older woman. “Thank you,
“Nonsense. You’ve been through a lifechanging experience far too early in your young life. I want you to find happiness,
“If you’re going to make that flight, you need to leave for Geneva in the next few minutes. On your way out, come back in here. There’ll be a check for you on my desk.”
“I don’t deserve your kindness.”
“Of course you do. You’re the best assistant I ever had. Don’t worry about your things. The maids can pack up your belongings and I’ll have them shipped to your address in Jackson. It’s still in my file.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, could you ask them to take them up to the attic? You see, my parents’s house is being rented at the moment. Their things are in storage. I’ll probably stay in Montana with my aunt and uncle until I’m free to move back to Jackson. Even then I may sell up and move somewhere else. When I’m settled in a place for good I’ll send for my things here. Right now e-everything’s so up in the air I can’t make definite plans.”
“Of course not. I’m just thankful you have relatives who love you and will be happy to see you. Promise me you’ll stay in close touch?”
“I swear it.” She sniffed. “
“Consider it done.”
They embraced once more before she hurried from the office and raced up to her room on the third floor. All she needed to do was put a few more blouses, jeans and shorts in her suitcase. She wouldn’t need anything else until she knew what she was going to do about the rest of her life.
For the moment nothing was as important as putting an ocean between her and Raoul.
Philippe finished off his croissant with another cup of tea. “You keep pacing the floor like that and you’re going to wear a hole in it,
Raoul’s frown turned into a grimace. He eyed his friend. “I doubt she could sleep anymore than I could. I’m going to phone her.”
He walked across the kitchen to the house phone on the wall and rang the guest bedroom. After four rings he decided she could be in the shower. When he’d counted twenty of them, he knew something was wrong and hung up.
Filled with alarm, he left the kitchen and raced down the hall. “Lee?” he called out before opening her door.
His gaze fell on the purple dress and shoes laid out neatly on top of the made-up bed. Alongside them were the coat and his mother’s sweater. He groaned as if someone had just planted a fist in his gut.
Philippe was right behind him. “Maybe she went out the front door for a walk.”
“You don’t believe that anymore than I do.”
“I’ll contact the taxi service and find out when she left.”
While Philippe phoned from the bedside table, Raoul picked up one of the shoes she’d worn dancing. As he dangled it by its dainty strap, a certain conversation came back to him in full force.
Philippe hung up the receiver. “There’s been no call made from the chalet.”
“She might have gotten a ride with Greta and Franz on their way to mass,” Raoul theorized, but he didn’t believe it.
“We didn’t go this morning.”
At the sound of his housekeeper’s voice, Raoul spun around.
“Franz isn’t feeling well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Greta? Do you know anything about Lee’s disappearance?”
“Nothing.” She turned and went back down the hall, mumbling.
“I’ll phone Roger,” Philippe volunteered. “Maybe she asked for his help.”
“Thanks, but you’d be wasting your time. He would have let me know if she’d tried to use him. It’s evident Lee sneaked out of here on foot. The question is,
“Probably while you were on the phone to your parents.”
“I told them I was bringing her back to the chateau to meet them,” Raoul muttered.
His mother and father had been more understanding than any son had a right to expect. Touched by Lee’s allegiance to Sophie, and the tragedy that had befallen her family and fiance, they had urged him to bring her home so they could get acquainted.
He checked his watch. “If she left that long ago she ought to be arriving at Beau Lac any time now.”
“Then let’s fly you to Nyon right away!”
“You’re reading my mind.”
Philippe pulled out his cellphone and punched some numbers. “I’ll alert the guys to have the helicopter ready for us.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE sight of the Tetons had thrilled Lee all her life. But as her rental car rounded a bend in the highway, and she glimpsed those glorious mountains tinted an orange-pink by the setting sun, they brought back such powerful memories of Raoul she was staggered by the pain.
During the last month and a half she’d been living in a kind of limbo with her mother’s sister and family. Between their love and a busy schedule guaranteed to keep her distracted, she’d managed to keep her heartache simmering beneath the surface.
After this long, she’d actually thought she was doing better. But one glance at the Grand Teton, reminiscent of the Matterhorn knifing through the thin atmosphere, and her agony came rushing to the fore, raw and unbearable.
She could never live here! There was no way. Lee needed to move to a part of the country where there’d be no possible reminder of Raoul.
During her time with the family she’d talked to her aunt about moving to Sacramento, where there was an opening at a private college for a teacher with her foreign language skills and experience. Though she couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, she had to make a new start somewhere.
After checking into the Mount Moran Inn in Jackson, Wyoming, Raoul got back in his rental car and followed directions to the Greshams’s modest ranchstyle home a mile away. Thanks to Madame Simoness, he’d been given an address.
He got there in time to watch an elderly couple drive away from the empty house in a U-Haul truck. Over the last six weeks he’d badgered them for Lee’s whereabouts. They’d insisted they didn’t know anything about her. But during one of his many phone calls from the chateau Raoul had found out they’d be vacating the house on the twenty-eighth of August.
Knowing the date, he’d made arrangements to leave Switzerland for as long as it took to find Lee and take her back with him. Her disappearance had created a living nightmare for him.
