The Seduction Of Claudia (24 page)

It crossed his mind as he moved through the familiar rooms to the door and out to his car, that he would never set foot in that house again. He had always been as comfortable there as he'd been in his parents' house growing up. No more.

*****

Marcheline had made herself comfortable in Claudia's apartment. She eschewed the use of the guest room Andrew had shown her to and instead appropriated the master bedroom for her own use and spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the premises and the contents thereof. When Andrew let himself back into Claudia's apartment, Marcheline was going through Claudia's closet, examining what she found intently, draping the things she particularly liked across the bed. Andrew watched her for a moment, saw her pull out a silk wraparound dress and hold it up to herself, looking into the full-length mirror, admiring the way the color of the dress suited her.

"Find anything you like?" Andrew asked, anger sparking in him that she would trespass, when against the instinct to protect herself, Claudia had opened her home to Marcheline.

Marcheline yelped and dropped the dress, startled. She turned around to face him and Andrew thought he saw a fleeting look of guilt in her eyes.

"Oh, chér! I didn't hear you come in," she said, recovering quickly. "I was just hanging my clothes..."

"Don't bother; I saw what you were doing. You won't be staying here."

"But why? There is plenty of room for me here," Marcheline said.

"I've decided that you will never get another chance to use or mistreat Claudia again. She doesn't owe you anything, yet against her better judgment, she extended you the courtesy of a place to stay while you go through your divorce. You've only been here a couple of hours and to repay her hospitality, you've smoked cigarettes which she hates, you've tried to seduce her boyfriend and now you're pawing through her belongings, setting aside the things of hers that you like so you could steal from her! I won't let you get away with it. You're not staying here," Andrew said implacably.

"I wasn't -- how is it you say? -- pawing through her things," Marcheline protested, her accent was back full force. "And I would steal nothing! I was unpacking and needed to make room for my clothes in the closet."

Andrew had to hand it to her. She had at least not denied that she had tried to seduce him. There was honesty in her somewhere, however deeply it might be hidden.

"Your suitcases are in the front hall, in the exact same spot I left them when I let you here. You'd need them if you were unpacking, wouldn't you?"

"I needed to see how much room there was, chér," Marcheline sidled up to Andrew, batting her lashes. "You wouldn't throw me out in the cold, would you, chér? Where would I go?"

"There are hundreds of hotels in this city. I'm sure one of them has a vacancy."

"A hotel? Why would I spend money to stay at a hotel when this place is going unused?"

"Because it's about damned time you paid your own way! You've sponged off of Claudia and your... what would you call them? Lovers? Johns? Whatever. You've never paid your own way and you've never faced the consequences of your actions. That stops now!"

"How dare you!" Marcheline asked angrily. Then, thinking to win him over with frail, stunned surprise, she raised shaking hands to her throat, sank onto Claudia's bed. "Why do you speak to me this way?"

"I'm the person who's doing for Claudia what you and Patrick Gates have failed to do for her entire life: I'm protecting her from predators!"

Marcheline's eyes flared in shock at hearing Gates's name.

"That's right. Thanks to me, Claudia met that bastard for the first time on Christmas night -- at my parents' house. He's been my father's best friend for nearly fifty years -- I have known him my entire life."

He paused, waiting for Marcheline's response. She sat in stunned silence. The look on her face was more like horrified glee than sympathy for what Claudia must have endured.

"She saw Patrick? Spoke with him?"

"Yes. He treated her like garbage, tried to give her money to leave me."

"Ah," Marcheline nodded with a knowing smile, "that's why she went to Paris. She took the money. And I thought she'd learned nothing from me," for the first time, her voice was tinged with pride as she spoke about her daughter.

"You disgust me. She didn't take the money. I'm not exactly sure why she left, but it certainly isn't because she thought all of her financial worries were behind her. She left the check Gates wrote her on my dining room table. She never even touched it."

"Then she's a fool," Marcheline said baldly. "Men like you and Gates will take what you want from her and use her up. In the end, she'll be left with nothing!"

"She won't, because she's nothing like you and I'm nothing like Gates. I love her and she loves me even if she's too afraid, too scarred by the shit you and Gates dumped in her lap, to admit it!"

Marcheline gave a typically gallic snort of disgust and disbelief. She stood and walked past Andrew out of the bedroom and down the hall to the living room. Andrew followed her. She walked over to where she had left her expensive au courant handbag and groped inside it. She found her packet of cigarettes and pulled one out and prepared to light it. Andrew snatched it from her hand and broke it in half.

"I told you before: Claudia doesn't allow people to smoke in her apartment," he enunciated each word slowly and carefully.

Marcheline opened her mouth, then closed it abruptly, apparently having second thoughts about going head to head with Andrew on the matter smoking indoors.

She rounded on him, in full attack mode.

"Are you so naïve as to think Claudia is the right woman for you?" she asked incredulously. "She's not good enough for someone like you. You are from two different worlds!"

"Gates really did a number on you, didn't he? He's called you trash so many times that you believe it, don't you? Let me tell you something. There's more to life than money and pedigrees. You've spent your whole life rubbing up against rich men and what has it gotten you? You've used people -- what has it gotten you? You're a desperate woman, whose stock in trade is no good anymore. Your marriage is over, your beauty is fading, Marcheline and you've got nothing!" Andrew hammered the final nail in the coffin.

Marcheline drew back in shock, "How dare you! You have no right to judge me. You and Claudia might just be perfect for one another -- your high horses are the same height!"

"It's not a judgment, Marcheline. You've used her since the day she was born. She was your meal-ticket, not your daughter."

"Claudia is a lucky girl; I gave her everything!"

"Oh, really? Is every girl lucky enough to get the gift of being molested by one of her mother's perverted lovers? How about a young girl being so lucky that she gets trotted out like a trick pony to serve drinks and hors d'oeuvres to the men her mother is fucking for money? Should she feel lucky that her mother absolutely delighted in telling her how worthless she is? I think you're right Marcheline, she wasso lucky to have been brought up in such a wholesome environment!" he finished sarcastically.

"I don't know what you are talking about! Claudia has a tendency to see things in the worst way possible. What you described never happened!"

"Having spent a few very informative minutes with you, I know who I believe. At any rate, I don't have time to argue with you; I've got a plane to catch. I can drop you at one of the hotels at the airport, if you'd like. They're sometimes a bit cheaper if not quite as nice as the ones in town," Andrew said, going to the closet to retrieve Marcheline's hat and coat.

"I will not stay at a dingy airport hotel!" she objected hotly.

"Suit yourself, but you're not staying here either," he plopped her fur hat crookedly atop her head and steered her to the door. Marcheline spluttered ineffectually, tried to fight against Andrew's forward momentum.

"You can't do this -- you have no right! This is my daughter's home -- not yours! And what is between me and my daughter is none of your business!"

Andrew opened the door, gently pushed her out of it and handed her her coat. He stepped back inside and grabbed her luggage, put it on the landing next to her.

"I am making it my business to see that you never hurt Claudia again," Andrew said. "That means seeing that she doesn't come home to a house that reeks of cigarette smoke and to find that her privacy has been violated or that she's been stolen from."

"You bastard. You will not get away with treating me this way," Marcheline was flustered, short of breath.

"I'm shaking in my boots," Andrew said dismissively, going back into the apartment. "Wait there."

He went down the hall to Claudia's office and opened the top drawer of her desk. He withdrew her leather-bound address book and found Marie-Josée's Paris address and phone numbers. He entered the information into his BlackBerry and put her book back where he had found it.

He rejoined Marcheline on the landing and locked the door to the apartment. He took the larger pieces of luggage and started down the stairs without a word to her, leaving her to carry one medium-sized bag and a hefty-looking makeup case. Marcheline clattered down behind him muttering Creole curses under her breath. It wasn't lost on Andrew that the proper little 'lady' could get as down and dirty with her language as any common street whore. Andrew knocked on Mrs H's door.

"Hi. I just wanted to let you know that Marcheline has decided to stay at a hotel. She doesn't agree with Claudia's smoking policy."

"I thought I smelled smoke coming from up there!" Mrs. H said with open disapprobation.

Marcheline huffed and rolled her eyes. Andrew thought he heard her say something about meddling old biddies under her breath.

"I'm going to keep the key to Claudia's apartment, Mrs. H, just to ensure that you won't be exposed to any awkward situations that might arise," he said with a speaking glance at Marcheline, nipping in the bud the possibility that she might return and somehow manipulate Mrs. H into letting her back into Claudia's apartment.

"Oh, I see. By all means, keep it!" Mrs. H said, nervously gripping the strand of pearls she always wore. Underneath his outward politesse, Andrew was clearly angry. Mrs. H had never seen him in anything other than a good mood and she was disconcerted by the thinly veiled menace he projected.

At that, Marcheline huffed and stormed out of the building. Andrew followed with her luggage.

"Which hotel will it be?"

"The Ritz."

"It's not the Ritz anymore, it's called the Taj now. Do you still want to go?"

"Whatever. I don't care what it's called," she gritted out.

He loaded her bags and drove her the few blocks to the hotel. The valet opened her door and Marcheline stepped out of the car without a word and stalked into the hotel in a swirl of dark fur. Andrew popped the trunk and the bellman removed her bags from the car and loaded them on a brass luggage rack. Andrew idled the car for a moment, shaking his head in amazement, wondering who would wind up paying for her stay at the hotel. Probably Gates, he smirked, the two of them were welcome to each other.

He understood Claudia's idiosyncrasies a lot better after meeting Marcheline in person; she was worse than he could have ever imagined. He was more in love with Claudia for the fact that she had survived, even flourished, with parents like Gates and Marcheline. Looking at the dashboard clock, he realized he had just enough time to clear airport security and make his flight to Paris. Another few hours, he thought with anticipation, and he'd be that much closer to having her back for good.

*****

Claudia went to bed early and lay awake in the darkness, exhausted, enervated but unable to sleep. She longed for Andrew, missed him with a ferocity that surprised her. She hadn't realized until that moment that he had gotten so completely under her skin. Reflexively, she cursed herself for having relaxed her guard, for having allowed herself to feel, to hope.

Still, she wondered if Marie-Josée was right. Had she mistaken Andrew's reaction? Had she been so convinced that he would recoil from her, horrified by what she told him, that she had only been able to see what she had been expecting to see? She didn't know, couldn't recall the events clearly, and couldn't examine them objectively.

But what if she had misjudged him? What she had told him clearly would have come as a shock to him. If she viewed things from his perspective, she had to admit that discovering that she was Gates's biological daughter would be difficult to digest. She groaned softly when she thought of how vicious she must have sounded when she had attacked him, assaulted him. She had gone on the offensive without giving him a chance to really absorb what she had told him.

Dare she harbor hope that he wasn't disgusted and fed up with her, that she had misunderstood him? She conceded that even if that was the case, she had made a big mistake by leaving town. If he hadn't been angry with her before, he must certainly be now. With all the negative things she had said to him, both the day before and since they had been involved, about the viability of their relationship, she honestly couldn't blame him if he gave up on her. The knowledge that she had possibly thrown away her only chance at happiness stabbed into her. Cynically, she thought that the misery she felt was nothing more than what she deserved. She had botched things up royally.

Her train of thought was broken when the front door to the apartment opened. Claudia tensed where she lay, her senses heightened. She heard someone moving with surety through the darkness, his or her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet on the floor, the quiet swish of clothing the only sound. Claudia stole out of bed and peered through the cracked door of her room. Through the gloom, she made out the figure of a man. Tall, thin and dressed in a dark overcoat, he slipped into her cousin's bedroom. Her heart thudded with terror as she wondered if she could call the police and perhaps improvise some sort of weapon to use in subduing him without betraying her presence.

She grabbed one of the decorative walking sticks, one of the many items Marie-Josée collected, from the stand in the corner and was in the hallway outside of Marie-Josée's room when she heard her cousin murmur a sleepy greeting to the prowler who apparently wasn't a prowler. She heard what sounded like clothing being removed and dropped to the floor. Marie-Josee was speaking, but her voice was so low that Claudia couldn't make out what she said. What surprised her was the softness, the affection, that warmed her cousin's voice as she spoke to the man. She heard the sound of sheets rustling, the quiet groan of the mattress springs as Marie-Josee's lover joined her in bed. Marie-Josée giggled suddenly and the man cautioned her, Shhhhhh.