Nine Lives - Danielle Steel Page 0,31

city.” Maggie couldn’t imagine any place that she’d love more than Rome. She was sorry she and Brad had never gone there in his lifetime. Even an inveterate non-traveler would fall in love with it. She thought it was the most romantic city on earth, and she didn’t even mind being there alone.

She was genuinely sad when she left Rome the next day to fly to Paris. Her driver, Luigi, hugged her, and told her to come back again. He had seen to it that on one of their drives she had thrown a coin into the Fontana di Trevi, which he assured her was guaranteed to bring her back to Rome.

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The flight to Paris took less than two hours. Things seemed to be moving more quickly in the Paris airport, and didn’t have the leisurely feeling of Rome, although the airport in Rome had been chaotic. Paris seemed more organized and a little less welcoming.

The hotel had arranged a car and driver for her there too. The driver’s name was Florent, and he sped her toward the city on the highway, which looked no different than an American highway, until they reached the city. As soon as they got there, it took her breath away. The sight of the Champs-Élysées stretching toward the grandeur of the Arc de Triomphe, with a huge French flag fluttering under the arch, the wide tree-lined street, and the splendor of the Place de la Concorde with its fountains and sculptures. She had seen countless movies filmed there, but nothing brought it home like being there. She could see the beautiful bridges, Napoleon’s tomb in the Invalides with its gold dome on the other side, on the Left Bank. After crossing the gilded Alexander III Bridge back to the Right Bank, they entered the Place Vendôme with its Napoleonic battle monument in the center, elegant jewelry shops all around the square, and the grandeur of the Hôtel Ritz, with a fleet of doormen and a wide red carpet leading up the front steps as though to welcome her. She had chosen the most elegant possible way to see Paris and get to know the city. Paris had an entirely different flavor from Rome, which was a venerable ancient city, filled with beautiful old monuments, and young people who looked happy and sexy. There was a spirit of romance there, which was contagious. Paris was sheer beauty at its most dazzling. Everywhere Maggie looked there was something beautiful to see. It was a whole different experience, and she could see instantly why Helen loved it. Who wouldn’t?

Her room at the Ritz was bigger and even more elegant than her room had been at the Hassler, since the Ritz had been recently renovated. It was filled with antiques and beautiful fabrics. It was done in blue silk, while at the Hassler it was yellow satin. She realized that after this experience it was going to be hard to go home and live a normal, ordinary life in a small house in a suburb of Chicago. Here she was surrounded by beauty and history and exquisite monuments and buildings everywhere.

She went to the Louvre that afternoon, and strolled through the Tuileries Garden. The driver took her past all the fancy shops on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, like the Via Condotti in Rome. She hadn’t done much shopping so far. She was too excited by the city itself to do so. There was nothing she wanted or needed except to be here and soak up the elegance and atmosphere, which were the essence of the city.

She loved walking along the Seine, the river that ran through Paris, and she stopped sometimes on one of the bridges, just looking into the water and thinking about Brad, and her mother, and how difficult her life must have been after losing her husband. She hadn’t had the luxury of a trip to Europe in opulent circumstances to help her recover. She had had to move from city to city and job to job to support her family. It had taken her five years to meet Harry, who gave her some degree of security, but until then everything had been a struggle, and even sometimes after that. She didn’t want to burden Harry with another man’s children, so she had done her best to support Maggie and Tommy herself with the jobs she had. She wondered if her mother would have been happier if she’d gone back to nursing,