It was dim and dusty inside and it smelled of insecticide and potting soil, but the wind that entered with them swept the odors away. There was a canvas awning, a remnant of some long-forgotten party, rolled in one corner. Noel spread it on the sandy floor before the open door, then they sank down upon it, side by side, their arms about each other. The rain pounded on the metal roof and poured in splattering streams to the ground. The clatter and roar of it combined with the rushing wind and crash of the surf.
Riva shivered with reaction, though whether it was to the confrontation with Cosmo, the implications of Noel’s kiss, or the wet weather she could not have said. Noel’s arms about her, the feel of his body against hers were welcome. She huddled close, anxious and confused at the feelings that raged inside her. Still, she might have retained some sense of her obligation to Cosmo, some loyalty, if Noel had not cupped her face in his hands and kissed her once more.
His lips were warm and firm and sweet. He took hers as a right, tracing their sensitive line with his tongue, gently abrading the smooth inner lining. He smelled of sea air and sunburn cream and youth, and there was in his hold the hard muscles and sinews of a man still young enough to be daring and unsophisticated enough to be impetuous.
“I want you,” he whispered into her hair. “In spite of everything, I want you. If I am to lose so much because of you, then there should be some reward.”
In his words there was a timbre of despairing rage that seemed almost as if it were directed at her. “What?” she asked in confusion. “What did you say?”
“No, no forget that, I didn’t mean it. It’s just that I want you so desperately I’m ready to use any excuse.”
She would have questioned him further, but his mouth covered hers. He drew down her strapless dress with his free hand and cupped her breast, brushing the nipple into stinging desire. Resistance held her taut for an instant, then it ebbed slowly. There was something right about his touch, about the feel of his body against hers and the taste of his lips; it was as if the two of them had been created for this moment, for each other. To deny it was impossible; to refuse, beyond her strength.
She pressed against him, accepting, offering, holding nothing back. Gently he lowered her to the canvas so that her weight was on her side instead of her sunburned back. His chest swelled with his pent-up breath of pleasure and disbelief, then as he let it out she felt its heat upon her breast followed by the warm, wet tracery of his tongue.
She was melting inside. She had no strength. Her principles and her pride hovered somewhere beyond her ability to recall them. Excitement burgeoned, though within it was a strong vein of terror. What she was doing was forbidden, dangerous. She and the man who held her could be engulfed by the storm or, what seemed worse, discovered. It made no difference except to add intensity to the fire in her blood.
She was making love. For the first time—the only time—there was no sense of restraint as she accepted Noel’s caresses and returned them with care and grace. She delighted in the sculpting of his body and the thick silk of his hair that grew low on his neck and gave herself to the gentleness of his hands. She was free and knew it. She made herself a gift, one that could not be taken and was not required, but could only be given by herself alone. And in return she received him.
He was eager, but the limits of his control were elastic, unending. He sensed her responses and tended them with care and as a joy. He was generous and as natural at his task, and as sweetly competent, as a young pagan. He was delicate but also inventive, blindly reveling in his own sensations but attuned to her every manifestation of delight.
And he was tireless in his superb strength, rhythmic and vigorous. He heard her moans of pleasure and, whispering his joy, increased them tenfold until, in rigid splendor, he joined them with his own.
The storm abated. They watched in silence as the clouds rolled away over the sea and the water turned once more from gray to blue. The waves on the sand still had an angry sound, however, and were dirty white on their crests. It was evening.
Riva waited for Noel to say something about their future. She had no idea what it would be, whether he would suggest telling his father that they were going away together or possibly ask her to discuss a divorce with Cosmo. The last thing she expected was for him to do nothing.
But that was what he did. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet, then walked with her in somber silence back to the house. He stood for a moment in the living room where Cosmo sat staring out at the sea. When his father said not a word, did not look at either of them, Noel released Riva and walked away, striding toward his room. He stayed there, not even coming out for dinner.
When morning came, he was gone.
At the breakfast table, Cosmo took Riva’s hand and looked into her eyes. It was the first time he had acknowledged her presence since she had returned the evening before. He had spent the night in the guest bedroom, and she had heard him pacing in there until early morning.
Now his voice was gruff but calm. “I’m sorry you had to witness the break between me and my son. I’m especially sorry because I think you feel that I’ve been unjust in some way.”
“Yes, maybe a little.” Riva swallowed as she answered, unable to look at him. There was nothing in his voice to suggest that he suspected how she and Noel had spent their time while they sheltered from the rain, but she could not forget, would never forget.
“I was jealous when I saw you together. I will admit it,” he went on. “But I soon realized no blame could be attached to you. It’s my son’s behavior that is the greatest pain to me. I never dreamed…Well, it’s always a shock when you learn someone you love is not what you thought.”
She moistened her lips in dread. “What do you mean?”
“While you were getting dressed yesterday afternoon, Noel and I had words. I didn’t want to tell you, but I think maybe it would be better for you to know what was said. He admitted to me that he had been making a play for you for the sole purpose of trying to come between us.”
“You are saying that he—he wanted to break up our marriage?”
“That’s it exactly, but it’s not all. He told me you had been giving him the…I believe you might call it the ‘come on.’ “
“He what?” Dismay vibrated through her. She couldn’t accept what she had heard.
“He said that you had been throwing yourself at him. I didn’t believe it, and finally I got the truth. He had been leading you on, trying to get you into his bed just to make trouble.”
“No,” she whispered, blindly shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, my dear, I really am. I expect he was afraid he might have to share his inheritance with a half-brother or half-sister. Or else that you might become too indispensable to the corporation.”
“I can’t believe it.” The words were dazed, edged with sick horror.
“I had thought to spare you the knowledge of just what kind of man my son Noel had become, but it didn’t seem right for you to grieve over something not worth your tears.”
She turned a wide stare on her husband. Had he guessed, after all? No, he could not have, not and still gaze at her with such loving understanding.
Noel. She felt as if something were being torn loose inside her. What of the closeness that had been between them, the sense that they had understood each other as few were privileged to do? Had it all been in her mind? In hers alone?
“It’s horrible,” she whispered, looking away again.
Cosmo gave a heavy sigh as he nodded his agreement. “We can only hope that a few months or years in the Paris operation will make a better man of him.”
But Noel had not gone to Paris. He had joined the Marines and been trained as a member of their most elite fighting unit before being sent to Southeast Asia as a military adviser. His specialty had been electronics and his skill was much in demand. There had been long months, even the best part of years, when they had not heard from him, had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He
had survived, however, and made a great many contacts among the French left in what they persisted in calling Indochina, as well as acquiring valuable Asian friendships. After the fall of Saigon, he had left the military. A short time later, he had shown up at the Paris offices of Staulet Corporation with some innovative ideas for making and marketing microprocessors. His father, informed of them, had given the ideas a green light at Riva’s instigation.
Noel had sent the value of the staid Paris operation soaring like a rocket. He had discovered that the man in charge, the same one Riva had so disliked when she met him, had been skimming the corporate profits for years for the entertainment of a hot little number from Deauville. The man was out and Noel was put in charge. At the end of eighteen months, the operation was running as smoothly as oil on ice.
His marriage a year or two later to a Sicilian princess, the Lady Constance di Lampadusa, had been an event of the most haute society. Riva, by then making regular forays to Washington and Palm Beach, New York and Dallas, had heard rumors of its splendor. The bitchy types who had not been invited said that the “protective specialists”—otherwise known as bodyguards—of the Sicilian dons outnumbered the guests two to one. Riva was unable to confirm or deny the snide rumor; she and Cosmo had been invited but had not attended.
There had been a visit to the newlyweds in Paris eighteen months later on what Cosmo called an inspection trip of the revolutionized office. Riva felt certain the real purpose of the journey was to see his first grandchild, a little girl named for Noel’s mother. By that time it had been many years since Cosmo had seen his son. Noel had changed, there could be no doubt of that. It wasn’t surprising considering all that had happened to him in Vietnam; still, Riva was distressed to see him so withdrawn and uncompromising, so implacable in his judgments. The only subject he and his father seemed able to communicate about was business, and most of their time together was spent discussing one phase or another of Staulet Corporation’s holdings. Riva, deeply involved in the management herself since she had instigated the diversification from sugar and cotton and oil leases into the insurance of shipped freight, was able to follow the details, for what good it did her. There was no satisfaction in communicating about such dull matters. Constance, who could follow none of it and had no interest in doing so, had had absolutely no reason for her obvious jealousy.
The divorce that followed the birth of Noel’s second child was quiet, or at least it appeared so from the other side of the Atlantic. Noel had announced it almost as an afterthought at the end of an overseas call, one of those he had come to exchange every two or three weeks with his father. A few months later, he had flown to Louisiana for a special executive meeting. It had been at that time that Noel had taken Riva aside and asked her how long it had been since his father had had a medical checkup.
It had been some time. Cosmo was hardly ever ill. He ate moderately, got a reasonable amount of exercise from walking, did not smoke or drink to excess. If he had a bad habit, it was his dedication to work.
He should have lived to be a hundred; instead he had barely made it to seventy.
When he had received the final prognosis, heard the terrible word, the big C feared by so many, he had sent for Noel. Blood had triumphed. It was obvious to Riva that Cosmo meant to deliver the company he had worked so hard to maintain and increase to his son. It had seemed only right. She had been shocked when she was told that she would be listed as a co-owner, equal in authority and in power.
That was not the only shock of those days. Late one night, when the room where Cosmo lay was still and dim, lighted only by the lamp beside his bed and the miniature reading lamp attached to the book Riva read as she sat beside him, her husband had called to her.
“Yes, Cosmo,” she said, putting her book down and getting to her feet at once to move to his side. “I’m here. Are you hurting?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. No, there is something—”
“Do you want a drink of water? Or the urinal?”
A shadow of annoyance crossed his face and was gone. As he spoke, his words were shortened by pain and the fluid slowly gathering in his lungs. “I have to tell you. I lied. That day on the island, I lied.”
Something shifted inside Riva, but she kept it from showing on her face. Or thought she did. “What do you mean? You lied about what?”
“Noel never said what I told you. He never tried to come between us. If he made love to you, he did it for himself.”
The words were like knives slicing deep. The greatest surprise was not the knowledge they contained, however, but how much they could still hurt. Still.
“But why did you say it? What made you do such a thing?”
He looked at her with perspiration dampening his thin, almost white hair and with pleading in his faded eyes. “I was afraid. God help me, but I was afraid you would love him. I was afraid of my own son, so I sent him away. I sent my son away.”
Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and ran into the hollows beneath. She watched them with anguish rising inside her, for herself, yes, but also for him. And for Noel. She reached for a tissue, and blotted the moisture away with gentle care, then took his hand to hold it between her own.
“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. He’s back again now.”
“I lied to him, too. I told him that you were trying to seduce him and that you meant to put the blame on him so that I would disown him.”
“Dear God,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
“I hurt you, I know. I’m so sorry. So sorry.”
She breathed softly in and out, once, twice, three times to control the terrible, exploding agony under her breastbone. Finally she said softly, “No harm done. It—it doesn’t matter, not really.”
“Oh, it matters. Only I think I hurt myself more than you. I’ve never known what you would have done. If you would have loved me just the same.”
“Of course I would.” She put her cheek against the back of his hand to hide the seeping tears.
“Of course you would,” he repeated on a sigh, but he did not sound as if he believed it.
An hour later, with his hand still in hers, he gave another long sigh, then his breathing stopped.
Riva, sitting in the darkened room at her sister’s bedside, rubbed her temples with the fingertips of both hands. So much love, so much pain, and so many years. She still could not believe Cosmo had been so ruthless, so manipulative, in separating her from his son. She sometimes wondered if Noel knew, if Cosmo had brought him home especially to tell him. If so, there had been nothing in the six months since to show it.
But then what did she expect? She and Noel were no longer young and thoughtless and prone to impulse. There was too much resentment, too much suspicion between them.
Yet he had kissed her in the darkened limousine. Why had he done that? Why? Had it been the sheer male need to dominate physically where he could not do so on a business level? Had it been to make a point about his father’s memory? Or did it mean that he still felt something for her, if only desire?
What did she feel? She wished she knew. There had been a time when he first went away that his absence had felt like a death. His image had haunted her, rushing in upon her at unexpected moments. There had been songs popular that summer that she could not bear to hear because she and Noel had heard them on the island together, and it had been a long time before she stopped finding excuses not to go back there. Nevertheless, she had forgotten. The songs had lost their power to hurt, and she had filled the island house with people and noise and gaiety. Cosmo had surrounded her with love and trust, and she had been happy. She really had been happy.
That she had responded to Noel’s kiss with astonishing fervor need not mean anything. It had been a long time since a man had held her, since well before Cosmo’s final illness. It could have been no more than a purely physical response; it didn’t have to be love. She wasn’t sure she was even capable of the kind of love she read about in book
s, the all-consuming passion for which no sacrifice was too great. She was basically self-contained. She was grateful for the love and affection that came her way, yes, but still sufficient inside herself without it. She sometimes wondered if in her efforts toward self-control, toward never letting anyone suspect she was Erin’s mother, and in forgetting what had happened during that island storm, she had somehow lost the ability to love.
It would, perhaps, be a fitting penalty.
FIFTEEN
ANNE GALLANT PICKED UP THE CREAM-COLORED silk scarf that lay on the hotel’s bedroom dresser. She looked at it for a moment with raised brows, then shook it out. It was large and fine, beautifully hemmed and marked with a designer’s insignia, but it was not hers. She never wore that color.
She had just come in from the luncheon that had followed the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The scarf had been lying there, carefully folded. She could not imagine where it had come from. At least, she didn’t want to imagine it. That it was lying there in plain view and so carefully placed made her think it might have been put on the dresser by the maid; other things gathered up during the twice-daily inspection of the room had found their way there: a belt that had slipped to the floor behind the dresser while Anne changed in haste, one of Edison’s ties slung over the bathroom towel rack.
With the scarf in her hand, she walked to the phone, picked up the receiver, and called Housekeeping. A few minutes later, the floor maid was knocking on the door.
“I found the scarf behind the sofa, Mrs. Gallant,” the young brown-skinned girl said in her soft voice. “I didn’t tear it or anything, I promise.”
“No, no, I know you didn’t,” Anne said. “The only problem is, it isn’t mine. It must have been left by a previous guest.”
The girl frowned. “I don’t see how. We vacuum behind the sofas after every checkout. Maybe the lady visitor left it.”
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