“How do you feel?” Heloise asked her gently.

“Scared shitless,” she said honestly with a weak smile. “I just don’t want to lose them.”

“I hope you don’t,” Heloise said and leaned over to kiss her hand. “You’re going to have to take it very easy.” Natalie nodded. It was worth it to her. She was willing to do anything to save their babies.

Heloise didn’t want to wear her out, and she left a few minutes later. Her father was going to stay with Natalie, and he promised to call her if anything happened. And Heloise thought about it on the way uptown, that no matter how angry she got at him about the sale, or Natalie, or the triplets, in the end they were a family, and the only thing that mattered was being there for each other and being loving and forgiving. She really did hope that Natalie didn’t lose the babies.

And miraculously, she didn’t. Natalie came back to the hotel the following day, in an ambulance. They put her straight to bed. She was on full bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy, with a bedpan. She couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom. Her feet weren’t allowed to touch the floor, and she looked terrified as she lay there. Hugues was with her, and he told her to ring for the maid or call him on his cell phone if she needed anything. And Heloise told her to call her or anyone at the front desk as well. Natalie promised not to move, and she looked pale and frightened when Heloise went back to the front desk and Hugues to his office.

They rode down in the elevator together. He didn’t tell her that he had had the offer from the Dutch the day before and had been meeting with their bankers. The offer was a good one and would be hard to refuse. He didn’t know if he would ever get an offer like that for the hotel again. He had told them he would get back to them in a few days. And then Jennifer had called, and he had rushed to the hospital. He thanked Heloise again for her help as they parted in the lobby. Things were still tense between them, and he knew they would be until he made his decision.

For the next several days Natalie managed not to lose the babies. Heloise checked on her, Jennifer came up to see her, the maids visited her. Ernesta brought her little treats and chocolates. The concierge sent up all the newest magazines. Room service brought her anything she wanted. And Natalie lay there, still panicked that she would lose them. She had delegated all of her projects at the office. Her life was on hold. And the day after she came home from the hospital, the unions that controlled their maintenance men provided a new distraction. They had given Hugues notice of a strike that morning. It was a rogue strike and was supposed to serve him as a warning. He had notified them that he was going to let go two employees, without replacing them, and they had told him that he couldn’t. He had followed all the appropriate procedures, and they had put a picket line in front of the hotel to annoy the guests. And the men on the picket line were pounding on pots and pans with soup ladles and causing a terrible racket to disturb the guests. You could hear it for blocks.

Heloise went into her father’s office to talk to him, and he was talking to his labor lawyer on the phone. The union wanted him to reinstate the two men, even though he had followed all the proper procedures. He called the union office then and told them to get their goddamn picket line away from the front of his hotel. And the man he spoke to said that if he didn’t rehire the two men, there would be trouble. Hugues hung up in a fury and looked up at his daughter.

“There isn’t a damn thing I can do,” he said unhappily. “And I want you to be careful. That jerk was threatening me on the phone, and you never know what those guys will do.” They both knew that the responsible people at the unions dealt with them sensibly, but there were always one or two hotheads who preferred violence to negotiation. “I don’t want you floating around alone, either at the doors to the hotel, or in the basement.” And he was worried that they would harass the other employees when they left after their shifts. Bruce brought in all their security, and all the employees were warned.

The picket line finally disbanded at six o’clock, much to everyone’s relief, and Heloise was working a double shift on the desk that night that would keep her there until morning. There were two men on duty with her, and by ten o’clock the hotel seemed to have settled down for the night. And the security men were cruising through the lobby often. Hugues had gone up at eight o’clock to keep Natalie company, and eventually Heloise sat down to chat with her two co-workers. They were talking about what a nuisance rogue strikes were, and how annoying the picket line had been all afternoon. And by midnight only a few guests were drifting through the lobby on their way in. Hugues called down to check on them before he went to bed, and Heloise told him everything was fine.

At one o’clock a fire alarm went off in the basement. They had a control panel at the desk, and it indicated a fire just outside the kitchen. It probably had nothing to do with the strike and was more likely a warming oven someone had left on with something in it. Heloise was alert immediately, and without stopping to think, she told the junior man at the desk to call the fire department immediately, and security. She ran to the service stairs to see if there was anything she could do downstairs; and when she got there, a small blaze was devouring a couch and several rolling trays right outside the kitchen. It was around the corner from room service, so no one saw it until they heard the alarm.

One of the security guards was spraying the contents of a fire extinguisher on the couch and the trays when the fire department arrived with full alarms, bringing hoses with them. They had the fires out in less than ten minutes. There was a nasty, acrid smell of smoke, and two inches of water on the basement floor, but the fire was out. The kitchen and surrounding areas were swarming with firefighters, checking everything. They wanted to make sure that nothing else had caught fire. And Heloise stood watching them and thanking them for what they’d done. They had come very quickly. Hotel fires were always taken seriously, and they often started in the kitchen. Her father had taught her to have a deep respect for fire and for every safety practice they could think of.

She was still talking to two of the firefighters, when another fire-man came up to her with an oil-soaked rag that reeked of smoke. It lay in an oily heap when he dropped it on the floor.

“There’s your igniter,” he said, looking at Heloise and two of the security men. “Somebody set that on fire. There’s another one under the couch. I’d say somebody is playing games with you.” It probably wouldn’t have caused a big enough fire to burn down the hotel, since their alarm system was up to date and very efficient, but it could have caused some damage if the fire department hadn’t been as quick. And as she was talking to them, she saw one of the room service dishwashers grinning. He hadn’t worked at the hotel for long, and while he was watching Heloise talk to the firemen about the rag, he looked amused. She saw the look of defiance in his eyes, and she slowly walked toward him.

“Did you see somebody do this?” she asked him directly, and he laughed at her.

“You think I’d tell you if I did?” he jeered at her. He knew who she was, but he didn’t care.

“What do you know about this?” she persisted. She wasn’t afraid of him at all.

“I know your daddy fired two guys, and the union is gonna kick your ass if you don’t take them back,” he said defiantly, as the security men moved closer to them both. Bruce was off for the night. “They told you there was gonna be trouble, so maybe someone lit a little fire tonight to show you what they mean. You can’t fire anyone just like that. The union won’t let you do it,” he said, he was standing inches away from her, and the way he looked at her would have frightened anyone else, but it didn’t frighten her. He was threatening her hotel.

“Did you do this?” she asked him, moving an inch closer to him. She was a slim woman, and twenty-one years old, but she was as brave as any man in the room.

“What if I did?” he said, and laughed at her again, and as he did, one of the firemen got on his radio and called the police. There was going to be trouble. He could smell it, and the security men from the hotel knew it too.

And then before they could stop him, he reached out and grabbed Heloise by the neck and slammed her against the wall. “Bitch,” he spat at her, “don’t tell me what I can do.” Heloise never took her eyes off him and remained completely calm. None of the men around them wanted to make any fast moves, in case he had a gun or a knife. They were waiting for the police. And with that, without saying a word, she landed her high heel squarely on his instep with her full strength, and as he doubled over, cursing her and shouting in pain, she took a nice clean swing at him with a fist and punched him in the nose, and as he wheeled a step backward, she raised her leg sharply and kneed him in the groin. She had taken self-defense in high school, and it served her well.

She took a step away from him as the police came through the door. His nose was bleeding, and he was spitting at her. The cops put him in handcuffs as one of the security men explained what had happened, and Heloise hardly looked ruffled, although she had ripped her skirt to the thigh when she kneed him in the groin.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said pleasantly. One of the patrolmen asked for a statement from her, and she was in the middle of it when her father came rushing downstairs. He had woken up to the sound of fire engines, saw them outside, and dressed quickly. The elevators had been stopped for safety so he took the service stairs. He took one look at the situation and turned to his security men. “What’s going on here?” Smiling, one of the firefighters described the scene to him. She had put them all to shame.

“Are you all right?” he asked his daughter, and she looked at him. She wasn’t even unnerved, although she’d been mad as hell at the man who’d set the fire.

“I’m fine. I think some asshole at the union paid the guy to set a fire in the basement tonight. We lost a couch and some rolling trays. But it could have been a lot worse.”

“Are you crazy?” her father said to her. “To hell with the couch. They just told me you punched the guy. He could have stabbed you. Did that ever occur to you?” He looked at her like she was insane.

“He set the fire. Someone paid him to do that. I’m not going to let a jerk like that burn down our hotel and destroy everything we’ve built.” Her eyes were rock hard as she looked at her father. She wasn’t going to let him destroy it either. The message was clear.

“Did the alarm go off?”

“Yes, it did. That’s why I came down here. The security boys were putting out the fire, and the fire department got here at the same time I did,” she told her father. “They found the rag he used to light it.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“He pretty much said so, or he implied it, and then he grabbed me by the throat.”

“And then you hit him?” Her father looked stunned by both the stupidity and the courage of what she’d done.

“She broke his nose, sir,” the young patrolman filled in.

“You broke his nose?” Hugues stared at his daughter as though seeing her for the first time.

“It was actually a very sweet move,” one of the firefighters commented. “Instep with her stiletto, punch in the nose with a fist, and then she kneed him in the groin.” Hugues turned to look at all of them then.

“And what were the rest of you doing? Taking pictures? Why did she break his nose and not you?”

“Because this is our hotel,” she said with a small smile. “And I love it more than you do,” referring to the pending sale.

The patrolman took the rest of her statement then. He said they were going to book the dishwasher for arson, and he doubted they could ever pin it on the union, unless he talked. But since they were pressing charges and he was in custody, he might.

They told Heloise then that she was free to go, and that there would be no charges for assault since it had been self-defense with a dozen witnesses to prove it. Her father shuddered at the words, as the security men called for the maintenance crew to get rid of the trays and the remains of the charred couch.

Heloise headed for the service elevator and said she had to change her skirt before she went back to the desk.

“I’ll ride up with you,” her father said somberly, and for the first few minutes after they got in, he didn’t say a word. He was still trying to sort out what he’d just heard. “Do you realize you could have been killed?”