Read Online It All Began in Monte Carlo by Elizabeth Adler - Free Book Online Page A

a friend from my school days. I haven’t seen her in years, then she called me just before Christmas and said she needs help. She’s done nothing but cry since she got here and I’m afraid to leave her alone. Anyhow, I’ll tell you the story when we get there. Just know that you’re not the only one needing help at the moment.”
    â€œOh, Allie, you talk like the new
You.
I know you’ll sort us all out.”
    Allie’s laugh would have been familiar to millions of moviegoers. “Hey, remember me asking you, only a couple of years ago,
Sunny, have you ever been heartbroken?
You said you didn’t think so. But
I
had, my darling Sun. And I remember what it feels like. I’m there for you, whatever it takes.”
    Sunny sniffed, remembering. She looked at Eddie. He was obviously trying not to listen. “Thank you, Allie. I knew I could count on you.”
    Cutting off Allie was like cutting off a lifeline. “Reality” swept back in full force. Sunny looked at the stranger she was having dinnerwith. The man who had come to find her. The man with magic in his eyes and she somehow knew, magic in his touch. She knew she had better leave. Go to bed.
Alone.
That dreaded word that tonight she had to face up to. She apologized, said, it must be jet lag, but she suddenly felt exhausted and needed to go to bed.
    Oh God, she hoped he didn’t think that was an invitation. A few minutes ago though, it might have been. She was a woman at a vulnerable point in her life, with feelings, emotions.
    He signaled the waiter, signed the bill, took her arm, walked her out of the beautiful golden-lit restaurant.
    Sunny didn’t believe how nice he was, how thoughtful. How handsome. And how sexy. There it was again, that flutter in her belly. She said, “I have a lot to thank you for, rescuing me twice.”
    He smiled. “Perhaps some other time, we can try again. Tomorrow I have to leave for Paris.”
    â€œYou will come back though?” There she went again, that impulsive voice, anxious this time, saying exactly what she was thinking.
    â€œYes. I will.”
    Against her better judgment, Sunny leaned in to kiss him. His mouth gently drew her lips into his. A lingering soft kiss.
    â€œI’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. Then he walked through the grand foyer and out through the glass doors.
    A short time later, tucked into that huge mint-green bed with Tesoro arranged neatly on the pillows, exhausted, Sunny fell instantly asleep. Her last waking thoughts were of Mac. And of Eddie Johanssen. Yet, oddly, she dreamed of neither man. It was Kitty Ratte who was in her head, and the strange warning from Maha Mondragon. And of Maha telling her that she must take the chances life offered her.

chapter 13
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    This was the most important “case” of his life and Mac Reilly, super-detective, was stumped. He had no idea where Sunny was.
    He had just gotten off the phone with Sunny’s charmingly hippie, beautiful mother, whose name was Flora and who wore hibiscus flowers in her blond hair and communed with nature under the Santa Fe moon. She would wander amid the desert cactus and wildlife and coyotes and rattlers who apparently found her unthreatening and left her in peace. And of course, he’d talked with Sunny’s papa, the handsome Mexican rancher who looked like a Latino actor in a Western movie, with his thick silver-gray hair and trim mustache and his polished-tan skin.
    They’d always been there for Sunny and Mac: Mom otherworldly; Papa earthy and direct. And they were concerned when Mac asked if they knew where their daughter was.
    â€œYou mean she’s not with
you
?” Flora sounded astonished. “But she told us she was going away, somewhere special for Christmas. She said it was a secret.”
    â€œWe assumed she meant with you.” Papa’s voice boomed.
    â€œOf course you two have had a fight.”