O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [96]
“We’d better have a chat,” she said, leading him to a bench. “That was very pleasant, but I have a feeling you have absented yourself because you have a feeling I was leading you on.”
“That’s what I think. You were leading me on,” he said.
Watch this young man, Lilly, she told herself. He doesn’t minuet. He polkas.
“Paris invented flirtation, I think. It comes naturally, rather expected. The problem with flirting is that it always has a tinge of naughtiness to it. If I overstepped, I’m sorry. It is just the vanity of an old girl in need of a little flirt.”
“You’re not an old girl and you’re very beautiful.”
“I should be,” she answered. “I spend enough time before the mirror every day troweling my beauty on.”
Zach took her hand, kissed it, and gave it back to her.
“Come on, Lieutenant, you know you can have any girl in Newport.”
“Their fathers are all lay preachers with shotguns. Washington and Newport are both fine places, but that’s not why I joined the Corps. I’m almost embarrassed to be here living like a duke.”
“But wouldn’t Paddy O’Hara be proud? You saw how my papa greeted you. Are you ill at ease when people come on so strong?”
“It’s a fact of life.” Zach stopped.
“Well, there are a number of women, older, and single, in Newport. It has always been a courtesy of the navy to dispatch a handsome young officer to escort them. To get them home safely when they’re too stiff. However, you’re quite a number, Zach, all on your own.”
“So are you,” he answered.
“But I am not a surrogate mother nor the summer replacement for a twenty-year-old sweetheart with whom you are very angry.”
“Ben talks too much . . .”
“Ben, indeed. Newport bleeds gossip no less than Paris. It’s the glue that holds the bourgeois drawing rooms together.” She rallied herself.
“I am a grandmother,” she went on, “certainly old enough to be your mother, and I am married. I despise an aging woman clutching at some young cadet. How do I feel for you? Let’s have a pleasant friendship.”
She arose and he arose and they lulled their way toward the little bridge to her villa. There was a gate. The bridge crossing over was but a few feet long over a small ravine.
“I suspect,” Zach said, “you are trying to spare my pride. You think I am too clumsily inexperienced.”
“All men are clumsily inexperienced,” she said, “but none quite so clever as you, Zach.”
“And I make you pleasantly nervous.”
“Pleasantly.”
Zach took her beneath her arms and lifted her so their eyes were level and his lips found hers and they maneuvered them until they discovered a softly sealed position and worked them back and forth, together now, half of forever, then he let her down to her feet.
Lilly leaned on him, dazed, and tapped his chest. Her defenses had been shredded. She whirled out of his grasp.
“You are so—!”
“What?”
“So damned American. You are a Yankee bastard!”
“The summer is half done, Lilly. You are beautiful and I want you.”
“I’m shaking all over, Zach,” she gasped between kisses. “You saw right through me, you beautiful Yankee bastard!”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Christ,” Zach said, “we have a logistical problem. I have to go back to retrieve my hat and sword and Major Ben and say good-bye.”
“You’re right. It has gotten late. Do you know the private road alongside the Burton estate?”
“I can find it.”
“It’s an access road to the houses farther down the bluff and it bypasses Onde la Mer. I have a private entry off it. Tomorrow, say two hours after the cannon sounds at the yacht club.”
“I’ll be there.”
Their departing kiss and the sudden freedom of her hand to wander left no doubt.
It was a long day for Zach. He imagined that she was going to have a change of heart and cancel their rendezvous. The Barjac family seemed to know what one another was thinking. Lilly won’t be joining us for dinner. Would a raised eyebrow from