The Property of a Lady (60 page)

He held open the door and they filed through, smiling shyly at him and murmuring their thanks. He found them seats at the three-hundred-foot-long bar and, after grabbing one of the fifteen bartenders, asked what they would like to drink, flinching when they asked for lemonade. With a wink at the barman he added in a low voice, “With a touch of gin.”

Azaylee leaned her elbows on the counter, sipping her lemonade and staring wide-eyed at the raffish crowd of drinkers, punters, pimps, and hookers who streamed nightly across the border in search of pleasures forbidden in their native America. Pretty dark-eyed girls paraded their wares, for which there were plenty of takers; alcohol flowed like an endless river and music blared deafeningly. Her nerve ends tingled: It was the most exciting place she had ever been to.

Carlos decided that the dark one was obviously very frightened but the blonde was interesting, with her pale, tumbling hair and those strange, dazzling eyes reflecting her excitement. She couldn’t keep still. She was wriggling on her barstool and nervously knocking back her “lemonade” as if she expected any minute to be arrested. Of course they were too young and innocent to warrant his attentions. He needed someone like their mother, a woman in charge of substantial purse strings, not juveniles out for a thrill. Still, innocence had its own charm, and it might be fun to give the blonde her first taste of corruption. Giving the barman a wink, he ordered two more “lemonades.”

“You must be on vacation from college?” he asked as the barman placed the fresh drinks in front of them.

Azaylee’s face was flushed from the gin and her eyes sparkled as she replied, “Oh, no. We are in the movies.”

“Movies, eh?” He thought of Mrs. O’Hara, the dragon lady who was too beautiful for her own good—or his. She
hadn’t looked like his idea of a stage mother; she was far too grand and dignified. A lady, he would have guessed, with a background of solid family wealth and education. She had put him off so obviously, he had not bothered to find out more about her, but now he was intrigued.

“And your father?” he asked, leaning closer to Azaylee. “Where is he?”

She hiccuped loudly, putting a hand to her mouth and blushing. “Papa is … Papa is dead,” she finished. Her lips trembled, and he quickly took her hand and squeezed it.

“I understand,” he said gently, “and I am sorry I asked such a personal question. It was unforgivable.”

Rachel stared into her lemonade, her eyelids drooping as she yawned and said, “It’s okay. Missie’s going to marry C. Z. now.”

“C. Z. Abrams?” His eyebrows lifted in surprise. Now he remembered, he had seen it often enough in the newspapers. She was King O’Hara’s widow—and the blonde must be his daughter.

Azaylee glanced at his hand still clutching hers on her lap. She stared up at him, her mouth slack, and then she licked her lips. He felt a tingle of desire for her, though virgins were not his usual territory. He preferred a woman with experience as well as money, and preferably one who enjoyed sex as much as he did. But she had potential, this little one….

“This lemonade tastes funny,” Rachel said sleepily. Her face was pale and she added suddenly, “I don’t think it agrees with my stomach.”

Carlos groaned. All he needed was her to throw up. “Come on,” he ordered briskly. “It’s time all good girls were in bed.”

Azaylee shot him a flirtatious glance from under her lashes and murmured, “I thought that’s where all the bad girls went.”

He laughed, putting his arm casually across her slender
shoulders as he guided her from the bar. “And sometimes good ones too,” he whispered in her ear.

He sat between the two girls in the taxi, opening Rachel’s window in case she felt ill, but she promptly fell asleep. Azaylee leaned her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed, and he put his arm around her.

“I’m so sleepy.” She yawned, snuggling against his chest.

He stroked her face with his finger, tracing her eyelids, her cheekbones, and her mouth, which trembled under his touch. Her eyes closed but he could tell she was not sleeping, and he let his fingers drift slowly down her neck until his hand rested against her small, soft breast. He could feel her heart pounding, and she breathed quicker as his fingers wandered across the soft flesh exposed by the low neckline of her pink silk dress. She gasped as he slid his hand inside. He could feel the heat coming from her as he twisted her face toward him and he put his mouth over hers, drawing her into him in a kiss that lasted forever.

She clung to him, dazed with passion. He took her hand and guided it to his bulging crotch. “There,” he whispered. “See what girls like you do to a man? You get them all hot and ready, leading them on, and then you cast them aside. You don’t know the pain you leave a man in.
The agony!”
He pressed her hand harder into his throbbing groin and she struggled feebly. “I just wanted you to feel what it was like so you would remember what you have done to me, you cruel, cold-hearted little virgin.”

Azaylee twisted away from him and sat up. Her face was flushed and her eyes glittered as she began to cry, the tears trickling down her cheeks and dripping unheeded onto her pink dress. “I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t want to hurt you. I just didn’t know….” She hiccuped again and he sighed as he passed her his handkerchief.

“So now you do,” he said brusquely as the cab drew up
in front of the hotel. “And a word of warning, young Miss O’Hara. You are playing with fire.”

The driver grinned knowingly as Carlos helped the girls from the cab and sent them hurrying into the hotel. Carlos watched them spin through the revolving door and lurch unsteadily across the hall. That was just a beginning, he thought. Just wait, little Miss Azaylee. Then he lighted a cigarillo and took a stroll around the grounds, thinking about Missie O’Hara.

The next morning over a subdued and silent breakfast, Azaylee was shocked to see him approaching. Kicking Rachel under the table, she kept her eyes on her plate, blushing furiously. Rachel glanced apprehensively at Missie and then at Carlos as he nodded to them, smiling.

Azaylee felt as if she were melting inside at the sound of his voice and his nearness as he said,
“Buenos días, Señora
O’Hara,
señoritas
. Forgive me for interrupting your breakfast, but it is such a lovely day and”—he hesitated—“I was wondering if you would do me the honor of lunching with me. I thought a little picnic, and then maybe you might like to visit the racetrack. After all, sometimes it gets boring here for the young people.”

“It’s very kind of you, Señor del Villaloso,” Missie said briskly, “but we have already made plans for today.”

Azaylee’s head shot up. “Oh, Missie,” she said, glancing imploringly at her, and Missie stared back at her, surprised.

“I understand,” Villaloso replied coolly. “Another day perhaps?”

Azaylee stared after him as he walked away without even a glance in her direction. After all that had happened between them last night….

“Whatever’s the matter with you?” Missie grumbled. “You would think I had refused to let you be Queen of the Rose Bowl Parade instead of sending that nasty man on his way. He’s a gambler and a womanizer and I’m certainly
not going on any picnic with him, let alone to a racetrack.”

“How can you say that?” Azaylee muttered angrily. “You barely know him.”

Missie’s eyebrows rose in a question. “And I suppose you know him better? Now let’s finish breakfast. I’ve arranged for the pro to give you both a tennis lesson. You look as if you could use a good run around the court to put some life back into you.” She inspected their faces critically. “Goodness, we come here for a rest and a holiday and you both look like ghosts.”

Rachel sighed, remembering the night spent throwing up, and said feelingly, “I guess it was the lemonade….” She put her hand to her mouth with a little gasp. “I mean, maybe we’ve been drinking too much lemonade.”

“Too much food and not enough exercise,” Missie agreed, sweeping them quickly from the dining room before Villaloso could speak to them again.

Missie kept the two of them busy for the next few days, sending them to tennis lessons morning and afternoon, organizing times for proper swimming, not just playing about in the water, with twenty laps to be completed each time, taking them for long walks and sending them to bed early. But when the end of the holiday came and they were driving back to Los Angeles, she wondered worriedly if she had overdone it. Azaylee looked so pale and tired and Rachel was so quiet. She watched her, puzzled, as the miles sped by, because whenever Azaylee’s eye caught hers she could swear she looked frightened. She shrugged away the idea as ridiculous. After all, what could the girl possibly be frightened of? She was just returning from a lovely holiday.

Missie had been thinking of Zev a lot while she was away and she had come to a decision. If Zev Abramski was not going to ask her to marry him, then she would ask him.

She dressed simply the night they got back, in a plain blue skirt and white blouse. She brushed her softly waved cap of short bronze hair, wishing she hadn’t cut it—Zev had loved her long hair so much. She sprayed on her old favorite lily perfume from Elise and inspected herself critically in the mirror, wondering how different this twice-married, twice-widowed twenty-nine-year-old woman looked to him from the eighteen-year-old naïve girl he had first met. Rosa said she still walked like a young deer, and despite all her sorrows and struggles her face looked the same. Just the eyes were warier now.

On an impulse, she tugged the old cardboard valise from beneath the bed and tipped its contents onto the pink coverlet. The diamonds in the tiara glittered and the huge emerald looked the color of the sea off Constantinople, shot with sunlight. Russia and the past had never seemed farther away, and she realized that since she had been with Zev she had barely thought of the Cheka and the Arnhaldts, except in her dreams. They were buried in the past along with the Ivanoff treasure.

She picked up Misha’s photograph and gazed at it tenderly, and then she took Azaylee’s picture from her dresser and compared the two. There was no resemblance; the girl was just like her mother. She held his
picture to her breast wondering whether after all these years she should show it to Azaylee and tell her the truth; but the doctor had warned her that she was not strong enough mentally to cope with the double shock of finding her real parents only to lose them to a cruel death.

“I’ll always love you, Misha,” she whispered, pressing him against her heart, “but you understand, now I have found a man I truly love and who loves me.”

After replacing the photograph in the valise, she took out the Ivanoff brooch, turning it this way and that in the sunlight so that it glittered with a thousand points of light. She hesitated a moment, and then, returning to the mirror, she pinned it at the neck of her blouse. It was far too grand for her simple outfit, but wearing it somehow made her feel she had Misha’s approval for what she was going to do.

She replaced the valise and hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where Rosa and her beau, the hardware merchant from Pittsburgh, were sitting over a glass of lemon tea. Rosa’s eyes widened as they fastened on the brooch. She said, “You look as if one half of you decided to go to a ball and the other thought she would just stay home.”

Missie snatched a cookie from the batch cooling under the open window, laughing as Beulah scowled at her. “Wrong on both counts. I’m going to ask the man I love if he will marry me.”

“I wish my woman was as smart as that,” Sam Brock-man said gloomily.

“You sure you know what you’re doing this time?” Rosa asked.

Missie nodded. “Certain sure.” After snatching another cookie, she headed gaily for the door. “After all, how else is a girl to get what she wants if she doesn’t ask for it?”

“It’s not correct!” Rosa yelled after her. “The man should be asking….”

Missie stuck her head back around the door and said,
“Then if he says no, I shall run home and cry on your shoulder and you can say ‘I told you so. ’”

“Crazy woman, crazy,” Rosa murmured as she departed.

“You should be so crazy,” Sam said firmly. “If you asked, I’d say yes in a minute.”

“I’m not asking,” Rosa retorted with a sniff,
“and
I’m not saying yes until I’m good and ready.”

“One day, maybe,” he said, and they smiled at each other contentedly.

Zev had been waiting for this moment all day—more, he had been waiting two long weeks for her to walk up the steps and back into his life again. He hurried to meet her, opening his arms wide, and she walked right into them just as if she belonged. “God, I missed you,” he murmured, burying his face in her sweet-smelling hair.

They walked out onto the terrace and leaned on the stone balustrade, listening to the cicadas and the bird calls and the cool little cataract that tumbled past on its way to the pool. His narrow, handsome face looked stern with tension.

“Don’t ever leave me again, Missie,” he said tightly, staring straight ahead. “Stay here. Marry me, please.”

She turned to look at him, astonished, but he was still leaning against the balustrade, still staring straight ahead. She laughed. “Zev Abramski, I thought you would never ask.”