The Hotel Riviera by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page B

beds are all gilded ormolu and padded damask, which somehow turned out to look more country bordello than seaside villa, but which has a certain charm. Others are plain country iron, painted white and draped in gauze so that lying in bed with the soft slur of the sea in your ears, you could imagine you were in the tropics.
    Everything else in the bedrooms is very simple. A table under the window; an amber-shaded lamp, a comfy chair, a soft rug for your feet. The soap in the small, Provençal-tiled bathrooms is made from local olive oil and is scented deliciously with verbena; the bed linens smell of being dried in the sun and the wind, and the bunches of flowers on the nightstands smell like wild strawberries.
    Occasionally, a nightingale pays us a visit, or a blackbird, which in my view has the prettier song. I like to hope it sends those guests already drifting off to sleep closer into each other’s arms, because there’s surely nothing as romantic as a nightingale’s song, heard while lying in your cool bed with the tall windows flung open to the sea breeze. “Hear that,” I sometimes imagine a delighted lover whispering, holding the long, cool length of his woman against his warm tanned body, as they love each other.
    I’m back on the terrace now, the focus and general meeting place of the Hotel Riviera. Worn terra-cotta pavers, verdigrised iron railings under a burden of blossoms, old-fashioned globe light, and, overhead, a thick canopy of fig leaves.
    Enchanting is the word that comes to mind as I look down over the tangle of colorful plants spilling onto the sandy path below. At the end of this path, there’s the clump of boulders and a flight of wooden steps leading down to the cove. Just above this is my own house, a miniature single-story version of the hotel, in the same faded-rose pink, with the same tall silvery shutters framing its windows, and a tiny porch tacked onto the front. The sea laps practically at my door and I sleep with my windows open to its soothing music.
    I pick a sprig of jasmine and tuck it into my hair, as I take that sandy path, back to my little house, and Scramble, and my lonely dreams. Is there any wonder I love this place?

Chapter 13
    The night had turned sultry, that sticky kind of heat that foretells a summer storm. I peeled off my clothes and headed into the shower. Five minutes later and many degrees cooler, I was in bed.
    I lay there, eyes wide open, sheet thrown back, rigid as a soldier at attention, staring into the semidarkness at the vague shapes of the old blue-painted ceiling beams with the yellow spaces of plaster between them, Scramble rustled around on my pillow, clucking softly and occasionally touching my hair with her beak. I was glad of her company.
    Sleep was impossible. I was too worried, too distracted, too lonely. I flung myself out of bed and sat by the open window, leaning on the wooden ledge. I felt the sun’s warmth still locked there and rested my head on my arms, listening to the distant rumble of thunder and the soft background sigh of the sea, thinking how fortunate I was to live in such a beautiful place. I reminded myself that I had Patrick to thank for that.
    I suppose I’m what you might call a nester, partly because as a child I never really had a home. Due to Dad’s financial ups and downs, we were always on the move; one month I’d be a country cowgirl on a ranch, the next I was an urban schoolgirl striving to make instant best friends. We lived in so many different apartments I lost count. I yearned for a place to call my own.
    My mother had simply picked up and left one day without taking six-year-old me with her. She’d dubbed my father, scathingly, Mr. Charm, and it was true, he was Mr. Charm, but oh, how I loved him. I’d hang on to his hand and on to his every word, gazing proudly up at my handsome daddy, who to his credit, and unlike my runaway mother, always showed up for PTA meetings,