Willow (19 page)

I'm not lying to myself;
I
thought. Am I?
As I hurried toward the boutique, I'm sure I looked like one of Daddy's patients arguing with herself in the corridor of the Willows. I tried on a black sleeveless, fitted dress with a crew neck and a kick pleat. Perfect. To go with it. I bought a pair of high-heeled, open-toe sandals, Then
I
pondered over some costume jewelry and decided in the end to look simple and classic. Once that was done. I went up to my room to wash my hair. I was feeling drab, and my eyes looked tired.
I
called room service and had them send up an ice-cold fresh cucumber. something I had often seen my adoptive mother do.
I
sliced it and put the thin slices over my eyes while I rested.
Was I being too vain?
No matter what I was doing, there was no reason not to look my best. I thought.
How
I
hated all these contradictor, feelings. When would they end? Or do they ever end? Thatcher seemed to be telling me he believed they were a part of life. and especially any relationship. Maybe I was learning more here about myself than I had ever intended.
I was just putting the finishing touches on my hair and makeup when he knocked at my room door,
"Hi," he said, and whistled. "You look great!" "Thank you."
He was wearing a black silk shirt open at the collar under an aqua-blue blazer. Beneath his cuffed black slacks, I saw he wasn't wearing socks with his soft leather loafers. He looked dapper, relaxed, and elegant all at once.
He gazed past me into my room.
"You don't look as if you've packed your things." he remarked with disappointment.
"I'm still undecided."
I
said "I'm not even sure I'm staying in Palm Beach much longer, anyway,"
"Oh? Well, let me see what I can do to help you decide to stay," he added with that cute little smirk on his lips. "Madam," he said, offering his arm.
I
laughed and joined him. An elderly couple was already at the elevator, the man in a tuxedo and his wife so bedecked in jewelry
I
wondered how she could move. They glanced at us suspiciously, even a bit disapprovingly. I supposed because of our joviality, Thatcher hoisted his eyebrows and winked at me as we all stepped into the elevator.
"So," he said, "I'd like permission to call you by your real name tonight."
The elderly couple swung their eyes at us so quickly and so simultaneously I almost burst out laughing.
"Is that all right with you?" Thatcher pursued.
"Yes," I said quickly, giving him a hot look of reprimand that only widened his smirk.
The couple exchanged looks and pulled closer to each other and farther away from us. When the doors opened. Thatcher stepped aside to let them go first, and they practically charged out through the lobby.
"That was very sneaky of you."
I
said.
"I can't help enjoying being a little outrageous, especially in front of obviously snobby people, people who take themselves too seriously."
"Wasn't that your complaint about Mai Stone?" I countered like a courtroom attorney myself.
He wasn't easily thrown off balance. It probably came from all his negotiating and trial experience. Without hesitation, he shook his head.
"Mai enjoyed being outrageous in front of anybody, snobby or not. She was playing on her own stage. Besides," he said, turning at the front entrance. "let's keep to the promise we made to each other last night."
"What?"
"No more historical revelations. No more personal questions, remember? Let's just have a good time in the here and now. The past. like the future, will take care of itself."
Last night. I'd thought I had more reason to want that than he did. Tonight, I wasn't so sure.
The gallery was already quite crowded by the time we arrived. Almost everyone there knew Thatcher. He introduced me as Isabel Amou and simply told people I was visiting Palm Beach. Very few fried to find out much more about me once they heard I was from South Carolina and not from a particularly wealthy family. Thatcher said I was a former college acquaintance.
"Ste how easy it is to create fictions here that people will willingly accept?" he whispered.
We wandered through the gallery, sipping wine. After a while, he turned me into a side room to show me Linden's work.
There were only three pictures, each darker and more eerie than the last. In the first, a young man, not unlike Linden. was lying on the beach, turned on his side and leaning on his elbow to talk to someone beside him, only that someone was a skeleton on its back. Everything else in the picture was realistic, almost photorealistic, but in strikingly vibrant colors. the colors you might see in a nightmare.
"He's interesting in a way." Thatcher admitted. "Inserting some horrific or surrealistic element into the realistic setting. Don't you think?"
"Yes." I said. moving to the next, which showed a woman walking along the beach holding the hand of a little boy who was literally sinking into the sand. Though he was half buried. the woman seemed unaware of it. The ocean had a crimson, almost bloody tint beneath a setting sun.
In the third picture, a small gathering of happylooking young people stood at the shore. some eating, some drinking, all laughing and smiling, while in front of them, an older woman who resembled my mother was caught in a wave, her arms stretched toward them in desperation.
"Not hard to read the meaning of this one. I suppose," Thatcher observed.
"There's a great deal of anger in all these pictures," I said "It makes you feel sorry for him."
"Pity is not something people here have time or an inclination to express." Thatcher said. "It won't sell the pictures." He took one look at my face and added. "Let's get out of here. I'm sorry I showed you these. I didn't mean to depress you. You're looking too beautiful for that."
I flashed him a smile and turned away so he wouldn't see the sadness in my eyes. Did my mother share this terrible agony? What was their world like, their everyday lives in that beach house? Did I really want to enter it?
It took us nearly twenty minutes to make our way back through the crowd. So many people stopped Thatcher to ask him questions about cases he had completed or was involved with now. Some of the younger women looked for any possible excuse to get him to pause and speak with them. He was polite with everyone but clung tightly to my hand and worked relentlessly to get us through.
When we broke out into the street, he apologized. "I'm sure you would have liked to stay and talk to more people to gather information for your project. but I'm being selfish tonight. I'm not sharing you."
"It's all right." I said. It wasn't exactly the setting I wanted, Too many distractions. and I don't think those people would have been forthcoming."
"Then maybe my mother is right: you would do better using Jaya del Mar and permitting her to invite people to meet you. There you could ensnare them with your questions and twist the truth out of them."
"Yes," I said. laughing. "Maybe.
^-.
We drove out of Palm Beach to a place called Singer Island, where he took me to a restaurant that had a patio facing the ocean, not more than forty feet away. Against the horizon, the stars looked as if they were falling into the sea.
"It is beautiful here," I said, "Thank you for bringing me."
"I knew you would like it I haven't been here in a long time."
"Why not?"
"Beautiful things aren't enjoyable unless you share them with someone special." he replied. "Don't you agree?"
"I suppose." I said, trying to be cautious. Being with Thatcher in so romantic a setting. I found myself feeling as though I were teetering on the edge of some great precipice. If I let myself go. I would fall deeply into the mystery of the darkness beneath. I was both attracted to it and afraid of it.
His good looks, his charm, and his interesting personality were enticing in and of themselves, but much more so for me sitting in the warm night with a candle flickering on his face and the mesmerizing sound of the ocean softly soothing us beneath a sky so bright with stars it looked like the beginning of all time. I felt I had stepped into a fairy-tale world where magic was as common as daylight, where every word between us seemed like poetry, every sound around us part of the symphony, music composed for us alone, as if the whole world were suddenly devoted to one purpose: ensuring our happiness above and beyond the rest of the world.
"What kind of an answer is 'I suppose,' " Thatcher said, not settling for my caution
. 'Beauty without the beloved is like a sword through the heart
Something Christina Rossetti wrote that I read once and never forgot."
I turned away quickly. Of course, he was right, and of course, this was what my mother and my father must have suffered for so many years after having discovered a great love they were forced to give up. I couldn't help but mourn for them both. My heart ached.
"I'm sorry," Thatcher said, reaching across the table to put his hand over mint. "I didn't mean to be so deep and serious, especially tonight."
"No," I said, shaking my head, unable to stop the tears from clouding my eyes. "It's beautiful, and you're right."
I
took a breath to get myself back on track,
"But according to your mother, you haven't been looking all that hard to find someone with whom you could share beauty and happiness."
"There's a lot my mother doesn't know about me," Thatcher said almost angrily, bet there was a lot your mother didn't know about you."
"Oh, yes," I said. laughing. "Oh, yes."
"There, you see." He reached for the wine list. "Let's have something special tonight. We've got to celebrate my settling another case favorably, among other things," he said.
"What other things?"
"Our being honest with each other. Willow. I actually like that name a lot. It fits you far better than the pseudonym."
He fixed that winning smile on me, holding me in the candlelike flame in his eyes until I realized it and looked quickly at the menu.
Careful, Willow De Beers,
I
told myself.
You're getting too far over that precipice.
You're going to fail.
.
After a wonderful dinner and a walk along the beach, we returned to my hotel. The meal, the wine, the soft conversation, holding hands while we walked in bare feet, laughing and teasing each other... all of it gave me a pleasant sense of deep calm. He seemed to feel the same way. Neither of us said much during the ride. All that passed between us was an occasional glance and smile. He had kissed me twice on the beach, and the taste lingered on my lips. Caution and conscience flew off like ribbons loosened in my hair and carried into the darkness behind me.
Even after we pulled up to the hotel and he got out and took my hand, we said little. We walked through the lobby, barely noticing anyone or anything else. In the elevator, we stared at the doors
impatiently. When they opened. I felt my heart skip beats and then thump with greater anticipation. At my door, he slipped his hand around my waist.
I
opened the door and had started to flip the light switch when his other hand took mine gently and brought my arm down at my side.
He closed the door, and in the darkness, we kissed again, a long, warm, and wet kiss that made my spine electric, my breasts tingle.
"Willow, Willow," he whispered.
He lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed.
I
looked up at him and watched him start to undress. All the while. I didn't move. It seemed almost like watching a scene in a movie, like watching something that was happening to someone else.
Shirtless, he knelt to kiss me and gently lift me so he could unzip my dress. He moved it over my shoulders and down my arms. There was just enough light coming through the windows to electrify his eyes.
"You're so beautiful," he said.
He cupped and kissed each of my breasts. I moaned and let my head go back onto the pillow as his lips traveled down over my stomach. In minutes, he had my dress completely off. and moments later, we were both naked.
I
heard him unwrap a contraceptive. "We're safe." he whispered.
I
knew it was important, but it sounded like a commercial. He sensed it could break our mood and was over me with his lips, his hands, as quickly as he could be. How wonderful he smelled. I loved running my hands through his hair and then feeling his firm shoulders and wrapping myself around him.
Our lovemaking began slowly, building and building, lifting me out of my body until I felt my passion crash again and again against him like the waves outside crashing against the shoreline. My cries rose and fell with each undulating rush of pleasure. I wasn't an experienced lover. In fact. Allan was the only other man with whom I had been this intimate, but it seemed to me that Thatcher was unselfish in his loving. He was concerned and determined that I would be as pleased as he was, whereas Allan always made me feel I was there to serve his needs, and if I was lucky enough to enjoy it. all well and good.
Thatcher and I didn't just come to an abrupt end, either, which was something that usually happened between Allan and me. Thatcher's retreat was very slow, loving, full of caresses and kisses, holding onto me as if he didn't want ever to leave me. It was like being placed softly back into yourself rather than experiencing a brusque uncoupling where
I
was left to break my own fall.
We lay beside each other, catching our breath, not talking, but still holding hands.
Finally, he spoke. "There's definitely something to be said about two people being drawn to each other magically,'' he said. My silence seemed to frighten him. "Right?" he asked.
"Yes,"
I
said.
I believed it. but
I
was full of mixed emotions about it, feeling both afraid and guilty.
I could hear Daddy's questions. Do you like him, Willow?
Yes, Daddy.
Is it more than just a passing fancy?
I think so, Daddy.
Do you feel special with him?
Oh, yes, Daddy.
Does it seem like he
_.
feels that way about you? Yes, yes, it does.
We've got to take risks with people sometimes, Willow. Don't you agree?
I do, Daddy.
Then leave that feeling of guilt outside your door. It has no place here, it seems, right?
Yes, right; Daddy. Yes.
"What?" Thatcher asked. Had I spoken aloud?
"Nothing," I told him.
He propped himself on his elbow and leaned over me, running his forefinger down my nose to my lips and then between my breasts.