The Last Time I Saw Paris by Elizabeth Adler

mother . . . you know how it is.”
    â€œSo what do you do with your days?”
    â€œMy husband is a specialist in cardiovascular surgery. He works with children a lot. Right now, he’s in Beijing, then he’s going on to India.”
    â€œThat’s him. What about you?”
    She shrugged, baffled. “I look after the house, work with seniors, play tennis with my girlfriends. That sort of thing.”
    â€œThe sort of things rich women do to pass their time.”
    â€œI’m not rich.” She was on the defensive. “I mean . . . oh, hell, you know what I mean.” She glared at him.
    â€œI think I do, Ms. Lewis.” He put the beer bottle down on the deck and stood up. “It’s getting late. I’d better go.”
    He whistled and his dog came racing back up the steps from the beach. “See you tomorrow around the same time,” he called as the gate clanged shut behind him.
    Lara shivered as she drained the last of her wine. With the sunset it had turned cold again. She went inside and closed the windows. She set the fire in the grate and put a match to it, waiting until it caught before she went upstairs to shower.
    â€œServes me right for asking, hey, Dex?” she said with a shaky little laugh.
    She fixed herself a childish comfort sandwich of bananas mashed with brown sugar on a slice of Wonder Bread, then, in her old pink robe, settled down in front of the fire with the Noel Coward
Diaries
to help her live vicariously. She thought maybe Dan Holland had got it right. Alone, you could eat what you pleased when you pleased. You could do what you liked. Be whomever you liked.
    But it was awfully lonely, she thought sadly, when all you had to look forward to were Oreos and a glass of milk. She wondered if Dan was seeing the beautiful young student again tonight.

CHAPTER 8
    L ara wore the red bathing suit the next afternoon when Dan came by, just to prove to herself that it meant nothing. She needn’t have bothered; he barely looked at her.
    She sat under the big green umbrella at one side of the deck pretending to read her book, while he busied himself at the other side, whistling softly as he worked. He had taken off his T-shirt and was wearing only a pair of old gray shorts. Lara wondered what the Girlfriends would say if they saw him. There was no doubt that Dan Holland was a hunk. A
young
hunk, she reminded herself. And she was a woman in her middle forties who was in the process of being ditched by her husband for a younger version. Maybe she should introduce Melissa to Dan and they would be irresistibly drawn to each other, beauty to beauty, sort of like looking in a mirror. She would get her husband back and resolve Dan Holland’s love life.
    Except she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to introduce Dan to anyone, not even the Girlfriends. He was her secret and she wanted to keep him right here on her deck and just watch him. His thick straight hair, bleached by the sun, fell over his eyes; his body had that golden, outdoor, California look about it, and his muscles rippled from more than a decade of hard work. He stretched lazily, and he was so male it took her breath away.
    He turned to smile at her. “Got to cool off,” he said, running past her, down the steps to the beach. He dived into the waves with that wonderful confidence of the young and well-coordinated that his body could do anything he asked of it, and she watched him swim effortlessly into the red-gold path of the setting sun, at one with his watery world.
    She had a beer waiting when he came back. His wet shorts clung to him, sleek as a second skin. “I’ll get you a towel,” she said, quickly averting her gaze. “There’s an old pair of Bill’s shorts too, if you would like to change.”
    He picked up the bottle of beer and drank deeply. “Thanks, Ms. Lewis, but don’t trouble. I’ll dry off in a couple of