Marcus couldn't believe she was only twenty-one when she told him, she was so mature for her age, and she had a sophisticated look to her that made her seem older. She still wore her thick auburn hair pulled straight back, but she often wore it in a chignon now, and she wore the kind of clothes she saw the models wear, whenever she could afford them. But Marcus was used to young girls who looked older than they were. Once or twice, he'd even been foolish enough to go out with fifteen-year-old models, thinking they were older.
“So what do you do yourself when you're not working?” he asked with interest over dinner at Gordon. He had just found a studio, it was a sensational loft, he'd explained, with living quarters and everything he needed.
“I keep busy enough.” She had started bicycling, and one of her new roommates was teaching her to play tennis. They were pastimes she'd never had time for before. The only sports she'd ever done were a little weight lifting and some jogging in prison, but she wasn't about to tell him about her two years at Dwight. She never intended to tell anyone that, for the rest of her life. She had taken Luana's advice to heart, and left it firmly behind her.
“Do you have a lot of friends?” he asked, intrigued by her, she was very closed and very private, and yet he sensed that there was a wealth of woman within her.
“Enough,” she smiled, but the truth was, she didn't, and he had already heard that. He had asked a lot of people about her. He already knew that she never went out with men, that she kept to herself, that she was very shy, and she did some kind of volunteer work. He asked her about it over coffee, and she told him a little about St. Mary's.
“Why that? What's so intriguing to you about battered women?”
“They need help desperately,” she said in a serious tone, “women in that situation think they have no way out, no options. They stand on the edge of a burning building and you have to pull them out of it, they won't just jump to freedom.” She knew better than anyone. She had never thought there was any way to get free of her own situation. She had had to kill to save herself, and then at what cost. She wanted others to have to go to less extreme measures than she did.
“What makes you care about them so much, Grace?” He was so curious about her, and she gave away so little. He had been conscious all through dinner how cautious she was, how outwardly friendly, but inwardly guarded.
“It's just something I want to do. It means a lot to me, especially working with the kids. They're so helpless, and so damaged by everything they've been through,” just as she was, and she knew it. She knew fully how scarred she was, and she didn't want them to be too. It was her gift to them, and it made her life worth living, knowing that her pain would serve someone else, and keep them from traveling the same agonizing road she had. “I don't know, I guess I have a knack for it. I think about going back to school, and getting a psych degree sometimes, but I never seem to have time, with work and everything … maybe someday.”
“You don't need a psych degree,” he grinned, and she felt something for him she'd never felt before, and it frightened her more than a little. He was very appealing. “You need a man,” he concluded.
“What makes you so sure?” She smiled at him. He was like a big beautiful kid, as he reached out and took her hand in his own.
“Because you're lonely as hell, in spite of everything you say, and all the bravado about how great your life is. My guess is you've never had a real man at all, in fact,” he narrowed his eyes and looked at her appraisingly, as she laughed, “I'd bet my last ten cents you're a virgin.” She made no comment and took her hand away gently. “I'm right, aren't I, Grace?” There was so much he didn't know, and she shrugged noncommit-tally. “I am,” he said, with confidence, sure of exactly what she needed. Tutored by the right man, he sensed that she could be an extraordinary woman.
“Standard solutions are not the answer for everyone, Marcus,” she said, sounding a lot older than twenty-one again. “Some people are a little more complicated than that.” But Marcus thought he knew her and she was just scared, and shy, and very young, and she probably came from a very straitlaced background.
“Tell me about your family. What are your parents like?”
“Dead,” she said coolly. “They died when I was in high school.” That explained some of it to him, she had had a major loss, and had been alone for several years. That was some of the loneliness, he suspected.
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Nope. Just me. No relatives at all, in fact” No wonder she seemed so grown up, she had obviously been on her own for years, he surmised. He had painted a portrait of her, entirely of his own invention.
“I'm surprised you didn't run out and marry your high school sweetheart,” he said with new respect in his voice. “Most people would do something like that, if they found themselves all alone at your age.” She was a strong girl, in fact she wasn't a girl at all, she was a woman. And he liked that.
“I didn't have a high school sweetheart to marry me,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What did you do? Live with friends?”
“More or less. I lived with a bunch of people.” In prison and jail … she wondered what he would say if she told him the truth. She couldn't even begin to imagine his reaction. He would surely be horrified if she told him she'd killed her father. And somehow the irony of it made her laugh. He really had no idea who she was. or what she was about. No one did. The people who knew her were all gone now, like Molly, or David, and Luana and Sally. She had stopped sending postcards to them and she didn't hear from David anymore. There was no point writing to him anyway. Her life was her own now. All she could do for the people she had cared for, and all the others, was the kind of work she was doing at St. Mary's. It was her way of paying back all the people who'd been kind to her over the years. There were so few, but in their memory, she wanted to help others.
“It must be rough for you on holidays,” he said sympathetically. “Like Christmas.”
“Not anymore,” she smiled. Not after Dwight. Christmas could never be as bad as that again, no matter where she was. “You get used to it.”
“You're a brave girl, Grace.” Braver than he knew. Much, much braver.
They went out for drinks after dinner that night, to a place he'd discovered that had an old jukebox and fifties music. And on Sunday they went bicycling around the lake. It was a beautiful warm June afternoon and everything was blossoming. And in spite of all her warnings to herself, she loved being with him. He was very patient with her, and didn't try to rush anything. He seemed to understand that she needed time, and a lot of tender loving care before moving forward. But he was willing to spend the time with her, and he didn't do anything more than kiss her. He was the first man she had ever even been kissed by, other than her father. And even that was frightening at first, but she had to admit, she liked it.
But as usual, Marjorie was full of warnings when Grace came home after spending a Saturday afternoon with him three weeks after he'd come to town. They had been out buying secondhand equipment for his studio. The agency had already started assigning work to Marcus, and the Swansons were very pleased. He had a lot of talent. “Enjoy him while you can,” Cheryl had said with a smile, “he won't be here long. I'll bet he's in New York within a year, or Paris. He's too good to last here.”
But Marjorie had other things to say about him. She had a network of friends all over the world, who were all models. And a friend of hers in Detroit had had some ominous things to report about Marcus.
“She told me he raped some girl a few years ago, Grace. Watch it. I don't trust him.”
“That's nonsense. He told me all about that. She was sixteen and she looked twenty-five. And according to Marcus, she practically raped him.” Marcus had told her she had practically torn his clothes off. It had been four years earlier and he had been naive and foolish. And he had seemed genuinely embarrassed when he told her.
“She was thirteen, and her father tried to have him put in jail,”
Marjorie said sternly. She didn't like stories like that. There were lots of stories of abuse of young models. “Supposedly, Marcus bought his way out of it. And there was some other story like that, maybe that was your sixteen-year-old. And Eloise said he did a lot of porno work to pay the rent. He doesn't sound like such a nice guy to me.”
“That's bullshit,” Grace said, defending him tardy. He wasn't that kind of guy. She could tell. If there was one thing she had learned from her experiences, and working at the agency, it was people. “People always say stuff like that when they're jealous. She probably had the hots for him, and he didn't go for her so she's pissed off,” Grace said matter-of-factly, annoyed that Marjorie was being so unfair to him. He didn't deserve that. She was so hard on people sometimes, and so uptight. She was like a real house mother. But Grace knew she didn't need one.
“Eloise isn't like that,” Marjorie said, defending her friend in Detroit. “And you'd better watch yourself. You're not as smart as you think you are. You don't go out with enough guys to be able to smell out the bad ones.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.” It was the first time she had gotten really furious at Marjorie, and her eyes were blazing. “He's a really decent guy, and he's never done more than kiss me.”
“Great. I'm glad for you. I'm just telling you, the guy has a lousy reputation. Listen to that, Grace. Don't be stupid.”
“Thank you for the warning,” she said, with a tone of irritation. And five minutes later she went to her room and slammed the door behind her. What rotten things to say about poor Marcus. But their business was like that sometimes. People who didn't get jobs blamed photographers, and photographers who wanted to score and didn't said terrible things about models, claiming that they were drug addicts, or had come on to them. Models claimed they'd been raped. There were a lot of stories like that in the business, and Grace knew it. But so did Marjorie. She knew better than to listen to that kind of gossip. And shooting porno was really a lot of nonsense. He had told Grace that he had even waited on tables at times in order to pay the rent on his studio in Detroit. He had never said a word about porno, and even as unattractive as that was, Grace knew instinctively that he would have. He was a very open, straightforward person, and he was very honest about confessing his faults and past sins to her. She had never trusted anyone in recent years as much as she trusted Marcus.
They went to the Swansons’ Fourth of July party together in Barrington Hills, and Cheryl begged him openly to get Grace to let him take some shots of her. She was growing prettier by the day, and she thought that Marcus was just the right man to break the ice and get Grace to do it But Grace laughed at them both, and shook her head, as she always did. She had absolutely no interest in being a model.
Marcus talked to a lot of the models at the party that afternoon, and he seemed to get along with everyone, and that night Marjorie told her pointedly that he had made dates with two of them, and she thought Grace should know it.
“He's not married to me,” she said, defending him again. They weren't sleeping with each other after all. He had asked her to, and she had said she wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment. But she was close to it. She just needed more time with him, although she trusted him already. She thought she might be falling in love with him. In a way, Marjorie's telling her about the other girls pushed her a little further in that direction. But she didn't dare ask him about it when she saw him the next day, and he asked about taking her pictures.
“Come on, Grace … it's not going to hurt anything … just for us … for me … you're so beautiful … let me take some shots of you. I won't show them to anyone if you don't like them. I promise. Cheryl is right. You'd be fabulous as a model.”
“But I don't want to be a model,” she said, and really meant it.
“Why not, for heaven's sake? You've got everything it takes. Height, looks, style, you're thin enough, young enough … most girls would give anything to have what you've got, and have a chance. Grace, be sensible … or at least just try it. What could be easier than to do it with me? Besides, I want to have some pictures of you. I've been seeing you for a month, and I miss you when you're not around.” He teased, and nuzzled her neck, and much to her own amazement, by the end of the afternoon, she relented, just for him. And she made him promise not to show anyone the pictures. They made a date for a shoot the following Saturday, and he warned her that she'd better not cancel.
“I don't know what you're so shy about.” He laughed as they made spaghetti in his kitchen in the loft. And that night they came closer to making love than ever before, but in the end, she said she needed to wait. It was the wrong time of the month for her, and that wasn't the way she wanted to start their relationship. Besides, she wanted to buy a little more time, and a week wouldn't hurt anything. The way she felt about him, it would only make it better.
She worried about their photo session all week, she hated the idea of being the center of attention like that, and of being a sex object. She hated everything it stood for. She liked working with the models at the agency, but she had never wanted to be one of them. It was really only for Marcus that she was doing it, and for fun. He made everything fun to do, as long as she did it with him. And the next Saturday she turned up promptly at ten o'clock, at the studio, as she'd promised. She'd been at St. Mary's the night before, she'd worked late, and she was tired.
He made her some coffee when she arrived, and he had already set up. There was a huge white leather chair, and a white fox throw covering part of it, and all he wanted was for her to sprawl on it in her jeans, and a white T-shirt. He made her untie her hair, and it fell over her shoulders lavishly, and then he exchanged the T-shirt for his own starched white shirt, and little by little he got her to unbutton it, but the shots were all very chaste and modest. And she was surprised by how much fun it was. He took her in a thousand poses, he had great music on, and each shot was almost like a caress as he danced around her.
They were still taking photographs at noon, and he handed her a glass of wine, and promised her a huge lunch of homemade pasta when she was finished.
“You know the way to a girl's heart at least,” she laughed, and he stopped inches from her and peered around the camera sadly.
“I wish I did … I've been working awfully hard at it,” he confessed, and she blushed and looked demure as he took a shot of her that he was thrilled with. Cheryl was going to love these. “Am I getting any closer, Grace? … to your heart, I mean,” he whispered sensually, and she felt a hot flush shoot through her. The wine had made her feel woozy, and she remembered that she hadn't bothered to eat breakfast. It had been stupid to drink wine on an empty stomach, and he'd already poured her a second one, and she was halfway through it. She didn't usually drink wine in the daytime, and she was surprised at how strong this was, when he asked her shyly to take off her jeans, pointing out that the shirt was long enough to cover her completely. In fact it was halfway to her knees, but she balked at taking her jeans off. But finally, when he promised her again that he wouldn't even show Cheryl the shots, she slipped them off, and lay back against the fur again with bare legs and feet and only his shirt covering her, unbuttoned to the waist, but not revealing anything. Her breasts were covered. She felt herself drift off to sleep slowly then, as she lay on the chair, and when she woke up he was kissing her, and she felt his hands caressing her all over. She felt his lips and hands, and she kept hearing clicks, and seeing flashes, but she couldn't tell what was happening, everything was swirling around her, and she kept drifting off and waking up. She felt sick, but she couldn't move, or stop, or get up, or open her eyes and he kept kissing her, and then she felt him touching her, and for a minute she thought she felt an old familiar feeling of terror, but when she opened her eyes again, she knew she had been dreaming. Marcus was standing there, looking down at her, and smiling at her. Her mouth felt dry, and she felt strangely nauseous.
“What's happening?” She felt frightened and sick, and there
were spots in front of her eyes now, and he was just standing there, laughing.
“I think the wine got the best of you.”
“I'm really sorry.” She was mortified, but then he knelt down next to her and kissed her so hard it made her dizzy again. But she liked it. There was a heady feeling to what was happening, she wanted it to stop, and yet she didn't.
“I'm not sorry at all,” he whispered from between her breasts. “You're gorgeous when you're drunk.” She lay back and closed her eyes then, and his tongue trailed tantalizingly down her stomach to her underwear, and then forced its way inside it, licking lower and lower, until suddenly her eyes flew open, and she jumped. She couldn't. “Come on, baby … please …” How long did she expect him to wait? “Please … Grace … I need you …”
“I can't,” she whispered hoarsely, wanting him, but too afraid to let him take her. All she could think of now was the night her father had died, as the room spun around, and she felt sick again. The wine had really done her in, and suddenly she felt like throwing up and she was afraid to say it. Marcus was touching her then, and feeling places where no one had been in years, no one had ever been except her father. “I can't …” she said again. But she couldn't muster the strength to stop him.
“Oh for chrissake, why not?” For the first time since he'd known her, Marcus lost his temper, but as he did, she felt the wine take over again, and with no warning, she swooned and fainted. And when she woke up, he was lying beside her on the huge white leather chair covered in the white fur, and he had all his clothes off. She was still wearing his shirt and her underwear, and he was smiling at her. And all she could feel was a sudden wave of terror. She couldn't remember anything except passing out. She didn't know how long she'd been out, or what they'd done, but it was obvious that something had happened.
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