Tender Deception: A Novel of Romance (20 page)

“Why don’t you come see for yourself?”

“I fully intend to!”

Jimmy was silent for a moment, growing more serious. “How is everything with you, Lilly? You and Kirk getting along all right? Is he treating you okay?”

“Yes. Everything is fine...Kirk is very generous,” she murmured, trying to cover up her own misgivings.

“Where is he? He hasn’t set foot in this place since we got here.”

“He’s been busy with a house he bought for us. And...today he had to leave on a business trip out of the country.”

Jimmy frowned. “He didn’t take you with him?”

“No. He had to go to the Mideast. He thinks it would be too dangerous for me....”

Jimmy’s face took on a peculiar expression. He started to say something, but changed his mind. “Hey, come up here and tell me what you think of this piano.”

Lilly returned to the club opening night. She was thrilled at how good the band sounded. Wistfully, she watched the new piano player, wishing she were in his place. The happy jazz beat had her feet tapping. It made her forget her loneliness and apprehensions about her own life.

She returned to the club for several hours each night. Talking with Jimmy and the band members and listening to them play helped fill the lonely hours while Kirk was away.

Then she came down with a cold. She went to a newsstand, gathering up an armful of light reading material, planning to spend a day in bed, pampering herself. She was comfortably settled with cold remedies and a box of tissues on her bedside table, leafing through the publications, when Kirk’s face leaped out at her startled eyes. The publication she was looking at was a tabloid, one of the kind that specialized in scandal stories about celebrities. The full-page picture showed Kirk at a table, dining with a group of people in Milan, Italy. Seated beside him at the table was Marie Algretto! The caption read, “The world’s most beautiful opera star dines with American oil tycoon, Kirk Remington. Are the embers of an old flame beginning to stir again?”

Lilly’s world came crashing down around her. She stared at the picture for several minutes in numb shock. Kirk’s face dissolved as tears began to fill her eyes.

So this was Kirk’s “dangerous mission” to the Mideast! They had been married barely a week, and he had to dash off to pursue his lost love again. How foolish Lilly had been to entertain delusions that he might be falling in love with her. How naïve she was!

Cold anger swept through her. Since he left on the trip, Kirk had been having flowers delivered to her every day, and making overseas phone calls to her periodically. What a hypocrite he was! she thought furiously. He wanted to have his cake and eat it. All he needed her for was someone to warm his bed during the times he was in San Francisco. She felt no better than a kept woman, a high-priced call girl.

Well, she wouldn’t be here the next time he phoned, and she wouldn’t be in this house when he returned from his “business” trip!

Ignoring how miserable her cold was making her feel, Lilly crawled out of bed and began throwing clothes into a suitcase. Kirk had paid for them, but she didn’t feel the least bit guilty taking what she needed. He owed her that and much more. When they got to the divorce settlement, she was not going to let him push her around. Then she remembered the papers she had signed in his New Orleans office. “The lousy rat probably had me sign some kind of pre-marital agreement,” she fumed. “I don’t know what those papers were.”

Then she thought angrily that it really didn’t matter. She didn’t want a dime from Kirk Remington. She just wanted out of his life forever.

She took a cab to a hotel and spent the next few days in bed, nursing her cold, having her meals sent to the room. It was the lowest ebb of her life up to that time. She felt dreadfully ill. She alternated between spells of shivering under thick blankets and burning up with fever. Her state of mind was worse than her physical problems. She was filled with anger one minute and grief the next. Her worst fears had been confirmed. What a fool she had been! Jimmy had warned her that involvement with Kirk would only mean heartbreak for her. All of her instincts had warned her. Well, she reminded herself, she had done it for Jimmy’s sake. At least she’d accomplished that much. But she hadn’t dreamed it was going to wind up hurting so much....

Lilly was so sick physically and spiritually that her time frame became disoriented. She lost track of time. With the shades drawn, she had no sense of day or night. She didn’t know how long she had been in the hotel room. She didn’t care if she lived or died.

The spells of high fever added to her confusion. She began having vivid dreams and she didn’t know if she was asleep or awake when she dreamed.

In one of the dreams, Kirk strode into the room. He sat on the side of the bed, shaking her. His face was contorted with emotion. He was repeating her name, “Lilly...Lilly—”

She brushed her hand across her eyes, trying to make the dream go away. “Leave me alone....” she mumbled.

“You’re going to be all right, Lilly,” he said gruffly. “I’m going to get you to a hospital.”

He picked up the phone, dialed, and barked instructions. She began to realize this wasn’t a dream. “What’re you doing here?” she muttered.

“I think that’s the question I should be asking,” he stormed. “Lilly, what possessed you to do this? I’ve been frantic with worry. I’ve tried to phone you. The maid said you’d packed some things and moved out without saying where you were going. I flew back yesterday. I’ve had the police looking for you ever since. We’ve been to all the hospitals, the morgue, and finally began checking the hotels.”

“Didn’t want you to find me,” Lilly mumbled. Her head was splitting. The high fever was making her groggy. She had the feeling that she was slipping in and out of a dream state.

“Why, for God’s sake?” Kirk gasped. “What has gotten into you?”

“I just want out of your life, Kirk. Please go away and leave me alone....”

He gave her a look of mingled frustration and concern. “I’m not going to sit here and argue with you now. You’re much too sick. I called Dr. Harrison and he’ll meet us at the hospital.”

The ambulance arrived in a few minutes. Lilly was taken to the hospital where her condition was diagnosed as severe influenza bordering on pneumonia. She responded quickly to proper medical care.

Kirk had florists bringing in deliveries until her hospital room was transformed into a flower garden. The nurses treated Lilly as if she were something of a celebrity. She supposed being the wife of Kirk Remington had that effect.

Kirk came to visit her as soon as she was feeling stronger. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” Lilly replied, eyeing him coolly. Her head was clear now. Her fever had abated.

Kirk moved a chair closer to the hospital bed. “Then we can have a talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, yes there is. There’s a great deal to talk about. I demand to know what possessed you to run away from our home like that.”

“I don’t know why it would matter that much to you.” Her voice was as brittle as icicles dropping from a tree limb.

“Don’t be childish. Of course it matters a great deal.”

“Oh, yes. I suppose it would. In the sense of your swollen ego losing a prize possession. Such as one of your racehorses running off.”

He frowned. “That’s a callous thing to say.”

“No more callous than your marrying me when you didn’t love me!” She hesitated, then couldn’t resist the impulse to blurt out, “By the way, I really would flunk a geography test. I had no idea that Milan, Italy, had been moved to the Mideast.”

He looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Milan, Italy? How did you find out I was in Milan? Is that what got you upset?”

“Not exactly. But you do admit to lying about where you were going.”

“I don’t admit lying about anything. My trip did take me to the Mideast most of the time. I flew to Milan one weekend to confer with some important business associates. We have a branch office there.”

“How convenient. And what a romantic coincidence that Marie Algretto happened to be in Milan that same weekend.”

He gave her a long, piercing look. “Now I’m beginning to understand. That photograph in the tabloid. You saw it and jumped to conclusions.” He scowled darkly. “I had a hunch that picture was going to wind up in a scandal sheet and cause problems. I’d like to break that photographer’s neck! Now let me explain—”

“Oh, Kirk,” she sighed wearily, “please don’t string me along with a bunch of lies. Why don’t we just agree this marriage isn’t going to work and call it quits.”

Anger exploded in his eyes. He leaped to his feet and paced the room in furious strides. “I wouldn’t be so self-righteous if I were you. I’m the one who has every right to be angry, discovering that you’ve been seeing Jimmy every night since I’ve been gone!”

An angry response made her eyes glitter. “You’ve had a private detective spying on me!” she gasped.

“Oh, stop sounding so melodramatic. You insult me to even suggest I’d stoop to anything like that. I just stopped by the club this morning to check on how the operation was going. In the course of the conversation, my club manager mentioned that you had been there nearly every night since the place opened. You just can’t stay away from Jimmy, can you?”

“It’s a public club. I can go there if I wish. Do you expect me to sit home and watch television every night when you’re away having your romantic fling with your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?”

“Your mistress. Your paramour. Marie Algretto. Who else? I must say I can’t blame you. She’s certainly the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen.”

Kirk stood menacingly over the bed. Lilly shrank against the pillows with sudden fright. He looked as if he were on the verge of hitting her or giving her a violent shaking. But then in a strangely controlled voice, he said, “Miss Algretto is acquainted with influential people all over Europe. She happens to be friends with the business associates we have in Milan. Yes, it was a coincidence that she was there the same weekend I was. She came to the café with mutual acquaintances. You’ll remember, if you saw the picture, that a number of people were seated around the table in our dinner party. I certainly was not at the café with Miss Algretto alone.”

Lilly did not believe him for one moment. Kirk stepped back from the bed. She gazed at him with troubled eyes that were filling with tears. “Kirk, I should never have married you. It was a mistake to marry anyone under those circumstances. You didn’t marry me because you loved me. I don’t know why you married me. I suppose because you were lonely. You were heartbroken over Miss Algretto. You were impressed by my musical talent. Jimmy said you had a weakness for talented women. Maybe it has something to do with your own frustrated desire to be able to play an instrument. You can’t live your music vicariously through a woman who belongs to you....”

Kirk had moved toward a window as she spoke. His back was to her.

There was a long, painful silence. Then in a strained voice, Lilly asked, “Can you look at me right now and tell me you are in love with me, Kirk?”

The silence lengthened. She gazed through her tears at his back. His lack of an answer to her question was all the answer she needed. Her tears trickled down to her pillow.

“Now do you see why I want to end this marriage?” she choked.

He turned. His dark-eyed gaze engulfed her with a strange expression she couldn’t define. At the moment she seemed very distant. There was a great space between them. “I don’t think that’s the real reason you want to leave me,” he said slowly. “I think it’s Jimmy. It’s been Jimmy all along who stands between us. You never have gotten over your high school crush.”

“And you’ve never gotten over being jealous of him,” she shot back. “Maybe
that’s
the reason you wanted to marry me, why you’re so stubborn about letting me go. You’re bitter because Jimmy has the thing you want so badly—his musical ability. You couldn’t take that away from him, but you could take me away from him.”

“It’s not easy for me to forget that you cared so much for him that you agreed to marry me just to be sure I’d help him!”

Lilly had no answer to that. Her pride refused to let her tell him that she could not have agreed to Kirk’s bargain if she had not been in love with him. She was in love with him now and always would be, but that didn’t change this impossible situation.

Then his eyes flamed with an overpowering intensity. “Lilly, I am not ready to give up this easily on our marriage. And I refuse to let you leave.”

“Oh? And how do you propose to stop me? This isn’t the nineteenth century, you know, when women were mere chattel.”

“How do I propose to stop you? The same way I got you. By reminding you that Jimmy’s career depends on me. I could end his engagement at The Landing just as I did when he was at the Sho-Time Bar in New Orleans. He’d be out on the street without a band again. Do you want that?”

“You’re the most heartless brute I’ve ever known!” she gasped, the blood draining from her cheeks.

“Lilly, all I want you to do is be reasonable. We’ve hardly been married a month. That isn’t giving marriage a fair chance. I want to make a deal with you. Give the marriage at least six months. I’ve tied up the loose ends of my business. I’ll be free to devote more time to you. I’m eager to help you with your career. I want to start by booking you into one of the top hotels in Las Vegas. How about it? Will you agree to six months?”