* * *
DORIAN WAS SETTING her alarm clock to wake her up in an hour when she heard Deke pounding on the door of her apartment. At least she was pretty sure it was Deke. Who else would raise such a racket so early on a Sunday?
“Go away,” she yelled, but he continued to pound.
Giving up, she slid out of bed and pulled on a silk wrapper before padding to the door in her bare feet.
“Come in,” she said, throwing the front door open. “If you wake Mrs. Hanigan across the hall, she’ll never let me forget it.”
Deke swooped into her apartment, grabbed her and waltzed her around the living room. “Practice up on your can-can, darlin’. You can, I can, we both can. Go to Paris, I mean.”
Dorian allowed herself to be led but refused to be charmed by him. It wasn’t easy to maintain this attitude, since Deke seemed so full of himself this morning. But even that reminded her of last night when he had been anything but ebullient; had, in fact, been more subdued than she’d ever seen him, and at a time when he should have been bursting with glee over their madcap escape to the roof.
“I want to brush my teeth,” she said, pulling away and heading for the bathroom.
Deke followed her, leaning against the open bathroom door and talking to her over the sound of running water.
“I really do have two tickets on the Concorde, and I’ll square it with anyone in my organization so that you’ll be free to go with me, so don’t think you need to be at work. I’ve thought it all out. We’ll spend a week doing what tourists do. We’ll take you to the clothing salon of your choice—Chanel, Givenchy, whatever—and buy you a stunning wardrobe for your television appearances. Dorian, are you listening?”
Dorian, who was leaning over the sink, paused with her mouth full of toothpaste. “Marginally,” she said.
“Is it registering at all?”
“What’s registering is that I’m hungry and we have time for a big breakfast before I go rollerblading in the park with Jill and Sandra and Charles. Couldn’t you make yourself useful, Deke, and turn on the coffeepot?”
“Coffee?” he asked incredulously. “Did you say coffee?”
“‘Fraid so,” Dorian shot back, turning off the water and dropping her toothbrush into the holder.
“Some people never learn,” he said, smiling at her in a conciliatory way, though he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be conciliatory about.
“What I have learned is that if I’m going to get on with my plans for the day, I’m going to have to lock you out of the bathroom. Shoo! Scram!” she said, waving her hands at him.
He caught her in his arms and pulled her to him. The front of her wrapper gaped open, and he slid a hand inside.
“Not a chance. And no coffee, either. Let’s go to bed, woman. I’ve missed you.” He gently palmed her nipple until she felt that familiar warm sensation rising from deep in her abdomen. Oh, Deke Washburn knew how to get around her, all right. He knew all too well.
But she wasn’t in the mood. Or rather she was, but she didn’t want to give in again. And she was still smarting over last night when he had been so distracted and curt after lovemaking.
“Stop it, Deke,” she said, easing away. She modestly closed the front of the robe and snapped it.
He looked crushed. When he looked like that, all she wanted to do was to glide into his arms. She loved making love with him.
“You’re not going rollerblading today,” he said, becoming more serious.
She brushed past him on the way to the kitchen. “I am, Deke. I promised Jill.”
“How can you? You’ll need to pack for Paris,” he said stubbornly, following her down the hall.
She turned on the coffeemaker. “Would you please get the bread out of the cupboard?”
He did, and she took a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator.
“Not only will you need to pack, but I hope you have your passport handy,” he said.
She stared at him. “Deke, you can stop talking about Paris. I don’t believe for one minute that you actually expect me to pick up and leave today without any prior planning, or, for that matter, that you actually have tickets on the Concorde.”
“But I do have the tickets.”
Something in his voice stopped her cold.
“You do?”
“Yes, Ki and his wife couldn’t use them because she’s pregnant and he’s having a hard time with it, he’s afraid for her to fly, and it’s too bad they can’t go because it would have been a romantic break from looking after two kids that she inherited from her sister who died, and—”
“How you do run on.”
“The point,” Deke said, “is that I’ve developed this deep desire to go to Paris, which Ki has made possible by letting me have these expensive tickets.”
“This is beginning to sound true,” Dorian said, halfway bewildered by this turn of events.
“It is. And we’re going.”
“Another example of how you’re taking over my life,” Dorian muttered.
“What was that remark?”
“Never mind. I’m spending the day in the park with Jill and our friends. You could possibly come with us if you like.” She turned away to switch the stove burner on.
“I told you not to go rollerblading anymore.”
“That’s precisely why I am doing it,” she said, though this wasn’t true. It wouldn’t hurt for Deke to think so, however.
He drew a deep breath as she was cracking eggs into the pan. “I don’t want eggs for breakfast,” he said.
She shot him an exasperated look. “I’m calling the shots in my own apartment,” she retorted.
“Is that what this is really about? About asserting your authority?”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “I’m merely making decisions on my own this morning, which is somewhat of a change in our relationship,” she admitted, not looking at him.
“Is this an issue we need to discuss?” he asked, sounding nonplussed.
She turned the eggs over. “Hand me a couple of plates, will you please?”
He gave her the plates, and she shoveled the eggs onto them. “The toast is ready,” she reminded Deke gently.
He fished the toast out of the toaster, and she handed him a plate. “Here,” she said. “Do you want to eat out on the balcony?”
“I’m not sure I want to eat at all.”
Ignoring this, she led the way to the dining room table and opened the draperies so that they could look out over the city. Here on the sixth floor the view wasn’t as spectacular as it was from the roof, but she liked it, anyway.
When Deke sat down across from her, she smiled uncertainly. “Well, I didn’t mean to take away your appetite,” she said truthfully.
“Dorian, what about Paris?”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “Assuming that you really do have tickets to fly on the Concorde tonight, I have to tell you that I can’t make it. I promised Jill.”
“Dorian, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” he argued. “Anyone would take advantage of it.”
Slowly she chewed and swallowed. The eggs and toast tasted like sawdust, and not because there was anything wrong with her cooking. She had always wanted to go to Paris. She couldn’t believe that she was turning down the chance.
“Can’t you see, Deke, that this is a larger issue? You’re always telling me what to do or what not to do, and because I’m bowled over by you, I cave in. I made up my mind last night when I realized how long it had been since I’d seen my friends that this would be my day to do what I want, and what I want is to spend time with Jill and Sandra and Charles.” She watched him steadfastly, waiting to see what he would say. She didn’t allow herself to think about Paris—the Eiffel Tower, the Tuileries, Montmartre.
Deke flushed. “I don’t believe this,” he said in a controlled voice, shoving his plate away.
“It’s too bad, but I have a life, Deke, you need to realize that. And my friends
are important to me.”
“More important than me?” he said in a low tone. He stared at her.
That was a tough question to answer. She looked away, not wanting to see the forbidding expression on Deke’s face. And if she looked at him, she’d give in. One part of her wanted to say she’d fly away to Paris with him, was already dancing down the hall and figuring out what to pack, but the other part of her, the more independent part, the real Dorian Carr who was not in any way the fantasy creation of Deke Washburn’s mind, sat in the chair and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
“You’re important to me, Deke, of course you are,” she said quietly.
“I thought you knew what you meant to me.”
She didn’t speak. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He merely stared at her from the other side of the table, his eyes dark with unspoken thoughts.
If only he would say the words, then she could drop this aloof facade that was wearing so thin under his relentless barrage of remarks.
It was as though she held her breath. The world stopped turning, stood still, tilted on its axis. And Deke kept staring at her, thinking things that he left unsaid.
Or else he wasn’t thinking them at all. But she was.
She loved Deke. She had loved him since that day at the house on Blue Lake when she had let down her guard enough to make love with him, which had also been long enough for her to fall in love with him.
“This isn’t the time to argue for argument’s sake,” Deke said.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” She couldn’t help being incredulous.
“I thought we’d gone beyond the chase,” he said in a dogged tone. “I thought we were having what is known as a relationship. I thought we were getting, well—serious.”
Dorian felt a sudden inappropriate and hysterical urge to break into giggles. “The S word, Deke? Coming from The World’s Last Bachelor, that’s rich.”
Deke inhaled a deep breath and stood up. The expression on his face showed conflict, anger, stubbornness. But he didn’t express any of these emotions.
“I’m going to Paris, anyway,” he said heavily. “Without you. I need to get away. To think.”
She couldn’t move. She hadn’t thought he would do any such thing. She had thought he would laugh or make a joke or allow himself to be drawn into a discussion that would reveal his true feelings for her. She’d thought that he might suggest postponing the trip. She certainly had never dreamed that he would go to Paris—Paris!—without her.
“Are you—are you going to take someone else with you?”
He treated her to a long, hard, penetrating look. She had never seen him look so serious.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said, and with that he wheeled around and walked swiftly to the door. She heard him letting himself out.
It was as if a light had gone out of the room when he left. It was as if a chill wind had swept through the apartment, riveting Dorian to her chair, hollowing her out, leaving her empty.
All her suppressed feelings rose in her throat on a wave of bile, and she choked it all back.
She had played the scene all wrong. She knew that now. The script certainly hadn’t called for her to alienate Deke so much that he walked out of her apartment and maybe even her life.
She got up and ran to the phone, thinking that if she called him, they could talk things over. The receiver was in her hand and she was ready to punch out Deke’s number when she realized that if she gave in now, she could possibly find herself giving in to him for the rest of her life.
Her pride wouldn’t let her dial Deke’s number. Instead, she replaced the receiver in its cradle and buried her head in her hands, wondering how it had ever come to this.
Chapter Fourteen
Deke went to Paris alone. He was stubborn enough and hurt enough to exact his revenge by absenting himself from At-lanta. He hoped that Dorian would regret her hastiness in turning down a trip that most women would have snapped up in a minute.
On his first night in France, he asked a perky auburn-haired flight attendant out for drinks and walked with her in the Bois de Boulogne. He took her back to her hotel and left her at the door to her room, even though she invited him inside.
He couldn’t even think of making love to another woman. The only woman he wanted was Dorian.
The next day, he looked up an old friend, a fellow he had met in a youth hostel when he’d backpacked through Europe all those years ago, thinking that the two of them could go out on the town together and get drunk. Instead, Jean-Luc informed him that he was married now and invited Deke to his apartment for dinner.
Deke went, but he left early. He felt claustrophobic in the company of Jean-Luc and his bride Monique, especially since they kept trading long, smoldering glances when they thought he wasn’t looking. Was everyone married these days? Was he, Deke, really The World’s Last Bachelor?
He walked moodily along the Left Bank of the Seine and tried not to notice the honeymooners holding hands. He viewed Notre Dame from the Pont de la Tournelle. He rode the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower and pretended on the way up that Dorian would be waiting there for him with the panorama of Paris as a backdrop.
His fantasy wasn’t there, of course. All he found were memories of her—not memories of her the way he wished she would be, but memories of her as a real flesh-and-blood person.
Fantasy, which had seemed like the only thing he could trust, had collided with reality. Dorian was his fantasy woman, yes. But she was much, much more than that. Talented, sophisticated, quirky, enchanting, clever, fetching and a true blithe spirit. But she was also willful and stubborn and sometimes ill-tempered. He loved the whole package. And because he hadn’t been able to trust the reality, the person she really was, he had walked out of her apartment, maybe even her life.
Now the regrets piled up. He knew now that he should have told Dorian that he loved her when he’d had the chance.
He could always tell her when he got home. Or could he? He and Dorian had never had a real tiff before.
He loved her.
All he could think about was getting back to her, but he wouldn’t go yet. He had impulsively paid the hotel bill for a week in advance, and he wasn’t up to dealing with the flurry of activity and anxious inquiries from the management if he checked out early.
He moped. He searched his soul. And what he realized was that life with Dorian was never boring. Why had he thought that restricting himself to one woman would be? This was boring, this eating alone in restaurants, pointing to items on the menu because he couldn’t pronounce the words, not having anyone with whom to share his thoughts and feelings. And walking alone was boring, and the Mona Lisa with her mysterious smile was boring, and so was the hotel at night with no one there to lie beside him or laugh at what he said.
He was lonely. He felt cut off from communication with everyone, because he didn’t speak French and the French people he happened to meet didn’t speak much English.
But he didn’t call Dorian. Even though they spoke the same language, he didn’t think they understood each other at all.
* * *
“IF YOU LOVE HIM, you should have told him so,” Jill said over lunch in La Roacherie that week.
“Now you tell me,” Dorian said sourly.
“Well, you didn’t ask. You were walking around in a dream world, letting Deke take over your life—”
“He was not,” Dorian said, digging into the chocolate pie that Jill had so thoughtfully made for their lunch.
“Okay, so you proved that he wasn’t taking over your life. And you feel better for it, right?”
“I feel terrible.”
Jill produced a teapot with a flourish. “`Drink a cup of Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Tea and you’ll feel better,’” she intoned in a voice as much like Dorian’s as she could manage.
“I hate you,” Dorian said glumly.
“But you love my chocolate pie,” sa
id Jill. “How many pounds have you gained since Deke left, anyway?”
“Five. And furthermore, I don’t care if I gain five more,” Dorian told her.
“After your snug fit into the clothes the company bought for your big media appearance in New York next month, I should think that would be a worry.”
“It is, kind of. Maybe they can let out the seams,” Dorian said. “Anyway, I don’t think the director of the play Charles told me about will care. A few pounds won’t make as much of a difference on stage as it does on film.”
“You’re still planning to try out for the play when you’re in New York?” asked Jill.
“That’s the present plan. My agent says I’m a cinch for the part. The director told her he’d seen my commercials. Let’s hope my face doesn’t break out the day before I meet him,” Dorian said. She avoided looking at the rest of the pie.
“What a downer you are! Honestly, Dorian, you aren’t yourself without Deke.”
Dorian glared at Jill. “You’re so supportive.”
Jill got up and brought the whole pie to the table. “We might as well finish this.”
Dorian helped herself to another piece.
“Why don’t you call Deke?” Jill asked. “Didn’t you say he’s still in Paris?”
“That’s what Bob’s assistant told me the other day. I thought maybe it was a hint for me to call him.”
“It probably was.”
“But I don’t want to go crawling back.”
“If you’re as much in love with the guy as you say you are, forget crawling. You should go running back.”
“Wouldn’t I be giving in again? Letting him take over my life?”
“Not if it’s your decision to go to him, made of your own free will,” Jill said firmly.
A tear dripped down Dorian’s nose and diluted the whipped cream on top of her piece of pie.
“Dor—? Oh, Dorian, I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“I m-miss him. And I love him. And I never told him. I mean, I even think I’d marry him if he’d ask me,” Dorian said, holding back the sobs.
Jill looked stunned. “Marry? You? I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” she said finally.
The World's Last Bachelor Page 20
