His One-Night Mistress

by Sandra Field

The wedding date wasn’t set. She’d won this round.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE cab dropped Seth off in front of Rudolfinum, the neo-Renaissance concert hall on the banks of the Vltava in Prague. It was pouring rain. He ran for the entrance, his black shoes splashing through the puddles.

  He was late. He’d be lucky if he made it for the intermission.

  He hadn’t planned to come to Prague. He’d planned the exact opposite. To keep his distance from Lia for a while. Let her cool her heels, come to her senses and decide to marry him.

  The usher led him through the well-dressed crowd mingling during the intermission to the best box in the house; Seth had achieved this by pulling any number of strings at once. The door to the box closed behind him. He hung up his raincoat and sat down in the plush seat. His trousers clung damply to his legs. His hair was wet.

  But he’d made it in time to hear Lia play.

  The audience as well as the orchestra were filtering back to their seats. The stage was high-arched, backed by an array of gleaming organ pipes. Seth’s box was in full view of the podium. Would Lia see him?

  When she was playing, her focus was too strong for her to be distracted. He hoped.

  He hadn’t made love to her since that night at Meadowland. It felt like forever. Wasn’t that why he was here? To make love to Lia?

  He was here to change her mind on the subject of marriage.

  He had a reputation as a perennial bachelor; in the early days of his career, the gossip magazines had used up considerable ink trying to pair him off with one glamorous beauty after another, all to no avail. Yet now he was determined to marry a woman he didn’t love, a woman who was, moreover, resisting him every step of the way.

  Did he want to marry solely for Marise’s sake?

  Hadn’t he been avoiding this question all week?

  A panel in the wall swung open and directly across from him Lia walked out on the stage. The audience broke into spontaneous clapping. As she acknowledged the applause, looking around her, she suddenly saw him.

  Her steps faltered. Even from his perch, Seth could see shock flash across her face. Then it was gone, erased as though it had never been. She took her place by the podium and smiled at the conductor.

  Her dress was scarlet, strapless and slim-fitting, her lips the same uncompromising color. Her hair was drawn back with two sparkling clips; with a clench in his gut Seth noticed she was wearing the earrings he’d given her. Just before the conductor raised his baton, she looked directly at Seth.

  Intimate. Intense. Challenging. How would he describe that look? It had gone straight through him, he knew that much.

  As she raised her instrument to her chin, the orchestra played a single chord. Then the violin began its restless, lonely searching, lyrical and melancholy. Seth sat stone-still. Although the Nielsen violin concerto had long been one of his favorites, tonight it was as though he’d never heard it before. Lia was playing for him alone, he knew she was; as the minutes passed, she released all her love, passion and pain in a glorious outpouring of music that shook him to the core.

  The final chord filled the sumptuous hall. A roar of applause broke out. Feeling as though he’d been stripped naked in full view of every soul in the hall, Seth got up, left the box and sought out the house manager in his office. “Would you see that Lia d’Angeli gets this note?” he said, passing over a sealed envelope with a banknote discreetly tucked beneath it.

  “Certainly, sir. My pleasure.”

  Seth thanked him and took a cab through the unrelenting rain back to his hotel in the Old Town. The next move was up to Lia.

  Either she came to him of her own free will, or not at all.

  He had a shower, changed into casual slacks and a sweater and poured himself a drink. The post-concert reception, he knew, could take a while. All he had to do was wait. When had he ever sat in a hotel room in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and waited for a woman to come to him?

  Never.

  The minutes ticked by. He flicked through the channels on the TV, trying to attune his ears to the various languages, then giving up in disgust. It was nearly midnight. Shouldn’t she be here by now?

  The phone rang on the cherrywood desk, making him start. Seth snatched it up. “Yes?”

  “It’s Lia. I’m in the lobby.”

  “Suite 700. Take the elevator to the top floor.”

  “I’ll be right up,” Lia said and put down the phone.

  But for a moment she stayed where she was, gazing blindly at the elegant Art Nouveau decor. She knew what would happen if she went to Seth’s suite. Was that what she wanted? If not, why was she here? Gathering her skirts in her hand, she walked swiftly toward the elevator.

  Just as she raised her fist to tap on the door of his suite, Seth opened it. Instinctively she took a step backward, and saw his jaw harden. “Lia,” he said, “come in. Did you get soaked in the rain?”

  “The taxi driver very kindly held his umbrella over me, and then parked under the awning of the hotel,” she prattled. “He loves Dvořák, so we had lots to talk about.”

  “You probably made his night. Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks. Not after what happened in Vienna.”

  “Were you pleased with the concert?” he asked, cursing himself for making small talk as though she were a casual acquaintance.

  “Yes. Were you?”

  So the small talk was over. “How could I not be,” he said, “when you played only for me?”

  She didn’t bother denying it. “Another way of telling you I love you.”

  “You think I’m so thickheaded that I wouldn’t realize that? I heard you. Heard love, desire and tears.”

  “I was pleading my case.” Her red dress swishing softly as she moved, she walked closer to him, resting one hand on his sleeve. “Perhaps too strongly. But I can’t make myself into another kind of woman, Seth. I am who I am. Impatient. Passionate. Uncompromising. Can you not love that woman?”

  “I’ve never in my life fallen in love. Had no use for it.”

  “So I’m the same as all the rest?” she flashed.

  “You’re utterly different—but I can’t make myself fall in love to order!”

  “Won’t, you mean.”

  “Can’t is what I said.”

  “Then I won’t marry you.”

  “What is this,” he demanded, “a battle of wills to see who comes out on top?”

  “As it stands now, we’re all losers. You. Me. And Marise.”

  “Now you’re fighting dirty,” he grated.

  “Did you expect any different?”

  In spite of himself, he lifted one hand to trace the soft curve of her cheek and the jut of bone above it. “I want to go to bed with you.”

  Unconsciously she swayed toward him. “I want that, too,” she whispered.

  His heart was juddering in his chest. “Suits me a lot better than arguing.”

  “No more words, Seth,” she said with sudden fierceness. “Take me to bed. Make love to me, make me forget everything but your body.”

  He lifted her off her feet, carrying her across the thick carpets to his bedroom with its imposing four-poster bed; there, he laid her down on her back and flung himself on top of her, hauling his sweater over his head. “You drive me out of my mind,” he muttered, then plunged to ravage her mouth. Her tongue laced with his, her teeth scraping his lip, a small pain that only served to inflame him. She was writhing beneath him, mouth and hands so hungry that he lost all restraint. Throwing himself sideways, carrying her with him, he yanked on the zipper of her dress and tugged it down the length of her body.

  Her bare breasts, the slide of silk over her hips…would he ever have enough of her? She was fumbling with the clips in her hair, tossing them onto the floor so that her hair spread like dark satin on the pillow. Her irises, so dark he could lose himself in them, were blurred with desire.

  Fiercely he took from her, giving no quarter, feeling her
nails rake his back, her teeth nip his shoulder. She was his mate, meeting him in every way that mattered, hunger for hunger in a primitive dance. Tasting, teasing, arousing, he traveled every inch of her body, making it his own.

  She was his.

  But he didn’t love her.

  When he entered her, she arched and bucked, her fingers like manacles around his wrists. He plunged, deep, deeper, groaning her name as he fought for breath.

  The climax ripped through her, leaving her breathless and spent; his whole body pounding his own release, Seth dropped his head to her shoulder, feeling sweat cool on his bare back.

  He had no memory of how he’d gotten out of the rest of his clothes. Or where they were. Not that it mattered.

  He turned on his side, burying his face between her breasts. This was what he wanted, Seth thought dimly. Lia in his arms. What more could there be?

  He’d left Malaysia very early that morning after three days of intense meetings. With the suddenness of a small boy, Seth fell asleep.

  Lia lay still, listening as Seth’s breathing settled into a smooth rhythm. For the first time after making love to him, she felt less than fulfilled. Physically she was satiated; that was a given. But her soul felt empty, she thought unhappily. At the moment of climax, she’d wanted to cry out how much she loved him; and hadn’t done so. He didn’t want to hear those words from her, because he didn’t share them.

  How strange to feel lonely when Seth’s arm was draped over her hip and his breath was wafting the curve of her breast. Yet lonely was how she felt.

  She waited another few minutes before slipping free of his embrace. He muttered something in his sleep, reaching for her. Paralyzed, she crouched on the bed. Only when his breathing had steadied again did she scramble to the floor. There were two fleecy robes in the bathroom. Belting one around her, she went to sit in one of the window seats, upholstered in embossed brocade. The lights of Prague twinkled through the leaded panes. Like diamonds on black velvet, she thought, fingering the earrings Seth had given her.

  A church spire lanced the darkness. Several streets over, the river wound its lazy way through a city where she’d always felt at home, so permeated was it with music.

  But now she felt exiled. In playing for Seth, she’d given him her heart; yet she’d failed to reach him, or to change him. Dropping her head to her knees, Lia let the slow tears course down her cheeks.

  She wept in silence until she was drained of emotion. Getting up, she went to the bathroom, washed her face and walked slowly back to the bedroom. Her dress was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Red as blood, she thought with a superstitious shiver, and picked it up. Her underwear was on Seth’s side of the bed, tangled in his trousers. Moving as quietly as she could, she got dressed.

  But as she reached for the cold sparkle of her hair clips, she bumped the side of the bed. Seth stirred. “Lia?” he muttered. “What are you doing?”

  Frozen to the spot, she watched him rear up on one elbow. He reached for the bedside lamp and switched it on. Blinking in the light, she said, “I’m going back to my hotel.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed, running his fingers through his tousled hair; he was instantly awake in a way that frightened her. “You’re running away,” he said. “Just as you did in Paris.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she said bitterly. “Because of Marise, I’m tied to you.” She dropped the clip into her evening bag. “I have to fly to Basel in the morning—a final concert before I go home.”

  “Why are you leaving now, in the middle of the night?”

  The truth, she thought. Why not tell the truth? “I can’t do this,” she said, despair thinning her voice. “I love you. To be with you like this, knowing you don’t love me—it’s too painful. It tears me apart.”

  “You came to my hotel. Knowing what would happen.”

  “I didn’t know how I’d feel afterward—how could I? Tell me, Seth, why did you come to the concert?”

  “I couldn’t stay away. I needed to touch you, hold you in my arms. It nearly drove me crazy having you stay in my house last weekend, knowing I couldn’t take you to bed. Couldn’t even kiss you the way I wanted to.”

  “There’s more to making love than the physical,” Lia cried. “Do you know how I felt tonight? Why I couldn’t go to sleep? I was lonely. Horribly, desperately lonely. I can’t separate making love with you from being in love with you. It’s that simple. And that complicated.”

  He said in an ugly voice, “So if I don’t fall in love with you, I don’t get to go to bed with you?”

  “You make it sound like I’m blackmailing you! I’m just trying to protect myself.”

  He stood up and walked over to her, unselfconscious in his nudity. “Come to bed with me now, Lia…you need to sleep. I don’t know what we’re going to do any more than you do. But surely we can work something out.”

  His body, as well-known to her as her own, towered over her, pulling her to him as effortlessly as a magnet attracts metal. “I can’t, Seth,” she whispered. “It hurts too much. You’re giving me all the gifts of your body—but you’re holding the rest back.”

  “I’m not holding anything back—it’s not there to give.”

  His words were like a death knell. “I’ll stay out of your way when you come to Meadowland to see Marise,” Lia said tonelessly, “and Nancy can deliver her when she goes to Manhattan to stay with you.”

  “Marise is a highly intelligent child. You think we can behave like a couple of strangers without her noticing? You told me she deserves parents who love each other. I’m not so ambitious—as far as I’m concerned, she deserves parents who can be in the same room together.”

  “Stop!” Lia exclaimed, covering her ears. “I’ll do the best I can, for Marise’s sake—I promise.”

  “Then marry me,” Seth said harshly.

  Knowing she had to get out of here, Lia said nastily, “I see how you got to the top—you’re ruthless, you don’t care about other people’s feelings. I’ll clear it with Nancy when I get home, and you and Marise can work out how often you want to see each other. Dammit, where’s my other shoe?”

  “Under the bed,” he said, bending to retrieve it, then passing it to her.

  She took it gingerly and shoved her foot into it. “Good night. Sleep well.”

  She looked like a firecracker about to explode. She also looked like a woman on the edge. “Lia,” he said hoarsely, “I can’t help the way I was brought up. That night when I overheard my mother telling Dad about the abortion—it killed something inside me. The ability to love. I can’t give myself to a woman, it isn’t in me.”

  Her eyes were dark as woodland pools. “You’re saying I should take you as you are?”

  Grateful for her understanding, Seth said, “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying. I’ll be faithful to you, I’ll be the best father to Marise that I can possibly be…but that’s as far as it goes.”

  She remembered how her violin had wandered through a desert of notes, searching for a place to rest, only finding it after long struggle; and shook her head. “You already love Marise. Your father and you are mending years of neglect.” Her lips curved gently. “And you love music. How can you say you’re unable to love?”

  He didn’t smile back. “I’m talking about you, not Marise or my father. I’ve lived with myself for a long time—I should know by now what I’m capable of.”

  He looked so adamant. So unmovable. “You’re letting fear run your life,” Lia accused.

  Flicked on the raw, Seth said, “I wish it was as simple as that. It’s not. It’s a blankness—an emptiness. A lack. Hell, I don’t even know how to describe it.”

  “So tell me about it,” Lia said fiercely. “Make me understand.”

  Why not tell her? What did he have to lose? Seth sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was eight years old, a year older than Marise. I’d sneaked down to the library that night to get a book—I used to read in bed till all ho
urs—when I heard my father coming, and hid behind the big leather couch. He sat down at his desk and started going through some bills. Then my mother came down the hall, talking to one of the servants. Dad called her in and held out a piece of paper, asking what she’d had done at the private clinic she always went to.”

  He paused, lost in memory. His mother had been wearing a black cashmere sweater and a strand of pearls; as a boy, he’d thought it was weird that a pearl could come out of an oyster. “She said she’d had an abortion,” he went on, ironing any emotion from his voice. “I’ll never forget the shock on my father’s face. He asked if there’d been a medical reason. No, she said, she simply didn’t want another child. Then my father asked if it had been a boy or a girl. A girl, she said indifferently, as though she was talking about a dress she’d discarded. My father was crying, tears sliding down his face—it terrified me. A daughter, he said. Eleonore, you know I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

  Seth rubbed his jaw, trying to lessen the tension. “I didn’t know what abortion meant, but I knew my mother had done something terrible. Then my father said, How could you have done that? My mother rarely lost her temper, control was too important to her. But she lost it then, screamed at my father that she’d never bring a little girl into the world, threw a priceless crystal statue at one of the cabinets—there were shards of glass everywhere—and stormed out of the library. Eventually my father got up, staggering like an old man…he went down the hall and I heard his bedroom door close. That’s when I ran upstairs to bed.”

  “Seth, that’s a terrible story,” Lia faltered. She reached out her arms, her one urge to comfort the little boy he’d been and the man he’d become.

  He struck them down. “Don’t,” he said in a voice scraped raw, that long-ago dissonance of terror and incomprehension swirling in his head. “This wasn’t a bid for sympathy.”

  “I didn’t think it was.” Lia made one last try, letting the words pour out. “Seth, I talked to your father last weekend—on Sunday, after you’d left. He told me a little about your mother’s upbringing, how violent it was. Despite my parents’ careers, I had such a happy childhood, filled with music and the constant undercurrent of knowing I was loved. I can’t imagine a childhood like Eleonore’s. It made me understand her a little—perhaps even begin to forgive her for the harm she did to me. Couldn’t you do the same?”