“Mmmm.” He was pulling the wide drapes that covered the window. “There; now you won’t be upset by the mountain.” He came over and sat on the couch beside her. “Now, that’s better.” He kissed her mouth lightly, lingeringly. “Isn’t that better?”
Jamie gently pulled out of his arms. “I’ve come to ask you something.” She took a small breath. “Please don’t try Silverlode. Whatever thoughts you’ve been thinking about her—put them out of your mind. Because—because if you don’t, she’ll kill you!”
The starkness of her words got to him; his eyes, cleared of their passion, met hers.
“Is that what you want of me, Jamie? Just that? And then what?” He got up from the couch, his hands jammed into his pockets, his big shoulders hunched as if in rage. He went to the window and opened it, sliding back the glass so that the sharp, cold air came in. “That’s the high, Jamie. That’s the ultimate, the prize, right there. Better than a woman, better than ten thousand women, because she’s timeless. She sits there century after century, seducing men, getting them to try to conquer her, but they never do.” He was looking at Ajax, his eyes narrowed, squinting. “She’s one hell of a lady,” he said softly.
For Jamie, sitting there, beginning to get cold, it was the artless end of the evening, an evening that had begun so beautifully. She smiled as Thorne closed the glass and came back to be beside her. The mood of the moment was gone; there was no point now in asking him a question so blunt, so foolish as Do you love me? No point at all, since he had just shown her the great love of his life.
They listened to some music, ate some cheese someone in the cheese business had sent him (from Wisconsin) and ultimately danced, very closely, her face lightly touching the front of his ski sweater.
“Thorne?”
“Don’t talk, just move.”
She looked up at him. “When you said you’ve never felt at home anywhere, did you really mean that?”
“Of course. Rich kids seldom do, you know. It’s part of the curse. My parents owned—let’s see—seven—no, eight houses, not including that farmhouse in the vineyard I told you about. The odd thing is, I can’t remember very much about any of them. Sometimes I’ll recall the shape of a chair, or the way it looked outside when a door was open, but most of the time, it—simply seems as if I’ve never lived anywhere.” He kissed her softly, the sweet wetness of their mouths clinging. “Unreal,” he said.
Jamie struggled to stay in reality, instead of allowing herself to be carried along on that flight that would take her straight to the stars—
“I’m going to make coffee,” she said suddenly, breaking away from him.
“Coffee? Now?”
“Of course.” Jamie slid out of his arms. “We’re going to spend the entire night talking.”
That’s exactly what they did, surprisingly. Around four, when the coffee no longer would work, with Thorne still sitting on the floor against the glass wall, his back to the mountains—Jamie dropped off to sleep.
The talk had been low-keyed, friendly, and although she’d dreaded it, afraid it might only be the question-answer kind of evening, it wasn’t at all.
He had talked, for instance, of his mother: “I don’t remember her very well. They were divorced and I was in school, in Paris. There was a telephone call from my father and I was put on a plane where all the hostesses were overly nice to me. I knew something was wrong, someplace. Women,” he’d told her, “are usually very transparent about their feelings.”
“Am I transparent?”
He’d smiled. “Not all of the time. I guess that’s partly why I want to make love to you.”
He had not wanted to talk about Ajax, however. He kept saying he wanted to make love to her and he told her wild stories about his childhood, where he’d lived with first one parent and summers, the other. When his mother was killed in a boat-sailing race off the coast of Palm Beach, he’d begun going to a series of expensive schools, from most of which he’d managed to get himself expelled. It was a now-familiar kind of story, the lonely child, shuttled from one country to another on jets, attending schools where he had to spend Christmas and other holidays because his father was A Very Busy Man, and the ultimate discovery one day that he was very good at sports.
“Not tennis or golf,” he told her, his voice low and quiet-sounding as they sat in the darkened room, she on the couch, he on the floor, and Ajax staring in on them as if she’d been invited. “I didn’t like either of those. My father played those games; maybe that was why. I tried football but it seemed kind of—senseless to me. Then, I was looking through some of my mother’s things one day, personal things she left me, and I saw my parents together, as teenagers, in Norway. They came over here when Dad was very young and he and my uncles got rich very quickly. But in that snapshot, they were all young and they’d been skiing and they looked so—right, together. It wasn’t until he started making the money, investing in films and things, that the trouble started between them.”
And that was when he had decided to try skiing. Within ten years—he was now twenty-six—he had become world-renowned, a fast, graceful phenomenon who won every race he entered, who took awards and gold cups by the dozens, and who became the darling of the wealthy jet set. He didn’t tell Jamie that, but they both knew it was true.
She had gotten very, very sleepy, and the last question had seemed as if she might have dreamed it, not really asked it.
“What about Ajax, Thorne? What makes you think you have to try Silverlode? What makes you so—certain—”
His voice had come to her from what seemed like very far away: “... last love affair. And the most wonderful, most exciting trip of all—”
She’d gone to sleep, to wake up in absolute panic. Late again for work! David would fire her; he’d be furious, after the last time, when she’d promised never, never again would her work suffer because of Thorne or anyone else.
“It’s terribly, horribly unfair,” she’d said as a weary Thorne drove her down the mountain and into Aspen. “He pays me all that money and now he’s had to get his own breakfast—”
“Don’t tell me you fix his breakfast?” There was a definite edge to Thorne’s voice. “I can’t see any reasoning in that,” he said. “He’s got a couple living in with him, hasn’t he? And he didn’t hire you as a cook, did he?”
She knew Thorne was edgy; they’d slept only a couple of hours and he had wanted very badly to make love, but she’d told him no. Now, he was suddenly showing himself to be jealous of David.
“I do it because I have to get up early anyway, to begin typing. Thorne, can’t you go a little faster, please?”
“I’m not going to kill us both because of some boring book he’s trying to write.”
“It isn’t boring! Please—let’s not be unkind to each other.”
In front of David’s house, where lights burned in the study and the kitchen area, he pulled her into his arms.
“I hope that does it,” he said.
“What?”
“Talking. The big interrogation. I hope that does it.”
She put her hands gently on his face. “Do you know what I think? I honestly think—the more you talk to me, the more I love you.”
She had not meant to say that; it had simply come out of her, out of her worried, loving heart. She had not meant to tell him how she felt about him; it was rather humiliating, since he had never told her he loved her.
“Let’s have dinner,” he told her. “Early.”
“I’ll have to check with David. After all, he’s going to be furious.” She looked rather anxiously toward the house.
“Are you sure you want to go on living in his house, Jamie?”
“Please,” she said gently, “you mustn’t start thinking that way. David and I are good friends and he’s always been a perfect gentleman.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” She wondered if she should tell him now that he wasn’t going to ski down Ajax, th
at already David had set things in motion to stop the exhibition. She decided against it; she was in no mood for Thorne’s explosion, and there would be one, she felt certain.
Jamie got out of the car and, as she’d done before, went into David’s house feeling guilty and anxious. She heard some sound coming from the kitchen; he was very likely fixing himself breakfast, dropping pans, cursing, getting angrier by the minute.
She hurried up to her room and quickly took off the clothes she’d worn on her date with Thorne, getting into her usual comfortable jeans and woolly sweater. Then she glanced at herself in the mirror; her hair looked uncombed and her face looked at once sleepy and yet glowing.
I look like a girl who has been made love to, she thought wryly, remembering the long hours of coffee and conversation. Well, perhaps they had become closer last night; she certainly felt closer to him. Maybe what they had done had, in the last analysis, been more loving than physical sex.
Jamie let her mind flee back to a moment, remembering how, around two in the morning, they’d fried eggs and had eaten them, sometimes smiling at each other across the small Danish table in the kitchen. Yes, they’d been very close.
She decided not to bother combing her hair; she’d do it later. Every second she spent here in her bedroom probably meant David’s wrath had risen ten percent. She hurried down the stairs, down the half-flight leading to the underground kitchen, and shoved open the pretty Dutch door that led to the main cooking area.
There, she stopped cold.
Rhonda Miles, wearing what was unmistakably David’s bathrobe, was pouring coffee from a fragrant-smelling silver pot. There was an air of warmth about the two of them; it was almost as if Jamie had walked into the cozy kitchen of a happily married couple of some years’ standing.
David looked stunned, Rhonda, a bit smug.
“Oh,” was the first thing Jamie said; she felt horribly embarrassed. “Well, I’ll go on up to the study,” she said somewhat feebly. “I’ll explain—why I’m a little late for work, but not until I’ve finished with the work on my desk, please.”
“No need explaining,” David said, his face turning red; “I’ll be along in a few minutes. Oh—want coffee?”
“No, thank you.” She was glad to be, as it were, excused from that room. Rhonda seemed to have enjoyed every second of it, however; that beautiful redhead had smiled ever so sweetly at Jamie as she passed the sugar bowl to David, her hand graceful and pretty, flashing a very large emerald ring.
“The Danish will be done in a moment,” Rhonda said, “darling.”
By the time David finally joined Jamie in his study, to begin the day’s delayed work, she had brushed her short hair into a dark cap of curls, and she sat at her desk near the window, typing.
David gravely handed her a steaming cup of coffee.
“Do you want to ask me what the devil that wild, spoiled infant of a woman was doing, spending the night in my house?” His brown eyes were unreadable behind his glasses. “Or should I ask you why you decided not to come home last night?”
“David, I only work for you. This is not my home. You’ve no—”
“By all the gods and little devils,” David said suddenly, “I believe she set it up! I honestly believe Rhonda wanted you to walk in here and think—” He shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. “I’ll never quite be able to figure that one out.”
“I think she has you figured out,” Jamie told him. “Anyway, I’m awfully glad you two—”
“Rhonda and I are not going through some moronic throes of love, Jamie, so get that notion out of your overly romantic little head.” He frowned. “And in spite of what you say, I still feel a responsibility for you. I’m standing here waiting for you to tell me you weren’t with Thorne Gundersen all night. Were you?”
“I don’t see why you—”
“Because Rhonda told me she’d seen you going up the mountain with Thorne and some friends and you probably would be staying in someplace. Of course, that vicious little witch lied about the whole business, simply because she saw her chance to stay the night here. The Lord knows,” he said, “why she’d go to all that trouble just to sleep on my couch!” He glared at Jamie. “And the couch it was. Not that I wasn’t tempted, but it isn’t sex that one needs, nor money, nor—”
“She loves you, David. I’m sure you know that.” Jamie began straightening sheets of paper. “And that is why she wanted to stay here and that is why she fibbed about my not coming home. It just so happens that I didn’t, but she didn’t know that. She’s jealous of me, you see. I’m sure of that.” Somehow, what was happening between Rhonda and David seemed very clear to her. She felt certain that they loved each other, but David hadn’t discovered that fact yet.
Her own problems with Thorne were not so clear to her.
David held a press conference that afternoon, arranged by his agent, a man who impressed Jamie with his orderliness. The private plane landed exactly when he’d said it would, and by five, David sat in his living room along with Jamie, as he talked to reporters.
He talked about his as yet unfinished book, about “life-styles” and finally about his coming lecture against what he called, “old-fashioned, bloodthirsty ways to produce pleasure, such as watching a man break his back, legs and neck trying to ski down Silverlode.”
Listening to him, Jamie felt her insides go cold at the thought of Thorne’s body lying twisted and dead under some tree on that dangerous run. But that, she assured herself, would never happen. David was seeing to that.
In fact, he seemed so confident that the exhibition featuring Thorne Gundersen would be canceled, in the interest of safety and sanity, that shortly before they stopped work for the day, he announced that he’d promised Rhonda he’d go with her party to Las Vegas.
“That means,” he said, “that you go along, too, of course. If you’ve come to think that Aspen is a merry-go-round of parties, sex, booze and drugs, Jamie—wait until you get a load of Vegas!”
NINE
“You’ve a call from the Lodge switchboard,” Emma told her that evening. “Urgent, they said.”
Urgent. She’d been sitting quietly in her bedroom, writing letters home, waiting with some kind of unreasonable excitement for Thorne’s call. David was out for the evening; he hadn’t said so, but Jamie felt certain he was with Rhonda.
Her hand trembled on the phone.
“Yes?”
“I have to see you,” Thorne told her, his voice strained. “Look—it’s terribly important. There’s been a lot of scuttle on the runs today about the exhibition.”
She should have expected that “Yes,” she said quietly, “I should imagine there would be.”
There was a little pause. “Last night—when we were together last night—did you know what Saunders is going to try to do?”
He was angry, furious; she could tell that. Jamie realized she might very well be seeing a totally new side of Thorne—coldly angry, determined that nobody should try to interfere with his plans.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I knew. I should have told you, but—”
“All that time you were asking me about how it was to be a kid growing up in places all over—all the time I was talking to you, telling you things I never tell women—you knew Saunders was planning to try to stop my run down Silverlode?”
“Thorne—”
“Look,” he told her, “I don’t really think you understand what I’m talking about.”
“Of course I understand. And furthermore—I approve.”
“It’s terribly important that I see you,” he told her, a definite edge to his voice. “I’ll be by to pick you up; I’m at the Lodge.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll—get a cab. I’ll meet you in the main lounge.”
Jamie hung up. The truth was she needed time to gather her thoughts before seeing Thorne, now that he knew of David’s campaign to ban the exhibition. Perhaps she should have talked about that the night before; Thorne was probab
ly right about that.
She put on warm boots, a scarf and wool gloves and a heavy, good-looking green tweed coat she’d bought with her first paycheck from David. She was a small girl, short, so sometimes clothes were a problem. But the coat had been perfect, shockingly expensive and in the window of a very exclusive shop in downtown Aspen. Now she had the feeling that whenever she looked at it in the future, she’d remember she’d worn it with Thorne.
Outside, it was early dark; lights were on in all the big houses along the tree-lined streets. Jamie crossed the street, hands in her warm coat pockets. She’d get a cab as she’d said, but for a while she wanted to walk.
She nearly always felt the urge to get up and go from wherever she happened to be at the time, and walk into the mountains, into the snow and greenness of them, where there were no people, no parties, no fast cars, no pull between what she felt for Thorne and what David had hinted to her might be wrong with him. She’d avoided talking to David about Thorne, not only because it had seemed totally disloyal but because she felt David might have something to tell her she didn’t want to hear.
And for some strange reason she thought again of the broken glass in Thorne’s house. She saw it in her mind as clearly as if it had been put there for a reason. Then, the light changed and she went across the street, walking quickly past the shops where Indian jewelry, chic clothes, hanging plants and hand-carved furniture were displayed. He isn’t like Kurt, she thought, forcing herself to look at Ajax, there in the distance. Kurt wanted to ski Silverlode because it would open doors to international invitations to ski in other exhibitions, but Thorne only wants to make it down Silverlode—as if that were some kind of end for him.
The thought came to her as suddenly as the mental picture of the broken glass did: Thorne knows he won’t make it down that run!
It was such a terrible, earthshaking thought that she had to stop walking for a moment. She found herself near the little corner coffeehouse where her friend Donna worked, and in spite of the fact that Thorne was up there at the Lodge right now, waiting for her, ready to demand things of her she would not do—like get David to stop the ban—she stepped inside the coffeehouse.
Precious Moments Page 11
