Champagne Romance (Romance Novel)

  Swan drove to the restaurant with a chatty Madeline all the way. It was a beautiful day and the lovely young women were enjoying the bright sunshine with the top of the convertible down. She soon pulled her Mercedes into the entrance of the bistro and handed the keys to the valet. An unsuspecting Swan and her friend walked into the French cafe and were soon seated a few tables away from Slater and the brassy blond.

  Slater made sure that he had a seat facing the entrance of the bistro so that he could orchestrate his moves accordingly. As luck would have it, Swan and a girlfriend walked in the door ten minutes after he and Lolita had arrived and sat down a few chairs away. When he sensed Swan looking from the corner of his eye he reached over, took Lolita’s hand, and carried it to his lips. It was all the encouragement that was needed to get Lolita licking her chops. He soon was rewarded with bare toes creeping up his leg.

  Slater’s back was turned, but Swan recognized him immediately. She was horrified by what she was witnessing! She watched what was taking place between the couple in fascinatingly slow motion. It wasn’t until her friend, Madeline, started fanning her face with the menu that she came back to earth with a thud.

  “Are you going to be sick?” she asked Swan.

  Swan couldn’t seem to use her vocal cords; she only shook her head up and down. She grabbed her purse and immediately exited out the door from which they had just entered with an alarmed Madeline following closely behind. It wasn’t until they were in the car with Swan gasping for air in-between crying and hiccupping did Madeline piece together the story and understand the reason for their quick departure--the swine!

  By the time Swan dropped a concerned Madeline back at her doorstep; Swan had pulled herself together and was beginning to regroup. The minute she entered the front door of her home, she was back in control. The last thing she was going to do was to mope around and hope any phone calls came from Slater. She was going to get as far away from him as was physically possible.

  Things began flying the moment after she booked a flight for two by phone to Europe. Almost as soon as she replaced the phone receiver in its cradle, she was packed and out the door with Quinn in tow. She was going to spend time with her friend, Kat. Kat was vacationing outside Rome where there would be no way that she would run into Slater---ever!!! So, she thought.

  CHAPTER 43

  It was a grueling luncheon date for Slater. Once Lolita had served her purpose and was no longer needed, he could hardly wait for the meal to be over. There was an unusually large crowd today and the waiters were swamped. As a result, it was a miserable two hours before they got out of there and Slater was back in his office.

  It didn’t help that Lolita wasn’t about to have the luncheon end any sooner than necessary. She took an unusually long time eating, drinking two glasses of wine, and then ordering dessert with coffee. He deserved to be punished for the agonizing luncheon and he accepted that. He was more than a little impatient, however, with her pouted red lips as her hopes were dashed when she found out that they would not be going back to his place for an afternoon romp that she had hoped to last the rest of the day and night.

  When Slater got back to his office he was could still smell the clinging musky smell of Lolita’s perfume. He felt like she was all over him and he couldn’t wait to get home and take a shower, which would wash all traces of her away from his mind and body. All he wanted was Swan--her scent and only hers.

  Slater was disgusted with himself. He saw the way Swan looked when she ran out the door of the restaurant. He wanted her to be upset, but not to the point of being sick. He went back to his apartment, took a shower, and contemplated his next move.

  Slater went out on the balcony and lit a cigarette as he gazed out over the Pacific and considered the day’s event. Swan didn’t bring in her lover boy for lunch, but that didn’t mean anything. She hadn’t reacted to his date like someone who had another lover, but then again she never did react the way that he expected. That caused him to frown as he stared out at Catalina. His whole plan was to make her so jealous that she would come running back into his waiting arms.

  Slater’s eyebrows drew together in a frown as he rubbed his chin and thought of the foolishness of that line of thinking. It suddenly occurred to him that she wasn’t experienced enough to play games. Smashing out his cigarette with the heel of his shoe he needed to drive past her place and prove his thinking incorrect. He had a premonition that he had made the wrong move. Slater usually shot from the hip and met things head on when he needed to solved a problem, but Swan solved her problems differently--she ran. Son of a bitch, how could he be so stupid!

  Slater knew that he was right before he ever got to Swan’s condo. He entered by the side door with the slip of a credit card as he usually did and took the back steps two at a time. Seconds later, he was pounding on the French door entrance of Swan’s condo. A sober Maria opened the door.

  Slater got very little information from Maria as she knew very little, but with much reluctance she gave him enough knowledge to serve as a starting point. Swan was headed for Europe, damn her! She had an hour jump on him, but he could easily close that gap difference once he got his private jet fired up. Sitting down at his computer he hacked into LAX terminals flight plan for all airlines. It wasn’t long before he verified the two tickets of Swan and Quinn on an American Airliner bound for Rome. It left in twenty minutes. Slater looked at his watch and realized that they would probably just be boarding at approximately this very moment.

  Slater alerted his staff for an overseas flight in his small private jet. They were used to last minute instructions and were paid well to be ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice. One hour later, they were in the air and headed to Tuscany country. They would be flying at night and would be arriving before dawn. With any luck at all, they would be at their gate about the moment the American Airliner was pulling up to theirs. By the time Swan got her luggage and went through customs, he would be greeting them on the other side. --- It should have worked that way, but it didn’t.

  Swan and Quinn boarded the international flight to Europe within two hours after she saw Slater at the bistro. Quinn was terribly excited about flying on the big silver bird of the sky. It was like he had been given an energizing battery pill. It wasn’t until they had taken off and they were in the air over the feathery white clouds for over two hours that her little energizing bunny began to wind down and nod off.

  After raising the arm of the plane seat, Quinn was able to stretch out in the plane seat quite comfortable for the entire flight. He snuggled beneath his “blankie” with his favorite toy doggy under his arm and was soon fast asleep. It was then that Swan had time to reflect on her day and Slater’s conduct with the blond.

  Replaying the restaurant scene like a DVD in her tired mind, she found herself becoming more and more miserable. How could she have believed all of Slater’s words and romance? How could she have been sooo stupid?! After a three-hour pity party and a bottle of wine, she tried to make a real effort to sleep. Trying to keep a blank mind so that she wouldn’t think of Slater making love to the blond from the restaurant, she punched her pillow pretending it was his head. Finally, she fell into a short shallow sleep of liquored bliss.

  They arrived in Rome late afternoon. Swan had packed light and brought only one carry-on for her and Quinn. She didn’t want to be waiting in the luggage line with a squirming three-year-old and a hangover. Besides, she could always buy anything that they needed. So, she had a short wait at customs and was soon spotted by her friend, Kat.

  It was a big relief to see Kat’s waving hand among the crowd of traveling people. After battling the airport mob, they were soon settled into Kat’s beamer and headed for her European castle in the coastal region of southern Italy compliments of Kat’s last husband, The Baron.

  A smug Slater arrived about fifteen minutes after the commercial airliner landed. He was soon through customs and on the other side of the gate scanning the horde of people for Swan
and Quinn. An hour later, a frustrated Slater was not so smug.

  The worldly part of Slater, however, did not take long to obtain the information he wanted. When a few palms were greased with the America dollar, a taxi driver suddenly remembered two women and a toddler. Slater knew he could depend on the Italian men to notice gorgeous women and he was not disappointed by their observation. He had been counting on their appreciation of the feminine beauty. When he finally found the taxi driver that remembered Swan with a small child and another woman, he was able to give a description of their get-a-way car. Then, however, he started to flamboyantly describe the attributes of the redhead woman’s figure. Slater put his hand up in a gesture to stop. It was not, however, the universal gesture that he desired to give to this male Italian with way too much testosterone.

  Slater opened his laptop. With a little help from a satellite dish, Slater was able to track fifteen light-gray BMWs headed south from the airport. He soon obtained satellite pictures, which enabled him to narrow the possibilities down to three. A quick check of the license plate zeroed them down again to an American name, Katherine Tortillini, which in all probabilities was her friend, Kat. He went with the gut feeling that he had found the trio. Hailing the nearest cab, he guided the taxi through the traffic following each turn of the gray beamer. They were soon whizzing down the coastal highway at 95 mph approximately an hour behind the equally speeding vehicle of Kat’s.

  CHAPTER 44

  An exhausted Swan and Quinn immediately went upstairs to the spacious bedrooms of Kat’s seasonal second home that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. Quinn was seeing ZZZs before the lights were out in his bedroom and Swan wasn’t far behind in her roomy king-sized bed. She was too tired to dig through her bag for an overnight gown. So, her clothes fell in a pile beside the bed along with her bra and panties. She then slipped between the luxurious silk sheets totally nude.

  Kat was wide-awake. She managed six hours of sleep before she had made the run to the airport. Setting the alarm, she went to the refrigerator and sliced some meat off the hunk of roast beef for a sandwich. Pouring herself a glass of relaxing prime Italian wine, she sat down to thumb through a magazine that she picked up at the airport. An hour later she closed the magazine with a big yawn.

  Just as Kat was about to turn out the lights and go upstairs, the doorbell rang. Startled that someone would be ringing the doorbell at this time of night, she apprehensively looked out the peephole. What she saw was a very handsome man standing on the other side of the door. He didn’t look Italian but he did look somewhat familiar. Hoping that it was just someone who had a flat tire and not an ax murderer, she cautiously used her intercom.

  Slater knew that he wouldn’t have any problem scaling the walls of the three story luxury home, but he preferred to enter the old-fashion way. As he stood on the front porch, a female voice asked in Italian his reason for him being on her doorstep at this time of night. He replied back in fluent Italian that he had been chasing Swan and Quinn half-way across the universe and he would appreciate it if she would open the door. To his surprise, she accommodated.

  Kat immediately recognized Slater from some Disneyland pictures that Swan had shown her, the minute he asked to see her friend. She, however, was not quite ready to throw open the door in invitation to enter until she had some sort of an explanation. She intended to protect her friend from this gigolo whom Swan had flown around the world in the middle of the night to avoid. So, if he wanted to gain entrance he better have a darn good story as to why he followed Swan and how he found her here.

  Kat’s body language told Slater that he better be on top of his game and up to some pretty fast smooth talking if he didn’t want to still be standing on the front step when the morning sun popped over the horizon. He took his cues from Kat. He was well aware of the way her eyes glanced over him in appreciation of his male attributes. He immediately and accurately pegged her as a female piranha. It did not take her long to guess she liked what she saw and he intended to use it to his full advantage. He would almost bet his last buck that she even had a pretty good idea on how long his pecker was.

  Oozing with charm, he soon found himself sitting on the living room couch with a scotch in his hand. Thirty minutes later after a declaration of his love for Swan, he was being led to the bedroom door of the sleeping beauty. Stripping to his briefs, he immediately crawled in beside her. He was pleasantly surprised to find her almost as naked as he pulled her next to him. Those luscious breasts with their pointy nipples bore into his chest like a steel drill. It was a bitter sweet feeling of male sacrifice just to have those soft breasts pressed against him, but he would happily endure it. With a deep breath he was soon sound asleep beside her.

  A sleeping Swan and Slater were awaken mid-morning with little feet jumping up and down on the bed and an excited baby voice saying, “Daddy, daddy!”

  Slater felt Swan tense beside him. She tried to bounce up and away, but Slater held her close with one arm as he cuddled and kissed Quinn with the other until Quinn decided that it was Mommy’s turn. Then, Quinn was off to tell the news about Daddy to anyone who would take the time to listen.

  Slater peered down at Swan. She wasn’t saying anything, just soberly looking at him and waiting. She tried again to put some distance between them, but Slater was not giving her even an inch of opportunity. He liked her naked and pressed up next to him. He looked down at her nude body and he couldn’t think of one reason why he shouldn’t indulge himself.

  Slater began nibbling on Swan’s ear, “Marry me.”

  Swan just spent a miserable night on a red-eye flight to Europe. She was vulnerable and exhausted. She did not know how Slater had slipped past Kat and why he was in her bed. She only knew that every time she had a visual rerun of the blonde’s toes creeping up Slater’s leg, she wanted to bonk him several times on the head. She didn’t know where he was going with this “marry me” bit, but she certainly had no intentions of falling for it. So, she said nothing.

  That nothing brought Slater to a three second abrupt stop. He hadn’t totally known what to expect, but he had expected some enthusiasm from the woman of his dreams. It always infuriated him when Swan went into her not talking mode, but he was getting better at figuring out this puzzling woman. Not letting Swan’s reaction dash his hopes in any way, he continued charging forward. He did not let up on his nibbling and kissing of all soft spots that he could get to in spite of her squirming and pushing beside him.

  Finally, she said one word, “Why?”

  Slater paused a moment from his on slaughter of love making to peer down his nose at Swan. His thoughts were still coming from his lower region, so it took him a few seconds for her words to travel up to his brain and comprehend what she was asking. She was piercing him with her aqua blues. He knew she was searching deep into his soul as she always did. He must have hesitated a little too long as he watched her begin to pull mentally away.

  “Be---cause,” he enunciated distinctly one inch from her nose, “I love you.”

  Unpredictably, her eyes began to swell up with tears. Not quite the response he wanted, but at least it was a genuine. Before he could pursue the conversation any further, he groaned as he heard the patter of small feet running down the hall. The door was thrown open again with a little Quinn rushing into the bedroom.

  “Hurry up, hurry up, breakfast is on and you’re going to miss it!” Then, he bounced out of the room again.

  Slater kissed Swan’s forehead and put his head next to hers. He wasn’t about to be strung along waiting until they were alone again. He wanted a commitment pronto!

  With a little apprehension he softly asked, “Well, what’s your answer?”

  She said nothing, but only shook her head up and down against his chest. He smiled, that would have to do for now.

  A grinning Slater entered the breakfast nook with an arm around a serene and happy Swan. Kat was relieved to see that she had read Slater correctly and that the dicey situation had appar
ently turned out for the best.

  Quinn didn’t understand what was happening, but was able to grasp the jubilant atmosphere around him, which made him bubble with antics that kept them all laughing throughout the delicious brunch. Quinn was soon finished and off to play with the remote control truck that Auntie Kitty Kat had given him.

  Slater looked at Kat, “Swan has agreed to marry me.”

  Kat clapped her hands with glee. She always loved a wedding whether it was one of hers or someone else’s. After congratulating them with happy hugs and kisses she had her cook bring out champagne cocktails in celebration.

  Clinking glasses, Kat asked, “When do you think you’ll tie the knot? “

  “Soon,” Slater replied, “Swan’s pregnant.”

  That brought the celebration to an abrupt halt as Kat’s eyes widened and swiveled questionably on Swan. The only sound that could be heard was the toy remote in the background.

  “I am not,” she countered indignantly.

  “I beg to differ,” Slater smiled. “Think about it.”

  As she did so, Slater watched his new fiancé turn peaked, then a little green as she left the table to throw-up in the nearby bathroom. With a wink and grin at Kat, Slater got up from the table to help Swan.

  A trip to the pharmacy did indeed confirm Swan’s pregnancy. It had probably happened in Malibu three weeks ago prior to their falling out. Slater was elated! Swan was having a little trouble getting her mind around it, but with some adjustment she began to get caught up in Slater’s enthusiasm. She hoped that this pregnancy would be different and easier because Slater would be with her all the way. His support and love would get her through any hurdles that she might have to endure. That gave her strength. She had never been loved before Quinn. It was a security that she had experienced from very few adults and never from any adult male.

  CHAPTER 45

  Slater was determined to make their engagement spectacular and special. Kat had agreed to watch Quinn for a few days while they jetted to Paris and picked out an engagement ring. Slater had contacted the most prestigious jeweler in all of Europe. When they arrived, followed discreetly by the pilots that Swan finally realized also doubled as body guards, they were led into an exclusive backroom that was only reserved for the sheiks, kings, and other special people with unlimited funds.