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Chapter 1
If anyone had asked small, delicate, beautiful blond Amanda Delanoe, she would have said she had the perfect life. She had a stylish look, a kind of natural chic which was partially inherited from both her parents, and she also had her own talent for giving everything she touched a special, very individual twist. She had an eye for beauty, fashion, and art, due to the milieu she had grown up in. Her father, Armand Delanoe, had a gift for business and fashion, and had started several very successful luxury brands, then acquired other established but failing companies and breathed new life into them. He had a talent for hiring the right people to bring his visions to fruition.
Amanda’s mother, Felicia Farr, had been a famous model. Armand had fallen in love with her the first time he saw her on the runway at the fashion show of one of his brands. They married soon after. She was American and had the same striking blond looks as their daughter, although Felicia was tall and willowy. She had retired soon after Amanda was born, content to be Armand’s wife and give up her modeling career. She had an elegant, classic style and became a showcase for many of the brands he owned by wearing their clothes to important social events and being photographed in them. Amanda’s taste was more unusual and more personal. She had her father’s eye for new fashions, but had chosen art as her career.
At thirty-nine, Amanda had an apartment she loved on the Left Bank in Paris, with a terrace that gave her a front-row seat to view the Eiffel Tower. The apartment reflected her eclectic taste, her travels, and her many passions. She had an important collection of contemporary art, and was part owner of a contemporary art gallery, Galerie Delanoe, which represented several well-known artists and a number of new unknowns whose careers she was shepherding carefully, with very satisfying results. She was a warm, caring person, who had been much loved as a child, and she lavished attention and affection on her artists. For now, they were her children, and they soaked up her generous praise like sponges. She never resented spending hours with her artists, listening to all their problems, and visiting them in their studios often to encourage them and see what new themes and techniques they were experimenting with. She was always willing to give advice or direction when asked.
Born in France, Amanda had also spent considerable time in the States and was a product of both cultures. She had the warm, passionate nature of the French and the cooler, more practical side of her American blood, plus a solid head for business, which her business partner, Pascal Leblanc, appreciated enormously. They were the perfect complement to each other. Pascal was more traditional in his training and outlook, and Amanda was more adventurous, willing to take a risk with an unknown artist. She had started the gallery herself in her twenties, and Pascal had joined her a year after she opened. It was a solid relationship and friendship, born of mutual respect.
Pascal was forty-four, five years older than Amanda. Neither of them was married, and their working relationship had never been confused or polluted by romantic overtones. They frequently gave each other advice of a personal nature. Amanda was given to serious relationships and spent long periods on her own between the men she loved, after the relationships failed for whatever reason.
Pascal’s romances were brief and passionate. They rarely lasted more than a few months. There was always a new woman to fall madly in love with around the next corner. His relationships were like summer fireworks and burned out just as quickly. He had an aversion to the concept of marriage. It sounded like a prison sentence to him. It wasn’t a goal for Amanda either. She didn’t seek it but wasn’t as opposed to it as Pascal. She had watched her parents’ once happy marriage deteriorate and eventually implode, so she was cautious. And so far no one had made her feel that she wanted to be married, and children weren’t a strong lure for her either. She was blissfully happy as she was, unattached for the moment, and happy with her friends, her work, and her dog.
Her education had been as evenly divided as her nationality. She had grown up in Paris until her parents divorced when she was twelve, and her mother took Amanda back to New York with her. It had been a big adjustment for Amanda, leaving France and going to an American school. Her father had always been her hero. She spent holidays and summers with him after the divorce and loved going back to France to be with him and her old friends.
Neither of her parents had ever precisely explained to her the reason for the divorce. She had been mildly aware of the dissent between them for a year or two, and saw some serious turbulence and angry fights. It was only later that she realized that her father’s frequent infidelities had been the reason for it. He loved his wife, but he could never resist the beautiful women, mostly models, who crossed his path.
Her mother had been deeply unhappy when they left Paris. Armand visited Amanda frequently in New York, since he had business there. Her parents had divorced when Amanda was at an age when adolescence quickly took over and in her early teen years, she and her mother argued more than they ever had before. Amanda was constantly at war with Felicia and blamed her for the divorce, since she couldn’t imagine her father causing it, nor any reason for her mother leaving him. Felicia never told Amanda her reasons, out of respect for Armand. And Amanda was too young to know. Armand had taken responsibility for it, and tried to explain to Amanda that her mother wasn’t entirely wrong, but she didn’t believe him, and continued to blame her mother. And then, disaster struck. Armand had been generous with his ex-wife, mostly out of guilt, and Felicia had lived a very comfortable life. Amanda went to one of the best private schools in New York and they lived in a very pretty apartment. Felicia was on her way to a party in the Hamptons with friends on a helicopter they’d chartered when a flash storm hit, the helicopter crashed, and everyone on it was killed, including Amanda’s mother. Amanda was at a friend’s house for the weekend, and the friend’s mother tearfully told Amanda what had happened.
Amanda was fourteen then. It was two years after she and her mother had left Paris. Her father arrived immediately to bring her home after the funeral in New York three days later. He was almost as devastated as his daughter at his ex-wife’s death. Amanda was consumed with guilt about their teenage battles, and Armand for the many affairs he’d had, which had driven Felicia away and broken her heart. He took Amanda back to Paris, and lavished love on her. There was always a woman in his life and on his arm, rarely the same one for long, and he assured Amanda that she was the love of his life.
Amanda went back to her old school in Paris and lived with her father. She missed her mother fiercely, but she and Armand had a good life, and she never lacked for attention. She felt more French than ever when she went home. Until then she had always felt a little American in France and a little French in New York, and in fact, she was both. Maybe subconsciously, to maintain her tie to her mother, four years after her mother’s death, Amanda decided to go to college in New York, and attended New York University, majoring in art history. She went back to France after she graduated. She enjoyed her college years, but also realized that culturally she was more French than American and was ready to go home. Her time in New York reminded her of her life with her mother, but she had grown up French, and Paris was home.
She had gotten a job at an excellent art gallery in Paris, and was thoroughly enjoying her life there, when disaster struck again. Her father fell gravely ill six months after she moved back. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was dead in five months. He was only sixty-two. It left Amanda alone in the world, without parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins or aunts and uncles, at twenty-two. But her father had also left her a sizable inheritance and had left his affairs in good order. He had partners in his businesses, but his estate enabled Amanda to do what she wanted and start a business of her own.
She had kept her gallery job very reasonably for three years after her father died, and had bought the handsome apartment she still lived in. And at twenty-five, she started her gallery, and was joined a year later by Pascal Leblanc.
She had realized by then that she needed a partner to help her run the business, and he was the perfect one. Talented, conscientious, and reliable, he had more experience in the art world than she did, and they got along well. At thirty-nine, she had been without a family for seventeen years now, and was a highly responsible woman, with a good head on her shoulders. She missed having a mother and father, or any relatives, but she had adjusted to it, and Pascal had several times invited her to spend holidays with him and his parents. In recent years, she had gone skiing with friends at Christmas, and paid as little attention as possible to the holiday. It was easier for her that way and made her feel less like an orphan.
