Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

Natalie was relieved to hear from her and thanked her for her call. Heloise told her Brad was there, and she invited them to come up, but Heloise said they were both tired. She needed some space. Her father came down to see her later on; he was worried about her. He had seen the shock and hurt on her face when she heard the news, and it made his heart ache for her. He chatted with Brad and her for a little while, and then he hugged his daughter and went back upstairs. Brad had brought his books with him and did some studying, and he spent the night, which was comforting for her. He was staying with her more and more often, and they were comfortable with each other. Everything worked better and made more sense when they were together.

It was a strange Christmas for Heloise after Natalie’s announcement. Everything felt surreal. She watched the big Christmas tree go up in the lobby and supervised the installation of it, and everyone commented on how exciting it was that her father and Natalie were having triplets. Jennifer was already planning a shower. It made Heloise feel left out again, but she forced herself to ignore it and not react. Her father had a new wife and family, and all she could hope was that he still loved her. Time would tell.

And she had Brad now. They went out whenever they had time, or he came over. But privately she was down about the triplets. It was hard to know where she fit in now. She was part of history for her father. The triplets were his future. And if she wanted to be part of a family, she knew she’d have to make her own one day, and she wasn’t ready to yet.

Brad went home to his family in Philadelphia for Christmas, and Natalie convinced Hugues to go to Philadelphia with her for two days, while she could still travel. But Heloise didn’t want to go. She told her father she’d keep an eye on the hotel, and he felt badly about it, but Natalie was insistent that she wanted to go home, and he felt torn. Heloise was staying in New York. And Natalie was so emotional now that she was pregnant and she cried about everything constantly. In the end he agreed to go, and Heloise signed up for all the Christmas shifts. Her father called her as soon as they got there, and first thing on Christmas morning. She was already at the front desk by then. And for the first time, but not surprisingly, her mother didn’t call her at all.

A GROUP OF Dutch businessmen checked into the hotel in January and took four of the big suites, on the ninth and tenth floors. They apparently represented a European consortium, and Heloise saw her father with them several times. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend time with important guests. They had taken over the big conference room, and she saw two of them in her father’s office one afternoon, chatting with him, and two others walking around the hotel with Bruce Johnson, the head of security, and Mike, the head engineer, which she thought was strange. But the hotel was so full that she didn’t have time to think about it, and it was only after they left that Mike said something to her.

“That’ll be strange, won’t it, if your father sells the place? I hear they’re willing to offer him a fortune for it!”

“Who is?” She looked at him as though he had grown a tree out of his head or were a creature from outer space.

“Those Dutch guys. The ones who were here last week. Your father had us show them everything. I hear they’re going to make an offer that’s impossible to refuse, or maybe they already did. The rumor is that he’s going to sell.” She felt dizzy when she heard his words. The ground rolled under her feet and she felt sick.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said, wanting to squelch the rumor immediately, and she was shaking when she walked into her father’s office. He was alone at his desk, and Jennifer was out to lunch. She wanted to hear it from him, if he was going to sell. And if it was true, he should have told her long before this. She knew that he worried about their overhead, but the hotel was a huge success.

“Something wrong?” She looked as though she had seen a ghost, and he assumed she’d had a problem with a guest. So far, she was handling even the most delicate situations extremely well. She had a wonderful way with people and was learning a lot about the business.

She didn’t beat around the bush. She never did with him. “Mike says you’re selling the hotel.” She didn’t know what to think. First he got his wife pregnant with three babies, intentionally, and now he was selling her home. “Is that true?” She was still shaking as she stood on the other side of his desk.

He hesitated for a long moment. Too long. And he answered her with a look of pain. But he knew he had to tell her the truth, or she’d hear it from someone else. “I wasn’t trying to. But if they offer me enough, I might. I haven’t decided yet. It depends on what they offer. It fell from the sky. I didn’t look for the offer. It found me.” He looked guilty as he said it.

“How can you do that?” she blazed at him. “This hotel is our home. It was your dream. Now it’s mine. You can’t sell our dream.” Her voice was shaking with fear and rage.

“I’m fifty-three years old. In a few months I’ll have four kids, not just one. And I have to think of all of you, your future, Natalie’s, and mine. If someone is crazy enough to offer me an insane amount of money, I’d be even more insane not to take it.” It was a concept she was too upset to understand. She had a lifetime ahead of her. He didn’t. And he had a lot more people to worry about now. His family was about to double in size and he suddenly felt old, and a little scared.

“You have no loyalty to anyone or anything,” she accused him, so furious with him that she could hardly speak. “I’ll never respect you again if you sell,” she said vehemently, and he nodded. He suspected that would be the case. But if the offer was big enough, he had no choice but to sell. She didn’t want the money, she wanted the hotel. “I’ll never forgive you if you sell the hotel, Papa,” she said, looking him squarely in the eye, and then she turned around and walked out of the room.

She didn’t talk to him for the next three days, and when she saw him in the elevator, she said not a word. The rumors were flying all over the hotel. She told Brad about it, and he knew how upsetting that was for her. She wanted to work there for the rest of her life and take over from her father one day. It was why she had gone to the École Hôtelière, and now he had made a mockery of her career and all she’d learned.

It was a tense, unhappy time for her, and the only comfort in her life was Brad. Her father knew how upset she was and was staying away from her. And once again she blamed Natalie. She understood nothing of the hotel or their business, and she had no idea what it meant to both of them. Heloise could easily imagine her encouraging Hugues to sell just in order to make a lot of money. But the Hotel Vendôme was not about money to Heloise. It was about love and dedication, the people who worked there, and her father’s vision, and dreams, and now her own. You couldn’t pay for that with money. Her father had promised to tell her what his decision was as soon as he got the offer.

She was at war with her father and Natalie again, and this time she wasn’t relenting. She had meant what she said about never forgiving him if he sold the hotel. And Brad had never seen her so determined. She didn’t talk to anyone but Brad about it, but he understood what it meant to her. Her father no longer did. And she refused to discuss it with anyone else. She was too upset.

She was in her room after work one afternoon, and she and her father were living now on separate floors like strangers. She hadn’t spoken to him or Natalie since the day Mike had told her the news that her father might be selling. And she had no desire to speak to either of them again until she knew what he was going to do. Which made it surprising when she got a call from Natalie that afternoon, on her cell phone. She sounded like she was being strangled.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?” Heloise asked her coldly. “You sound terrible.”

“Can you come up? Are you in the hotel?”

“I’m in my apartment.” Heloise’s tone was as cold as she felt. Once again they had betrayed her. Or they were hoping to, if the consortium paid them enough money. She didn’t want the money. She wanted to live and work at the Vendôme forever. “Is something wrong?” Heloise asked Natalie, and she made a terrible groaning sound in answer.

“I’m in a lot of pain… I’m bleeding… I can’t reach your father.”

“Oh shit,” Heloise said as she ran out the door of the apartment and tore up the back stairs with her phone still in her hand. She didn’t want to waste time waiting for the elevator. And luckily, she had her passkey in her pocket. She let herself into the apartment and ran into the bedroom and found Natalie lying on the bed, writhing in pain. “Should I call an ambulance? How much are you bleeding?” She had taken advanced first aid as part of her training. She approached Natalie and could see there was blood on the bed where she was lying, and she didn’t want to frighten her. “I think you’ll be more comfortable going to the hospital in an ambulance, Nat,” she said gently, their battle over the sale of the hotel instantly forgotten.

She went into the other room and dialed 911 from the landline. She explained to them clearly and precisely that one of the guests was hemorrhaging, and she was four months pregnant with triplets. They promised to send paramedics and an ambulance immediately. She gave them the room number, and then she called the front desk and told them, and told them to find her father. They called her back immediately and told her that her father was out of the hotel at a meeting, and his phone was still on voice mail.

“Keep trying him, and get the paramedics up here immediately when they get here.” She went back to Natalie then, sat down on the bed next to her, and stroked her hair.

“I don’t want to lose my babies,” she was crying, and then Heloise remembered to get the name of her doctor and called her. She said she would meet them at the hospital as soon as they arrived. Natalie was sobbing; she knew that at four months they couldn’t save them, while Heloise did all she could to reassure her.

The paramedics were there in less than ten minutes, and they asked if her husband was around or if someone would go with her. Without hesitating for an instant, Heloise said she was her daughter. And as soon as they put her on a gurney and covered her with a blanket, Heloise followed them into the freight elevator, holding tightly to her stepmother’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay, Nat. I promise,” she told her blindly, with no idea what would happen. They took her out the service entrance so as not to frighten people in the lobby, and Natalie was sobbing loudly, while one of the paramedics asked her questions. And they started an IV as soon as they got in the ambulance, turned the sirens on, and took off for the hospital at full speed. There was an obstetrical team already waiting for her, and her own obstetrician arrived twenty minutes later. They wouldn’t let Heloise stay with her. And it was a full hour before they found Hugues, and he called Heloise on her cell phone.

“What happened?” he asked, sounding panicked. He was already in a cab and had come straight from the meeting.

“I don’t know. She called me in my room, she said she was in pain and that she was bleeding. I called nine-one-one immediately, and they’re working on her now.”

His voice was hoarse when he asked, “Did she lose the babies?”

“I don’t know,” Heloise told him honestly, “they haven’t told me anything, but she was bleeding pretty heavily when we left.” It didn’t look hopeful to her. “Her doctor is with her.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’m in the waiting room outside obstetrics.” They had moved her up from the emergency room in case she delivered. But at eighteen weeks there was very little chance the babies would survive, and if they did, not in decent condition.

Five minutes later she saw her father fly past her and disappear into the treatment area beyond where she was sitting. He waved as he went by but didn’t stop to talk to her, and for the next two hours Heloise had no idea what had happened. She didn’t know who to ask, and it was six o’clock when her father came to find her.

“How is she?” She didn’t dare ask him if she’d lost the triplets. He looked worse than Natalie had when she came in, and Heloise could see then how much they mattered to him, and even more how much Natalie did, and she felt sorry for him.

“She’s okay. And so are the triplets for now. They did a sonogram, and she didn’t lose them. She may have placenta previa or some other condition. But she’s hanging on to the babies. They’re going to keep her overnight, and if nothing else happens, they’re going to send her home with a monitor and keep her on bedrest. She’ll probably be in bed for the rest of the pregnancy, but if she can keep them for another month or two, they might make it.” It sounded like it was the most important thing in the world to him, and Heloise reached out and hugged him. “Do you want to come in and see her?” Heloise nodded and followed him through two sets of double doors, down more hallways, and finally to her room, where there were monitors all over her, and Natalie looked terrified and traumatized by everything that had happened.