"I didn't say I could entertain you in style," she said as she led him to one of the two cushions in the room, the only furniture apart from a brace of candles on a ceramic dish on the floor.
"I know you won't believe it, but this is exactly the style I'm used to," Remo said.
She laughed, a big, hearty, uninhibited guffaw. "That's the nicest thing you could have said." Her green eyes caught the sparkle of the candles. She took his land. "I've chilled some champagne," she said. "Found it in the cellar."
Remo placed his hand on her hair, found a pin, and removed it. The cascade tumbled over her shoulders, nestling between her breasts. Remo pulled her close to him and kissed her. She responded eagerly, holding him as her lips parted to feel the smooth pressure of his tongue.
"I don't feel like drinking," Remo said.
She kissed him again. "Maybe we can think of another activity."
She responded to Remo's tender, expert lovemaking with the zeal of a woman who'd sworn off sex for years, only to rediscover it with more joy than she had ever felt. When they were finished, they held each other in a riot of tangled, damp sheets on Fabienne's bed, the only piece of furniture left in the room.
Remo stroked her face, now shiny and contentedly drowsy. "I'm glad we're here together," he said.
She nuzzled her face close to his chest. "Monsieur Remo Williams," she said very close to him, "you are possibly the best lover in the world."
"Possibly?" Remo snorted in mock indignation. "Not positively?"
"Positively, this has been the most wonderful hour I've spent in— in many years." Her face flickered and darkened for a moment with unwanted memories.
"At least two years," Remo said.
"How did you..." She waved the rest of her question away. People talked, especially on the island. "I guess you didn't believe I just like empty houses, did you?"
"I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
She shook her head. "Nothing, I'm afraid. It's up to the courts now. Don't bother about my financial ups and downs, Remo. We only have a short time together. Let us enjoy what we can, quoi?" She cocked her head beguilingly. In the moonlight she looked, Remo thought, like a good French postcard.
"Saisez le jour's what I always say." He pulled her face to his.
She looked bewildered. "I beg your pardon?"
"Saisez le—" He cleared his throat. "It's French. I think. Catch the day. Grab the moment. Or maybe it means pass the salt. I never was very good in high school French."
"Oh." She burst into peals of laughter. "Chéri, your French is wonderful." She kissed him. "Where it matters."
She climbed out of bed and reached for Remo's hand. "Come with me," she said. "I want to show you something."
She led him outside, where the warm trade winds were singing through the silhouettes of the palm trees. "It's beautiful," Remo said, because he knew she wanted him to say it.
"It gets better."
They walked behind the house, through a bright tropical garden that Fabienne had maintained, past a grove of mango trees, until the sound of slapping water came up at them from whitecaps far below. "This is the best spot on the island," Fabienne said, testing a rock with her foot. The rock gave way and tumbled down the cliff to splash in the sea. "One just has to be careful where one sits." She sat down cross-legged near the cliff, her naked limbs shimmering.
Remo sat next to her, his arm encircling her shoulders. "One promises to be very careful," he said. "One would not like to slide down this cliff without so much as one's pair of jockey shorts to smooth one's way."
She laughed. "You're making fun of my accent."
"I'm crazy about your accent. Among other things."
She started' to speak, but Remo silenced her. There was something else in the air, a familiar noise.
"Are there any motorcycle trails around here?"
"I suppose," she said. "Not in my back yard, surely. Remo..."
But the sound grew more persistent. "Someone took a potshot at Pierre's truck tonight," he said. "Someone on a dirt bike."
By then, the presence of the bike was undeniable. "Get behind those trees," Remo said.
"What will you do?"
"I'm going to get a better look at him. Go on." He pushed her near the grove of fruit trees that dominated the skyline. Remo walked along the cliff, toward the source of the motorcycle's blast.
He could see it now, headed straight for him. As the bike approached, a blinding beam from its headlamp focused on Remo. He held up his arms, waving. "Get out of here," he shouted. "This is private property." But the bike kept speeding for him, accelerating as it came closer. When he realized that the biker wasn't going to stop, he sidestepped out of the way as the bike veered dangerously close. Maybe the bullets weren't for Pierre, Remo mused. But who in this place would want...
Fabienne's scream echoed in the still night as the dirt bike entered the grove of mango trees. The rider had found the girl. Remo raced back while the bike's engine roared in short bursts as it raced around the maze of the grove. He saw Fabienne running out of the trees, followed by the bike a few feet behind. A silhouetted arm on the bike's handlebars raised slowly, a pistol poised at the end of it aiming for the girl.
Automatically Remo squeezed his eyes shut to help his night vision. Then he picked up a small rock at his feet and hurled it. The rock was smaller than a baseball, but it shattered the gun to fragments in the man's hand. It gave Remo enough time to reach the girl and toss her gently to the ground, out of the way.
The bike came at them again, circling and buzzing menacingly. Remo waited for it to come near enough to pull the driver off. But even as it drew close and he got a clear picture of the driver's bloated, outlaw's face, the figure in black drew something from his pocket. It sparkled briefly in the dim light, first in the driver's hand, then far into the space between him and the girl. As it flashed inches from her face, Remo saw that it was a steel-tipped mace on a chain. Even lying on the ground wouldn't protect her from a weapon like that.
Remo charged the bike, but it skittered away.
After a few moments, the girl stood up. "He's gone," she said.
"I don't think so." Already he heard the change in the engine that signaled a turn. The bike was coming back for them. "Just get down behind that scrub," Remo said. "Stay as well hidden as you can.
"Okay." She scrambled for the cover of the thin brush growing near the cliff's edge, but her voice became a howl as the earth gave way beneath her and slid like a dead weight with it. She clung to some scrub halfway down the cliff, its nettles digging into her palms. "Remo!" she screamed. "I'm going to fall!"
And now, the motorcycle was nearly on him.
"Hold on," Remo said. "I'm coming after you. Hold on." Inching his way down the sheer cliff, he heard the sound of the engine roaring above him. A cascade of small stones and earth loosened by his hands rolled continuously into Remo's eyes. He could taste the dirt. Just as he reached the girl, he heard the dirt bike's engine click off.
"I'm going to push you up," Remo said. "He's up there, so once you hit ground, just run like hell." He placed one hand around her knee and pushed it upward hard, at an angle so that the girl would land some distance from the boots of the biker immediately above him. There was a thump, and then the frantic running steps of the girl.
The man above Remo did not move.
Suddenly Remo felt foolish hanging stark naked from a cliff with an island version of a Hell's Angel towering above him. "Wanna talk, buddy?" Remo asked.
The biker responded by pulling the steel mace out of his jacket. It whirred to life above his head.
"Well, if that's the way you want it," Remo said. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
A half-smile spread across the biker's face as he lowered the whistling, whirling mace toward Remo. Then, with a motion so swift that the mace seemed to be twirling in slow motion, Remo caught the weapon as it was coming for him and yanked himself up to ground level. The propulsion of the mace was such that he landed some distance from the biker, who blinked and sputtered, "Hey, mon, I talk. I talk." Remo came up to him slowly. The man backed away. "No. I say I tell—"