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 École Hôtelière, and she had earned her stripes. At twenty-two, she was a supremely competent young woman, and her father was very proud.

Brad and Heloise stood on the sidewalk and waved when her father and Natalie left for the Fourth of July weekend to celebrate their first anniversary. They had their babies with them, and a mountain of equipment. And Brad reminded her that it was their anniversary too, they had met exactly a year before at Hugues and Natalie’s wedding, and so much had happened since then. Their lives had grown and changed, she looked very official in her navy uniform as they walked back into the hotel and he went upstairs to finish unpacking. He had just moved in. And their trip to Europe was a few weeks away. They could hardly wait.

Chapter 25

HELOISE LOOKED AT her watch and decided to run by the ballroom for five minutes. Sally had stunned them all by taking a job at a hotel in Miami and had left a few months before. The salary had been irresistible, and they had a new catering manager that Heloise wasn’t sure of yet. Everyone had been heartbroken when Sally left, and she said she might come back one day. So now Heloise was diligently overseeing all their catering events. And this was an important event. It was her father’s sixtieth birthday party, and they were expecting over a hundred guests for dinner and dancing. He and Natalie had been married for seven years, and the twins had just turned six.

When she got there, the ballroom looked just the way she wanted it to, with topiary trees, and flower arrangements on every table, and the ceiling was covered with balloons. The new catering manager loved balloons, a little too much for Heloise’s taste, and worst of all, Jan had left too. She had opened her own florist shop in Greenwich, but she came to visit often, and she and Heloise had lunch every few weeks. So they had a new florist, Franco, too. He had trained with Jeff Leatham in Paris at the George V, and he was very good. His topiary trees and large arrangements were exquisite, and already causing comment at the hotel.

She checked everything, and once she was satisfied, she went upstairs to dress. Brad had just come home from his office. He’d been working on a strike all week for one of his clients, and he kissed her as she flew through the door, took off her uniform jacket, and pulled out the dress she was planning to wear. They had just updated the uniforms that year, and she’d picked the design. It looked younger, and fresh.

“How does it look?” Brad asked her, knowing she must have just checked the ballroom. She was as attentive as ever to detail, and he knew her well after seven years.

“Perfect.” She beamed at him, and then hopped into the shower, and a minute later popped her head out again. “I meant to call you. I have a guest who slipped in the shower and is threatening to sue.” He still worked for the hotel’s law firm, and he did more and more work for the hotel.

“Your father called me about it,” he reassured her. “I already contacted the guest. They’re coming back for Thanksgiving with their kids. They want three suites and a free stay for four days. It’s cheaper than litigation or a settlement.” Heloise nodded, relieved. The woman had broken her collarbone and arm, and it could have been expensive. Brad had handled it well. He always did. He was terrific with all their labor issues. He was a partner of the firm now.

Brad and Heloise arrived at the ballroom just before her father, Natalie, and their children, and Stephanie looked up at her with a toothless grin. She looked surprisingly like Heloise, except that her hair was blond instead of red. And she said that she wanted to work at the hotel one day. She wanted to be the hairdresser or the florist, and Heloise had told her that there were even more fun things to do if you ran it. Stephanie said she didn’t want to wear a uniform. She wanted to wear pretty dresses to work and sparkly shoes. Julien wanted to be a baseball player and had no interest whatsoever in the hotel. And they both went to the Lycée, just like Heloise. Natalie was working as hard as ever at her design business, although only three days a week, and Jim, her design assistant, had become her partner, which took the pressure off her. She had just redone all their suites at the hotel, and given them a whole new look, although this time Hugues had grumbled at the expense and was constantly looking to cut costs. And she had redone the presidential and penthouse suites too.

Hugues’s birthday coincided with the hotel’s twenty-fifth anniversary, and it was a double celebration for the hotel and for him. And Franco had ordered all silver balloons. And within half an hour the celebration was under way. The band was playing, people were dancing, and everyone was gathered around the buffet. All the familiar faces were there, even Jan who had come in from Greenwich. Hugues looked ecstatic as his dedicated employees circled around him. And the pastry chef had made him an enormous cake. Heloise smiled at Brad across the table when her father stood up to make a speech. He rapped a knife on his champagne glass and held it high as he looked around the room at his wife, his three children, his employees, his favorite guests, and his friends. Everyone he cared about was in that room.

“I’d like to thank all of you for your loyalty to me, to this hotel, to my family, and for making the last twenty-five years here a joy for me in every way. If I named you all, we’d be here all night.” He smiled. Heloise rolled her eyes as she listened. It sounded like a retirement speech instead of an anniversary speech, and she saw that Brad was thinking the same thing. Her father had been very emotional about the anniversary and this birthday. “I’ve had fun here,” he went on, “I’ve had headaches here, I’ve had children here. Twenty-five years ago Heloise was almost three years old when I started to renovate this hotel. And when we opened she was almost five. She’s been terrorizing most of you for the last twenty-five years, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching her grow into the lovely and extremely competent woman she is, and as some of you know, she keeps me in line. I was almost foolish enough to sell the hotel a few years ago, and she stopped me, because she loved this hotel so much. She was right, of course, and it would have been a terrible mistake.

“So, my friends, I won’t bore you any longer. I am here to thank you for these extraordinary twenty-five years, to celebrate my birthday, and to make an important announcement. I will be retiring later this year, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to our new general manager tonight, and I ask you to raise your glasses to congratulate her and wish her well. I give you Miss Heloise Martin, the general manager of the Hotel Vendôme.” He stood there holding his glass up to her, as Heloise stared at him in disbelief, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She had had no idea that he would do that, and as she glanced around the table she could see that Natalie hadn’t known about it either. She looked just as shocked, and so did Brad. Jennifer didn’t look as surprised and had a wistful expression as she sat next to Bruce. And Heloise realized that she knew and hadn’t said a word.

And as she looked at her father, everyone had risen to their feet and was toasting her. Heloise walked across the room and kissed him then.

“What are you doing, Papa?” she whispered.

“It’s your turn, darling. You’ve earned it. I always knew you would one day. And after you, maybe someday one of the twins.” Heloise knew that it would be Stephanie, and not Julien.

She raised her glass to her father then and toasted him. “I have to tell all of you, I’m quite stunned. My father didn’t warn me that he was going to do this tonight, or ever. I always wanted to run the hotel with him, not after him,” she said, fighting back tears. “I will never be able to live up to the legend he has been here, nor to be the general manager he has been. But I promise you, Papa, solemnly, and all of you whom I’ve known for most of my life, that I will do my best, and I will try. Happy birthday, Papa! Here’s to you!” She kissed him, and there rose a cheer in the room as she went back to her seat. There was a huge clamor everywhere as people exclaimed over what he’d done.

“You didn’t know?” she said to Natalie across the table, who looked as surprised as she did.

“I had no idea.” She was stunned. She wondered what he was going to do now. She couldn’t imagine him doing nothing.

“Neither did I,” Brad said as he joined in, but he thought it was a great idea. Heloise was twenty-seven years old; she had prepared and trained for almost ten years and grown up in the business. At Stephanie’s age the hotel had been her playground, and in the years since, it had become her life. And in subtle ways she had improved and modernized it and enhanced her father’s original vision. It was an exceptional hotel and a legend in New York.