Hotel Vendome

“Never.” He answered her question with a smile. “I almost made that mistake once. I won’t do it again. One day Heloise will run it, and maybe even Julien and Stephanie. And then you and I will travel the world and have fun.” He made it sound like it was just around the corner, but Natalie knew now that it was years away. She couldn’t even imagine him turning over the reins of the Vendome. Sharing it with Heloise perhaps, but he wasn’t ready to retire, and she wondered if he ever would be. The hotel he had devoted his life to for twenty years was still his passion, and now so was she.

“All right,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “I concede. You’re all crazy. Heloise works as hard as you do. She was doing double shifts the whole time you were sick.” And she had done it again that week. “Just don’t kill yourself doing it,” she warned him. “I need you for a long, long time, Hugues Martin.”

“I need you too,” he said as he pulled her close to him to kiss her. “You’re the woman I love, and the mother of my children. And one day, I promise you, we’ll get out of here, when Heloise is ready to take it on.” It was a promise she didn’t intend to hold him to, but she had finally understood that he was never going to sell and probably shouldn’t. The Hotel Vendome was his life.

Chapter 24

IN MAY THEY all attended Brad’s law school graduation. His parents and siblings came up for it, and everyone was excited for him, Heloise most of all. She had watched him study every night and knew how hard he had worked. She was proud of him, and really thrilled. His parents had given him a trip to Europe, and he was taking Heloise with him in August. They were going to Spain and Greece and winding up in Paris. They could hardly wait. He was going to take the bar in July and was already preparing for it.

He had been interviewing for jobs at law firms for three months and finally realized that both antitrust and tax law bored him. He had gone through a brief phase of thinking that he wanted to do criminal defense work, but he didn’t want to work in the public defender’s office. What he really wanted to do was labor law. He found it fascinating and talked to Hugues about it, who arranged an interview with the law firm that handled all their labor disputes at the hotel. And the week before graduation they had offered him a job. He was starting at the end of August, when he and Heloise got back from Paris, and he was really excited about it. He knew it was the right line of work for him, and he teased Heloise that maybe one day he would be the labor lawyer for the hotel. She hoped he would be.

He was giving up his apartment near Columbia before they left for Europe, and Hugues had given his blessing for him to move into the hotel with Heloise. He stayed there every night anyway, and her schedule was so intense that they saw more of each other that way. And they’d been dating for a year. They complemented each other well. And Brad’s parents were pleased too. They were too young to decide on their future, but they seemed to be heading that way. They were just starting out on their careers, had much to learn and a long way to go. She was about to turn twenty-two by then, and he had just turned twenty-six. Still babies, as their parents said.

Hugues hosted a beautiful graduation dinner for him that night at the restaurant at the hotel, for both families and a few of Brad’s friends. It was a beautiful celebration. Heloise had worked on the menu with the chef and picked all the wines, and everyone loved the selections she’d made.

The twins were home by then, and thriving. Natalie had taken a three-month maternity leave to be with them full time. And she was loving every minute of it, and nursing them both. They still remembered and often thought of the baby they had lost, but they were enjoying the ones they had. And she was trying to figure out how to work part time and take fewer projects when she went back to work.

Natalie took the babies out in a double stroller every day, while Hugues went for his walk in the park. He was giving Heloise more and more responsibility, and he was taking Natalie and the twins away for their anniversary in July. They had rented a house in Southampton for the week. He had just given Heloise the title of Assistant Manager. She had completed her internship for him, in addition to the one she had done for the Ecole Hoteliere, and she had earned her stripes. At twenty-two, she was a supremely competent young woman, and her father was very proud.