Fortune is a Woman (49 page)

She kept him waiting ten minutes while she prowled her suite in case he thought her too eager, and then she went downstairs to meet him. He was waiting in the foyer and she thought, breathlessly, that he must surely be the handsomest man in Paris, and he looked adoringly at her and made her feel like the loveliest woman in the world. The maître d' at Maxim's knew a pair of lovers when he saw one and he sat them in a discreet booth and immediately suggested champagne.

Francie gazed happily around the famous restaurant and its glamorous patrons and thought that if she hadn't met Buck Wingate she would have been dining alone at her hotel. "I can't believe my luck meeting you," she said impetuously. And he looked steadily at her and said, "Nor can I." The sexual electricity crackled like lightning between them and she glanced shyly away.

They drank a toast to Paris and ate tiny Belon oysters from a silvery bed of ice and tasted morsels of each other's dishes. He told her about his trade mission and she told him about her visit to Hong Kong, but she didn't tell him the Mandarin's secrets—or her own. Instead she tasted his white-chocolate mousse and her eyes rounded with pleasure, making him laugh. She thought it must be the champagne fizzing in her veins that made her feel so frivolous and lighthearted. In all her life she couldn't ever remember laughing like this with a man before, not even with Edward.

She glanced idly around the crowded restaurant. There wasn't a single person she knew and she turned to him, one eyebrow raised. "I wonder what people would say if they saw the senator from California dining at Maxim's with the notorious Miss Harrison?"

He took her hand across the table and said quietly, "They would say he's a very lucky man."

"And what would Maryanne say?"

He thought for a while and then he said seriously, "Maryanne and I do not love each other, I doubt we ever really did. I've thought of asking her for a divorce more than once. In fact, the last time was on Christmas morning. Remember? I said I would be thinking of you?"

She nodded and he said, "Well, I was. Oh, in theory all the right Christmas elements were there, the tree, the log fires, the gifts, the squabbling children and the so-called friends, but like our life together it was all an expensive facade. It was all such a sham I wished I were anywhere else but there." Her blue eyes were gazing into his and he said softly, "I wished I were with you."

She was silent and he took her note from his pocket and unfolded it. It was creased and worn and he held it out to her and said, "Remember this? I've carried it around with me ever since. And believe me, I've asked myself a thousand times, Why? But it's only now that I think I have the answer."

He put the note on the table in between them and he said quietly, "Francie Harrison, this may sound crazy, but I'm afraid I must be in love with you."

Their eyes locked; she felt calm and elated at the same time. When she had met him in New York she had refused to admit the possibility that the spark they had felt could be anything so wonderful, so irrevocable as "love" and now she shook her head. "How can it be possible, we hardly know each other?"

"Time has nothing to do with it."

"Then maybe it's just the magic of Paris..."

He took her hand and kissed it. "It could be Detroit..."

"Then how do we know it's
true?"

He kissed her fingers again and little tingles ran down her spine. "You don't question fate, you take what it offers and are glad."

She looked at him frightened, and said, "I must go."

He called the waiter and took care of the bill. Then they walked from the elegant restaurant hardly noticing that people turned to watch the handsome couple, speculating on who they were. She was silent in the cab on the way back to the hotel, aware of his eyes on her. She was afraid; she had only known two men in her life and she didn't know if what she felt was love or not. She thought of what he had just said about not questioning fate and when he walked with her to the gilt-caged elevator at the Ritz, she said, "Do you think people would talk if I asked the senator to my suite for coffee?"

He shrugged and took her hand. "Let them," he said happily.

The silk-shaded lamps had been lit in her elegant rooms and the bottle of champagne still waited in the ice bucket. He opened it and poured her a glass, then filled his own and lifted it and said, "I have another toast, Francie. To love."

She drank the toast and then she put down her glass and took his hand and walked with him into the bedroom. The heavy brocade curtains were drawn across the tall windows and the lamplight cast a golden glow across her face as she looked at him. "I don't know what to do," she said helplessly.

"You don't need to know, my darling," he said, folding her in his arms.

He thought that undressing Francie was like unfolding the petals of a flower, each layer of soft rustling pastel silk sliding from her body until she was naked, and her shyness touched his heart and her beauty, his senses. He took her in his arms and held her close, he caressed her velvet skin and she clung to him. She loved the feel of his body against hers, his lips on her eyelids, her hair, her throat. She clung passionately to him as he entered her and felt him trembling in her arms as he made tender love to her.

"I can't bear to leave you now that I've found you," he said later as they lay still languorously entwined. "I think all my life I must have been looking for you." He tilted her face to his and said quietly, "Don't ever go away."

"Shhh"—she put a finger softly on his lips—"you mustn't say that." She struggled from his arms and sat up, pushing her long, tumbled hair back from her face as she looked at him. "Let's just take this little time together and be happy."

She was sitting with her arms clasped around her knees, her long blond hair fell across her shoulders, covering her beautiful breasts with streamers of gold, and her troubled blue eyes were fixed seriously on him. He thought how unaffected she was and how unaware of her own beauty, and he compared her quickly with Maryanne's artifice, her false smiles and chilly dismissal, and he knew he could not give her up. "I don't care," he said, snatching her back into his arms, "I only want you."

He was holding her close and she felt loved and protected, even though she knew it was all impossible, it should never have happened. But she never wanted to move from his arms, from this bed, from Paris.... She pushed the cold reality of who she was and who he was to the back of her mind. She would take her happiness while she could, however fleeting. "Just for now, Buck," she said happily. "Just for these few days."

"Forever," he promised, covering her face with passionate kisses. "I'll never let you go." And as he made love to her again she hoped just a little bit, in her heart, that it might be true.

They couldn't bear to leave each other's side. He sent for his bags from the Crillon and moved into the suite next door to her at the Ritz and her sumptuous bed became the center of their little universe. Every now and then they ventured forth, sipping Pernod in Left Bank cafes, exploring the narrow streets of Saint-Louis-en-Ile, arguing over paintings in art gallery windows and dining in tiny candlelit bistros where monsieur
le patron
was chef and madame, his wife, the waitress, and where there was nobody to notice them as they lingered over a glass of red wine, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes without any thought for the future.

And in those long evenings she told him about her life, holding nothing back, waiting for his judgment of her. He looked lovingly at her and said, "My poor Francie, you've had to be so strong. I hope life will never be so harsh to you again."

On their final night he watched as she combed her hair. It gleamed like satin and he ran his hand wonderingly across it and said, "Promise me you'll never cut it. It's like a treasure trove of gold."

Francie's clouded sapphire eyes met his in the mirror. "I promise," she said sadly.

He was leaving at six to catch the boat train and then the liner back to America, but both of them knew it was more than that, and that at six o'clock he was going back to reality. They lay sleepless in each other's arms savoring each precious fleeting minute, but the separation loomed over them and Francie told herself desolately it would be forever.

"I can't leave you," he whispered as the time grew near. "Don't you understand, Francie? My life with Maryanne is false, she doesn't care for me and I don't care for her. I've never felt like this about any woman before. I didn't know there could be such happiness. Please say you'll stay with me. I'll get a divorce and we'll be married; just tell me yes. We'll buy a pretty little house in Washington and I'll look after you and love you forever."

Her whole being yearned toward him, she could almost taste the delicious new life they would share together. She thought that because his life with Maryanne was meaningless, then just maybe it was all possible. But then she remembered Buck was a public figure—he was a man heading for the top and a scandalous divorce would wreck his career. And she was a scandalous woman.

She covered his mouth with tender kisses, stifling his words, counting their final minutes together, and when the time came for him to go she cowered naked in their bed as he packed his bags, telling herself she mustn't cry and that she should be glad for the happiness she had been given.

His bags were in the hall and she heard him instructing the porter and then his footsteps as he walked back to her bedroom. He stood in the doorway, his eyes devouring her. He looked the way he had when she first met him, handsome, well-dressed, powerful—a man with a future. She knelt on the tumbled bed, the sheet covering her nakedness, waiting for him to say good-bye. He walked toward her and wrapped the silken strands of her hair around his hands like golden chains as she tilted her face to him. "This isn't the end, Francie," he promised, his eyes burning into hers. And then he strode quickly away.

***

Annie stared suspiciously at Francie. There was a hectic flush on her usually pale cheeks and a nervous air about her that was different. She had dragged her from one Paris couturier to another, buying recklessly at Patou and Lelong, Molyneux and Chanel, and now they were sitting in Madame Vionnet's dove-gray salon while models paraded sinuously in front of them. There was nothing there to suit Annie's rounded figure. Vionnet made sleek, easy, graceful clothes in clinging crepe de chine and supple satins, but they were perfect for Francie's tall, streamlined body and long legs, and Annie shook her head, marveling as Francie ordered a dozen dresses in different colors. "Where on earth are you going to wear all these things?" she asked. "You go to Hong Kong once every few years, and when you're in San Francisco you are working hard for your charities and the rest of the time you spend on the ranch. I hardly think you'll be wearing Madame Vionnet's sugar-plum slipper satin to tend your vines?"

Francie shrugged and gave her a too-brilliant smile. "Oh, I don't know, they're all just so pretty," she answered vaguely, but she knew she was buying them because Buck would have loved her in them. It was impossible to put him out of her mind and impossible not to think of herself as part of his life. She had received a cablegram from him every day since he had left and they all said the same thing: "I love you." She was playing with fire, but if Buck ever came back to her she would not be able to send him away again.

Annie said suspiciously, "You haven't met a man, have you?" and Francie blushed. "I see," Annie laughed, pleased. "Then why haven't you told me about him?"

Francie bit her lip, staring embarrassed at her hands. "I can't."

"That means he's married." Annie sighed. "Oh dear, Francie, what have you gotten yourself into now?"

"Annie, it's Buck Wingate." The news brimmed from her lips. "It's like a miracle. I mean, love
can
be a miracle, can't it? It's not like with Edward when I just fell slowly in love with him. This is
Love,
Annie." She almost shouted the word, and the vendeuses and the models turned to smile—love was love in any language. Francie dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper as she told Annie quickly about her whirlwind affair.

"And you sent him away?" Annie asked, amazed.

"I sent him away," she repeated, her blue eyes searching anxiously for approval.

"Then why all the new clothes? It seems to me you might be expecting him back again."

"Yes... no... oh, Annie, I don't know. If he came back... oh, what should I do?"

A vendeuse interrupted with the account for Madame Harrison to sign, and then they left the salon and strolled thoughtfully down the avenue together. "Buck fell for you the minute he saw you at my party," Annie said. "I knew it even if you didn't. But everything's against it, Francie, it's not just Maryanne, it's his career. You realize he would have to give it up if he married you?"

Francie hung her head, she had hoped against hope that Annie would pull an answer out of her practical bag of tricks, but there was none. A man's work was his life. "I know," she said sadly, "that's why I sent him away. I can't let him throw away a brilliant future. Oh, but Annie, what if he comes back again?"

Annie looked compassionately at her. "Let's just wait and see, love, shall we?" she said.

They spent the next few days looking at hotels for Annie and she decided the French had their own style and she declined to compete, and then they took the train to Bordeaux. They visited half a dozen chateaux and tasted a hundred wines and bought new vines for Francie's ranch, but still she couldn't forget him, and she hurried Annie back to Cherbourg and onto a liner to New York a week earlier than they had planned.

In San Francisco she hung all her beautiful Paris dresses in the closet and waited for him to call. A week passed, then two. She told herself she wouldn't call him, she must not. After three weeks she steeled herself to the fact that it was over and left, heartbroken, for the ranch.

The weather was cold and windy but the sky was a clear hard blue. She put on her riding britches and flannel checkered shirt and flung an old navy wool sweater over her shoulders. She saddled up her favorite Appaloosa and rode over the hills with the cold wind tugging at her hair and stinging her cheeks, but she welcomed it—anything to take away the ache of new loneliness.