It All Began in Monte Carlo Read Free

tempted by a beautiful Siamese kitten, offered by a well-known breeder. The online picture had shown a cream and chocolate skinny little beauty with enormous eyes of such a bright glistening blue, that he, a dog-lover, had fallen in love. In the end though, he had been forced to be practical. His dog, Pirate, would no doubt also have fallen in love with the kitten, but as for the Chihuahua—forget it. Tesoro would have stood her ground against a grizzly if it came anywhere near Sunny. A bit like Mac himself. Eventually, he had bought her diamond drop earrings, as small and delicate as her beautiful ears.
    Later this afternoon, the gift choosing and purchasing hopefully having been quickly completed, he and Sunny would rush to the Malibu lot where they sold Christmas trees and where no doubt she would, as she always did, choose a tree so tall he swore would never fit into his cottage. And as always, he would be correct and would end up sawing off the top, which Sunny would then tie ontothe deck rails overlooking the beach, and fashion into a minitree with twinkling lights of many colors, none of this prissy all-white for his girl, and always with a star on top improvised from tinfoil. They’d hit the supermarket and pick up a turkey and all the fixings; he would haul a batch of logs into the car, and at the liquor store pick up a bottle of port for after dinner because somehow that always seemed very Christmassy to him.
    Later, huddled under blankets out on the deck with the dogs, hopefully content and picking at the bones Sunny had begged from the butcher, they would share a bottle of champagne. They would hang their stockings over the fireplace, the dogs’ stockings too. And, as the clock struck twelve signaling the beginning of Christmas Day, they would kiss. A deep loving kiss because God knows he loved her and he knew she loved him. They would go to the bedroom and snuggle deep under the down coverlet that always left her too cold and made him sweat and they would either make love or fall asleep in each other’s arms. Or hopefully both.
    A smile lit Mac’s face as he thought about the pleasures to come. Once they had gotten these last few shots. Lord knows why they couldn’t have finished yesterday, but somehow it always seemed to happen this way.
    He checked the set but things were still being shifted around and the director was deep in consultation with the lighting guy, all longtime friends of Mac, and all, he knew, as eager to get out of here as he was. Bored, he checked for e-mail. Nothing important, which meant nothing from Sunny.
    Mac understood how upset Sunny was at putting off the wedding—“one more time” as she had said in a tone half-disbelieving, half-saddened, in a way that had stabbed at his own heart, even while he was trying to get her to understand that he had commitments with all these people relying on him for their own jobs, as well as those with unsolved murders or disappearances of loved ones who needed him for their peace of mind. Except this time Sunnyhad not cared for anybody else’s peace of mind, and in his heart Mac knew what she had said was true. He could just never say No to someone in need of his help.
    The name
Paris
caught his eye on the news headline.
Paris.
A place that only last year had delighted both him and Sunny. He remembered the room at the Ritz she had talked the manager into giving them when all of Paris was full; the gorgeous bed, the bath for two, her beautiful body, her luxuriant long dark hair soaked from the shower where they had made love . . . But this news flash was not about
their
Paris. This was about a daring heist at a fashionable jeweler’s, three masked blondes and a sadistic act of violence that had left a young woman assistant with a broken face.
    His own assistant called him back to the set. “Another half hour and we’re finished, buddy,” he said with a thankful grin, and forgetting Paris and the