Fleur had never seen her father. He’d brought her to the couvent when she was only one week old and never come back. She’d never seen the house on the Rue de la Bienfaisance where all of them lived without her-her mother, her father, her grandmother…and her brother, Michel. It wasn’t her fault, her mother said.

Fleur gave a shrill whistle as she reached the fence that marked the edge of the couvent property. Before she got her braces, she’d whistled a lot better. Before she got her braces, she hadn’t believed anything could make her uglier. Now she knew she’d been wrong.

The chestnut whickered as he came up to the edge of the fence and stuck his head over the post to nuzzle her shoulder. He was a Selle Français, a French saddle horse owned by the neighboring vintner, and Fleur thought he was the most beautiful creature in the world. She’d give anything to ride him, but the nuns wouldn’t let her, even though the vintner had given his permission. She wanted to disobey them and ride him anyway, but she was afraid they’d punish her by telling Belinda not to come.

Fleur planned to be a great horsewoman someday, despite her current status as the clumsiest girl at the couvent. She tripped over her big feet a dozen times a day, sending serving platters crashing to the floor, flower vases wobbling off tabletops, and the nuns scurrying into the nursery to safeguard whatever baby she might have taken it into her head to cuddle. Only when it came to sports did she forget her self-consciousness over her big feet, towering height, and oversized hands. She could run faster, swim farther, and score more goals at field hockey than anyone else. She was as good as a boy, and being as good as a boy was important to her. Fathers liked boys, and maybe if she was the bravest, the fastest, and the strongest, just like a boy, her father would let her come home.

The days before the Christmas holiday dragged endlessly until the afternoon arrived for her mother to pick her up. Fleur was packed hours in advance, and as she waited, the nuns passed through the chilly front hallway one by one.

“Do not forget, Fleur, to keep a sweater with you. Even in the South, it can be cool in December.”

“Yes, Sister Dominique.”

“Remember that you’re not in Châtillon-sur-Seine where you know everyone. You mustn’t talk to strangers.”

“Yes, Sister Marguerite.”

“Promise me you’ll go to Mass every day.”

She crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirt. “I promise, Sister Thérèse.”

Fleur’s heart burst with pride when her beautiful mother finally swept into their midst. She looked like a bird of paradise descending into a flock of chimney swifts. Beneath a snow-white mink coat, Belinda wore a yellow silk top over indigo trousers belted at the waist with braided orange vinyl. Platinum and Lucite bangles clicked at her wrists, and matching disks swung from her ears. Everything about her was colorfully mod, stylish, and expensive.

At thirty-three, Belinda had become a costly gem, cut to perfection by Alexi Savagar and polished by the luxuries of the Faubourg St.-Honoré. She was thinner, more prone to small, quick gestures, but the eyes that drank in her daughter’s face had not changed at all. They were the same innocent hyacinth-blue as they’d been the day she’d met Errol Flynn.

Fleur bounded across the hallway like a Saint Bernard pup and threw herself in her mother’s arms. Belinda took a small step backward to steady herself. “Let’s hurry,” she whispered into Fleur’s ear.

Fleur waved a hasty good-bye to the nuns, grabbed her mother’s hand, and pulled her toward the door before the sisters could bombard Belinda with an account of Fleur’s latest misdeeds. Not that Belinda paid any attention. “Those old bats,” she’d said to Fleur the last time. “You have a wild, free spirit, and I don’t want them to change one thing about you.’”

Fleur loved when her mother talked like that. Belinda said wildness was in Fleur’s blood.

A silver Lamborghini stood at the bottom of the front steps. As Fleur slid into the passenger seat, she gulped in the sweet, familiar scent of her mother’s Shalimar.

“Hello, baby.”

She slipped into Belinda’s arms with a small sob and cuddled into the mink, the Shalimar, and everything that was her mother. She was too old to cry, but she couldn’t help herself. It felt so good to be Belinda’s baby again.

Belinda and Fleur loved the Côte d’Azur. The day after they arrived, they drove from their pink stucco hotel near Antibes into Monaco along the famous Corniche du Littoral, the serpentine road that twisted around the cliffs of the coastline. “You wouldn’t get carsick if you’d look straight ahead instead of out the sides,” Belinda said, just as she’d said the year before.

“But then I’d miss too many things.”

They stopped first at the market at the foot of Monte Carlo’s palace hill. Fleur’s stomach quickly recovered, and she bounded from one food stall to another pointing at everything that caught her eye. The weather was warm, and she wore khaki camp shorts, her favorite T-shirt, which said, “Draft beer, not students,” and a new pair of Jesus sandals Belinda had bought her the day before. Belinda wasn’t like the nuns about clothes. “Wear what makes you happy, baby,” she said. “Develop your own style. There’s plenty of time for high fashion later.”

Belinda was wearing Pucci.

After Fleur made her selections for lunch, she dragged her mother up the steep path from the Monte Carlo market to the palace, eating a ham and poppy seed roll as she walked. Fleur spoke four languages, but she was proudest of her English, which was flawlessly American. She’d learned it from the American students who attended the couvent-daughters of diplomats, bankers, and the bureau chiefs of the American newspapers. By adopting their slang and their attitudes, she’d gradually stopped thinking of herself as French.

Someday she and Belinda were going to live in California. She wished they could go now, but Belinda wouldn’t have any money if she divorced Alexi. Besides, Alexi wouldn’t let her get a divorce. Fleur wanted to go to America more than anything in the world.

“I wish I had an American name.” She scratched a bug bite on her thigh and tore off another bite of sandwich with her teeth. “I hate my name. I really do. Fleur is a stupid name for somebody as big as me. I wish you’d named me Frankie.”

“Frankie is a hideous name.” Belinda collapsed on a bench and tried to catch her breath. “Fleur was the closest I could get to the female version of a man I cared about. Fleur Deanna. It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

Belinda always told Fleur she was beautiful, even though it wasn’t true. Her thoughts flew in another direction. “I hate having my period. It’s disgusting.”

Belinda delved into her purse for a cigarette. “It’s part of being a woman, baby.”

Fleur made a face to show Belinda exactly what she thought of that, and her mother laughed. Fleur pointed up the path toward the palace. “I wonder if she’s happy?”

“Of course she’s happy. She’s a princess. One of the most famous women in the world.” Belinda lit her cigarette and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “You should have seen her in The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan. God, she was beautiful.”

Fleur stretched out her legs. They were covered with fine, pale hair, and pink with sunburn. “He’s kind of old, don’t you think?”

“Men like Rainier are ageless. He’s quite distinguished, you know. Very charming.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Last fall. He came for dinner.” Belinda pulled her sunglasses back over her eyes.

Fleur dug the heel of her sandal into the dirt. “Was he there?”

“Hand me some of those olives, darling.” Belinda gestured toward one of the paper cartons with an almond-shaped fingernail painted the color of ripe raspberries.

Fleur handed her the carton. “Was he?”

“Alexi owns property in Monaco. Of course he was there.”

“Not him.” Fleur’s sandwich had lost its taste, and she pulled off a piece to toss to the ducks across the path. “I didn’t mean Alexi. I meant Michel.” She used the French pronunciation of her thirteen-year-old brother’s name, which was a girl’s name in America.

“Michel was there. He had a school recess.”

“I hate him. I really do.”

Belinda set aside the olive carton without opening it and took a drag on her cigarette.

“I don’t care if it’s a sin,” Fleur said. “I hate him even more than Alexi. Michel has everything. It’s not fair.”

“He doesn’t have me, honey. Just remember that.”

“And I don’t have a father. But it’s still not even. At least Michel gets to go home when he’s not in school. He gets to be with you.”

“We’re here to have a good time, baby. Let’s not get so serious.”

Fleur wouldn’t be sidetracked. “I can’t understand Alexi. How could anybody hate a baby so much? Maybe now that I’m grown up…But not when I was one week old.”

Belinda sighed. “We’ve been through this so many times. It’s not you. It’s just the way he is. God, I wish I had a drink.”

Even though Belinda had explained it dozens of times, Fleur still didn’t understand. How could a father want to have sons so much that he would send his only daughter away and never see her again? Belinda said Fleur was a reminder of his failure and Alexi couldn’t stand failure. But even when Michel was born a year after Fleur, he hadn’t changed. Belinda said it was because she couldn’t have any more children.

Fleur had cut pictures of her father out of the newspapers, and she kept them in a manila envelope in the back of her closet. She used to pretend Mother Superior called her to the office and that Alexi was there waiting to tell her he’d made a terrible mistake and he’d come to take her home. Then he’d hug her and call her “baby” the way her mother did.

She tossed another piece of bread at the ducks. “I hate him. I hate them both.” And then, for good measure, “I hate my braces, too. Josie and Celine Sicard hate me because I’m ugly.”

“You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Remember what I’ve been telling you. In a few years, every girl at the couvent will want to look just like you. You need to grow up a little more, that’s all.”

Fleur’s bad mood slipped away. She loved her mother.

The palace of the Grimaldi family was a sprawling stone and stucco edifice with ugly square turrets and candy cane guard boxes. As Belinda watched her daughter dart through the crowd of tourists to climb on top of a cannon that overlooked the Monaco yacht basin, she felt a lump form in her throat. Fleur had Flynn’s wildness, his restless zest for living.

Belinda had wanted to blurt out the truth so many times. She wanted to tell Fleur that a man like Alexi Savagar could never have been her father. That Fleur was Errol Flynn’s daughter. But fear kept her silent. She’d learned long ago not to cross Alexi. Only once had she beaten him. Only once had he been the helpless one. When Michel was born.

After dinner that night, Belinda and Fleur went to see an American Western with French subtitles. The film was half over when Belinda saw him for the first time. She must have made some sort of sound because Fleur looked over at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Belinda managed. “It’s…That man…”

Belinda studied the cowboy who’d just sauntered into the saloon where Paul Newman was playing poker. The cowboy was very young and far from movie star handsome. The camera moved in for a close-up and Belinda forgot to breathe. It didn’t seem possible. And yet…

The lost years dropped away. James Dean had come back.

The man was tall and lean with legs that didn’t stop. His long, narrow face looked as if it had been chipped from flint by a rebellious hand, and his irregular features projected a confidence that went beyond arrogance. He had straight brown hair; a long, narrow nose with a bump at the bridge; and a sulky mouth. His slightly crooked front tooth had the tiniest chip at one corner. And his eyes…Restless and bitter blue.

He didn’t look at all like Jimmie-she saw that now. He was taller, not as handsome. But he was another rebel-she felt it in her bones-another man who lived life on his own terms.

The film ended, but she stayed in her seat, clutching Fleur’s impatient hand and watching the credits roll. His name flashed on the screen. Excitement welled inside her.

Jake Koranda.

After all these years, Jimmie had sent her a sign. He was telling her she mustn’t lose hope. A man is his own man. A woman her own woman. Jake Koranda, the man behind that off-kilter face, had given her hope. Somehow she could still make her dreams come true.