The Rich Shall Inherit (75 page)

Naples was broiling under late-summer heat as she checked into a suite at the Grand Hotel, and she bathed and changed into a thin silk robe, pacing nervously between the silent waiting telephone and the tall mirror in her bedroom that showed her the truth. She had refused to cut her lavish red hair in a fashionable bob and it fell to her shoulders the way Franco would remember it, only now it was smoother, sleeker, and there were two fine sweeps of white at the temples. Her eyes were just as blue and maybe they still had that old insolent tilt, but there were small lines around them now, marks of past joys and sorrows. Throwing open her robe, she stared at her naked body, seeing it as he might; the curve of her breasts was a little deeper, her hips a little rounder, but her waist was small trim and her buttocks taut, and her long, elegant legs were as slender as they had always been.

She fastened the robe again with a sigh; she couldn’t turn back the clock, even for Franco. And if she could have turned it back, she would have changed her whole life.

Nevertheless, she fussed endlessly over her appearance, choosing and discarding dresses until she found one that seemed right; she powdered the freckles on her nose and added a blush of color to her cheekbones, and a touch of coral lipstick to her lips. She sprayed on her favorite gardenia scent and finally, she was ready.

She could put off the moment no longer, and she picked up the telephone and dialed his number, tapping her nails nervously on the edge of the table as it rang.

“Pronto
, Malvasi,” he said.

Poppy’s nails stopped tapping, her heart jumped, and her eyes widened with astonishment … “Franco!” she gasped …. “I didn’t expect … I thought you wouldn’t be there ….”

“Poppy,” he said, “is it really you?”

“Yes … I’m sorry, I can’t think … I hadn’t expected to speak to you, I thought I’d have to talk to several secretaries, leave messages first…”

“You dialed my private number,” he told her. “I always answer it myself. And I’m just as surprised, Poppy, to be talking to you.”

“Franco,” she whispered, cradling the telephone against her cheek as though it were his face, “you sound just the same.”

She heard him sigh as he said, “After twenty-five years, Poppy, none of us are the same.”

“I’m here—at the Grand in Naples,” she cried eagerly. “I wanted to see you …”

There was a pause and then he said warningly, “It’s better not to, Poppy. Remember?”

She nodded; she remembered only too well. “But it’s important,” she pleaded. “I
need
to see you, Franco. I’m here to ask your help.”

“Then I’ll send a car for you,” he said abruptly, “it’ll be there in half an hour.”

She knew she couldn’t bear the memory of the bulletproof black limousine with the shaded windows, and the guards and the guns. “I have my own car,” she said quickly, “I’ll drive myself, Franco. I know the way.” She’d made it her business weeks ago to find out where the villa was.

“I’ll tell the guards on the gate to expect you,” he said quietly. “In an hour, Poppy?”

“In an hour.” She waited until she heard the click as he replaced his receiver before she put down the phone.

The heat in Naples had been unbearable all day and even now, as dusk changed to midnight blue, the temperature had barely dropped. Poppy opened the car windows wide, letting the warm breeze rake through her hair, grateful for the breath of air. As the long green car climbed the hills she wondered what it would be like, seeing Franco again, touching his hand, looking into his eyes, and she shivered as though the breeze had turned cold.

The guards outside were different this time, they wore smart blue uniforms and peaked caps; there were no machine guns in evidence, and they manned a booth at the entrance linked to the house by telephone.

“We were expecting you, Signora,” they told her politely, peering intently into the back seat and opening the trunk. But they didn’t check her personally and she realized Franco must have asked them not to—still, she might be carrying one of those small neat pistols in her cream leather purse, the sort that didn’t look nearly big enough to kill a man, but that she knew could.

The gates swung open, Poppy pressed her foot nervously on the gas. The big car prowled up the gravel driveway to where a butler was waiting on the white-columned portico. “Signor Malvasi is in the library, Signora,” he told her.

“Wait,” she said as he started to tap on the door and announce her. “I’ll go in by myself.”

She slid through the library door without a sound. The big room was filled with the scent of night-blooming flowers wafting in from the garden. There were pools of light from soft-shaded
lamps, and a treasure house of paintings glowed on the walls. Franco was standing by an open window gazing out onto the moonlit garden. Of course he looked older, but he was the same lean, vigorous man she remembered and he was as immaculate as always, in a well-cut dinner jacket. His hair was now completely gray, though his heavy brows were still dark and his eyes as he turned and looked at her still had that same piercing quality, as though he could read her soul.

Franco stared at her silently; he’d been thinking about her, wondering what she would be like now, how it would feel being with her again … and now here she was. In the soft light, she was the Poppy of his dreams; a girl again, just as he always thought of her, in an apricot silk dress that brought out the peachy-red of her hair and made her skin glow like alabaster. She put her head to one side and looked at him with that old familiar insolent stare, and he wanted to kiss her.

“You look beautiful—as ever, Poppy,” he said instead. “Time hasn’t changed you.”

“It’s a trick of the light,” she said, walking toward him and holding out her hands. “I’ve lived a dozen different lives, and it’s all there on my face.”

She was close to him now, and as he took her hands in his, he could see the truth. But even if life had been cruel to her, it had blessed her with a timelessness; she was more beautiful now than when she was a girl.

“I didn’t think I’d ever feel this happy to see anyone,” he said simply.

“Nor I,” she said. And then she moved closer and the familiar scent of gardenias was in his nostrils as their lips met.

Poppy turned away, burying her face in his shoulder. “This isn’t what I came here to tell you,” she whispered, “but I’m quite sure now that I’ve never really loved any man but you, Franco. It’s always been you … only you.”

He stroked her hair gently. “It’s too late for us,” he said quietly. “It’s always been too late. It was impossible right from the beginning. Nothing has changed, Poppy. It never will.”

She nodded. “I know. I’m just glad to be here with you … now, for a little while.”

Putting his hand under her chin, Franco lifted her face to his. “Then let’s enjoy our stolen moments,” he said, determinedly cheerful. “Let’s have champagne, let’s talk the way we used to at Montespan, over dinner. You can tell me all about yourself.”

He walked to the waiting silver wine cooler and pulled the cork, laughing like a boy as he filled the glasses until they foamed over with bubbles. “Poppy,” he cried, “I think I’ve been old all my life; only you have the capacity to make me feel young.”

She took the glass from him, laughing intoxicatedly though she hadn’t yet drunk anything, elated at just being with him again. “It’s our own party,” she cried, “our
reunion
party, Franco!
You
and me—together again!”

They clinked glasses in a toast, laughing as the golden wine spilled.

“You were the champagne in my life,” he told her, “you were always bubbling and full of fizz and vitality—”

“Except when I’m unhappy,” she said abruptly, “which is all the time now.”

They looked at each other soberly. “I wish that weren’t true, Poppy,” he said quietly.

She shrugged. “I’ve tried to run away from it. For four years I’ve chased around the world. There isn’t a historic monument I haven’t seen, an ocean I haven’t crossed. And,” she added with a short bitter laugh, “none of it mattered a damn!”

“I heard you closed Numéro Seize.”

“A long time ago. I sold the contents recently. You bought my portrait. That’s how I knew I could come back to you. I told you, I need your help,” she said simply.

There was a small silence and then he said, “I’m always here when you need help, Poppy. I’m glad you remembered.”

Franco drank his champagne quickly, wishing he didn’t feel like crushing her in his arms, like begging her never to go away again … Of course he couldn’t do that; he must take control of the situation, the way he always did. “You must be hungry,” he said, taking her arm. “I thought we would have supper in here. It’s my favorite room, where no one else is ever allowed. We’ll get the breeze from those long windows.”

Places were set at a small round table covered with a rich paisley shawl, and a serving trolley nearby groaned under the weight of platters of freshly poached salmon, pink shrimp, oysters and lobsters, iced soufflés, and a great crystal bowl of figs, melons, cherries, and wild strawberries.

“It’s a still life, like one of your wonderful paintings,” Poppy gasped, “a medieval feast fit for a prince!”

“Then tonight we are the royalty,” he said with a smile. “After all, it’s our celebration, isn’t it?”

He refilled her glass and let her talk about her travels; noticing that the words spilled from her excitedly, the way they would from a woman too long alone. He put salmon on her plate and cut it into delicate little pieces for her, he plied her with fruits, slitting open the figs, revealing their soft pink inner skins bursting with sweet juices, and then he enjoyed watching her eat them. He tried with all his strength to keep her out of his heart and at the end of it all, when she fell silent and just looked at him with those wide, wonderful blue eyes, he knew he had failed. He still wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any other woman in the world.

Afterward they walked together to the window, and looked out onto the moonlit garden. “So,” she said, meeting his glance, “nothing has changed, Franco?”

“Nothing’s changed,” he murmured. And as he took her in his arms and kissed her, he knew it never would.

She waited, still trembling from his kisses, while he picked up his house phone and dismissed the guards from inside the house; he told the butler that they would need nothing further and they were not to be disturbed. And when he was sure they were alone, he took her hand and they walked together up the grand staircase.

His room had the simplicity of absolute luxury. Priceless silk rugs, soft draperies, a beautifully carved antique headboard, and a single painting on the wall, a Botticelli Madonna. But then Franco pulled back a velvet curtain to reveal her portrait. “You see,” he smiled, “now you are always with me. I see you first thing in the morning and last thing at night.”

She sat nervously on the edge of the bed. “I know it’s silly, Franco,” she whispered, “but I feel as anxious as a new bride.”

“Then that’s what you shall be,” he murmured, putting his arms around her.

But her body told her she wasn’t his new bride, her body
remembered
his. The silk dress slid from her shoulders and she was naked underneath just the way he’d always liked her to be, but for pale peach silk French panties and her pearls. She felt him tremble as his lips moved slowly down her throat to her breasts. “Franco,” she moaned, “oh, Franco, darling …”

Stripping himself naked, he lay beside her, turning her into his arms. They lay body against body, feeling their heartbeats, then he was kissing her again and the desire to possess her, to claim her again as his own, made him fierce. He thrust into her, again and again, until she shouted her passion, tossing her head frenziedly,
demanding the final moment. “Poppy, oh, Poppy,” he cried as he burst inside her, “ah, Poppy, my love …”

They lay quietly for a while, like dazed travelers returning from another world, reorienting themselves. “If you ever wondered how much I love you,” he said at last, “surely now you know.”

She turned to look into his eyes; their faces were so close that their breaths mingled. “I know,” she said simply. “It will never change.”

The night passed in moments of tenderness, wrapped in each other’s arms—“Being in your arms is like coming home,” she whispered—and in more lovemaking, longer this time, more drawn out, with tenderness as well as the frenzy of passion. As the hot sun rose again in the late-summer sky, jolting them from their private world into the public one, she begged him to let her stay. “Don’t send me away, Franco, not yet … let’s pretend just for a little while that life is the way it used to be.”

Franco strode naked to the window, switching back the curtain on his world. Suddenly none of it mattered; he would trade it all for a week with the woman he loved. “I know a place,” he said quietly, “an old villa … I haven’t seen it in years and it’s probably falling to rack and ruin by now. But there’s no one there who knows us, no one who cares. Maybe, just for a few days …”

“A few days,” Poppy whispered, “just a few days lost from our real lives. Who is there to care about that, Franco?”

She waited for him in the library while he summoned his top three men, telling them that he was leaving for a week, that they would not know where he was nor would they be able to get in touch with him. They stared at him mistrustfully, as he told them he was taking no one with him, no bodyguards, no bulletproof cars, no guns. “It’s crazy,” they warned. “You are Franco Malvasi, you’ll be recognized anywhere you go. It’s too dangerous.” Franco just shrugged away their arguments; for the first time in almost twenty-five years he was doing exactly what he wanted, and he wanted it passionately, at any price.

“I expect you to carry on as normal,” he told them. “See that the house is guarded as though I am still here. Have the doctor come here and let it be known that I have some minor illness and am confined to my bed—that will explain my absence.” Their faces were worried as he left, but he didn’t care. As he drove out of his prison in the long, low dark green de Courmont, all he cared about was Poppy.