Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [173]
“I can’t bear to leave you now that I’ve found you,” he said later as they lay still languorously entwined. “I think all my life I must have been looking for you.” He tilted her face to his and said quietly, “Don’t ever go away.”
“Shhh”—she put a finger softly on his lips—“you mustn’t say that.” She struggled from his arms and sat up, pushing her long, tumbled hair back from her face as she looked at him. “Let’s just take this little time together and be happy.”
She was sitting with her arms clasped around her knees, her long blond hair fell across her shoulders, covering her beautiful breasts with streamers of gold, and her troubled blue eyes were fixed seriously on him. He thought how unaffected she was and how unaware of her own beauty, and he compared her quickly with Maryanne’s artifice, her false smiles and chilly dismissal, and he knew he could not give her up. “I don’t care,” he said, snatching her back into his arms, “I only want you.”
He was holding her close and she felt loved and protected, even though she knew it was all impossible, it should never have happened. But she never wanted to move from his arms, from this bed, from Paris…. She pushed the cold reality of who she was and who he was to the back of her mind. She would take her happiness while she could, however fleeting. “Just for now, Buck,” she said happily. “Just for these few days.”
“Forever,” he promised, covering her face with passionate kisses. “I’ll never let you go.” And as he made love to her again she hoped just a little bit, in her heart, that it might be true.
They couldn’t bear to leave each other’s side. He sent for his bags from the Crillon and moved into the suite next door to her at the Ritz and her sumptuous bed became the center of their little universe. Every now and then they ventured forth, sipping Pernod in Left Bank cafés, exploring the narrow streets of Saint-Louis-en-Ile, arguing over paintings in art gallery windows and dining in tiny candlelit bistros where monsieur le patron was chef and madame, his wife, the waitress, and where there was nobody to notice them as they lingered over a glass of red wine, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes without any thought for the future.
And in those long evenings she told him about her life, holding nothing back, waiting for his judgment of her. He looked lovingly at her and said, “My poor Francie, you’ve had to be so strong. I hope life will never be so harsh to you again.”
On their final night he watched as she combed her hair. It gleamed like satin and he ran his hand wonderingly across it and said, “Promise me you’ll never cut it. It’s like a treasure trove of gold.”
Francie’s clouded sapphire eyes met his in the mirror. “I promise,” she said sadly.
He was leaving at six to catch the boat train and then the liner back to America, but both of them knew it was more than that, and that at six o’clock he was going back to reality. They lay sleepless in each other’s arms savoring each precious fleeting minute, but the separation loomed over them and Francie told herself desolately it would be forever.
“I can’t leave you,” he whispered as the time grew near. “Don’t you understand, Francie? My life with Maryanne is false, she doesn’t care for me and I don’t care for her. I’ve never felt like this about any woman before. I didn’t know there could be such happiness. Please say you’ll stay with me. I’ll get a divorce and we’ll be married; just tell me yes. We’ll buy a pretty little house in Washington and I’ll look after you and love you forever.”
Her whole being yearned toward him, she could almost taste the delicious new life they would share together. She thought that because his life with Maryanne was meaningless, then just maybe it was all possible. But then she remembered Buck was a public figure—he was a man heading for the top and a scandalous divorce