Highlander - Donna Lettow [45]
Her heart was beating fast as they descended to the lobby in the guest elevator and he squeezed her hand in encouragement. As the doors opened, they stepped nonchalantly into the lobby and toward the revolving doors.
“Uh-oh.” Before she even had a chance to notice what was wrong, MacLeod wrapped an arm around her shoulder and spun her around in the opposite direction. They started walking quickly out of the back of the lobby and into a corridor of meeting rooms. As they passed out of the lobby, Maral turned around and saw a flock of reporters at the door, anxious for a statement about the Palestinian walkout at the day’s negotiations, and Farid and his men valiantly holding them at bay.
MacLeod ducked into a room labeled “Degas,” empty of people but set for a formal dinner, pulling Maral behind him. They hurried across the chandeliered room and through a small door at the back. They found themselves in a stark, utilitarian hallway surrounded by serving carts and metal shelving.
“I’ve never been backstage before,” Maral whispered. “Where does this go?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He looked right, then left, then right again.“C’mon, this way,” he said, starting down the corridor to the left. They’d only gone a couple of feet when a cadre of servers bearing trays of glassware for the Degas Room came toward them in formation, blocking the hallway. “Or not,” MacLeod said, quickly changing direction and hurrying back the other way, pulling Maral along in his wake.
Not too far past the Degas Room, they found a metal door labeled “Sortie.” Maral moved to push on the exit bar, but MacLeod pulled her back. “Wait.” He looked around the door, checking for sirens or buzzers that might go off once they pushed the door on, but found none. “Okay, here goes.” He tensed himself for an alarm and together they pushed open the door. There was silence.
They ran out into the night, into the alley behind the hotel. The Citroën was parked a couple of blocks away and they strolled leisurely to it, hand in hand, Maral giggling like a schoolgirl at their little taste of adventure. As they drove back past the hotel, surrounded by news vans with satellite transmitters on their roofs, she waved at it in triumph.
When MacLeod heard that Maral had seen virtually nothing of Paris since her arrival, he regretted their grand adventure was taking place at night. There were so many things he would have loved to have shown her, he said—the rose window of Sainte-Chapelle at sunset, the gallery of the Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay, the Bagatelle gardens in the Bois de Boulogne. Maybe someday. They had to content themselves with a moonlit ride up the elevator at the Eiffel Tower, but the look of delight on her face as she gazed out over the twinkling splendor of the City of Lights when they’d reached the top made up for it all. And the view of Notre-Dame from the deck of MacLeod’s barge, lit bright against the night sky, was better than any she could have hoped for. It was a long while before he could even coax her belowdecks. Had it been summer and the breeze off the Seine not so biting, she might have stayed there all night, gazing across the river at the wonders that man could create.
Before he even snapped on the light, she could tell they were in a place uniquely his. It smelled of him, strong and masculine, yet as comforting as her father’s favorite sweater. Ali had had a scent like this, warm but powerful, a touch of spice that had slowly leaked away out of their apartment, out of her life in the months after his death. As the lights came on, she thought to herself “Of course”the room was a natural extension of the man. Both fit and spare, but at the same time comfortable and welcoming.