Summer's End by Danielle Steel

frantic worry crossed his face. She smiled.
“I’m fine.”
“You took your insulin properly today?” He was all fatherly concern now, the passion of the moment before forgotten.
“Yes, I took it. Stop worrying. Want to try your new watch in the bathtub?”
“Now?”
“Why not?” She smiled happily at him, and for once he felt totally at peace. “Or did you have something else in mind?”
“I always have something else in mind. But you’re tired.”
“Never too tired for you, mon amour.” And he was never too tired for her. The years between them vanished as he made love to her again.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when they lay quietly side by side again. “Well, we’ve taken care of this afternoon.” She smiled mischievously at him, and he grinned in answer.
“You had other plans?”
“Absolutely none.”
“Want to do some more shopping?” He loved to indulge her, to spoil her, to be with her, admire her, drink her in. Her perfume, her movements, her every breath excited him. And she knew it.
“I could probably be lured back to the shops.”
“Good.” The trip to Rome had been for her anyway. He was going to have to work hard that summer, and Athens would be dull for her. He knew how she loved Rome. And he always made a point of bringing her. Just to please her. Besides, he was going to have to leave her for the weekend.
“What’s wrong?” She had been watching him very closely.
“Nothing. Why?”
“You looked worried for a moment.”
“Not worried.” But it was best to get it over with. “Just unhappy. I’m going to have to leave you for a couple of days.”
“Oh?” Her eyes iced over like a winter frost.
“I have to stop off in Antibes to visit my mother and Pilar before we go to Greece.”
She sat up in bed and looked at him with annoyance. “And what do you plan to do with me?”
“Don’t make it sound like that, darling. I can’t help it. You know that.”
“Don’t you think Pilar is old enough to withstand the shock of knowing about me? Or do you still find me so unpresentable? I’m no longer the little mannequin from Dior, you know. I run the biggest modeling agency in Paris.” But she also knew that in his world that didn’t count.
“That’s not the point. And no, I don’t think she’s old enough.” In what concerned Pilar he was oddly stubborn. It irritated Chantal a great deal.
“And your mother?”
“That’s impossible.”
“I see.” She threw her long legs over the side of the bed and stalked across the room, grabbing a cigarette on her way, turning to look at him angrily only when she had reached the window at the opposite side. “I’m getting a little bored with being dumped in out-of-the-way places while you visit your family, Marc-Edouard.”
“I’d hardly call Saint-Tropez an ‘out-of-the-way place.’” He was beginning to look annoyed, and his tone showed none of the passion of the hours before.
“Where did you have in mind this time?”
“I thought maybe San Remo.”
“How convenient. Well, I won’t go.”
“Would you rather stay here?”
“No.”
“Do we have to go through this again, Chantal? It’s getting very tedious. What’s more, I don’t understand. Why has this suddenly become an issue between us, when for five years you have found it perfectly acceptable to spend time on the Riviera without me?”
“Would you like to know why?” Suddenly her eyes blazed. “Because I’m almost thirty years old, and I’m still playing the same games I was playing with you five years ago. And I’m just a little tired of it. We play make-believe games of ‘Monsieur and Madame Duras’ halfway around the world, but in the places that matter—Paris, San Francisco, Antibes—I have to hide and slink around and disappear. Well, I’m sick of it. You want an exclusive arrangement. You expect me to sit in Paris and hold my breath for half the year, and then come out of mothballs at your command. I’m not going to do that anymore,