Authors: Danielle Steel
“I adore it.” He dropped his voice, “But I love you more.”
“Do you, m’lord?” She arched an eyebrow, and he felt a rising at his crotch.
“Do you require proof?”
“Perhaps. What did you have in mind?” She eyed him evilly from beneath her hat.
“I was planning to suggest lunch out in the country somewhere, but perhaps….” His smile matched hers.
“Room service, darling?”
“An excellent idea.” He waved to the
cameriere
and quickly paid their bill.
She stood up languidly, letting her body sway gently against his for a tantalizing instant, then began to weave her way through the crowded tables, casting a glance at him over her shoulder now and then. He could hardly wait to get her home. He wanted to run back to the hotel, holding fast to her hand, but she walked at her own pace, in her own style, knowing that she had Marc-Edouard Duras precisely where she wanted him. He watched her, amused. In a very few moments he would have her precisely where he wanted her. In his arms, in bed.
In their room he began unbuttoning her blouse with alarming speed, and she brushed him away playfully, making him wait before she’d let him reveal what he was so hungry for. She fondled him with one hand and nipped gently at his neck, until at last he found the button to her skirt and it dropped to the floor, leaving her in transparent pink lace. He almost tore at the blouse now. In a moment she stood naked in front of him as he softly moaned. She undressed him, quickly and expertly, and they fell together on the bed. Each time they made love was better than the time before, and ever reminiscent of the first. It left him sated, yet still hungry, eager to know that they would soon be joined again.
She rolled over in bed, lying on one elbow, her hair tousled but still beautiful. She watched him silently, smiling. Her voice was a husky whisper near his ear as her fingers played slowly across his chest and down toward his stomach. “I love you, you know.”
He looked at her intently, his eyes searching hers. “I love you too, Chantal. Too much perhaps. But I do.” It was a remarkable admission for a man like Marc-Edouard Duras. No one who knew him would have believed it. Least of all Deanna.
Chantal smiled and then lay back with her eyes closed for a moment, and there was concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“You’d lie to me, though. I know it. Tell me seriously. Are you all right, Chantal?” A look of almost frantic worry crossed his face. She smiled.
“I’m fine.”
“You took your insulin properly today?” He was all fatherly concern now, the passion of the moment before forgotten.
“Yes, I took it. Stop worrying. Want to try your new watch in the bathtub?”
“Now?”
“Why not?” She smiled happily at him, and for once he felt totally at peace. “Or did you have something else in mind?”
“I always have something else in mind. But you’re tired.”
“Never too tired for you,
mon amour.”
And he was never too tired for her. The years between them vanished as he made love to her again.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when they lay quietly side by side again. “Well, we’ve taken care of this afternoon.” She smiled mischievously at him, and he grinned in answer.
“You had other plans?”
“Absolutely none.”
“Want to do some more shopping?” He loved to indulge her, to spoil her, to be with her, admire her, drink her in. Her perfume, her movements, her every breath excited him. And she knew it.
“I could probably be lured back to the shops.”
“Good.” The trip to Rome had been for her anyway. He was going to have to work hard that summer, and Athens would be dull for her. He knew how she loved Rome. And he always made a point of bringing her. Just to please her. Besides, he was going to have to leave her for the weekend.
“What’s wrong?” She had been watching him very closely.
“Nothing. Why?”
“You looked worried for a moment.”
“Not worried.” But it was best to get it over with. “Just unhappy. I’m going to have to leave you for a couple of days.”
“Oh?” Her eyes iced over like a winter frost.
“I have to stop off in Antibes to visit my mother and Pilar before we go to Greece.”
She sat up in bed and looked at him with annoyance. “And what do you plan to do with me?”
“Don’t make it sound like that, darling. I can’t help it. You know that.”
“Don’t you think Pilar is old enough to withstand the shock of knowing about me? Or do you still find me so unpresentable? I’m no longer the little mannequin from Dior, you know. I run the biggest modeling agency in Paris.” But she also knew that in his world that didn’t count.
“That’s not the point. And no, I don’t think she’s old enough.” In what concerned Pilar he was oddly stubborn. It irritated Chantal a great deal.
“And your mother?”
“That’s impossible.”
“I see.” She threw her long legs over the side of the bed and stalked across the room, grabbing a cigarette on her way, turning to look at him angrily only when she had reached the window at the opposite side. “I’m getting a little bored with being dumped in out-of-the-way places while you visit your family, Marc-Edouard.”
“I’d hardly call Saint-Tropez an ‘out-of-the-way place.’” He was beginning to look annoyed, and his tone showed none of the passion of the hours before.
“Where did you have in mind this time?”
“I thought maybe San Remo.”
“How convenient. Well, I won’t go.”
“Would you rather stay here?”
“No.”
“Do we have to go through this again, Chantal? It’s getting very tedious. What’s more, I don’t understand. Why has this suddenly become an issue between us, when for five years you have found it perfectly acceptable to spend time on the Riviera without me?”
“Would you like to know why?” Suddenly her eyes blazed. “Because I’m almost thirty years old, and I’m still playing the same games I was playing with you five years ago. And I’m just a little tired of it. We play make-believe games of ‘Monsieur and Madame Duras’ halfway around the world, but in the places that matter—Paris, San Francisco, Antibes—I have to hide and slink around and disappear. Well, I’m sick of it. You want an exclusive arrangement. You expect me to sit in Paris and hold my breath for half the year, and then come out of mothballs at your command. I’m not going to do that anymore, Marc-Edouard. At least not for much longer.” She stopped, and he stared at her, stunned. He didn’t dare ask if she were serious. For a terrible instant, he knew that she was.
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately. The Americans have a perfect expression, I believe: ‘Shit or get off the pot.’”
“I don’t find that amusing.”
“I don’t find San Remo amusing.”
Christ!
It was useless. A small sigh escaped him, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Chantal, I can’t take you to Antibes.”
“You
won’t
take me to Antibes. There’s a difference.”
And what’s more, she had added San Francisco to the list of her complaints. That startling bit of information hadn’t escaped him either. She had never even wanted to go to the States before.
“May I ask what brought all this on? It can’t just be your thirtieth birthday. That’s still four months away.”
She paused, her back to him, as she looked silently out the window, and then slowly she turned to face him again. “Someone else just asked me to marry him.”
Time seemed to stand still. Marc-Edouard stared at her in horror.
8
“Deanna?” The phone had rung before she’d gotten out of bed. It was Ben.
“Yes.”
She sounded sleepy, and he smiled. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“More or less.”
“What a very diplomatic answer! I’m calling to bug you a little more. I figure that sooner or later I’ll wear down your resistance and you’ll sign with the gallery just to get me off your back. How about lunch?”
“Now?” She was still half asleep and turned toward the clock wondering how late she had slept, but Ben was laughing at her again.
“No, not at eight o’clock in the morning. How about twelve or one? In Sausalito?”
“What’s there?”
“Sunshine. A condition we’re not always blessed with on this side of the bridge. Have I sold you?”
“More or less.” She laughed into the phone. What the hell was he doing, calling her at eight o’clock in the morning? And why lunch so soon? They had had dinner the night before, and lunch in her studio the day before that. She was beginning to wonder if she had found a new friend, an ardent potential dealer for her work, or something else. She wondered if it were wise to see him again quite so soon.
“Yes, it is.”
“What is?” She was confused.
“You’re wondering if it’s a good idea to have lunch with me. It is.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Then we’ll have lunch in the city.”
“No, Sausalito sounds nice.” She had accepted without thinking further and found herself smiling at the ceiling as she spoke into the phone. “I’m an easy sale at this hour of the day. No defenses yet, no coffee.”
“Good. Then how about signing with the gallery before coffee tomorrow?”
“I may hang up on you, Ben.” She was laughing, and it felt wonderful to start the day off with laughter. She hadn’t done that in years.
“Don’t hang up on me till we settle lunch. Do you want me to pick you up around noon?”
“That’ll do.” What’ll do? What was she doing having lunch with this man? But she liked him. And lunch in Sausalito sounded like fun.
“Wear your jeans.”
“O.K., see you at noon.”
He pulled up in front of her house at exactly 12:02. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans, and when she climbed into the car, she saw that there was a basket on the seat, draped in a red-and-white cloth. The neck of a bottle poked its way out at one side. Ben opened the door for her and put the basket on the backseat.
“Good morning, madam.” He smiled broadly as she slid in beside him. “I thought maybe we’d have a picnic instead. O.K.?”
“Very much so.” Or was it? Should she be having a picnic with this man? The head of Madame Duras told her no, while the heart that was Deanna’s wanted an afternoon in the sun. But surely there were other things she could do, and she had the terrace outside her studio if she really wanted sun.
Ben glanced at her as he started the car and saw the faint pucker between her brows. “Do we have a problem?”
“No.” She said it softly as he pulled away from the curb. She found herself wondering if Margaret had seen them.
He amused her with stories about some of the gallery’s more colorful artists as they drove across the splendor of the Golden Gate Bridge. He fell silent then for a moment. They were both looking out at the view.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked. She nodded with a smile. “May I ask you an odd sort of question?”
She looked surprised for a moment. “Why not?”
“How is it that you and your husband live here, instead of France? From what I know of the French they don’t, as a rule, like living very far from home. Except under duress.”
She laughed. What he had said was true. “There’s a lot of business to be done here. And Marc isn’t here that much anyway; he travels most of the time.”
“Lonely for you.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’m used to it.”
He wasn’t quite sure he believed her. “What do you do when you’re alone?”
They spoke in unison with a burst of laughter: “Paint.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What ever made you come down to Carmel?” He seemed to be riddled with questions. So far they were all easy to answer.
“Kim. She insisted that I needed to get away.”
“Was she right?” He glanced over at her as he took the turnoff that led into the military preserve on the other side of the bridge. “Did you need to get away?”
“I suppose I did. I’d forgotten how lovely Carmel is. I hadn’t been there in years. Do you go every weekend?” She wanted to turn the questions back to him. She didn’t really like talking to him about Marc.
“I go whenever I can. It’s never often enough.”
She noticed then that they had taken a narrow country road and were driving past deserted bunkers and military buildings. “Ben, what is this?” She looked around herself with curiosity. They might have stumbled onto a stage set for a movie depicting the years after a war. The barracks on either side of the road were crumbling and boarded up, and there were wild flowers and weeds climbing onto the road.