Adam's Daughter (12 page)

“So you’ve decided to try out for Father of the Year all of a sudden? For God’s sake, Adam, if you cared at all about Ian’s feelings you wouldn’t put him through a custody fight. Why don’t you think of him for once?”

She turned back to her mirror. “You stole the newspaper from me, Adam,” she said, as she calmly applied cream to her face. “And someday, some
way, I intend to get it back. But you might as well forget Ian. You lost him years ago.”

Adam knew now she would agree to the divorce but her words about Ian cu
t into him. If he wanted him he would have to endure a custody battle and all its sordid fallout. Josh was right; the courts would never grant him custody and putting Ian through it would only alienate him further.

He stared at Lilith’s back, at the rippling movements of her thin shoulder blades. Suddenly, all he really wanted was to be free of her forever.

“I’ll be staying at the club,” he said. “I’ll have the divorce papers delivered to you tomorrow.”

It was dusk, and the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts were deserted. Adam sat on a bench alone, near the pond. He pulled his coat collar up against the cold wind that was blowing up from the bay, his eyes trained on the street. He had just come from Josh Hillman’s office. Lilith’s lawyers had delivered the divorce papers, signed. It had been only eight days since he last saw Elizabeth on the bridge. He shivered and glanced at his watch. When he looked up, he saw Elizabeth coming toward him and he jumped to his feet.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “It was hard for me to get away when you called. Then I couldn’t get a cab and had to have my aunt’s driver bring me here. I gave him fifty dollars to shut him up.” She smiled. “I hope it was enough.”

Her smile faded as she noticed Adam’s somber expression. “What is it, Adam? Why did you want to see me?”

She was swathed in a silver fox coat, a white scarf wrapped around her hair. Her cheeks were red from the cold and her lips were parted expectantly. She had never looked so beautiful and he had never felt so unsure of himself. What if, after all this, she didn’t want him after all?

“Adam? What is it?” she asked. “You look so strange.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Marry me, Elizabeth.”

Her eyes grew wide. He was acutely aware of the silence, growing unbearably longer with each second she hesitated. He searched her face for a clue to her thoughts. There was a glimmer of the same wariness he had seen in her eyes that day on the bridge, when she said she thought he had wanted her for her money. He grasped her hands. They were icy cold.

“Marry me,” he whispered urgently.

“But, Adam —-” she said.

“I’m getting a divorce. I love you, Elizabeth. Marry me, please.”

The details of her face were growing blurred in the fast fading light but her eyes were locked on his. Suddenly, he felt her fingers curl tightly around his.

“Yes,” she
said. She smiled, and it grew into a laugh. “Yes,” she repeated. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He clasped her to him, burying his face in the soft warmth of her fur and neck.

Finally, she pulled away. “I have to go home to Atlanta. I have to tell my parents.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “When will you be back?”

“As soon as I can.” She glanced at the waiting car. “I have to go, Adam,” she said.

He wouldn’t release her hand.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It will work out. It will be different this time. I’m not sixteen. I’m twenty-seven. My father can’t tell me what to do anymore. This time, I won’t listen to him. This time, I’ll listen to my heart.”

She leaned into him. “Oh, what a wonderful life we’re going to have together,” she whispered against his cheek. “I’ll share your dreams. I’ll make you so happy. We’ll have children
, so many children. I love you, Adam.”

She pulled away and with a final smile ran across the lawn. He stood watching the car’s lights creep up the hill until they were gone. He sat down on the bench and looked up at the Grecian statues on the colonnades but they were lost in the dark.
He looked to his right down to the water. The fog was creeping in from the ocean and the lights of the East Bay flickered and went dark.

His life, he knew with
a sudden aching certainty, was never going to be the same.

PART TWO

ELIZABETH 1937

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Adam and Elizabeth were married a month later.

It was a small ceremony, held in the rustic sanctuary of the Swedenborgian Church in Pacific Heights. Elizabeth’s sister flew in from
Atlanta to be the maid of honor but her parents refused to come. Adam, realizing he did not really feel close to any man, asked Josh Hillman to be his best man. There was no one else in the small candlelit church to hear the tender ceremony.

Elizabeth wanted a honeymoon in Paris but Adam felt it was unwise because of the growing threat of war in Europe. They decided on a week in New York.

They arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria in late afternoon on a balmy day that promised summer. In their suite, Elizabeth went immediately to the window and gazed down on the busy street below.

“I like this city,” she said. “There’s so much to do here, so much to see.”

“We’ve been married less than a day,” Adam said with a smile, “and you’re bored with me already.”

Elizabeth came to him and slipped her arms around his waist. “I will never be bored with you,” she said.

He kissed her, almost formally. She gave him an inquisitive half smile and kissed him back, a deep kiss that left him stirred. She brought up her left hand to examine the thin gold band.

“
Why didn’t you want a diamond?” Adam said.

“I like the way this feels,” she said.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t go to Paris.”

“
Oh, Adam, I don’t care about that,” she said softly. “We’re finally together. That’s all that matters.”

He stared at the face before him, the one that had haunted his dreams for so many years. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

When she pulled back, she was breathless. “We should take off our coats at least,” she said. She drew the drapes, muting the dusky light. She kept her eyes on him as she began to undo the buttons of her suit coat. Adam’s hands moved mechanically toward his own clothes, his eyes on hers. He looked away for a moment to slip off his belt. When he looked up again, his fingers froze.

She was standing by the window in her slip, her hair freed from its coil at her neck. The white satin
slip pulled across her hips, outlining the soft curve of her pelvis and the tips of her breasts. Adam stared, mesmerized, as he felt himself growing hard. He had known she was beautiful but not like this. He had relied on his dreamy memory of a girl. This was a woman before him...his wife.

He shrugged out of the rest of his clothes and went to her. At the first press of her body he felt he would explode. He fought back the urge, drawing on a mental trick he had learned from one of Sally Stanford’s prostitutes, and guided her down on the bed. He had always been vaguely ashamed about going to prostitutes but he had learned much about pleasing women from them, things he could now bring to Elizabeth. He didn’t expect much sophistication from her. She had been a sheltered teenager, and what could she have gained from a marriage to an old man like Willis Reed?

He was fully prepared to be the patient teacher. But at this moment, delirious with the feel of her flesh against his, he was fighting for control. He had to hold back. He had to perform.

He was losing himself in her body, kissing her, feeling her, trying to be gentle. Finally, when he could stand it no longer he positioned himself above her. Her eyes stared up at him, clear and steady. Slowly,
he inserted himself inside her and immediately had to shut his eyes.

Then the wave reared, and he began to move inside her, helpless.

Suddenly, he felt her inner muscles grow tight, then tighter, her wet warmth gripping him. Stunned, he could only stop and the wave subsided.

“Wait for me,” she whispered.

Her arms were draped gently across his back. But inside, she was holding him fiercely, with no apparent effort. She lay there quietly looking up at him. He was totally in her control. It was the most incredibly erotic sensation he had ever experienced.

“Oh my G
od,” he whispered hoarsely.

Her lips turned up in a small smile, and she closed her eyes in pleasure. She released him then tightened, repeating the exquisite pulsing rhythm for several minutes. Then she let go and began to move her hips rhythmically, her breath coming in short gasps. She raised her legs to take him deeper, pulling his back, as her climax tore through her body. With a final quivering thrust and cry, he collapsed.

He was breathing hard and his back hurt from where her fingers had dug into his skin. But he was completely, gloriously spent, bathed in sensation and sweat.

“I wanted to make it good for you,” he whispered against her neck.

“You did,” she said.

They lay there, entwined, as the room grew dark. After a while Adam moved to his side so he could see Elizabeth’s face. Her eyes were closed, her red hair fanned out on the pillow, a
half smile on her lips, one hand draped languidly across her breast. She looked so blatantly sensual, and the way she had moved, and held him like that —- where had she learned such things?

His ego was slightly bruised and he felt vaguely disconcerted, unable to reconcile the fact that this woman he had held up as some ideal goddess had sexually
manipulated him as no prostitute ever had.

She opened her eyes
. “Hello, husband,” she said softly.

“Hello, wife,” he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

They returned home to take up residence in a suite at the Mark Hopkins until they could find a house. Elizabeth said she didn’t mind, but Adam did. He had lost the house on Vallejo to Lilith in the divorce and the rest of his finances had been greatly limited. He had retained majority ownership in the
Times
and the paper in Sacramento, but Lilith had extracted high alimony payments, her lawyer claiming she was entitled to be supported in the style equal to her social position.

The irony of his situation was not lost on Adam. Here he was, just married to the widow of one of the country’s wealthiest men, yet he was so financially strapped himself that he could not afford to buy her a
new home.

Elizabeth had inherited $100 million from Reed but it was tied up in stock holdings, set up in a trust directed by a board of executives from her late husband’s company. The revelation had come as somewhat of a disappointment to Adam. He certainly
hadn’t expected to plunder Elizabeth’s fortune but he had expected to have some access to it eventually. As it was cunningly set up, however, Elizabeth could sell small blocks of stock and spend the capital as she wished but Adam could lay no direct claim to it. She could buy whatever she wanted. But nothing could be in his name.