Tomorrow she had to see Hans again.
She had to feel like this again, all but floating across the lobby after one last giggled kiss. She pressed the elevator button, weightless, filled with champagne bubbles, giddy with excitement. Alice imagined winning Wimbledon would feel similar.
It wasn’t until she reached her floor that she came back down to earth. It was well past curfew.
Alice squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. She was no child. She didn’t have to answer to anyone. Teach was only her coach.
Her coach, whom she owed everything to.
Who was the closest thing she had to a mother now.
She rubbed her lips together as she pressed her ear to the door.
Nothing.
She turned the key and eased the door open.
Nothing.
No lights were left on.
City lights shone through the window, the drapes still open.
Alice exhaled. Teach hadn’t returned to the room yet.
The bubbles, the weightlessness, the giddiness returned as Alice fell into bed, already replaying every moment of the night.
The night she met Hans.
* * *
In the morning, a very groggy Teach sat across from Alice in the hotel restaurant. Roz was hardly better.
“Late night?” Alice asked them.
Teach took a swig of coffee like it was a shot of liquor. “It’s not every day I get to play the tables.”
It also wasn’t every day a person started to fall in love.
What a delicious thought that Alice had zero intentions of revealing to her coach. She hid her smile behind a bite of her toast, then a sip of her tea.
“Excuse me,” the bell captain said, approaching their table. “Miss Marble, this just arrived for you.”
At first, Alice laughed, confused, as Alfred had just walked up beside the bell captain. Frankly, he was lucky his mother hadn’t fretted about his tardiness. The woman would still nurse him if she could. But then the bell captain revealed a long flower box with a single rose inside from behind his back.
Alice’s breath hitched. Hans clearly wasn’t going to make it easy to keep her secret. Their evening ended with him promising to contact her today. And he had; she knew without a doubt Hans was behind this peach-colored rose.
Roz snatched the box. “Beautiful! Who is it from?” She pulled the card from its envelope. “It says”—she waggled her brows at Alice—“‘from your best fan.’”
What a clever man.
Teach chortled. “That could be anyone.”
Oh no, it couldn’t.
Alice threw her napkin on her plate, her insides on fire. She had to get to her room in case he called. “I think I’ll run up and put this in water. See you at dinner.”
Teach forced down the coffee she’d gulped. “Dinner?” She dabbed her napkin against her mouth. “What on earth are you doing all day?”
“Alfred and I are exploring more and having a picnic.”
Alfred’s eyes danced between Alice, Teach, and his mother, the toast he’d only just buttered halfway to his mouth. Discreetly, she kicked him beneath the table.
He cleared his throat. “Let me just take this to go.”
Alice beamed.
* * *
“I’ll cover for you, you’ll cover for me,” Alice suggested to Alfred.
It took zero convincing, the start of a weeklong conspiracy that began with Hans picking Alice up in a green convertible outside the hotel.
The wheels spun against the road as though they’d just robbed a bank like the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, Alice yelling, “Go, go, go,” and Hans going without any explanation.
“The keeper?” he said after they turned the corner.
“The one and only.”
He smirked. “She’d like me.”
“You are neither a ball nor a racquet. She will not want me playing with you.”
“Actually, I have two—”
She pointed a finger at him, though Alice was unable to hide the amusement on her face.
He chuckled, making another turn. They drove through the narrow city streets and onto the country roads. The scenery was more fitting for the sport coat and khakis he wore. Alice had on a sundress. Perfect for the picnic they had planned along the banks of a river, across from a seventeenth-century castle.
“En Guete,” he said.
Roast duck, liver pâté, caviar, a loaf of fresh bread, and a bottle of champagne.
Was this real life?
It certainly felt real every time Hans’s lips touched hers.
It felt real when they dined the next day at a restaurant in Stella Plage. Then when their next tête-à-tête took them to a tiny lobster place down the coast from Le Touquet. Then at a tree-shaded, secluded patio café in a small village Alice couldn’t even pronounce.
“Can I ask you about tennis yet? Or is it still out of bounds?”
“And he has puns.” Alice laughed. “Tennis, thanks to you, hasn’t crossed my mind in days.”
“Would it be horrible for you if it ended?”
“What do you mean?” Surely he wasn’t suggesting he’d replace tennis in her life.
He reached for her hand. “How is it that I can already read your mind? Or maybe it’s your face I can read so clearly. I’d never dream of getting in the way of your tennis. I only meant there are whispers of countries that’ll soon be bumping heads that may disrupt all of our lives. Tennis for you.”
“Bumping heads?” she asked. “Between who?”
“Time will tell. But many fear a war. July’s been an interesting month as it is. The Soviet Union is contentious with Japan. Germany is all but seeking out conflicts. German Jews are now banned from working in a number of professions. In fact, if I understand correctly, all Jews in Germany are required to get special identification cards by the year’s end.”
“For what purpose?”
“Nothing good. Adolf Hitler is an egomaniac.”
Alice cocked her head. “I remember him from a newsreel. Him and Benito Mussolini. I didn’t get a good feeling about either of them.”
“I’m not surprised. When Hitler opened an art exhibition in Munich last week, he made a speech attacking one in London, which includes some banned German art. He called the artists ‘cultural Neanderthals’ and”—Hans scratched along his jawline, where a hint of stubble caught the afternoon light—“‘lamentable unfortunates who plainly suffer from defective sight.’”
“Ouch.”
“I bought quite a few pieces.”
“Do you collect?”
“Occupational hazard of being around rare valuables the whole of my life.”
“Ah, it’s making more sense now. You only approached me because I’m invaluable.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I daresay not until you win Wimbledon.”
Alice’s mouth fell open.
Hans bellowed a laugh, turning heads, clasping her hands to ensure her of his joke, but also saying, “Darling, surely you know that’s a jest. But yes, back to your question. I do collect, along with my father. Our family vault is home to some incredible wealth.”
“You’re very rich, aren’t you?”
And charismatic.
Magnetizing.
Handsome.
Kissable.
Tempting.
“Very.”
Alice laughed, muffling the sound behind her napkin when a woman locked eyes with her. The woman’s gaze jumped between Alice and Hans, a sly smile appearing on her face. Any moment now Alice expected the woman to rise and ask for an autograph. Or perhaps the woman was a fan of bankers. Alice may have to stake her claim.
She leaned across the table toward Hans and spoke in a low voice. “Want to get out of here?”
Her body language, her tone, they both sounded like an invitation.
Hans’s expression became wolf-like, hungry. No one had ever looked at her that way before. She wanted it. Needed it. Needed Hans.
And while Alice hadn’t initially intended for her words to be suggestive, she leaned in farther. “My hotel room?”
“And risk your keeper? I’ll rent a room on a different floor. Hell, I’ll buy the whole establishment. You’re worth it.”
“As I said, flattery will get you everywhere.”
“I sure hope so.”
* * *
Hans’s hotel room went to good use. Three afternoons in a row.
In those precious, stolen hours, Alice felt like they were the only people on earth. The two of them, sharing secrets . . .
Hans was irrationally scared of spiders.
Revealing fears . . .
For Hans, it was that he would become like his father, who was on wife number four; for Alice, that she would never be the best in the world.
Falling into inside jokes . . .
It was now physically impossible to see a green chair without laughing, a joke that doubled as a secret.
They talked about everything, except what exactly came next for them after this holiday. Oh, they had talked around it. Hans mused he’d lock her away in his castle. Alice joked how it sounded like the beginning of a story where a damsel in distress would be rescued from a tower. Hans posed more seriously how he’d never get in the way of her tennis. She said just as seriously how she wanted both her career and Hans. But they never spoke about what their future actually looked like or how it would work.
And for the moment, Alice was completely content to continue falling in love. Currently falling more in love with his backside as he walked stark naked toward his hotel room door.
There’d just been a light knock before a note had been slipped beneath the door. Alice fluffed the pillow, propping her head for a better view, as he retrieved it.
“It’s addressed to you, mon amour.”
His love. Her breath caught. But she quickly found it. Never one to mince words, so much like her coach in that way, she let the question pour out. “I’m your love, huh?”
Hans slowed his walk. He tapped the small white envelope against his free hand. “I didn’t know you spoke the language.”
“Not well. But I know a little. Un poco.”
“That’s Spanish.” He shook his head, knowing full well she was being playful. “Would that be all right, though, if you were my love? I’ve never met anyone like you, Alice.”
She yanked him toward her the remainder of steps. “More than okay considering you’re also mine.”
That did it. Those words elicited the hungry look Alice had seen and experienced an obscene amount of times over the last three days.
He maneuvered his body overtop of hers, his interest in Alice without question. Locks of his dark hair dangled, nearly touching her forehead. Alice arched into him.
He shook his head, enamored. “Your stamina is incredible.”
“I’m training to be the best tennis player in the world.”
“I’m glad to aid in your training.”
He repositioned an arm, the note he’d retrieved and Alice had all but forgotten, crinkling.
“Ah,” she said, reaching for it.
“And just like that, she’s moved on.”
Alice laughed. “Never.”
But she was curious. These afternoon trysts were top secret, after all.
Turned out, it would have been better if she’d ignored the little white envelope. It contained information she didn’t want to know. Information that because she now knew it, she could no longer live in their fantasy land.
Alice shut her eyes and released an expletive that likely made her poor mother roll over in her grave.
Alice,
Teach knows. You made the society pages.
Alfred