The Affair - Danielle Steel Page 0,67
shirt, with orange satin pants and gold sandals, all of which looked great on her with her tan and red hair. They were a handsome group, and Harley livened up when he joined them. Venetia smiled at what Olivia was wearing: white silk slacks and a navy-and-white silk blouse with a string of pearls and her hair in a knot. She looked years older than she was. Harley was a very distinguished-looking man, but also seemed old for his age. He was only sixty, but the way he moved and spoke and his natural gravitas made him seem older.
They had bouillabaisse for dinner, brought in from a local restaurant, sole meuniére that the housekeeper made, bread and cheese, and a big bowl of fresh berries for dessert. The berries were from the estate and were served with delicate chocolate cookies that melted in your mouth.
Eventually, all the children went to bed, so they’d be fresh for the next day. The adults stayed up late, talking and drinking wine after dinner. It was two a.m. before the adults climbed the stairs to their bedrooms, with Nicolas’s ancestral family portraits all around them. It made Nadia feel odd to be there without him, and she was thinking of Nicolas as she left the others and went to her enormous master bedroom. She was grateful that she and her family could spend a week there together, thanks to him. It reminded her of happier times when they’d had house parties with friends for the weekends, and when she had been helping him to restore it. Most of their eleven years of marriage had been happy ones, it was sad to think that it was all ending in disgrace now. It seemed a terrible way to end their marriage. A year before, she would never have expected them to be separated. She tried not to think about it as she slipped into bed between the beautiful Porthault sheets she had bought for all the beds.
They drove to several of the local villages the next day, and then went to walk on the boardwalk in Deauville. The kids loved it. They had a late lunch at a small, noisy local restaurant. The weather had gotten warmer, and they were eager to get back to the pool after lunch.
Nadia had rented a van for the week so she could chauffeur them around. When they got to the château, all the children changed into bathing suits and dove into the pool, while their mothers walked in slowly from the shallow end. Ben and Harley got into a serious political discussion, with similar opinions, despite their differences in politics and age. The two brothers-in-law liked each other, and were a good balance to their wives, who couldn’t have been more different too.
Ben and Will finally started a chess game a little later, while Nadia chatted with her sisters on three lounge chairs, and they FaceTimed with Athena again. It was only eight in the morning for her, but she was an early riser. They could hear the dogs barking in the background.
They rented a sailboat big enough for all of them on one of the days. Ben, Olivia, and Harley were expert sailors, and so was Will after years of sailing camp. They went from one day to the next, doing fun things and having lively conversations. They truly enjoyed each other’s company and it showed. The children were caught up in the warm family atmosphere too.
Whenever Nicolas called the girls, he told them to give everyone his love. He had been thinking about them a lot, and missing them. He was getting tired of Pascale’s jet-set life with endless hangers-on in Saint-Tropez. They were all along for a free ride, and he hadn’t had a serious conversation all summer. He was eager to get back to work in Paris, although he had no place to stay now, or to write, if Nadia was serious about his getting his own apartment. Pascale was going to stay in Brittany with her mother until the baby was born, and for a month or two after, until she recovered. She had given up her Paris apartment, so he was camping at a friend’s. He was beginning to think he had to get an apartment of his own after all. He had nowhere to stay long-term, and he could no longer count on Nadia letting him stay at their apartment.
On the last day of the vacation, Olivia was watching