Inheritance (89 page)

gives pleasure. It's like the rooms you did at Owen's house:

filled with the most wonderful light and warmth."

n "A labor of love," Laura said. "I needed a place that was

^ comforting."

In the bedroom, in the pale amber light from the lamps in

Judith Michael

the courtyard, Paul took her in his arms. "Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, if you need comfort, my darling, this is where you'll find it. I promise you that. No questions, no doubts, ever again. This is where we belong."

Laura put back her head and held his look. "And I promise you love and trust and sharing, and to protect you, iif I can, from pain . . ."

"My God," he exclaimed. "How much I wanted to hear that, for so long, and didn't know it." His lips met hers, and when they kissed it was as if it were the first time, and as if they had never been apart. "Do you remember that room?" he asked. "Everything was white: the curtains and the moonlight —and you were wearing white. And I loved you."

"And took over a year to tell me," she said with a soft laugh.

"Not the first time I was a fool." He slipped her jacket off her shoulders and slid his hands under her cashmere sweater, spaiming her waist, then moving along her warm skin to her breasts, full and straining toward him. "So much to make up for," he said.

"No, not make up for," she murmured. "We're starting again." Her body was drawn to his, she felt she was melting against him, opening to him with an abandon she had fc«'got-ten. But something held her back.

Ben.

She had not told it all. And she could not make love to Paul, she could not start again, until no more secrets lay between them.

"Paul." Her voice was husky; she had to pull herself from him.

He held her still, his hands on her waist, and searched her eyes. *Tell me," he said.

They sat on the chaise beside the window; a sliver of a moon shone through the tree branches just beyond, flickering as the breeze stirred the few remaining leaves. *There's something I have to tell you, and it can't wait. I want you to know now, because I love you and whatever happens I want you to know the truth; there can't be any more lies."

He waited, watching her.

"I've never told you that I have a brother, another brother

Inheritance

besides Clay. A half brother, so our names are different, but we were very close once. We quarreled and he went to Europe to live, and we hadn't seen each other for years. But now we've found each other again and I want you to understand why I didn't tell you about him, why I didn't tell anyone about him and he didn't tell anyone about me. ..." She hesitated, then looked straight at him. "It's Ben."

The room was silent. "I assume you mean Ben Gardner."

She tightened at the flatness of his voice. "Yes. I was with him last week, in Boston. If you'll listen for a few minutes— ** In a rush, barely stopping for breath, she told him as briefly as she could the story she and Ben had told Alhson and Leni. And then, still widiout a pause, she said, 'There's one thing more. I think you were right about Clay. I'm not sure—^I have to talk to him, and I don't know where he is right now—but I found out, after you left my office, that he was the one who stole Leni's jewels at the Cape years ago. That doesn't mean he's the thief Sam Colby is looking for ... I still can't believe . . . well, I just don't know. But I owe you an apology about that, too."

It was easier now. She had told it all, and her voice was steady. "I seem to have been wrong about a lot of very important things. I always liked to think I was so grown-up, but I've behaved like a scared little kid, and that makes it hard to—^"

"You aren't the only one," Paul said quietly. "My poor darling, worrying about all your apologies ... do you think you're the only one?"

At the love in his voice, Laura's breath came out in a ragged sigh. She hadn't realized how tightly she had been holding herself until now, when every muscle in her body loosened and she found her palms were wet in her clenched hands.

"We were all scared kids," Paul said. He put his arm around her and held her, and Laura rested her head on his shoulder. "Scared we'd been fooled, or taken advantage of, or done out of something. Scared we'd been wrong, and scared to admit it. But I was the worst; when I got scared I forgot everything I knew and loved about you; I turned away when you needed me most, and made you wretched— "

"I think this is what Ben calls a hair shirt," Laura mur-

Judith Michael

mured. Laughter bubbled inside her; it's all right; it's all right; I've told it all, and everything is all right.

"Hair shirt," Paul repeated. He chuckled. "I'm overdoing it? I'm enjoying itT'

"A httie, I think. Ben and I did, too. As if the more we apologize and the better we do it, the faster we erase the past."

"I don't want to erase it. I want to learn from it." His voice roughened. "And make you part of me." He turned her toward him and kissed her again, with a fierceness that was also a promise, and at last Laura let herself go: the barriers were gone.

They pulled off their clothes, helping each other, until once again they stood in each other's arms, their bodies curving together as they remembered, softness and hardness fitting together, already one. "I missed you; I wanted you ..." Paul said, his hands moving over Laura's body, shaping it, molding it, as if he were drawing it from memory. She slipped her hand between their bodies and slid her curved fingers and palm along his hardness, listening to the sigh that broke from his throat, remembering it, loving the feeling of knowing she could do that to him. But then Paul's fingers were between her legs, wet with her, and everything in Laura was open to him, and longing. "I dreamed of you, dreamed of this, dreamed of us . . ."she said, moving against him. Their tongues found each other, Laura felt she had been starving, and could not eat ca" drink enough.

"Laura," Paul said, and the passionate sound of her nanae on his hps swept them up, held them, at last shutting everything out. Arms around each other, they went to the bed and lay on their sides, facing each other, smiing at each other, and as they kissed, Laura opened her legs and Paul thrust deep inside her. "Better," she sighed. "Oh . . . much better . . . than a dream." Her voice was as soft as the afternoon breeze that came through the open window; it seemed to taste of wine. And as they moved together in a liiythm their bodies had never forgotten, they were so closely «itwined tbey made one shadow on the wall beside the bed.

Laura slept, and when she woke, the moon had moved past the window. She opened her eyes and saw Paul watching her.

Inheritance

She smiled drowsily. "I dreamed of that, too: waking up and finding you here. Did I sleep long?"

He slipped an arm beneath her and cradled her to his chest. "About an hour. Long enough for me to begin to believe this is real."

"It felt so good. I haven't slept much the past week." She closed her eyes again and placed small kisses on his chest, his nipples, the hollow of his throat. Making love to Paul was being strong and whole and loved, not battered by the actions of others; it was a tie to a past when she was with Owen. And it was a new beginning.

Paul raised himself on one elbow and leaned over her to kiss her eyes and her lips and then move down to take her breasts into his mouth, first one and then the other, playing his tongue over the nipples, slowly, teasingly, while his hand just as slowly and lightly moved along the soft skin inside her thighs. Laura lay against the pillows, letting the waves of sensation build within her, lifting her as if she were weightless; she floated through a dream, and the dream was Paul and all the longings she had held in the secret places of her heart, even when she thought she had put them away forever.

They made love slowly, tasting each other, drinking each other, releaming the tiny sounds and movements, gestures and expressions that only a loved one knows and treasures and remembers, laughing softly as the past and the present merged and the emptiness inside them was filled with joy, and they were complete. They made love and talked through a long night that was theirs alone. The sounds of the city's traffic, punctuated with horns, came to them through the open window as if from a distant place. The air had turned cool, and they pulled the comforter over them, and the closeness of being wrapped together aroused them again and, almost without moving, Paul was inside Laura and they moved in a harmony that was as new and as familiar as their love.

Laura reached up to turn on a lamp beside the bed, and shadows danced on the wall. "Friendly shadows," she murmured. "There were so many I was afraid of."

"No more," Paul said quietly. "We have only those we make for ourselves." He kissed her smiling lips. "Don't go away; I'll be right back." He slid from the bed and walked

Judith Michael

across the room, and Laura watched him, tall and lean, as graceful as an athlete or a dancer, his muscles taut with coiled energy. We're both like that, she thought: impatient and aggressive, wanting to create and achieve and win. But at one time Paul had been different. She remembered how they had talked at dinner in Owen's kitchen about work and what it meant to them. Paul had been flippant and careless—he couldn't imagine caring about work—and she had been serious and determined, and worried about the differences between them. How much he's changed, she thought. And yet the young man she had fallen in love with was still there. As she stretched in bed, remembering the weight of his body on hers, the embrace in his eyes, the laughter in his voice, she loved him with a passion that astonished her with its intensity. It was as if a lantern lit our way through the years, and it was always bright. Owen had said that about Iris. And now we've found it, too, Laura thought, watching him come back to her. We'll light each other's way. My love, who seems so right in my bedroom, so natural a part of the home I thought I was making only for myself. My first love. And I never got over him. She smiled.

"Yes?" he asked, sliding in beside her.

"I love you."

He put an arm beneath her shoulders. "I love you, my darling. Although I must admit that I'm also thinking a great deal right now about food."

Laura laughed. "Poor darling, you haven't eaten since you got off the plane."

"And not much on the plane, either. Shall I prepare you a feast and serve you in bed?"

"No, I'm beginning to feel like I'm rooted here. Let's make something together and eat in the breakfast room, as if we live here and aren't just camping out."

"We could live here, if you'd like to. But I'd have to build a darkroom. Have you a guest room I could use?"

"Yes, but I don't think I want to give it up; I like to have a place for Rosa when she visits. We may have to find something bigger—" She stopped. "We did this once before. At the Cape. Started talking about what kind of home we'd have before we even talked about getting married. Paul, you and Emily are still married."

Inheritance

"We're going to change that as soon as possible. She's not fighting a divorce, and we're still friends. Especially if I can find someone to help her in films. I haven't told you about that; I will. There are so many things we haven't talked about. Would you have a bathrobe for me to wear?"

"Nothing that would fit you."

"No men here? Or only small ones."

She smiled. "No men." She slipped an ivory satin caftan over her head and waited for him.

With a sigh, Paul pulled on his pants and shirt. "Do you require shoes at the dinner table?"

"Not if it's a casual evening," she laughed, and they went downstairs barefoot.

It was nearly midnight. The courtyard was quiet, and the kitchen was bright and warm, with oak cabinets and Pennsylvania Dutch tiles on the walls. Laura took eggs and salad ingredients from the refrigerator. "If you'll make the salad, I'll do the omelets. And there's French bread; we can warm it up. And wine."

They worked together for a moment. "Tell me about Ben,'* Paul said. "Why were you in Boston?"

Stunned, Laura looked at him. So much had happened, and he knew none of it. *There was a Salinger board meeting," she said, and she went over the past week, from the time Paul had come to her office to the meeting with the OWL investors. "So many changes," she said, "and I don't know what other ones are ahead."

"Whatever they are, we'll be together. We'll share them instead of reporting back to each other later, and we'll make up for all that went wrong."

Laura shook her head. "I told you, I don't want to make up for anything; I want to start again. I've been angry for so long, and trying to make up for things that happened—^I don't even want to think that way anymore. The past is over, Paul. I want to love you and be loved and share my Ufe with you, not have some kind of contest, keeping score or measuring what we owe each other or whether we've done enough . . ." She looked at him, a little frown between her eyes. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

"Nothing. It's what I want, too. But I want you to under-

Judith Michael

stand that I'm not trying to deny the past. There's so much I regret—"

"Oh, regrets." Laura sighed and put her fingers on his lips. "We both have more than enough of those. But let's not have any now. We'll sort it all out later. I want to tell you about Ben and Clay, how we grew up and loved each other, all the good times we had, and the ones that were bad. . . . There were so many things I wanted to tell you when we were together; I always thought it was unfair that you could tell me anything you wanted but I had to be so careful. And now I don't. It's like being free for the first time, not having to guard myself when I talk to you." Her eyes grew shadowed. "Clay doesn't have that. He's never been able to be himself with anyone, not even me."

*Tell me about him," Paul said, and for a few minutes Laura talked about their childhood, how close they had been when they thought they had nothing. Paul began to understand the charm and sweetness in Clay that had helped blind Laura, and others, to what he really was. And he learned much about Laura herself that he had never known. "We kept trying to prove how brave and grown up and invulnerable we were, but we weren't; we were all looking for love and a home. Ben found it, and I tried to make Clay believe he had one with me, but he never believed it. Or it was never enough. And so he never outran his past." She was silent a moment. "I think he was h^piest with Kelly and John's vintage cars. They were wonderful toys, they didn't make demands on him, they were luxurious enough to make him feel rich, and they made him the center of attention when he drove them. They gave him everything he wanted. If we'd stayed at Damton's, he might never have started stealing again."