She said she couldn’t remember, but he didn’t believe it for a moment and made a mental note to find out. He wanted to know who had been worthy of such a sultry look. He found it difficult to tear himself away from the vision of that young, lithesome body stretched out in the sun.
Fifteen, which would have made him twenty-two, the year he had moved out to LA. He would have fallen like a star from the sky for that girl. He would have ruined his career for her, just to get that kind of glance. She was perfection, and totally unconscious of it, which made the picture so much stronger. That braid, and the way it hung over her shoulder and breast, literally forcing the eye to follow its trail and consequently stare at the soft skin of her cleavage and the swell covered by the scanty red top, the long, shapely legs crossed at the ankles, toenails painted pink, waiting to be touched.
“Stop staring,” Naomi had said sternly and taken the album away from him. “You child molester. Give it back.”
He had done it unwillingly, firmly resolved to get a copy of that photo for his studio.
“You looked just like that when we met. You still look like that.”
“Hopefully not.” Naomi had put the book back in its drawer.
As a child, she had looked just the way he had imagined her: sweet, joyful, without a care in the world, cherished.
This was all, she had informed him, that was left of her here in Kleinburg. Maybe, if he felt like it, they could raid the attic like they had done in Helen’s house, but there were no stage shirts hidden away here.
The clock chimed in the New Year.
The big doors were thrown open and the fireworks began. Most of the guests streamed outside to watch the spectacle, but Naomi shook her head. “Go. I don’t care for the cold.”
Sal remained behind too. For a few moments they sat silently side by side, listening to the sounds from outside.
Sal cleared his throat. “I’m a curious old shark, as you know, Baby Girl, and I really would like to know.”
Naomi raised her head to him, her hands folded over her skirt. “What, Sal?”
“The man you were supposed to marry. The one your family wanted you to marry. Is he here tonight? I would really like to know who they picked for you.” He grinned at her. “Just curiosity. And maybe comparing him to who you chose yourself will be fun.”
She glared viciously at him and turned her head to where Jon was returning from outside in the company of Toronto’s mayor, talking to him.
“No.” Sal leaned forward so she could not avoid him. “Tell me it’s a joke. Please, I beg you, Naomi; you know you will never live this down. Tell me you’re kidding!”
“I hate you,” she hissed, flustered now. “Go away. Inviting you of all people to come here was the worst mistake of my life.”
Jon tried to introduce the mayor, but Naomi interrupted him.
“Hello, Seth.”
“Naomi, dear,” Seth bowed slightly to her. “Haven’t seen you around in a long time. Married, are you?”
With interest, Jon watched the slow blush creep up on her face and Sal’s wide smirk and wondered what they had been talking about in the short time he had been gone. He had the impression she was extremely uncomfortable, and furious at Sal.
“Yes.” It came unwillingly and with lowered eyes.
“Why don’t you sit with us for a moment,” Sal said, patting the chair beside him. “I recall you were very kind to us when we were here for a concert some years ago.”
Naomi, her lips clamped together tightly, listened to them talking about when the band had passed through, but she refused to take any part in the conversation, only glaring at Sal from time to time.
“Naomi and I, we were nearly engaged for a brief while. Did she tell you? But we were very young and she preferred to go to Europe with her parents.” Seth raised his glass to her. “There was the understanding that she would return in a couple of years or so and become my wife. Only she vanished.”
“Ah.” Mirth twinkled in Sal’s in his eyes.
“Understanding?” Jon asked. “Really?”
“Well, yes.” Seth did not seem very concerned. “But not to worry; I’ve overcome my broken heart.” He eyed Naomi with appreciation. “I always had the feeling she was aiming for something more spectacular. She had that air of extravagance.”
“That is so not true.” Naomi’s anger was barely contained. “And you know it, Seth.”
“I know you never thought I was good enough for you,” he replied. “You never wanted to marry me anyway.”
“And that’s not true, either.” She rose and shook out her skirt. “I’m leaving now. I hate being talked about like this, and if you want to go on, do it without me.”
“Hey, which part of that is not true?” Sal called after her, but she made her way across the hall and up the stairs without looking back.
She was in bed when Jon entered the room a good while later. He turned on the bedside lamp, but she pulled the blanket over her head. “I’m not going to talk to you. You’ll imagine all kinds of weird things, and I’m not going to start the New Year with a hateful discussion.”
“Who said anything about a discussion?” he asked softly, highly amused by her angry defiance. “All I want to know is this, dear heart: did the extraordinary Seth take that picture of you in the red bikini? Did he receive that impossible look from you?”
Furiously, she threw back the quilt and glared at him. “You! You only have one thing on your mind, all the time!”
“Well, did he or didn’t he? Come on, sweet bird, spill your secret!”
He took off his jacket and pulled the tie open, moving through the room noiselessly.
Naomi sat up and leaned against the headboard, her mind gradually calming as she watched him. Whistling under his breath, Jon hung up the dress she had dropped on the chair.
“It was Seth, yes. And it was the summer before I turned sixteen.”
That day, it had been hot and humid like it often was in July. School had ended for the year and the vista of long, lazy weeks stretched out ahead of her. She had put on that bikini and flounced out onto the lawn with her mother’s Vogue to find some peace. It had irritated her that the color of her nail polish did not match her bathing suit, but she hadn’t had the energy to change it.
The magazine had been boring; there wasn’t even a crossword puzzle in it, and nothing captivating about new music or books either. Seth had shown up unannounced in the middle of the afternoon. His father was a high-profile lawyer in Toronto and owned a big firm; in fact he and his associates were retained by her family, and that was why everyone was looking to their possible union with so much favor.
“They never said it directly. But it was always, ‘Oh, look, Seth is here; Naomi, why don’t you go riding with Seth; oh, maybe Seth would like to see that movie, too’.” She paused and shook her head. “I was sixteen, for crying out loud. I didn’t even know what my favorite color was, and my family was pushing a future husband in my face.”
“And how old was he?” Jon asked without looking at her, busy peeling off his shirt.
There were special, small things that were terribly arousing, like the smooth way the muscles in his shoulders moved when he undressed, or the way the hair on his chest tapered to a fine line over the taut stretch of his stomach. She felt quite warm under the quilt and moved her legs restlessly, which made Jon raise his eyebrows and shoot her an amused, sidelong glance.
“Easy, Baby. You know what happens when you get too excited. It’ll be over in a minute, and who wants that?”
But he did turn to face her when his hands reached for his belt, feet well apart and hips thrust forward, unconscious of his very male, aggressive stance.
Naomi felt her heart hammering furiously and sweat prickling between her shoulder blades.
“So how old was your suitor?” Jon repeated.
“Back then? Twenty-four. He was working on his law degree.”
She wanted him. She wanted the talk to end an
d to be in his arms.
“Patience, little beast. First, I want to know. They left you alone with a man of twenty-four? You, looking like that, on the verge of becoming a woman, the essence of seduction, and they handed you over to Seth?”
The trousers came down.
“Come on, tell me. Was it Seth who took that photo? Or someone else?”
“It was Seth. He was nice. I liked him, he was like a big brother. He used to buy ice cream for me and take me riding.”
“But,” delivered in the voice that reminded her of dark, melted chocolate, “you didn’t desire him, right? You didn’t feel like you’re feeling now, right, Baby?”
He came over to her and wrapped her hair around his hand, talking into her mouth. “You didn’t crave him, the way you do right now, with me, right? You weren’t willing to plead with him to stop the talk and not wait any longer.”
Her mind was racing with lust when he laid her out on the sheets, his fingers expertly opening the ribbons on her thin muslin nightgown.
“And I bet when he saw you poured out like that in your sweet little bikini, he wanted very badly to find out what you were hiding.”
His hands slid lower on her body, over her hips and thighs.
“He wanted it more than anything else, I’m sure. And he’ll never get it. Never. No other man will ever find out how it is to hold you, not Seth, not Sal. No one will ever feel the passion of your love.”
“And now,” Jon said a lot later, freeing himself from her embrace, “now that picture belongs to me. I’m going to take it away from you and pretend you were searching for me even then. That gaze can only have been meant for me.”
She watched him remove the album from the drawer, and the folder with her early lyrics as well, and stow them away in his suitcase. She did not demur.
Sal was waiting for them at the airport with the limo; sunglasses pushed up on his head, tanned and very relaxed. “Welcome back to LA,” he said, grinning broadly at Naomi’s warm sweater. “You won’t need that here, you silly Scandinavian.”
The sunlight was blinding, and the sun-soaked air felt like warm oil against her winter-parched skin. She felt like she could just strip off her clothes and lie down on the tarmac, limbs spread wide, and drink in this flood of spring and ease her tired muscles after the long flight and their final weeks in the cold of Norway.
Against Sal’s protest she had opened the car windows to let in the soft air, waving away Jon’s dry comment that she might as well hang her head out the window like a dog, but please keep her tongue in. He was pleased to see her delight in the weather and her easy, playful mood.
Sue and Art had moved out of the Malibu mansion. The house was still and empty, spotlessly clean, as pristine as if it had never been touched by others. The studio was once more a working space, even if it was still missing Jon’s personal things. In their bathroom, everything was white. Towels, rugs and shower curtains were all brand new, there was lavender and rose soap in the dishes, bath oil on the corner of the tub. Jon looked over her shoulder for a moment.
“Here.” He stepped inside, laying the hair clip on the side of the sink, right where he had picked it up that morning. “I’m returning it to you now that you’ve come back to me.”
Naomi stared at the cheap old thing, a smudge in the virginal space, surprised he had kept it all this time.
“No,” Jon said. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Tell me you love me. Tell me you’ll never leave me again. Those are the words I want to hear.”
Their bedroom looked just like it had last summer, with flowers on the table and a choice of drinks on the cupboard, the cream quilt folded over the bed, gossamer lace curtains blowing lazily in the breeze.
“I’ll never leave you.”
Her voice drifted toward him from where she was standing on the roof garden, looking out over the glittering sea. She had begun opening her braid and combing through her hair with her fingers, the wind catching tendrils away from her and curling them around her face.
“I’ll always love you.”
Those were the promises he needed to hear, over and over again, to drown out the constant fear.
“I never stopped loving you,” Naomi said, stepping back inside. “And you know it. I would certainly not be here now if it weren’t for my love of you. In that, nothing has changed. California without you was never on my agenda.”
“Falling so madly in love while on tour in Europe wasn’t on mine,” came his quick reply. “And I know you are doing things you vowed never to do again, like being here with me in Los Angeles. I know I promised you would never have to come back, and that I would stay with you in Halmar always. You never wanted to set foot in this house again, and yet we are going to live here once more. I know, Naomi, what you are doing. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
Slowly she sat down on the edge of the bed. His tone was so sincere and heartfelt, there was neither the lover’s charm nor the tenderness of their more intimate moments in it.
Jon stood in the center of the large room as if it were his stage.
“We’ve never really talked about it, I know what it means that you consent to be here with me, to leave your old life behind like that. Even when you came here with us last summer I knew what it meant for you, and now, here, preparing for the tour, it is even more.
“As if I had a choice. As if there were an alternative for me.”
A furrow appeared on his brow. “You might have,” Jon offered pensively, “stayed behind. You knew I would return to you. You could join us for the kick-off in London. I would come over to see you as often as I could, Naomi.”
She was unbuttoning the cotton top, revealing a lacy bra underneath.
“No, there would be little fun in that. Now that I have you back, I don’t want to be apart from you again. And so,” she looked up at him with a tiny smile, “and so I’m afraid you will have to lug me around with you wherever you go.”
He went for her then.
“I would have,” he whispered to her later, “I would have taken you off that deck chair so quickly. Your stupid magazine and those sunglasses, they would have ended up on the ground, and you, my sensuous hussy, would have found yourself on a bed of leaves under those maple trees and learned soon enough why you are not supposed to look at men like that. Sweet sixteen, and I would have robbed you of your innocence on that hot afternoon. Oh yes, Baby, I would not have waited for an invitation.”
Naomi was lying on her side, listening to him with half-closed eyes, the setting sun casting a coppery glow on her skin, her hand under her cheek.
“Had you come across the lawn that day instead of Seth, I would have taken off that top myself to seduce you. I would have made you follow me into the woods and found a hidden place for us. I would have had you, lover boy.” A dreamy smile curled her lips. “I would not have waited for you to start your seduction routine. You would have been mine right away.”
“And yet.” His hand wandered over her hip in a slow caress. “You told me—oh those bitter, bitter words—that’s not how it works, when I had the first chance with you. Eternal regret, I hold that moment in my mind in eternal regret.”
“You are such a wimp.”
Her body stretched under his touch.
“You had the choice to ignore those words, and you didn’t. You opted for suffering and waiting, remember? You chose to obey. Your doom, lover boy, because it showed me your weak spot.”
“I have a weak spot?” His grip tightened considerably. With one deft move he had her flat on her back. “Really, a weak spot. Now I need to know what that might be.”
A slow, hot flush crept over her throat and face as she tried to reach his lips for a kiss, but he drew back just far enough so she could not touch him.
“Your weak spot,” she managed breathlessly, “is your love for romance. And I gave you romance by putting you down and making you wait. There.”
Naomi barely looked up from where she was lounging on
the couch when Sal and Art walked in the next morning.
Sal stopped to stare down at her. “Well, are you ready to step out into the public eye next week? You know you can’t hide here any longer.”
She did not reply.
“And do you have a proper gown?” Sal went on, ignoring her cool silence. “You know you can’t show up in one of your cotton thingies on the red carpet.”
He eyed her suspiciously when she did not reply and only held out her cup to Jon to get it refilled.
“You know how important it is how you look, don’t you? They’ll see you not only as a nominee, but also…”
“Yes, I know.” She held up her hand wearily. “As his wife. Don’t I know it. Shut up, Sal.”
“You did not answer my question. What are you going to wear? I’m your manager, and you pay me a lot of money to push you.”
“I pay you a lot to look after my interests, Sal.”
He opened his mouth to snap a sharp reply but drew back when Jon shot him a glance.
The room had not changed much since Art and Sue had lived here, and yet it was completely different. Sue had allowed the comfortable, slightly negligent atmosphere of a well-used house, but Naomi kept it airy, the surfaces cleared and clean, spare in the graceful Scandinavian manner. The flowers on the table were pale roses, the cushions on the couch had been replaced, no longer a mixture of colors and shapes but cream and very light green against the beige leather.
“I know where I want to go,” Naomi was saying, but not to him. “And I’ll do it tomorrow. Alone, sadly, since Solveigh can’t seem to find the energy.”
“Right, Babe,” Jon replied without even looking her way.
Sal was on the point of intervening, fear for her safety surfacing, when he saw her pick up the phone and instruct her new bodyguard, Stewart, ending with, “I’ll be ready by ten, and I don’t know how long it will take. Better plan on the day.”
“You’ll be getting a lot of attention, for a number of reasons, so get used to it. You know you will have to look and act your best. No mumbling, and no hiding behind the Jonman. Dress up, look sharp, dazzle the world. I know you can do it!” Sal said.
The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy) Page 31
