Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (58 page)

     They walked through the cold night in silence.

     When they passed Larry Wolfe, who didn't acknowledge them but seemed intent on his destination, Raoul said, "He is the famous screenwriter. I read somewhere that he is going to produce a movie about Marion Star. It should be very exciting."

     Frieda murmured a vague, "Yes." She couldn't have been less interested in the Wolfe-Star project.

     When they arrived at her cabin, Raoul stepped politely back as Frieda searched her purse for the key. "Thank you for the escort," she said. "I'm sure I would have gotten lost!"

     "I'll wait until you are safely inside."

     "God, I'm cold," she said, wondering why she had said that, and then knowing exactly why she had said it.

     "These cabins have fireplaces," Raoul responded right on cue. "A good hot fire is perfect on a night like this."

     "Yes," she said, bringing out her key and looking right at him, knowing what was happening. "Providing one knows how to start a fire.
I
don't."

     "I would be glad to do it for you, if you like."

     "Thank you," she said, noticing how big and dark his eyes were and just getting lost in them and thinking, Why not? "I would appreciate that." And she handed him the key so he could open her door.

     Inside, she shed her coat and watched him build a fire. He still wore the black overcoat, as if he intended to leave as soon as the fire was going. As he worked, he kept up a light banter.

     Frieda poured herself a drink and said nothing.

     When he was done and flames were struggling up through the logs, Raoul stood, brushed off his hands, and said, "There. Now you'll be warm all night."

     Frieda thought,
Who wrote this dialogue?

     "It's a good hot fire," he said suggestively. "It will burn all night long for you and never go out."

     All night long. Where had she heard that before? "Thank you..."

     But instead of going to the door and saying good-night, as she had expected, he just stood there, smiling, watching her with big, sexy Cuban eyes.

     And then she realized: it was her move.

     A couple of odd thoughts went through her mind at that moment. She thought of Jake, who had died sixteen years ago of prostate cancer. "Marry again, Frieda," he had said when he was in Cedars-Sinai. "Or at least enjoy yourself after I'm gone." And then her daughter, who seemed to harbor some strange notion that widows, or women over fifty, belonged in nursing homes. More immediately, she thought of Bunny, looking so pitifully crestfallen upon hearing about the Syd Stern deal she had blown with her multiple surgeries.

     "Would you like a drink?" Frieda said quietly, almost afraid of his answer—that he would say no, that he would say yes.

     "That would be very nice, thank you," he said, and he removed the long black coat.

     They sat on the sofa facing the fire. There was space between them, but not much.

     "You're a very nice lady," he said, his face illuminated in the flames.

     Frieda said, "Why do you say that?"

     "A lot of people, when I say I'm Cuban, they think I'm a communist. You just told me I had a nice accent. I appreciate that."

     "Tell me about Cuba," she said, and he did. While he talked, Frieda began to go soft. She stared into the flames and listened to him, and suddenly she was very glad she had made that dinner reservation.

     When his hand lightly touched her shoulder, she didn't stiffen, she didn't even think. She just turned to him and smiled. He was so young, so very beautiful...

     And when he kissed her, it was with such tenderness that Frieda was startled. She had expected a macho assault.

     He took the glass out of her hand and drew her into his arms. She felt awkward at first, unused to the feel of a man after so many years. But instincts
came back, and an enormous flood of desire. Raoul kissed so sweetly, not pushy or aggressively, but lightly and almost lovingly. He took his time, as if he had nothing to prove, no need to demonstrate how male he was. As if, in fact, he understood her fears and uncertainties and sensed that any sudden foray into other parts of her body too soon would put her on the alert. It was some time before his fingers moved through her hair, then down her cheek, her throat, along the collar of her blouse.

     When the first button came undone, she drew in a sharp breath. His hand paused, but he kept kissing her, and Frieda melted against him. He went on with the rest of the buttons until she felt a hand that was both hard and soft at the same time insinuate itself under her bra and cup her breast.

     The slow gentleness became urgency then, as she ventured an attempt at exploration, finding a hard chest, a hard stomach, and...a very hard erection.

     Raoul murmured something in Spanish, slipped her blouse off her shoulders, and unhooked her bra. His hand slid up under her skirt and he began to kiss her where she hadn't been kissed in years.

     
It felt so good.

     He drew away, smiling, and he stood up, starting to undress. But Frieda reached up, doing it for him, sliding the jacket and tuxedo shirt off his magnificent olive-skinned torso and then drawing down the trousers.

     He reached for her and brought her to her feet. They kissed standing up for a long time, both of them naked, with his hardness pressing against her thigh.

     "Hurry," she finally whispered.

     He smiled again and led her to the sheepskin rug at the hearth, laid her down. He whispered, kissing her gently, "Let us enjoy it..."

     And then he was inside her, hard, vigorous, youthful. Frieda gasped.
Was
it like this? Oh yes yes yes yes...

     He took
forever.
Just when she thought they were coming to the end of it, he would suddenly slow down and then gently speed up again until once more she thought they must nearly be there. And then he'd go slowly again.

     The last clear-thinking spot in her brain thought, Surely he can't go on like this forever. No man can.

     But he did, until finally she dug her fingernails into his back and whispered, "Now!"

     When she felt a tremor begin in her toes and undulate up her legs, Frieda screwed her eyes tightly shut and thought, Oh God.

     When the wave crashed over her—

     An image—

     Of Larry Wolfe.

     "Oh God!" she cried out.

     She fell back, gasping. He didn't roll off her, but stayed there, to be sure. And when she started to laugh, and then say, "
Oh my God
," he gave her a quizzical look.

     "Raoul," Frieda said. "Oh oh oh." She hurriedly moved out from under him and made her way to the phone by the sofa.

     She dialed quickly, and after a moment said, "Lisa, honey! Yes, Frieda here. Get yourself up to Star's tomorrow morning, first thing. Yes,
Star's.
Palm Springs.

D
ANNY
M
ACKAY SAT DRUMMING HIS FINGERS ON THE STEERING
wheel of his brand-new Jaguar as he waited outside the Wilshire high-rise where the Starlite offices were housed. He had followed Philippa Roberts and her two companions here after they had checked out of the Century Plaza Hotel. They should reappear soon; the receptionist had told him that Miss Roberts would be leaving for Palm Springs today.

     It was getting dark, and the Christmas lights festooning busy Wilshire Boulevard were starting to come on in white-and-silver twinkles. From somewhere nearby, Danny could just make out the melody of "We Three Kings," while shoppers and professional people hurried along the sidewalks, their arms loaded with packages, determined looks on their faces. Danny hated Christmas; it made him nervous. Memories of his mother who had been so beautiful and who had died so young, always came back at this time of the year with knife-like pain.

     Finally, his impatience was rewarded as the familiar white stretch limousine emerged from the cave of the underground parking lot. One of
the passenger windows was down a few inches; he could see her profile. It looked like Beverly. It was Beverly.

     As he followed the limousine onto the 10 Freeway heading east toward Palm Springs, Danny gripped the steering wheel in delicious anticipation of what he was going to do to her. It would be soon now—very soon.

     "Operator," Alan Scadudo said impatiently into the phone, "what happened to my call to Los Angeles?"

     When the answer came in a language he didn't understand, he said, nearly shouting, "
Não falo português.
I don't speak Portuguese."

     "
Desculpe-me, senhor.
I am still trying. All the circuits are busy."

     "Please keep trying, this is urgent."

     "Yes,
senhor.
I will ring you as soon as I have your party."

     Alan hung up and swore under his breath. It was vital that he talk to Philippa right away. He had a bad feeling about this visit to Rio and his meeting with the president of Miranda International. Something wasn't right here; Caspar Enriques wasn't right. The old man had been too cheerful, Alan thought, too cooperative, and too quick to promise that he was going to stop buying Starlite now that he owned 8 percent of the stock, while pleasantly refusing to sign the standstill agreement Alan had brought with him.

     He looked at his watch. His important visitor should be knocking on his hotel room door at any moment.

     Christ, what a day it's been, Alan thought as he went to the window and looked out at the warm Brazilian night. The day had been hot, sizzling the city at just a hundred degrees, and now it had settled down to a humid seventy-two. Alan loosened his tie and thanked God the hotel was air-conditioned. He was staying at the Caesar Park on the Avenida Vieira Souto, where security guards stationed on the roof patrolled nearby Ipanema beach with binoculars to protect hotel guests from being victims of "beach rats," kids who stole anything they could get their hands on. It was on that very beach that Alan had earlier met with Gaspar Enriques.

     Enriques had turned out to be one of those aristocratic old gentlemen frequently seen on Brazilian beaches who like to prove their virility by challenging the ocean. Alan was made to wait on the beach while the
Brazilian septuagenarian dipped into the pounding waves, after which he jogged in place on the sand for half an hour, the gray hairs on his skinny chest sprinkling sea salt with every jolt as he and Alan tried to carry on a business conversation amid the crowds, the noise, and the insects. Alan had not come prepared for the beach; he had worn dark blue wool slacks and a very expensive silk Armani shirt, feeling ludicrous in socks with his cuffs rolled up, and carrying a briefcase. But he had discovered during the course of the meeting that this was not uncommon at Ipanema; he had seen other executive types meeting with client types on the beach, all in swim-suits, all carrying briefcases.

     The real problem with meeting at such a place, for Alan, was that he couldn't wear his shoes with the special lifts inside, so he was reduced to his actual five feet six inches. Another problem was the wind—it blew back his carefully combed thinning hair, exposing the transplant dots to the whole world.

     Even so, the women had eyed him with interest—those aristocratic, olive-skinned, full-breasted creatures whose legs seemed to go all the way up to their armpits. They were naked except for the tanga—the string bikini that had originated in Rio and that might as well not have been there at all. These beauties had a way of looking at a man, a kind of sliding, sideways glance that made him melt right into the sand—especially fifty-five-year-old Alan Scadudo, who hadn't been looked at like that since, well, since never. More than once he had had to say to Enriques, "I beg your pardon, what did you say?"

     After an entire afternoon spent on the beach with the old man, eating ricotta cheese sandwiches, Enriques chatting happily away in perfect English, telling Alan every detail about Miranda International and its throbbing nut export operation, all Alan had come away with at the end of it was an enormous headache and a sunburn. Remarkably little had been accomplished. Now that he looked back over the encounter, he began to see it as some sort of charade, as though he and old Gaspar had simply been acting out a pantomime, dancing at the end of somebody else's strings, as it were, with nothing being really said or done. And now, as his watch ticked off the midnight hour and he waited anxiously for his important visitor, Alan's
misgivings grew. Miranda International was definitely not to be trusted. Philippa had to be alerted at once.

     When there was a knock at his door, he hurried to open it, only to see a waiter with a room service cart. Alan stepped aside while the man wheeled the food in and, with flourishes, set the table, remarking as he did so about the heat, the humidity, the latest soccer scores. When the waiter noticed a small hand-carved doll sitting beside the telephone, he grinned and said, "Ah, you believe in the luck of Iemanja, goddess of the sea? She's very powerful,
senhor
, a very, very lucky goddess."