Hold Back the Night (30 page)

'How did you find me?' she asked in a low voice. 'How did you know?'

'I knew, or I came to know, because I love you,' he murmured huskily, touching his lips to her hair. 'You're engraved on my heart, Domini Greey.'

Domini asked for no more immediate explanations. For a time they sat by the flickering fire, still but for the slow movements of Sander's hand, sharing emotions too deep for words. Both seemed to know intuitively that to kiss would be to go far beyond a kiss, and the time for that had not yet come. They had shared beds and they had shared caresses, but this was a moment to share feelings and hearts.

Contentment seeped into the very core of Domini's soul, until she grew ready for talk. 'There are so many things I need to know,' she whispered at last. She shifted until she could see his face. He had lost a great deal of weight, she realized with a wrench; his features had grown quite gaunt. And yet there was about him a repose that had not been there before.

'Please tell me, Sander. Tell me everything. Was it true for you, the story you told Tasey?'

'In essence,' he murmured, stilling her questions with a finger placed gently against her mouth, caressing the soft surface so intimately that it might have been a kiss. In his dark eyes, illuminated to a new warmth by the golden flames of the firelight, there was a glow of love that replaced all the bitterness of before. 'Perhaps later I'll talk of my past, but not now. Now is a time to think of you. I love you, Domini. Desperately. So very desperately.'

He loosened her hair, letting the dark gold spill over her shoulders, tumbling to catch the light of the fire. Then gently his mouth closed over hers, hard lips brushing across soft, with a patient and aching tenderness that told her of his feelings more surely than any urgency would have done. There was no haste in his hands as they touched her ears, her hair, her throat, rediscovering the soft hiding places where tiny pulses ticked. Domini forgot the things she had wanted to know, forgot the past, forgot the future, forgot everything but the moment and the happiness in her heart. She laced her arms around his neck, telling him of the need that rose in her, as surely as in him.

And soon, when neither wanted to wait, she led him to the bed. Love and the expression of it were as natural to Domini as life itself, and for the first time Sander was ready to return her love with the warmth she had always wanted. As he undressed she revelled in what the room's soft glow revealed of the man she loved: the firm fiat stomach, the virile shoulders, the hard male flanks. To her he was a whole man and always had been.

Out of habit while she watched, she had started to strip herself, starting with the heavy alpine sweater. She was working at the buttons of the light silk shirt she had worn underneath when he came down beside her and stilled her with his hand. 'No,' he said huskily. 'I want to undress you tonight, and I want to do it slowly. For once we have all the time in the world. Be patient, love.'

'Yes,' she said and trembled back to stillness.

Each part of her clothing came off with exquisite slowness, and as each part of her body was bared in turn, his hands and his mouth roamed in slow praise over the curves they already knew so intimately. As he touched and trailed and rediscovered, he whispered the words she had always wanted to hear, little words, tender words, beautiful words.

At last she lay naked, flesh quivering not from the coolness of the room, but from the racing of heated blood not far beneath the surface of her skin. His unhurried kisses, sparing no part of her, had awakened fires in every secret inch of skin. She was weak with wanting, and yet she wanted even more to let this be a night of love-making to remember.

And then he waited no more. With a groan of deep desire, he parted her legs and his long lithe body shifted to cover hers. Murmuring love words in her hair, he united his hardness with her softness, his maleness with her quivering, willing womanhood. He moved gently at first, worshipping her breasts and her hips with his hands. Domini arched to meet him, inviting his fuller possession. With a helpless moan of need she pulled his head down to hers, openly offering all the sweetness to the mastery of his tongue.

And gradually, as the poised male power of his limbs followed nature's course, the tempo grew more urgent until at the end, with one long last kiss that united their mouths in a message of deep abiding love, he brought her to a final blaze of pure unequalled passion.

Later they lay entwined, Domini still warm in the afterglow of his ardent possession. Had any woman ever been more skilfully, more beautifully loved?

The high-burning logs had by now warmed the room, and so they lay without covers, sharing the intimacy that comes when lovers know themselves well loved and well sated. Occasionally one or the other expressed the feelings of the moment with a slow, undemanding caress. At last Domini touched a gentle fingertip to the furrow between Sander's brows, where the years of darkness and bitterness had put little lines of pain that would never be fully erased.

She murmured, 'Was it very hard to find me?'

Sander's arm tightened its grip around her. 'Not half as hard as not finding you would have been,' he murmured in a somewhat elliptical answer to her question. But he didn't want to talk about himself. With one hand stroking the tendrils at her temples, he said sombrely, 'Yesterday I heard most of your story, Domini. I know about what happened to you years ago, and I know you haven't had an easy time.'

Domini knew that no newspaper had ever unearthed her true story. There was only one way Sander could have heard. 'Berenice,' she guessed. 'You've been talking to Berenice.'

He nodded, confirming it. 'Lazarus gave me her address, and I spent a day with her in Paris before coming on here.'

'Then it was she who told you the truth,' guessed Domini. But at the moment she was unutterably glad that Berenice had broken her promise.

'No, it wasn't. She told me a great deal, but as to your identity, I already knew it. However, she was very pleased that the one small clue she provided had helped trigger the search.'

'Clue? I don't understand ...'

'Just before the start of the show, she air-expressed one last small painting to Lazarus. She knew about my sister and knew she was sure to be seeing the show. She hoped Miranda might notice the painting and draw it to my attention. And Miranda did ... but unfortunately not at once. As you can imagine, opening night was quite busy with one thing and another.'

Indeed, Domini could imagine what one thing and another had been, for Sander at least. Jealousy snaked inside, but she curbed her tongue, biting back the acid questions about Nicole. It hadn't escaped her that in his story to Tasey, Sander had never fully disposed of the black-haired sorceress, and it seemed he wasn't going to mention her now.

'The painting's very small, so it was hanging in an obscure corner. As a result, Miranda didn't spot it until she went back some days later for a more leisurely look at the show. Berenice says she was only able to send items out of her own personal collection because the will is still being probated. Otherwise she would have sent a more dramatic example. It was a portrait of you, Domini, at about twelve years of age. Although Miranda at once recognized it as an older version of the famous Didi, she also noticed a striking similarity to you ... enough to catch her eye. Even so, she would probably have put it down to a far-fetched coincidence if she hadn't seen the title.'

'Title?'

'
Daughter of Anastasia Greey
. Berenice says she named it herself, because the portrait had been untitled. Miranda was riveted at once; it's not a common spelling for that surname. Naturally she rushed home to tell me. And when I remembered Tasey's first name

So the name had had some bearing after all! Jealousy flew from Domini's thoughts as she found herself thinking: clever, clever Berenice. Without breaking any promise she had sent a very clear message to New York. 'So you started to think,' she said with a delighted little laugh.

'Started to think!' Sander's harsher laugh held no amusement at all. 'My God, I'd been doing nothing else. I suffered the tortures of the damned, thinking I might never find you.'

Domini looked at him with love in her heart. 'Yet a few months ago you wouldn't have admitted to feeling anything for me at all.'

He lowered his head, an almost humble gesture. 'True,' he admitted. 'All the same, that's how I felt.' He took a ragged breath and went on. 'I was dumbfounded when I heard the name Anastasia Greey. Miranda said the portrait could be you, the eyes and the smile especially. And when she heard that I had once known Didi Le Basque . . . well, a lot of little things started to fall into place. It was clear that Anastasia was the mother of the famous Didi, but was she also your mother, and Tasey's grandmother? Was Domini Greey the same girl I'd known so many years ago? If she was, a unicorn in a little art gallery would certainly have caught her eye. And if she was, mightn't that also account for her persistent and extraordinary interest in a blind man's well-being, when she stumbled into his life? Why she put up with his rudeness and resentment? Why she fought to make him feel his creative fires again? It all seemed logical enough. And yet I had grave doubts. If you were the same person, why were you living in New York, speaking English with no French accent, not using your father's name? Remember, I knew nothing about your part of the story then. Had you lied to me about your true hair colour and a hundred other details? I had to know.

'So who could help solve the mystery? Lazarus was the only person I could think of. It was after hours by then and he wasn't at his gallery, but I called him at home. He came over at once. He ... he's been a good friend.'

'And he phoned Berenice for the answer?'

'He didn't need to.' Sander placed a hand alongside her cheek in a gentle curve. 'I showed Lazarus a sculpture I had done a few weeks before. It was of your face, Domini, the face that's carved in my memory.'

Domini gave a surprised little laugh. 'But I've never met Lazarus,' she said. 'He wouldn't know my face.'

'Ah, but he does. For one thing, he was familiar with various portraits done in your later teens. He saw them during a long visit to the Pyrenees, when he came a few years ago to help estimate the value of your father's paintings ... a futile exercise, I gather, for none were put on the market.'

Domini smiled a small smile to herself as Sander added, 'Lazarus also knows what Didi Le Basque looks like today. He saw you at your father's funeral.'

'I didn't even know he was there,' Domini murmured, wondering which in the sea of faces that day might have belonged to the New York dealer, 'I don't think Berenice knew, either.'

'Knowing Lazarus, he probably sat in a back row and left as soon as it was over. Anyway, thank God he was there. He took one look at my sculpture and told me it was the face of Le Basque's daughter. As soon as possible I was on my way to France.'

'I'm glad,' she whispered, silently thanking Berenice and Lazarus and Sander's sensitive hands, and all the other chances of fate that had brought him across the sea.

Sander's fingers caressed her throat. There was a catch in his voice as he murmured, 'You're beautiful, Domini, so very beautiful. I knew it with my hands, and now I know it in my mind's eye. But I'll never sculpt you again, at least not in the nude. In some ways I'm sorry I ever did.'

Domini had grown impudent with knowing herself much desired. 'Why?' she teased, lacing her fingers in his hair.

'Can't you guess?' he muttered fiercely. 'I want no other man's eyes to possess you in any way.'

'And what about you!' she cried, jealousy at last bursting out. She pulled away from him and sat up. 'You and your s-s-sorceress! I know Nicole was at your opening! No wonder that night was busy with one thing and another! And you didn't even mention she was there!'

Sander's expression became immediately unreadable, his mouth mocking. He murmured, 'Oh, didn't I? An oversight. She's married now, you know. She was there with her husband, an American. He's a very important person, director of a large corporation and a well-known art collector too.'

'Oh,' said Domini, subsiding and feeling foolish.

'I agree, I should have told you at once,' Sander drawled. 'Thanks to Nicole, I've been offered a very handsome commission. She wants a gift for her husband, something to add to his private collection.'

'That's . . . nice,' Domini said, although the words were definitely grudging. A commission might mean that Sander would be seeing more of Nicole in the future.

'I imagine Nicole doesn't have a very easy life,' he went on with a sigh that sounded far from sincere. 'Her husband is quite an old man, and very crotchety. Why, on the night of the opening I hear she practically had to prop him up so he could get around to see the show ... until he left with his chauffeur, that is. Fortunately he allows Nicole some small amount of freedom. She stayed on because she wanted to make her proposal to me.'

'I see,' Domini said, her tone decidedly chilly.

'Jealous?'

'Not a bit,' Domini lied haughtily.

'Ah. When I was telling my small story to Tasey, I wondered if you might feel a fleeting resentment when I mentioned the beautiful black-haired sorceress.'

'It was the description,' Domini said coldly. 'I wouldn't have minded if you had said witch.'