Portrait of a Love (15 page)

The blue eyes were now directly on hers. “Oh?” he said.

“It was an act of colossal egotism, I should say. One can only hope you have advanced in maturity since then.”

“One can only hope,” he repeated. Laughter lines creased the corners of his eyes.

“Since you can’t stop the documentary, however,” Isabel went on relentlessly, “your wisest course is to rise above the whole thing by simply ignoring it.”

By now he was laughing. “I had the same thought,” he gasped.

“Good.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Golf is much more civilized.”

He had regained his composure. “It is, honey,” he said, blue eyes brilliant. “It most certainly is.”

It was the last night of Isabel’s stay in the old Georgetown house she and Leo made the most of every minute. Deep in the night, when Leo had finally fallen asleep, Isabel lay awake and thought back to the incident in the clubhouse that afternoon.

It was a thousand pities that there had to be a documentary. Isabel didn’t doubt that Leo would be treated as a hero. It would be a prospect most men would adore—the chance to be sanctified and lionized before a national TV audience. Most politicians would sell their eyeteeth for the chance.

Leo would hate the show because it would reveal his physical infirmity to millions. Yet there was more to it than that, Isabel realized. For all his charm and his instinct for human relations, Leo was a deeply private man. He did not object to sharing his public persona with his fans or with his constituents, but his personal problems and agonies he wanted kept private. Isabel could understand that perfectly. She looked over at the silky fair hair lying tousled on the pillow at her side. Tomorrow night he wouldn’t be there. Resolutely she beat down the wave of desolation that swept through her at that thought, closed her eyes, and tried to go to sleep.

Isabel settled in at the Messengers’ McLean estate the following day and on Tuesday began to paint Ron Messenger. Her sessions with him were extremely interesting. He was polished and urbane and smacked of old family, New England prep-school, and Harvard, yet there was something very real about him that Isabel liked very much. His interests were art, architecture, and antiques, and his conversation was both enjoyable and stimulating.

Hilda Messenger was a little too much the professional Washington wife for Isabel to feel completely at ease with her. She was a highly polished specimen of a highly polished type, and she made Isabel feel her own rough edges too acutely. But Isabel had to admit that she was very pleasant and went out of her way to be kind.

It would have been an ideal situation, in fact, were it not for Leo. Or rather, the lack of Leo.

Finding time with Leo alone did not prove as easy a task as Isabel had anticipated. The Messengers were very social people and they expected to include Isabel in most of their activities. It was absolutely awful, seeing Leo in the busy whirl of a dinner party, and then leaving him to go home with the Messengers.

It wasn’t until Sunday that they had the chance to be together. Isabel told the Messengers that she and Leo were going to golf and then have dinner. Leo picked her up at one o’clock and they went, not to Chevy Chase, but back to Georgetown. They spent the afternoon in bed.

“This is an impossible setup,” Leo said later. Much later, the sun had set and it was dark outside.

“I know,” said Isabel dismally. “I didn’t reckon on the ferocious Washington social instinct when I made my brilliant plan.” She turned her head to look at him. “I felt like a sixteen-year-old sneaking out to meet a forbidden boyfriend today,” she said with an attempt at humor.

His lips smiled, but his eyes darkened. He picked up her hand and began to play idly with her fingers. “How is the portrait coming?”

“Very well. Ron is a darling. I’m having fun doing him.”

“That’s good.”

“Oh, Leo,” she said miserably and, turning, buried her face in his shoulder. “It’s all such a mess. I can’t stay here like this. It’s impossible.”

“Yes.” He sounded tense. “It is.”

“I’ll be finished with Ron in another week. The work is going well.”

“I see.”

She sat up and shoved her hands into her hair, pushing it back off her face. “I’ll have to go back to New York,” she said flatly. “At least for a while.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I
have
to, Leo,” she said a little desperately. “My work is back there. Even if I got another commission, I can’t keep on doing portraits indefinitely. That’s only a small part of what I want to do. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I understand.” He put his hands behind his head and regarded her with veiled blue eyes. “I own half an island,” he said, seemingly at random. “It’s off the coast of Island Views. Ben and the development company own the other half, but I wanted to keep a part for myself. I spent the whole summer there last year. It’s not modern at all; in fact, it’s pretty primitive. But it’s totally private and quiet. Ben hasn’t even started developing the other half yet.”

It was very quiet in the room. “Yes?” said Isabel.

“Would you come and spend the summer with me?” he asked.

“Oh, Leo.” She smiled, radiant. “Oh, darling, I’d love that.”

The shadowy look about his mouth lifted. “Would you, honey? It’s not much more than a shack.”

She laughed. “Then I’ll be right at home. The plumbing can’t be worse than it was in the apartment I grew up in.” She put her hands on his shoulders and bent over him.

“Plumbing?” he said. “Who said anything about plumbing?”

“Leo!” Isabel’s eyes widened in horror.

“I said it was primitive.”

“Oh, well,” Isabel said resignedly, and bent down to kiss him lightly. Her black hair fell about them like a tent. “You Tarzan, me Jane.”

He chuckled. “There’s plumbing. And electricity too.”

She pulled back a little. “Then why tease me?”

He slid his hands into the heavy silk of her hanging hair. “I just wanted to see how much you loved me,” he murmured.

“Very much,” she said softly, and bent forward to kiss him. “Very much indeed ...”

The conversation ended for quite some time.

* * * *

It was April when Isabel finally got back to New York. The apartment, when she let herself in, looked like a place remembered from another life: strange and familiar all at once. She was in the middle of unpacking when Bob came home.

“Isabel!” He gave her an affectionate hug when she came out into the hall to greet him. “How are you, stranger?” he asked.

“Fine.” Their eyes were almost on a level and she smiled into his. “How are
you?”
She frowned. “You look like you put on weight.”

“Thanks a lot,” he retorted. “I’m not even in the door and she’s telling me I’m fat.”

“I didn’t say that. The extra weight is very becoming.”

“Liar.” He gave her a look of mock injury. “It’s all the meals I’ve been eating out.”

“Italian food,” Isabel said instantly. She knew his weakness.

“I’ve been at Mama Theresa’s four nights a week,” he confessed with a grin.

“There’s nothing in the refrigerator. I already checked. What did you plan to do for dinner tonight? Mama Theresa?”

“No. Tonight we are going to Gramont’s for dinner.” This was said very firmly and Isabel’s eyes flew open.

“Bob! That’s a fortune!”

“I know,” he said complacently. “But as you are now a famous painter and I am a junior partner, I think we can afford it.”

Isabel’s face lit with pleasure. “Bob, you got the promotion. That’s great. By all means, Gramont’s it
is.”

They ran into one of the senior partners from Bob’s firm at the restaurant, and he insisted that Isabel and Bob join him and his wife for dinner. The senior partner had a difficult time taking his eyes off Isabel, commenting at least four times on how well she was looking. The senior partner’s wife spent her time extolling the virtues of marriage. Isabel and Bob bore up as best they could, but the dinner was not the one they had envisioned.

“Well, at least we didn’t have to pay,” Isabel remarked to Bob in the taxi on the way back home. The senior partner had insisted on picking up the check.

“True.” His voice sounded a little muffled and she turned to scrutinize his profile. “Don’t mind Mrs. Shore,” she said softly.

He made a visible effort to shake off his preoccupation. “I thought Mr. Shore was going to eat you up,” he said humorously.

Isabel laughed.

“There is something different about you, Isabel,” Bob went on. “I noticed it right away. It’s as though all those banked fires have suddenly burst into flame.”

“Oh, dear,” said Isabel, and bit her lip.

He didn’t say anything until he had paid off the taxi and they were walking together into their apartment building. “Is it a man?” he asked then, quietly. She darted a quick look at his face. “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not,” he said evenly.

“Yes,” she said. “It is a man.” There was a pause. “As a matter of fact, it’s Leo Sinclair.”

“Leo Sinclair!” He stopped abruptly and stared at her. Then he began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked mildly.

“You are,” he said. “How serious is this?”

He opened the apartment door and they both walked into the entrance hall. “I’m going to spend the summer with him on an island in South Carolina.”

“On an island in South Carolina. God,” he said, “I’ll be a blimp by the time you get back.”

Isabel didn’t know whether she should feel glad or sorry at his instant assumption that she would indeed be coming back.

* * * *

Isabel rented a loft on New York’s Lower East Side and spent the spring months organizing her paintings. It was absolute bliss working in her own place. For the first time in her life, she told Bob, she felt like a professional.

She missed Leo and kept herself busy in order to hide the ache. In the back of her mind always was the promise of the summer.

At the beginning of July, Isabel left for Hampton Island. She flew into Savannah and Leo met her at the airport. They left the car at one of the Island Views docks and boarded a small boat moored nearby. Isabel’s luggage filled one-half of the tiny vessel.

“There’s no regular ferry service to the island,” Leo told her as he started the boat’s motor. “Not yet, at least. Once Ben gets moving, of course, there will be.”

“No cars?” asked Isabel.

He smiled. “No cars.”

“Sounds blissful,” she said, and leaning back in the boat, she let her eyes devour him.

He had already been on the island a week, he had told her, trying to get things shipshape. He was very tanned and his hair looked even lighter than she remembered. When she first saw him at the airport, her heart had given a tremendous leap and it hadn’t quite calmed down yet. They had greeted each other casually, conscious of possible watching eyes, and their conversation thus far had been such that it could have been overheard without embarrassment by a roomful of total strangers.

The trip to the island took ten minutes. Isabel gazed at the surrounding water, marsh, and sky when Leo’s voice said, “There’s the island. Over yonder.”

Oveh yondeh.
How she had missed the sound of his voice. She looked obediently to where he was pointing, and in another minute they reached a small dock. The air was filled with the scent of pine.

Leo tied the boat up and, balancing easily, stepped up onto the dock.

“Can you hand me up your luggage?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Isabel, and reached up her cases; most of them contained painting equipment. Then he held out his hand to her. When she landed on the dock next to him, he reached out with his other hand and pulled her close.

“I missed you,” he said fiercely, and kissed her, hard and long.

“I missed you too,” she said breathlessly when finally he released her. “June went by so slowly.”

“That it did.” He moved from her with obvious reluctance. “Well, let me show you our palatial estate.”

“My bags?” said Isabel, and gestured.

“No trouble, ma’am,” he drawled. “We just pile them in this little old wheelbarrow here,” which he proceeded to do efficiently, “and we’re on our way.”

Isabel laughed as she followed him up the sand-and-shell road into the pines. He pushed the wheelbarrow before him with a jaunty cockiness that she loved.

“This is how we get the groceries from the boat to the house,” he informed her.

“My God,” said Isabel. “Do you have to go to the mainland for all your food?”

“Yep. There’s a developer’s office on the other side of the island and there are cabins here and there, but they’re all deserted. It’s been years since the last families moved away from here.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“No jobs. There used to be farms here—and fishing, of course. But the young didn’t want to stay and the pines grew back over the farmland.”

Isabel saw a small cabin-like house appearing in front of them. It looked a lot more substantial than she had been led to believe. There was a screened porch on the front, and inside, Isabel discovered three rooms: a living room, bedroom, and kitchen. The furniture was old and solid. There was a stall shower in the bathroom. The walls in the living room were paneled in white pine.

“This is lovely,” Isabel said as she walked around. “Did you build it?”

“No. It’s been here for years. I’ve done some renovations, that’s all.”

“I love it,” she said.

He stood against the door watching her. “I kind of thought you might,” he said, drawling a very little more than usual.

Isabel gazed at him, her dark eyes luminous in her thin, intense face. “I love you,” she said.

His shoulders came away from the door in a kind of a lunge and then he was across the room and holding her in his arms. Isabel closed her eyes and stopped thinking. Her whole life seemed to have narrowed down to this room, this man, this moment. His mouth was hard on hers, his hands moving possessively over her breasts, her waist, her hips. She felt his desire, felt also the unnamable, irresistible force in him that called so strongly to something in her. Her head was pressed back against his shoulder and his lips left her mouth and moved, searingly, to her exposed throat.