The Apartment by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online

carried out. She talked to Claire again then, and Morgan and Abby were with her. Morgan suggested they meet at Max’s restaurant, half a block from where they were standing, at the other end of the street. Their building was no longer at risk, but they’d been told it would be another hour or two before they would be allowed back into their home. Sasha was sure it would reek of smoke when they did. But they could easily have lost it that night if the wind had changed direction, and she thought about the people who had died, as she walked around the block to meet the others on Tenth Avenue. They were quiet on their way to Max’s. He had closed half an hour before, and was counting the money while the kitchen staff and bus boys were cleaning up. Max had come out to see what was happening a couple of times, and brought them more water, and then had gone back to work. It was a busy night.
    “That was quite a blaze,” he commented as they arrived, all four of them looking tired, and Sasha still teetering on Claire’s high heels. The others were all wearing T-shirts, shorts, and flats and looked as though they’d dressed in haste.
    “Seven people died,” Sasha said sadly. “I think they were mostly old people, from smoke inhalation.” They didn’t know any of them personally, but all of the residents of the loft recognized some of their neighbors by sight and waved at them occasionally. It was tragic to think of how their lives had ended. It was one of the risks of very old buildings. One of the firemen had told Morgan it started as an electrical fire, in a building that hadn’t been renovated like theirs, and since it was rent-controlled, it had some of the original tenants in it.
    They shared a bottle of wine at Max’s, and finally at three-thirty, they were allowed to go back to their apartment. The building reeked of smoke, and they opened all the windows when they got home, and turned on their air-conditioning units for ventilation, but they assumed correctly that it would take days or longer for the smell of smoke to dissipate. The buildings only two doors away were still smoldering, and firemen were hosing them down both inside and out. None of the possessions inside would remain.
    “Boy, that was close,” Morgan said as she sat down on the couch with Max. “We could have lost everything.” In their haste, they had taken nothing with them, except Abby, who had grabbed her laptop with her novel on it. And Claire had stuck some photographs of her parents into her purse. The rest had seemed unimportant, but they would have hated losing their home. They had installed smoke detectors in the loft years before, and had never had a fire in the neighborhood come as close as that. It was an eerie, depressing feeling, especially knowing people had died.
    It was five in the morning before they all went to bed, and just before they did, Claire turned to Sasha.
    “By the way, how was your date?” Sasha had already forgotten all about it, in the excitement of the fire.
    “Ridiculous,” she answered. “A total waste of time. I’d rather stay home with all of you, or work, or sleep,” Sasha said with a yawn. “He was pretty to look at, but there was nothing to say.”
    “There are some good ones out there,” Morgan reminded her, as Sasha looked skeptical and Claire shook her head.
    “I think you got the last good one left,” Claire commented, referring to Max with a smile, as he went to get ready for bed and let the girls discuss the date.
    “What do you expect from an underwear model, for chrissake?” Morgan said to Sasha.
    “He kept taking pictures of me to send to his Instagram followers,” Sasha said. “He probably told them he was out with Valentina.” Morgan and Claire suspected that was probably true. He wasn’t likely to be impressed by Sasha’s medical school credentials, and claiming he was out with Valentina would blow the minds of all his friends. Morgan groaned at the description of his