Honor Thyself by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

didn't want to be disturbed. Stevie wouldn't dream of bothering her, and waited for Carole to contact her when she was ready.
    “Do you know where she is?” He sounded concerned.
    “Not really. She started out in Paris, but she was going to do some traveling on her own.” He wondered if she had a new romance, but didn't want to ask. It sounded like that to him. “Is anything wrong?” Stevie suddenly wondered about the kids. Carole would want to know immediately if anything had happened to either of them.
    “No, it's not important. I'm trying to make plans for Christmas. I know they're planning to spend Thanksgiving with her, but I wasn't sure what her Christmas plans were. I talked to Anthony and Chloe, and they weren't sure either. Someone offered me a house in St. Bart's over New Year's, and I didn't want to screw up her plans with them.” Particularly now, with Sean gone, the holidays with her children meant more to her than ever. And Jason had always been nice about it. Stevie knew he'd remarried briefly, and had two other kids, who now lived in Hong Kong with their mother and were in their teens. Carole had mentioned that he didn't see them often, only a couple of times a year. He was far closer to his children by Carole, and to her.
    “I'll tell her to call you as soon as I hear from her. It shouldn't be long now. I expect to hear from her any day.”
    “I hope she wasn't in Paris when that bomb went off in the tunnel. What a mess that was.” It had been all over the news in the States too, and an extremist fundamentalist group had finally claimed responsibility for it, which had caused an outcry in the Arab world too, who in no way wanted to be linked to the perpetrators of the attack.
    “It looked pretty awful. I saw it on the news. I worried about it at first, but it was the day she got there. I'm sure she was cozily tucked into the hotel after the flight, and nowhere near it.” Long distance travel usually wore her out, and she often stayed in her room and slept the day she arrived.
    “Have you tried e-mailing her?” Jason asked.
    “Her computer is turned off. She really wanted some time to herself,” Stevie answered matter-of-factly.
    “Where's she staying?” he asked, sounding worried. And he was getting Stevie upset too. She had thought of it, but told herself it was ridiculous to worry. She was sure that Carole was fine, but Jason's concern was contagious.
    “At the Ritz,” Stevie said quickly.
    “I'll call her, and leave a message.”
    “She might be traveling, so you may not get an answer for a couple of days. I'm not too worried yet.”
    “It can't hurt to leave her a message. Besides, I need to know about this house, or I'll lose it. And I don't want to take it unless the kids want to come down. It might be fun for them.”
    “I'll let her know if she calls me,” Stevie assured him.
    “I'll see if I can catch her at the Ritz. Thanks.” He hung up then, and Stevie sat at the desk in her office, thinking about it. It seemed so unlikely that anything had happened to Carole, that Stevie was determined not to worry. What were the odds that she had been in the terrorist attack? About one in a hundred million. Stevie forced it out of her mind as she went back to work on a project she'd been doing, gathering information for Carole for some of her women's rights work. With Carole away, it was a good time for Stevie to catch up. The research she was doing was for a speech Carole was planning to make at the UN.
    As soon as he hung up, Jason called the Ritz in Paris, and asked for Carole's room. They put him on hold, while they called her room to announce the call. She always had her calls screened by any hotel she was in. They came back on the line then, said she wasn't in her room, and referred him to the front desk, which was unusual. He decided to stay on the line and see what they had to say. A desk clerk asked him to wait for a moment, and then an assistant manager with a British accent