Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

“You’re dangerous,” he teased her. “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off? I’m afraid you might injure someone else.” He followed her to her apartment door.

“I’m fine. They’ll be short-handed if I don’t go back.” She was standing in the doorway of her apartment, with her skirt slit nearly to her waist, from raising her knee high enough to kick the arsonist in the groin. And she had packed a hell of a punch. “How’s Natalie?”

“Okay, I guess. Time will tell. She hates being stuck in bed. And her office is going crazy without her. But she’s too scared to argue about it. It’s going to be a long five months, or however much she has left.” She had planned to take the last few months off but not be on bedrest this soon.

“I’ll come up and see her tomorrow,” she promised, and then went inside to change. She was back at the front desk ten minutes later in a fresh skirt, with her hair neatly combed and brushed. She spent the rest of the night talking to the men she worked with, and she was about to go upstairs at seven when she went off duty, when her father came down to the lobby and asked her to come into his office. She wondered if he was going to reprimand her for assaulting the arsonist when he asked her to sit down. He obviously had something to say to her, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept the night before. She’d been up all night and she looked better than he did as he spoke to her. When he did, his voice was gruff.

“I’m not selling the hotel. I’m probably crazy. It’s an insane amount of money to turn down. We’ll never have an offer like it again, and we may be sorry one day. But I can’t have you willing to risk your life for what I built, while I sell out for the money. You reminded me last night of what this hotel means to me, to us. I don’t ever want you taking chances like that again, no matter how brave you are. But I’m not going to sell something that you love that much. I’m turning down the offer.” Heloise sat and smiled at him, and he smiled at her too. The hotel was something very special that they shared, and she wasn’t willing to give that up, or let anyone hurt it or take it from them. And now he wasn’t either.

“I’m proud of you, Papa,” she said softly, coming around his desk to hug him.

“Don’t be,” he said quietly. “I’m proud of you. I almost sold us out. You were the one who risked your life to defend the hotel.”

They walked out of his office together, arm in arm. He called his lawyers later that morning to turn down the offer, and they called the labor union after that. Their attorney told the union they were not taking back the two maintenance men, and they would bring charges of arson if they ever pulled a stunt like that again. The union representative told the attorney that they had no idea what he meant. But the message was clear. The dishwasher was in jail. And the picket line did not come back again. And he made equally clear to the Dutch that the Hotel Vendôme was not for sale. Now or ever.

BY MARCH, BRAD was staying at the hotel with Heloise every night. They weren’t officially living together, but it was working out that way, and her father didn’t object. He was a very nice young man. Heloise’s life was mature beyond her years, but it always had been, growing up in the hotel. She had seen more of life than most girls her age. And she and Brad were a good match. He didn’t complain about her long hours and double shifts. And he was interested in the hotel. He was getting increasingly interested in labor law. Neither of them was afraid of hard work. He studied when she worked, and he was graduating from law school in June. And then he had to pass the bar. He was starting to look for a job.

They went to dinner at the Waverly Inn downtown on a rainy night in March, to take a break from his studies and her work. Natalie was still on bedrest, and Heloise had seen her that afternoon. She tried to drop in as often as possible and brought her all the latest magazines and DVDs. She’d been on bedrest for two months. She was six months pregnant and the babies could survive if they were born now, although they were still very small. Every added week was a help. She was trying to direct her office from her bed, and her assistants were coming to see her every day. It was frustrating for her. But the babies came first.

Heloise was talking to Brad about his job search as their cab approached the hotel, and as soon as it did, she saw a fire department rescue truck parked right outside. She immediately wondered if a guest had had a heart attack, and they both thought of Natalie instantly, as Brad paid the driver and they both jumped out and ran inside. No one had called her on her cell during dinner, so she assumed it was a guest, and as she flew into the lobby, she saw her father going past her on a gurney, surrounded by paramedics with a defibrillator on his chest. She was totally shocked and ran after them and followed them outside. The front desk manager, Bruce, and two security men were following them with a terrified expression, and guests were watching around the lobby. “What happened?” she asked the manager, as the paramedics slid the gurney into the truck.

“I don’t know. He clutched his chest and fell down at the front desk. They just got here. I think he had a heart attack.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” she said with a look of panic as the paramedics talked to her father, and Brad stood next to her.

“We didn’t have time. I was just about to.”

“Does Natalie know?” she asked quickly. He shook his head. “Don’t tell her,” Heloise said firmly, and then jumped into the rescue truck with a last look at Brad before they closed the doors. An instant later, the siren was on and they were speeding to the hospital. Two paramedics were next to Hugues and watching him closely. He was conscious by then and looking at Heloise with a dazed expression.

“What happened?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “I have a terrible pain in my chest.” There were IVs in his arms, and the paramedics told him not to talk. It looked like too much effort, and he was holding Heloise’s hand while she fought back tears and prayed he would be all right.

They rushed him to Coronary ICU and made her wait outside while they examined him, and then they let her come in. They said he had had a mild heart attack. They had done an EKG and were talking about doing an angiogram that night. Heloise gave them his history, and her father looked at her with frightened eyes.

“Don’t tell Natalie,” he whispered. “She’ll lose the babies.”

“I didn’t, and you’re going to be fine,” she said, holding his hand and willing it to be true. She couldn’t imagine her life without him. She needed him too much. She stayed with him until they took him to do the angiogram. And then she called Brad and told him where she was. He had waited in her apartment, and he came immediately, and they sat in the waiting room together for hours.

It was two in the morning when they brought her father back. They had done an angioplasty, and they put him back in ICU so he could be monitored, while she and Brad sat in the waiting room, and she called the front desk at the hotel.

“What did you tell Natalie?” She was worried about that, if he didn’t come up to bed.

“We told her that one of the guests had an accident, and your father went to the hospital with him, and he told her not to wait up,” the assistant manager said.

“Perfect.” Heloise was relieved.

“How is he?” Everyone was worried about him. He had gone down like a rock behind the desk.

“They did an angioplasty, and they said he should be fine. I don’t know how long he’ll be here. He’s still sedated now.”

“Keep us posted.”

“I will.” She turned back to Brad then and nestled into his arms, as they spent the night in the drafty waiting room. She could go in and see her father for ten minutes every hour, but he was sleeping from the sedation and didn’t see her all night. It was morning before he woke up, and Heloise and Brad were there. Bruce had brought them sandwiches at six A.M. and a Thermos of hot coffee that room service had prepared. Heloise couldn’t eat, but Brad was starving and devoured two sandwiches with a sheepish expression by the time Bruce left again.

When Heloise saw her father early that morning, he was groggy and looked like he had aged a decade overnight. There were still monitors all over him, beeping loudly in the frenzied activity of the ICU. They were waiting for the doctor to come, and she went back to wait with Brad, after she kissed her father and told him she’d be back. He was asleep again before she left. And he didn’t look good.

The doctor came to talk to her finally at eight o’clock. He was smiling when he came out of the ICU, which relieved Heloise’s mind enormously as she squeezed Brad’s hand.

“You can go home and get some rest. He’s doing fine. We’re going to keep him for a few days just to keep an eye on him, and then he can go home. I’d like him to rest for a few weeks before he goes back to work, maybe a month. Exercise, diet, he needs to monitor all that. This was a warning shot across his bow, but I think we patched him up pretty well last night. With a few weeks’ rest, he’ll be as good as new.” Heloise smiled at the thought. That would have been hard to believe a few hours ago.

“His wife is having triplets, and she’s on bedrest. I guess we’ll have to keep them in bed together.” She smiled at the doctor, and he laughed.

“As long as he doesn’t get frisky with her, that would be fine. But if she’s on bedrest with triplets, I guess there’s no risk of that.” All three of them laughed at what he said.

“Can I see him again?” she asked.

“He was asleep a few minutes ago,” the doctor said, “but you can check.”

She went in to see her father again then, and he stirred and looked at her and apologized for the trouble he had caused.