Inheritance (14 page)

Judith Michael

"I said friendship."

She looked up and saw his amused smile. Stung, she turned without replying and led the way to the wing chairs flanking the fireplace. They weren't really close to the bed; they were fifteen feet away, and their high backs blocked Laura's and Paul's side vision like blinders on a horse. The two of them sat facing each other in a circle of amber light, a small table between them, the shadowed room like a retreat as sounds of the party drifted through the closed door.

"I've been hearing about you for three years," Paul said conversationally. He sat relaxed in his chair, an ankle resting on one knee, watching her almost lazily. "And I should have spent some time with you last summer; I'm sorry I didn't. You've become a real member of the family. I assume that means you like us."

"I love you," Laura said. She flushed. "I mean, I love Owen and Allison and Leni and Barbara—they've all been wonderful to me."

"I don't hear my uncles Felix and Asa on that list."

She shrugged, then caught herself. "I don't see much of them."

"A careful answer. They're not easy men to get along with, although Asa can be pleasant when he gets out of Felix's orbit. Don't you miss your own family?"

"No. I mean. Clay is here and . . . he's all I've got."

"No one else? I didn't realize that. It must have been hard, then, to leave your friends in New York."

"It's always hard to leave friends." Laura's face was smooth. "But I like meeting new people; it gets dull having friends who know all about each other since they're together at every party all year long. Rosa says you've been traveling for the past few years."

Something wrong there, Paul thought. She'd used his own words and they'd rung false. He wondered what was forbidden territory: her friends, or New Yoric, or leaving New Yoiic. "Europe, Africa, India," he said. "It keeps me out of trouble."

"And what else do you do?"

"I take pictures."

"And sell them?"

"No, why should I? I do it for pleasure."

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"Some people might need the money," Laura said dryly.

He nodded. "I'm luckier than most. My great-uncle Owen set up a trust for me when I was still crawling around his study and charming him with my baby wit. I probably looked as restless and unambitious then as I am now and he took pity on me and ensured my future. I did go to college; does that make me sound a little less frivolous? And now and then I do think about taking photography seriously. I'm told you're in college. What will you do when you finish?"

"Something in hotel management; that's what I'm studying. And maybe some acting in my spare time." At his look of surprise, she said defensively, "Why shouldn't I? Other people have hobbies. I've had parts in four plays and everyone says I'm very good."

"And you like it?"

"It's wonderful. To be somebody else and have all your lines written so you never have to worry about what you might say—because playwrights use words more beautifully than the rest of us."

He pretended he had not noticed her abrupt shift in mid-sentence. "I thought your hobby might be making friends. You were going to tell me how you met all those people out there."

"Oh. It's nothing special; I don't know why you think it is." She was frustrated because instead of talking about himself the way most men did, he kept trying to find out about her. But she realized she wasn't angry, as she usually was when people asked prying questions; she was more concerned with saying the right things and keeping that warmth and interest in his eyes. And she knew why. Because he was the most attractive man she'd ever met; because he had an aura of excitement about him, something she might share if she could be clever and quick enough; because he was like a magnet, pulling her closer, making her want to talk instead of running away.

It's dangerous to get close to anyone who makes me want to talk.

"You were saying?" Paul prompted.

I'll be careful. I won't say too much. "I like to listen. People love to talk about themselves; all they need is somebody who's interested and they'll go on for hours. And I guess I'm interested in just about everybody."

Judith Michael

He smiled. "You'd be good in the hotel business."

'That's what Owen says."

"Does he? He doesn't say it to many people. Has he offered you a job at the Boston Sahnger?"

"Yes," she said, adding almost defiantly, "and I'm going to take it."

He looked at her thoughtfully. "Doing what?"

"Assistant to Jules LeClair. The concierge." When he made no response, she said, "You don't know him?"

"I don't pay much attention to the hotels. When do you start?"

"On Monday. Full-time for the summer and then part-time when I go back to school."

'To study hotel management. Why don't you major in theater since you like acting so much?"

"Owen wants me to leam the hotel business."

"In case you don't make it as an actress?"

"He calls acting a hobby." She smiled, almost to herself. "And he says anyone who manages his hotels has to be good at acting and have dozens of other skills."

Paul's eyebrows rose. "His hotels?"

"I could do it," Laura declared.

"I'm sure you could. But Felix and Asa handle the management of the chain."

"Yes, but Owen was talking about his own hotels—the four oldest ones that aren't part of the family coqx)ration. He has some plans for them. He says Felix and Asa aren't interested in them."

"Don't fool yourself; they're interested in every dust ball in every Salinger hotel. And Owen knows it. \Vhat kind of plans?"

"I don't know much about them; they aren't put together yet. What do you photograph when you travel?"

Skittish and secretive, Paul thought. What the hell did she have to hide? And what were she and his uncle up to? "Animals and people and sunsets. Have you convinced Owen to start a new hotel chain?"

"I haven't convinced him of anything! I'm learning from him, not telling him what to do!"

"Hold on," he said sofdy. "I wasn't accusing you of any-

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thing. I just thought an active, discerning man might think up a new project with an attractive young woman as a clever ploy to keep her close to him for a long time."

Laura's anger disappeared; her eyes danced. "You mean you think Owen behaves the way you would."

Paul laughed aloud. In some ways she was like a child, he thought, feeling her way around a strange house, pretending she knew what she was doing, quick to anger when she thought she was being suspected of something. But in other ways she was a woman of beauty and spirit, and a cache of secrets. A challenge, Paul reflected; it had been a long time since anyone had seemed so interesting to him.

"What do you do besides photograph when you travel to all those countries?" she asked.

"Read a lot, hike, ski, bicycle cross-country, and wonder what's over the next border."

"Don't you ever want to stay where you are?"

"No. Do you want to stay where you are?"

"Yes." Safe with Owen, forever. "If I could, I'd stay here and do all the things I want ..."

"You can't want many things if you can do them all in one place."

"I do! I want so many things! And I suppose I can't do them all here . . . everything I need to do to be special and secure—" She bit off her words. "I'm sure that sounds foohsh to you but I never had a trust fund—^I never even had a bank account when I was younger—and I have to make my own safe place. It's what I most want in the world." She stood up. "I'd better get back to my party."

"Stay a httle longer," he said. "Your party can roll along for hours on its own steam." He stood up with her. He was surprised at the feelings of tenderness she had aroused in him. She had sounded so ingenuous about being special and secure —whatever that meant—that he wanted to comfort and reassure her. "Listen to me," he said and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him like a child. "You're already special. You're a lovely young woman with nothing to stop you from doing whatever you want or being anything you want." He felt the slender bones of her shoulders beneath the satin dress, her silken chestnut hair brushed his cheek, and

Judith Michael

desire surged through him. He tightened his ami and turned her toward him. "I'll help you; we all will. There's nothing to stop you. It's not as if you're alone, or have some dark past to live down, or— What is it?"

She had pulled away, her eyes wide, her face pale. "I have to get back," she stammered. "I'm supposed to— "

"What the hell are you afraid of? Me? Because I held you? For God's sake, Laura— "

"No, no, it's not that; it's not you; it wouldn't ever be—I'm sorry, I really am. I'm not being very smart about this—"

"What does being smart have to do with it? Come here, sit down, just for a minute. I'd like to understand. . . ." He looked about for some way to change the subject. "Tell me about your room. I like what you've done with it."

Giving her time to calm down from whatever was bothering her, he studied the country French furniture he remembered from Iris's rooms, newly reupholstered in ivory and apricot silk, and the ceiling moldings and carved fireplace surround, all painted in soft ivory against the palest of mint green walls. "Dawn," he murmured, almost to himself. "Clear, cool, and warm, all at once. Depth and intimacy. My God, what wonderful light." He smiled at Laura. "You've given this place life. It's been in the doldrums ever since I can remember. Perfect colors—you have a good eye."

'Thank you." She was looking at him in surprise, seeing a different Paul Janssen. No longer the careless playboy with no ambition or direction, he was absorbed, intense, an artist who cared deeply about color and light, whose praise was generous, whose smile was warm and intimate. And at that moment Laura knew she would be with him as much as he wanted her to. It might be risky to be close to him, but she was drawn to his intensity, and she wanted more of his praise—and his smile.

He was standing before a shelf of books near the fireplace, running his fingers along the spines. "Where did you get these?"

"A friend named Cal Hendy gave them to me. Left them to me, really: he owned a bookstore and when he died he left me the ones he knew I loved the most."

"A good friend." He took one down and leafed through it. "Do you have any idea what they're worth?"

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"No, why should I? I'm not going to sell them."

"You might want to someday, and this one could be worth a good bit: there can't be many first editions around of Washington living's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Would you mind if I had it appraised?"

"If you'd like. It's really not important, though; they were a gift from Cal and I loved him and I'd never sell them, no matter what."

"'Never' is a long time. Anyway, you ought to know what you have. I'll bring it back in a week or so." He put the book on the coffee table, then moved a few steps to gaze at a large framed black-and-white photograph Laura had hung over the mantel. "Where did you find this?"

"In Owen's library. I was admiring it one day and he said I could hang it here. You don't mind?"

"Photographers never mind seeing their work displayed." He studied the three children in the photograph as if he had not spent hours watching them one day on the beach at Well-fleet, photographing them again and again. And then he had spent a week in his darkroom to get a set of prints that satisfied him. That had been five years ago, when he was twenty-three, and it was because of those prints that he had decided that if he ever took anything seriously, it would be photography.

Owen had bought four of the prints after Paul gave him the first as a Christmas present. The one Laura had chosen showed the little girl and her two brothers quarreling over a sand castle they had just built: the girl had made a flag from her hair ribbon and wanted to fly it from the highest tower; her brothers had insisted on flying their own skull and crossbones. Paul had printed the photograph with high contrast to intensify the emotions; the children's eyes flashed, in the background dark waves broke in a stark white froth onto the sand, a white gull was brilliantly outlined against a deep, cloudless sky, the sand castle was scored with long, angular shadows.

"Why did you choose this one?" he asked Laura. "Most people prefer softer prints. More fantasy, more like a dream."

"This is the dream," she said without hesitation.

He looked at her curiously. "Why?"

"Because the castle is finished."

Judith Michael

His eyes moved back to the picture. No one else had ever said that about it. "And you have a castle somewhere, waiting to be finished?"

"Everybody does, don't you think? Or do you have everything you want?"

There was a small silence. "I have everything I want," he said reflectively. "But sometimes I wish I wanted more."

She shook her head. "I don't understand that."

"Well, neither do I," he said carelessly. "At least not most of the time." He moved to Laura's side and took her hand. "But I do want to see more of you. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night? Better yet, we'll start early, with one of Rosa's lavish teas, and then go out for a late dinner. Can you arrange that?"

"Yes," she said. She did not hesitate or wonder about it after she agreed. He might be dangerous, but he was someone she could love.

The bracelet found in a New York pawnshop had been bought in Austria by Leni Salinger's grandmother as a gift for her thirteen-year-old daughter, to ease her sadness at leaving home to make a new life in America. It was solid gold, with a monogrammed locket that sprang open to reveal a picture of Leni's grandfather. When the police returned it, and Leni held it in her hand, looking at the tiny picture of her smiling, curly-haired grandfather, she began to cry. "I know it's silly; so many terrible things could have happened, far worse than losing a bracelet, but it seems so important to have it back and not in some stranger's hands ..."

"It is important," Felix said. He fastened his cummerbund and reached for the cuff links he wore only with his tuxedo. "But mainly because it will help us find the son of a bitch who took it."