Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [166]
She laughed again. “But I don’t have any secrets—not anymore. My life is an open book, everybody knows everything about me.”
He shook his head. “No, oh no. I’ll bet there are very few people who know the real Francesca Harrison.”
Francie glanced nervously at him; he was too perceptive by far. Looking into his steady brown eyes, she told herself they were getting into deeper waters than they should for two casual acquaintances, but she couldn’t help noticing the little lines of laughter around his steady brown eyes and the way his dark hair waved slightly and that there were already touches of gray at his temples. Annie had told her Buck Wingate was too handsome for his own good and it was true.
Then the waiter brought tea in a silver pot and hot toasted muffins oozing wickedly with butter, and he changed the subject to his work. He told her he had loved the world of politics since he was just a kid, and that first the Senate had taken over his life, so he never had time to think of anything else. He told her he hardly saw his children anymore and that he was going to spend Christmas with them in the country and that he was afraid they would treat him like a stranger.
“And where are you spending Christmas?” he asked when the muffins were finished and the final cup of tea had been drunk. “Oh, I’ll be at my ranch with Annie and Lai Tsin,” she told him. And then she met his eyes. She had never felt the need to define her relationship with the Mandarin to anyone before, but now she said, “Lai Tsin is my friend.”
Buck nodded. “I envy him your friendship,” he said quietly.
She wouldn’t let him take her back to the Ritz Tower, where she was staying, and once again he watched her walk away from him, threading her way through the crowds. He watched until she disappeared and he thought maybe he had it all wrong and it was he who was the lonely one after all.
A few days before Christmas a beautifully wrapped parcel addressed to Miss Francesca Harrison was delivered to the house on Nob Hill. She couldn’t wait to open it, ripping off the scarlet ribbons like an excited child. Inside was the small painting she had admired in the New York gallery and a card from Buck Wingate that said, “This was meant to belong to you. I shall be thinking of you at Christmas.”
Francie ran her fingers lovingly over the carved frame. She held the painting at arm’s length and looked at it and it was just as beautiful as when she had first seen it. She thought of Buck going to the gallery and buying it for her, of him writing the note—thinking of you at Christmas, it’d said. And then she shook her head and told herself it was far too expensive a gift, that he shouldn’t have bought it and of course he wouldn’t be thinking of her at Christmas at all. He would be with his family and friends at his wonderful country house three thousand miles away and it might as well be a million.
She went to her desk and wrote him a note thanking him for his thoughtful and extravagant gift and saying that in return for his generosity and kindness she was donating sackfuls of toys and Christmas cheer to a dozen needy orphanages across the country in his name, and that she knew he would enjoy thinking of the pleasure he had given them on Christmas morning.
And then she took the beautiful painting and placed it on a little gilt easel on her bedside table where it would be the last thing she saw every night before she went to sleep.
Christmas at the Wingates’ country house, Broadlands, was a traditional but elegant affair. There was a vast fir tree trimmed by the staff with gilded pine cones and lit with tiny red candles, mountains of expensively wrapped gifts, and log fires in every room. Maryanne had invited her brother with his wife and children, and a dozen important Republicans and their wives. “I can’t tell you how pleased they all were to be invited,” she told him happily. “This was such a good idea of yours, darling.”
Spending Christmas with a bunch of politicians