First Sight (15 page)

“You finished them? All of them?” She nodded and grinned at him as he shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? Did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“A little,” she said, as she glanced at something on his computer. She had slept for four hours, which was nearly enough for her. She rarely slept more than five, and could still function on three. She was a human powerhouse, and never seemed to run out of energy, although by late Friday afternoon, the jet lag got her, and at four o’clock, she was about to fall asleep at her desk. She had forgotten all about her recent surgery and convalescence. She was back to working at full speed, but by five o’clock she decided to call it a day. It was the weekend after all. She didn’t even need to take work home, she had caught up on almost everything, and the rest could wait till Monday. She was afraid she might have to go to Taiwan to settle problems there.

With the traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway, she got home at six o’clock, and decided to go to Malibu that night. Zack hadn’t called from San Francisco, and she didn’t call him either. She’d been too busy and she knew she’d hear from him when he got back to the city. She had the driver take her out to Malibu at eight o’clock, after the traffic slowed down. He left her there, and she promised to call him on Sunday, when she wanted to go back to Bel Air, unless Zack drove her back. And by nine o’clock, she was standing on her deck, looking out at the ocean, and smelling the sea air, as the wind whipped through her hair. She loved being there. The house was done in blues and whites, with bleached floors, and stark white Chinese porcelains. She had a white marble coffee table, and oversize white furniture. The ceiling was painted the color of sky. Everything about the Malibu house reminded one of summer. She had a big white four-poster bed draped in white linen. It was a place she always enjoyed, and one of the few where she relaxed.

She couldn’t wait to wake up and go for a walk on the beach in the morning. She had just decided she didn’t mind being there alone, when the phone rang. It was Zack, he was on his way home, a day early.

“You’re already at the beach?” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t think you’d go out till the morning. I’m just driving past Bakersfield, I should be back in a couple of hours. Do you want me to come out there tonight?” She hesitated and then decided she might enjoy it. As she listened to him, she realized it would be nice to see him, although she had expected to spend the night alone.

“Sure. Why don’t you come out?” she said easily. It was one of the things about him she liked most. He was an easy companion on weekends, and she never had to make a fuss for him. He came and went, and didn’t expect her to do anything special for him, which was particularly nice when she was tired, or had a long week. He just liked to hang out, and be at the beach. Sometimes they didn’t even talk for hours.

“I should be there around midnight. If you’re tired, just go to bed, and leave the door open.”

“I might,” she said with a yawn. “I’m beat. I worked all day, and I’m still on Paris time.” Although she hated to rub it in.

“I’ll let myself in.” He sounded like he was in good spirits.

She had a bath in her pristine white granite bathroom, with a view of the ocean from the bathtub. She was going to try to wait up for him, but left the kitchen door unlocked just in case, and long before midnight she was sound asleep in the canopied bed. She never heard him come in, and as he often did, he slipped quietly into bed, and fell asleep next to her. Their relationship was more companionship than sexual. He was the proverbial warm body, literally sometimes, and when she woke up early the next morning, she saw him lying beside her, his long blond hair tousled on her pillow, like a child’s. He looked like a large beautiful boy as he slept, and she lay watching him for a few minutes and smiled. He was an exceptionally handsome man. She was never sure exactly what she felt for him, but it didn’t really matter. There was nothing to analyze about their relationship. He was just there, for now. She didn’t need or expect more than that from him.

She moved carefully out of the bed then, so as not to wake him up, and walked barefoot into her kitchen and out onto the deck. It was a glorious late October day. In fact, she realized with a start, it was Halloween. There was a soft breeze, and it was unseasonably warm. She couldn’t wait to put on her jeans and walk down to the beach. The ocean was flat and still, the sand immaculate and smooth. It felt more like spring than fall.

She poured herself a cup of tea, and made coffee for Zack, and then sat down in the October sunshine. It was nine o’clock. She lay on a deck chair in the sun, and an hour later, looking handsome and tousled, Zack appeared. He looked like a movie star, or a Calvin Klein ad, with his exquisite body, as he walked out on the deck in his briefs.

“Hi there,” Timmie said, smiling up at him from her deck chair. “I’m sorry I was asleep when you got here. What time did you get in?” He made no move to kiss her, just stood across the deck from her, smiling sleepily, and stretched lazily with a yawn. He wasn’t a cuddly person, but he looked happy to see her, and she realized it was nice to see him too.

“I don’t know, probably close to one. I stopped to get something to eat. I figured you’d be asleep. You look good, Tim. You don’t look like you’ve been sick.”

They were like two friends or roommates meeting after a long time, running into each other casually somewhere. He wasn’t a particularly affectionate person. They were two entirely separate people on parallel tracks, which intersected from time to time, but rarely touched. If she hadn’t had other relationships like it before, she would have found it very strange. Zack was neither passionate nor affectionate with her. Sometimes she felt as though they were more friends than anything else. He was friendly, but never really warm, and he liked hanging out with her. And once in a while, when the mood struck both of them, they made love. But sex was never of particular interest to Zack. Looking at him, one would have expected him to be fabulous in bed, but he wasn’t. He was very beautiful, but never terribly interested in anyone else, mostly himself. He lay down on the deck chair next to hers, and closed his eyes in the morning sun. He didn’t lean over to kiss her. It never even occurred to him, after not seeing her for a month, but he was happy to be there. He was exactly what he looked like, a beautiful male model with a fabulous body, sometimes a huge spoiled brat, as he had been when she left for Europe, and at other times, he was actually fun. It was hard to predict which he would be at any given time. It depended on whatever mood he was in. This morning he looked sleepy and relaxed, and beautiful as always. He turned to her with a smile then, and opened one eye in the bright sun.

“I don’t suppose you’re in the mood to make me breakfast?” he asked, and then finally leaned over to kiss her. It was the merest peck on the lips. His own were tightly closed.

“I could be,” she said, smiling at him. “It’s nice to see you.” It had been a month since she left. “Maybe you should cook for me,” she teased. If they depended on his cooking, she knew they’d starve.

“I missed you,” he said, his big blue eyes looking into her green ones. It was a rare admission for him. “Too bad you got sick. How do you feel?” Questions about her health were rare too. He was in unusually good form. He acted more like a twenty-five-year-old than a man of forty-one. All his reactions were those of a younger man. And most of the time, he hung out with people half his age.

“I’m fine. I felt lousy for a while in Paris. I’m okay now. Just tired from the trip. How was San Francisco?”

“Not too exciting. That’s why I came back.” She was sure that that was true. If it had been more interesting, he would have been in no rush to see her. She had no illusions about that. “I got two commercials this week. Big ones. National TV.” He looked pleased with himself, and liked talking to her about it. She had given him good advice about his work.

“Sounds good.” They talked about his career a lot, and rarely hers. But that was her choice, not his. He wasn’t someone she could discuss her problems with, nor did she want to. He was just easy company and beautiful to look at. She realized full well that she paid a high price for how handsome he was. Men who looked like him were rarely attentive to their women. They expected the women in their immediate circle to take care of them, and to a small degree, Timmie did. “What do you want to eat?” she asked as she stood up. She liked making breakfast for him on weekends. It made her feel domestic. They rarely saw each other during the week. She was too busy, and with his easy lifestyle, he got underfoot, either when she was rushing in the morning, or when she came home exhausted at night. It worked much better when they met for weekends at the beach.

“Orange juice, two eggs over easy, bacon, toast, coffee. The usual.” He rarely offered to make breakfast for her, but she didn’t care about that either. He was a lousy cook, and for her, it was actually fun cooking for him, and hanging out together on the weekends, lying in the sun and walking on the beach hand in hand. It was friendly, easy, and warm. The only time she didn’t enjoy his company was when he complained that she wasn’t doing enough for him, like getting modeling jobs or taking him to parties. But he wasn’t going there yet. She’d just gotten back, and he was still half asleep.

She disappeared to the kitchen to make him breakfast, and twenty minutes later, she came back with his breakfast on a tray. “Deck service, Your Highness,” she teased him, and he sat up with a grin and took the tray from her. It was fun for her to have someone to pamper once in a while. She had put it all on white plates with seashells on them, with a linen placemat and napkin on the tray. She liked playing house at the beach, it was a side of her she rarely had time to indulge. And surely not during the week.

Over breakfast, he told her about some modeling go-sees he’d been on, and acting auditions, and brought her up to date on the dramas in his world. She told him about the ready to wear shows in Europe, and this time he made no comment about not coming along. After breakfast, they went for a long walk on the beach. He told her some funny stories, they picked up shells, and waded at the water’s edge, and then he ran down the beach while she walked at an easy pace. But even the walking made her recently healed incision begin to hurt, so she sat down on the sand, while he continued running in the shallow water in the October sunshine. He was beautiful to watch, and from the distance he looked like a kid. He caught up with her on the way back. They went back to the house shortly after, and lay on the deck again. She was tired after the walk.

It was an easy, lazy day. They napped, and dozed. They made lunch together, and he barbecued steaks for them that night. They had no serious conversations, made no attempt to solve the problems of the world. He watched sports on TV, and she fell asleep on the deck reading a book. That night, they watched a video, and by ten o’clock, they were both in bed, sound asleep. He had made no attempt to make love to her, but fell asleep with his arm around her, and it gave her some warmth and comfort. Companionship was the hallmark of their relationship. Although when they woke up in the morning, he wanted to make love to her, and she told him she couldn’t yet. Her surgery was too fresh. He was good-humored about it, and told her to make him breakfast instead, which she did. It was all easy and comfortable for both of them. They spent the day on the deck, although the air had gotten colder, and at six o’clock he drove her back to Bel Air. He used the gym and hot tub, while she checked her e-mails from work.

He didn’t stay for dinner, he rarely did on Sunday nights. He usually made plans with his friends, and Timmie stayed home and worked, getting ready for the week ahead.

“What are you doing this week?” he asked her casually before he left. He liked knowing if she had some important event to go to. He was always angling for invitations to parties where he might be seen, but Timmie rarely went. She usually worked late every night. She had missed Barbara Davis’s illustrious Carousel Ball while she was in Europe, and she hadn’t paid much attention to the invitations Jade had left on her desk. They weren’t nearly as important to Timmie as they were to Zack.

“Nothing much, I think,” she said, watching him put his gym clothes back in his bag. “I’ll check. I have a lot of work to do after being away for a month.” He had never fully understood the volume of work she did, nor the pressure that was a daily fact of life for her.

“Let me know,” he said, and she knew that if she didn’t include him in her major social invitations, he’d have one of his tantrums. He was only pleasant as long as he felt he wasn’t missing anything. She didn’t always indulge him. When she did go out, she went to most events by herself. She didn’t like advertising her relationships. She preferred staying private about it, which had never suited Zack. He hadn’t had much luck getting her out, and he always said she worked too hard, which was correct, she readily admitted, and not something she intended to change. And surely not for Zack.

Even if he was pleasant company at the beach, he offered little else. The limitations of their relationship were even more obvious to her now after a month apart. It also struck her again how deceiving looks were. Anyone looking at him would have assumed he was fabulous in bed. Instead, he was boring and selfish. There was no fire and few sparks. There was something about his looks that captivated her nonetheless. His physical beauty was his main asset. He was beautiful to look at above all.

“I’ll call you,” Zack promised as he gave her another peck on the mouth as he left on Sunday night. “Thanks for a good weekend.” It had been that at least. Good, and peaceful, although she felt empty when he left.

He hadn’t been bratty, and they didn’t fight. And it had been nice sleeping next to him, it almost always was. It kept her warm, both body and soul. It was amazing how things like that mattered when you were alone. Sex had become less important to her than hugs, or human touch. Sometimes it was just nice to sleep next to another human being. Without Zack staying with her on weekends, she would have been starved for human warmth. There was no one else in her life to sleep with or touch. Sometimes she thought she’d have been willing to sell her soul for a hug. Loneliness had become a huge factor in her life in recent years. Zack was an antidote to that.