Hold Back the Night (25 page)

Other than one snatched and sinful half-hour that was not spent in talk, Domini was unable to pursue her relationship with Sander during the week that followed. Window changes filled the balance of the working days, and construction of required props as well as designs for upcoming displays filled the evenings and the weekend. A lengthy transatlantic call to Berenice took more long precious minutes, and for once Domini didn't even think of the cost, either in time or in money.

On the weekend, at Sander's request, Domini dropped Tasey off one afternoon so that he could finish the final details of his sculpture. With glowing face, she watched her daughter run up the stairs to the man who was her father, almost as eagerly as if she knew the secret of her birth. Domini longed to run up the stairs herself. But the things she wanted to say to Sander could not be said with Tasey around, nor in a snatched half-hour.

By the end of the working week the various phone calls from unknown sources, probably suppliers, had still not been returned. At least two had called a second time. Domini resolved to attend to them first thing Monday morning, prior to the window change and lunch she had promised Grant Manners.

As it happened, she didn't. Over the weekend a burst pipe in the loft above one client, the travel agency, caused water damage to Domini's display. Remembering the help they had tried to give her, she raced over with a stored prop, symbolically enough a model she had once made of the Eiffel Tower in order to promote French perfumes. That and some travel posters and a roll of no-seam paper ought to have been enough to put the window back in quick working order, but the burst pipe had taken its toll, causing dye to run out of the crepe paper poppies used in the previous display. There was quite a mess to clean up. By the time it was done, Domini realized she was going to be late for her next appointment. She rushed home to change for the lunch, the navy dress again, and called a taxi while she was changing ... she would need it in any case to transport Grant's props. Her cotton working slacks and shirt went into a bag because she knew she would need them during the afternoon. She was half an hour behind schedule and breathless by the time she reached Grant's exclusive boutique.

'Well, shall we drink a toast to the fact that you finally made it?' he asked with a tilted brow, when he and Domini were at last settled at a table in one of the discreet and expensive restaurants for which New York is justly famous. He lifted his martini glass as if to clink it against Domini's.

'Sarcasm will get you nowhere,' Domini said lightly, without raising the spritzer she had requested in order to keep her head clear for the afternoon's work. 'Surely you know by now I'm not in the habit of being late.'

'Are you deliberately misunderstanding me, or are you just being modest? Good God, Domini, surely we're good enough friends by now that you don't need to keep that sort of thing secret from me. It isn't as though you've never spoken to me about your intentions.'

'What are you talking about?' she asked, honestly puzzled.

Grant's hand was still raised in the unjoined toast. He lowered it slowly. 'You mean you don't know?'

'Don't know what?'

He laughed, sounding surprised. 'My God, you've had days to find out. I intended this lunch to be in the nature of a celebration. I didn't mean to ruin the surprise, but it seems I've let the cat out of the bag.'

'You haven't done anything of the sort,' Domini said, as confused as ever. 'What is it I'm supposed to be celebrating?'

'Why, your success,' Grant stated. 'I thought you'd have doubled your prices by now! Last week I kept mum, but I knew you'd be hearing from several people. That last window of yours attracted a lot of interest, and I don't mean just from customers. I handed your name out freely because I remembered what you had said about intending to take Fifth Avenue by storm. A couple of merchants were so damn positive ... my God, haven't they called yet? I could bite my tongue off.'

Domini stared. 'I haven't returned half my calls from last week,' she said. 'I've been far too busy.'

Grant stared, too, and then started to laugh. He lifted his glass again. 'Here's to returning your calls,' he grinned.

Domini did, as soon as possible, and because that afternoon was spent changing Grant's window, as soon as possible meant the following morning. Some calls really were from suppliers; others weren't.

A few callers couldn't be reached, but by the way the telephone was answered Domini knew the calls had come from stores and boutiques, not from salesmen. She left her name with a message that she'd call again, and when. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her telephone, she wrote herself reminders. Some callers were only cautiously interested and wanted quotations, no doubt to compare with the freelance display firms they were already using. Domini made appointments, most of them for the following week, fitting them in as best she could around the scheduled window changes for her regular SoHo clients. Two or three callers sounded really serious; they asked about Domini's current work load. She made more appointments. By the time her morning's calls were finished, her calendar for the next three weeks was jammed with good prospects. Or to be more exact, jammed all except for that very afternoon, which she intended to spend with Sander.

But if all went well, she'd be spending more time with him soon. Cut-rate clients meant long working hours, but with the halfway decent prices she could soon start to charge, that mightn't go on forever.

At noon, with most of her messages returned, she placed a quick call of thanks to Grant. 'I find you've been singing my praises,' she said. 'I don't know how I can thank you.'

'By agreeing to dinner instead of lunch,' he returned without a flicker of hesitation.

Domini hesitated; she wanted no more soft lights and romantic settings. And yet, Grant had been a good friend. 'If I thought you wouldn't get the wrong idea, I'd invite you here for a bite one night.'

'Try me.'

'Perhaps it's best if I don't. My attitude hasn't changed in the past six months, Grant.'

'Ah, but mine has.' He paused on that somewhat enigmatic statement. 'I never did tell your daughter the rest of the story,'he reminded her persuasively.

'Tasey would like that,' Domini acknowledged slowly, thinking of the conversation about broken promises. And surely Grant could get no mistaken notions with Tasey's presence as a deterrent. Coming to a quick decision, she suggested Sunday evening because it had fewer connotations of romance than other weekend nights.

Grant accepted and added, 'I'll bring wine. We still haven't had a proper celebration in honour of your success.'

'Sunday may be premature for that, because I may not have any new clients by then. I'm not seeing most of the prospects until next week.'

'Then we'll simply have to find something else to celebrate, won't we?' he teased softly before he hung up.

The call made Domini vaguely uneasy, but not for long.

Delight swiftly took over after she put down the phone. She danced across the room past the papier-mache Shoe Tree she had been making, its bare, twisted branches soon to be garlanded with pretty autumn shoes. And then, hit by the irony of it all, she threw back her head and laughed. Wasn't it always the way, that fate sent its riches when one didn't really need them any more?

'Fifth Avenue discovers Domini Greey!' she declared gleefully to her only listener, the yellow unicorn. 'And do you know, I think it all started the day I went broke paying for you?'

❧

Fifteen minutes later, and long before the usual hour of assignation, she was on her way to the SoHo gallery. There was a spring in her stride and the glint of determination in her clear amethyst eyes. The easy swinging confidence in her step caused a few eyes to turn, or perhaps it was the sunny yellow she had donned for the occasion because it matched her mood. If she had been certain of what she wanted to say to Sander before, she was doubly certain of it now. She intended to ask him to marry her. She knew he would never ask her; Miranda had conceded that. But Domini had an idea she might be able to get him to accept, especially if she played on his pride. She intended to remind him that Miranda might like to live a life of her own, that in order to free his sister he should marry. That was her first weapon.

She thought she would leave love out of her proposal and do some of her persuasions with her second weapon: Tasey's need for a father. Sander was fond of Tasey, of that she was certain, having seen them together the other evening. Tasey seemed utterly at ease with him too.

As for Sander's feelings towards herself . . . was it possible that underneath that mask of cynicism and lovelessness, he might have developed some glimmer of affection for her? Enough to make a marriage work?

Miranda seemed to think so, Domini was not quite so hopeful, because she had too often suffered emotional rejection at his hands. But he did want her physically, and that was a third weapon in her arsenal. She didn't for one minute imagine she could go so far as to withhold herself, a maneuver which in any case reminded her too much of what she had heard about her father's wife. But she did think she might be able to stiffen her will power to resist Sander for a while, at least until he had listened to everything she had to say.

Perhaps, as possessor of her father's stone, she was feeling overly optimistic. Certainly she was buoyed up by the recent turn of events, no longer feeling hopeless as she had felt all spring. Sander's success in finding a dealer, for one thing, should help in her campaign. Providing his thorny pride didn't cause a falling out with the temperamental Lazarus before the show was even mounted...

Not wanting to talk to Miranda right now, she was relieved that there were several customers in the gallery. She hastened up the stairs, thankful that the heat wave was long since over.

As she had come so early, Sander was not in his studio, but she went on in, knowing he would be down the stairs at the sound of her arrival. The sculpture of Tasey had been moved to one side of the room along with other stored works, while the sculpture of Domini, which last week had been in the corner, had resumed pride of place. It was still draped with its damp coverings, but she recognized it by its contours. Waiting for Sander to arrive, she moved closer and carefully peeled back a corner of the cloth and plastic, but that was all she had time to do.

The feel of hands fastening over her upper arms was her first notice that he had arrived in the room, silent as a predator. A wave of love and longing travelled the length of Domini's body. She turned to offer her mouth, eager as a young girl, allowing Sander the claim over her senses that was renewed each time she was in his presence. His hands sliding over her throat, her shoulders, her waist, proclaimed her his possession, just as she wanted to be. Could Sander kiss like that if he cared nothing for the woman in his arms?

'You're early,' he muttered.

'I couldn't wait.'

'Yet you haven't undressed,' he said in a thrillingly husky voice. 'Are you waiting for me to help you today?'

Domini reminded herself that today was not going to be a day like all other days. She shifted slightly, moving far enough apart to see his face, but unable to break altogether away from the magnetic influence of his nearness. His hands still gripped her shoulders.

'I'll undress later,' Domini said. Her heart full of the thing she wanted to ask she looked up at him, love and hope glowing in her eyes. 'First there's something I want to say.'

'Say it quickly then,' he murmured. Although his voice smoked, there was a tenseness in his face; Domini hoped with all her heart it was because he had missed her. His next husky words seemed to confirm it. 'This afternoon is already too short to make up for the past couple of weeks.'

In her mind she had planned all kinds of persuasions and she forgot them, every one. She loved him far too much for reason to be applied, and so she said, as simply as she had once asked him to make love to her:

'Please marry me, Sander.'

His face froze, the shadowed eyes totally dark for the moment, the strong mouth motionless. Slowly he released her upper arms and turned his back. 'No,' he said after a moment, the single word very clipped.

Domini stood still for what seemed an age, dying inside. She wished she had started with logic, but it was too late to use it now because it would sound like begging. And yet she had to make some overture. 'Sander,' she whispered at last, touching her fingertips to his muscled spine.

'What is it you want now?' There was violence in his voice, tension in the harsh set of his shoulders. 'Love? I've told you no. I won't give it, and I want even less to receive it.'

'I said nothing about love,' Domini returned in a low voice, shedding some part of her pride. 'I want a father for Tasey and a proper home life. I'm tired, Sander. Tired of racing around trying to find time, to fit an affair into my days. I'd rather do it at night.'

'I suppose it's a case of no wed, no bed,' he said harshly. 'If that's so, get out. If not, get upstairs and prove it. If you stay now, I never want to hear you talk of marriage again.' He paused, letting his ultimatum sink in. 'Well, what is it to be? Up the stairs or out the door?'

In Domini's heart there was no choice. But she had some pride left, so when she walked past him she didn't answer at all. When he heard the direction of her footsteps, he would know where to find her.

He took her masterfully that day, but with none of the tenderness she wanted. There was a wonderful and terrible poignancy to the love-making, because natural though Domini's instincts were, she knew she ought not to have let the affair continue. But for the moment she gave with her heart, touching him in the ways he had taught her to touch, telling her love with her hands and her hips, and with eyes that he could not see. Sure of his power over her, he bathed her with burning kisses, ranged her flesh with his familiar hands, breathed erotic words into her ears, brought her to a wild forgetfulness that sent her soft, yielding thighs arching to meet the hardness of his. And soon, mindless with desire, she was swept to heights she had reached many times before, but which were new each time in the reaching.

In his own moment of release Sander threw back his head, his shoulders shuddering with passion, his body thrusting deeply in its final imperative demand. In the dark silver glow of his eyes, there was an emotion so intense it might have been pain. Or was it anger, passion, pride? And then he closed them, night returning to night, and the sudden silver was gone.

When his head bent to rest buried against her throat, Domini twisted her fingers into his dark disordered hair as if to memorize its texture for the first time, or the last. Spent but still quivering, she made no move to ease away from under the male body still welded to hers in the aftermath of release. In the passion there had been pain, and the pain was of her own choosing. Would she ever be strong enough to say no to her heart?

He rolled away at last and lay silent beside her, his head turned so she could not see his face. Before long Domini had become so unhappy with her thoughts that she knew she must not stay. She slipped off the bed intending to dress and leave in silence, as she had done on several previous occasions.

From behind, a hand closed over her upper leg. 'Don't go,' he said, but for once the cracking of his voice made it sound like a request, not a command. His tone stopped her because it conveyed some sense of a terrible personal hell. Domini's heart flew to him. Instinctively she knew he was afraid that after today she would not be coming back; perhaps he had read some of her thoughts. Loving him and wanting to give him reassurance, she said gently, 'Do you want to work on the sculpture now?'

'Yes.' The word was muffled, almost agonized.

'Then I'll wait for you down in the studio.'

Because she had come upstairs in her street clothes, she dressed for the downward trip. Sander lay without moving, turned away from her, his length and nakedness familiar to her eyes and yet different because there was despair in the very lie of the muscles, the cording of the neck, the clench of the fingers over the pillow. As she slipped quickly into slacks, shirt, and sandals, Domini wondered about what she saw in his tense posture. She wondered, too, what meaning could be read into the unusual nuances she had heard in his voice. Could Sander sound so upset if he was as unattached to her as he pretended?

In the studio she walked over to look at the image of herself instead of disrobing at once. She peeled the damp cover carefully aside so as not to disturb the unset clay. Thoughtfully, mindful of the clues she had been considering upstairs, she studied it for the hundredth time and saw it with new eyes. It was a sensuous sculpture, the clay somehow creating an illusion of the flow of flesh, the glow of hair, even the texture of nipples and the softness of thighs. The face was tremulous with love. Could Sander create a sculpture so moving if he cared nothing for her at all?

When he arrived a few moments later, she was still unsure of her conclusions. She went to the chair where she usually left her clothes, watching Sander closely as he went over to his sculpture and touched it, readying himself for the sitting about to begin. Usually she watched his face or his long lithe body, but today she watched his hands. Was there something almost reverent in the way his fingers moved across his creation?

He had never admitted to any satisfaction with the work, and Domini wondered about that too. Powerful and touching in its simplicity, it was the best of all the sculptures he had done. During her last brief visit the matter of Sander's new dealer had been mentioned, so she thought it was safe to bring up Lazarus now. As she started to loosen the button of her cotton slacks, she asked with apparent lightness, 'Which of the sculptures are you having cast right away?'

'None of them,' he returned harshly, his hand coming to rest on the breast of the clay figure. Without removing his hand, he turned to face her.

Domini's finger came to a halt, too, over her waistband. 'But ...'

'This morning Lazarus sent his publicity man over with a photographer. They read me a note from Lazarus saying he couldn't possibly put on a show without advance press to build my name. He was also clear about the kind of stories he intended to place.' Sander's jaw was grim, as unyielding as granite. 'I won't have my blindness traded upon. I told them to take their sob stories and tell Lazarus to go to hell.'

'Oh, Sander,' Domini whispered, immediately suffering for his sake. Did that account for his despairing mood today? And was that why he had been so callous in rejecting her proposal? A man like Sander would never marry if he thought he had nothing to offer a wife.

Domini knew she could no longer contain the burden of her own feelings. 'Sander,' she started, studying his shuttered features for reaction, 'when you asked earlier, I replied that I hadn't spoken about love. Now I will. I love you. I've loved you for a very long time.'

His mouth merely hardened. 'Then you've wasted your affection on the wrong man. I have no affection to give in return.'

Again Domini's eyes shifted to look at the languorous rendering of herself where Sander's hand rested, curved over the soft swell of a breast. The sculpture depicted a woman very much in love. Could it do that so well if it had been done by a man who had no feeling for the model at all? Was it she who had been blind all along?

'I don't think that's true,' she said slowly. 'I believe you do have feelings for me, and you've been hiding them because of your handicap and your pride, and maybe because of some bad experience with another woman. You lie when you tell me I mean nothing to you. You may not love me yet but you could, if you would allow yourself to love. Now that I understand how you feel, it's all quite clear.'

His lips tightened, baring his teeth. 'And what gives you such insight into my feelings?'

'The sculpture,' she said. 'Everything about it. The way you've curved it, shaped it, put so many emotions into it. Even the way you're touching it now, as if you care, really care.'

And then she gasped. With no hesitation at all, Sander's hand lifted and smashed down in a fist, flattening the malleable mound of the clay breast.

'Shall I show you how I care?' he grated, eyes blazing with a silver that struck a terrible coldness into Domini's heart. 'This is how I care!'

And with that he reached blindly for the sculpture, sweeping it off the table with one enraged movement of his arm. It crashed to the floor face-first, the head demolished in the moment of impact, large fragments of the soft clay body flattening, too, or tearing away so that the fretwork of the understructure could be seen poking through. For several horrified moments Domini stared at the armature where shapeless clay still clung, at the almost obscenely naked chicken wire of the devastated head.

She had lived through this scene before. Icy numb to the bone, brain frozen with shock as it had been years ago, her actions followed with the rigidity of a robot obeying remote control. She picked up her purse, went to the door, and walked down the stairs. In the gallery she was vaguely aware that Miranda was saying something to her. She walked past without acknowledgement, eyes unseeingly focused directly ahead of her, and left the little gallery with her heart in a deep freeze.