Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [172]
She glanced idly around the crowded restaurant. There wasn’t a single person she knew and she turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “I wonder what people would say if they saw the senator from California dining at Maxim’s with the notorious Miss Harrison?”
He took her hand across the table and said quietly, “They would say he’s a very lucky man.”
“And what would Maryanne say?”
He thought for a while and then he said seriously, “Maryanne and I do not love each other, I doubt we ever really did. I’ve thought of asking her for a divorce more than once. In fact, the last time was on Christmas morning. Remember? I said I would be thinking of you?”
She nodded and he said, “Well, I was. Oh, in theory all the right Christmas elements were there, the tree, the log fires, the gifts, the squabbling children and the so-called friends, but like our life together it was all an expensive facade. It was all such a sham I wished I were anywhere else but there.” Her blue eyes were gazing into his and he said softly, “I wished I were with you.”
She was silent and he took her note from his pocket and unfolded it. It was creased and worn and he held it out to her and said, “Remember this? I’ve carried it around with me ever since. And believe me, I’ve asked myself a thousand times, Why? But it’s only now that I think I have the answer.”
He put the note on the table in between them and he said quietly, “Francie Harrison, this may sound crazy, but I’m afraid I must be in love with you.”
Their eyes locked; she felt calm and elated at the same time. When she had met him in New York she had refused to admit the possibility that the spark they had felt could be anything so wonderful, so irrevocable as “love” and now she shook her head. “How can it be possible, we hardly know each other?”
“Time has nothing to do with it.”
“Then maybe it’s just the magic of Paris …”
He took her hand and kissed it. “It could be Detroit …”
“Then how do we know it’s true?”
He kissed her fingers again and little tingles ran down her spine. “You don’t question fate, you take what it offers and are glad.”
She looked at him frightened, and said, “I must go.”
He called the waiter and took care of the bill. Then they walked from the elegant restaurant hardly noticing that people turned to watch the handsome couple, speculating on who they were. She was silent in the cab on the way back to the hotel, aware of his eyes on her. She was afraid; she had only known two men in her life and she didn’t know if what she felt was love or not. She thought of what he had just said about not questioning fate and when he walked with her to the gilt-caged elevator at the Ritz, she said, “Do you think people would talk if I asked the senator to my suite for coffee?”
He shrugged and took her hand. “Let them,” he said happily.
The silk-shaded lamps had been lit in her elegant rooms and the bottle of champagne still waited in the ice bucket. He opened it and poured her a glass, then filled his own and lifted it and said, “I have another toast, Francie. To love.”
She drank the toast and then she put down her glass and took his hand and walked with him into the bedroom. The heavy brocade curtains were drawn across the tall windows and the lamplight cast a golden glow across her face as she looked at him. “I don’t know what to do,” she said helplessly.
“You don’t need to know, my darling,” he said, folding her in his arms.
He thought that undressing Francie was like unfolding the petals of a flower, each layer of soft rustling pastel silk sliding from her body until she was naked, and her shyness touched his heart and her beauty, his senses. He took her in his arms and held her close, he caressed her velvet skin and she clung