It All Began in Monte Carlo by Elizabeth Adler

snack.
    â€œJesus,” Pru said, impressed, “that’s some fast dog.”
    â€œShe just did you a favor and ate half that sandwich. Remember that,” Allie said. “Because tomorrow you and I are working out a whole new regime for you.”
    â€œBut I’m leaving tomorrow, I can’t stay and be a burden to you, or to anyone. I have to work out my life myself.”
    â€œOh, stop it.” Allie stared exasperated at her.
    Then Ron said, “By the way Allie, the phone rang when you were out. I only caught the end of the message. I didn’t check it, but I know it was Sunny Alvarez. And it sounded to me as if she was in trouble.”

chapter 11
Monte Carlo. Christmas Day evening.
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    The hotel bar was quiet, just the Indian woman with her elegant friends, and Sunny and her would-be new friend whose bright red hair fell in fluffy bangs over her small secretive blue eyes.
    Kitty put her hand over Sunny’s. “I’ve been down that road myself, a few times,” she said, with that demure chin-down bucktoothed smile and upward glance that, Sunny thought, seemed to be her trademark. She wasn’t sure she liked Kitty Ratte, wasn’t sure she wanted to be consoled by her, wasn’t sure she wanted to be anybody’s “friend” simply because she was lonely and desperate about Mac and feeling like hell and really, truly, thought she might die.
    Still she found herself saying, “Hi, I’m Sunny Alvarez,” through a large gulp of good champagne, glad after all, just to be talking to
someone.
Allie wasn’t at the end of the phone; Prince Charming had disappeared in Paris, and Mac . . . well Mac was probably in Malibu, gazing out at the Pacific Ocean and wondering where she was and why on earth she had left him, when he’d just told her he couldn’t marry her that’s all.
    â€œHe told me he couldn’t marry me,” she said flatly.
    Kitty Ratte looked interested and sympathetic at the same time. The barman refilled Sunny’s glass and she indicated she needed a second glass for her friend. The barman did not look at Kitty as heput a glass in front of her, filled it, placed the bottle back in the silver ice bucket.
    Sunny noticed his attitude. “Does the barman know you?”
    â€œOoh, I come here occasionally. It’s convenient, a pleasant place for a woman alone. A woman can simply be herself here, drink what she wants, think what she wants.”
    â€œAnd what exactly is that?”
    Kitty’s small blue eyes crinkled into pinpoints when she laughed. “What do I think? Or what do I want?”
    â€œBoth.” Sunny sipped the champagne, suddenly very interested in what Kitty Ratte had to say. For an insignificant woman she seemed pretty full of herself.
    â€œWell,” Kitty said slowly, as though she were thinking hard about Sunny’s questions. “I like to be free. I’m successful in the modeling business. I have an apartment in Cannes. I have a lot of friends. I enjoy myself.”
    â€œYou work?” Practical Sunny wondered where the money was coming from to finance an apartment in Cannes and a life alone.
    Kitty shrugged, leaning closer to Sunny. The V of her dress fell away, revealing a heavily padded blue bra. L.A. woman that Sunny was, she wondered why, if Kitty Ratte were so successful, had she not had a boob job. And anyhow why hadn’t she had those buckteeth fixed? And the front two had awful cheap too-white veneers. Obviously whatever Kitty did, she wasn’t making enough to keep up with the Joneses of Monte Carlo.
    â€œI have a ‘partner,’ ” Kitty explained. “Not a husband, you know, just someone I have an ‘understanding’ with.”
    â€œYou mean you’re a mistress?”
    Kitty’s forced laugh was a bit angry. “I suppose you could call me that,” she said stiffly. “I prefer to call it, the way the