The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [214]
Going quickly to the mirror, she ran a brush through her hair and touched up the expensive, wet-look lipstick Uta Baur had given her. For reasons she couldn’t explain or begin to understand, and despite all that had happened to her, she felt more sexually aroused than she ever had in her life. As if some insatiable hunger or thirst had suddenly and uncontrollably swept over her so powerfully that it could only be satisfied by the act itself.
Opening the door, she stepped into the hallway and saw Von Holden in the downstairs foyer conferring with Eric and Edward. A moment later he stepped off and disappeared from view. Her instinct was to fly down the stairs after him, but she couldn’t with Lybarger’s nephews still there.
Trying to shake the feeling free, she crossed the hall and knocked gently on a closed door. Immediately it was opened by a white-haired, pale, pig-faced man in a tuxedo. His skin had so little pigmentation she thought he might be albino.
“I—I’m Mr. Lybarger’s . . .” The man’s appearance and almost superior way he looked at her made her nervous.
“I know who you are,” he said in a throaty voice.
“I would like to see Mr. Lybarger,” she said, and was shown in without hesitation.
Elton Lybarger was sitting in a chair by the window reading from a dog-eared sheaf of papers typed with very large print. It was the speech he would give tonight, and in the last few days he’d done almost nothing but go over it.
“I wanted to make sure you were comfortable and that everything was all right, Mr. Lybarger,” she said. It was then she noticed another man, also in a tuxedo, standing back near a window that looked out onto a large backyard. Why Mr. Lybarger needed two bodyguards in his room, in house as elegant and genteel as this, and with a guard-house and a gate out front, she had no idea.
“Thank you, Joanna. Everything is fine,” he said without looking up.
“Then, I will see you a little later.” She smiled caringly.
Lybarger nodded absently and continued reading. Smiling pleasantly at the pig-faced bodyguard, Joanna turned and left.
* * *
Von Holden was alone in a dark paneled study when she came in and closed the door quietly behind her. He was sitting in a chair with his back to her, talking in German on the telephone. The room was dark compared to the bright sunshine in the yard outside. The grass was a vibrant green that caught and displayed like a quilt the; brilliant yellow and red leaves that flitted down from a massive copper beech in the far corner of the yard. To the left of the tree she could see a large five-car garage and beyond it an iron gate that appeared to lead to a service drive in the rear of the estate.
Suddenly Von Holden hung up and swiveled around in his chair. “You shouldn’t come in when I’m on the telephone, Joanna.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Now you see me.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. She thought he looked more tired than she’d ever seen him. “Did you have lunch?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Breakfast?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re tired. You even need to shave. Come up to my room. Shower, rest a little.”
“I can’t, Joanna.”
“Why?”
“Because, I have things to do.” Suddenly he stood. “Don’t mother me, I don’t like it.”
“I don’t want to mother you—I want to—make love to you.” She smiled and wet her lips. “Come upstairs, now. Please, Pascal. We may never be able to be alone ever again.”
“You sound like a schoolgirl.”
“I’m not . . . and you know it. . . .” She moved closer, so that she was standing directly in front of him. Her hand slid down over his crotch. “Let’s do it right here. Right now.” Everything about her, the purr of her voice, the movement of her body as she drew herself closer to him, was totally sexual. “I’m wet,” she whispered.
Abruptly Von Holden reached down, took her hand away. “No,” he said. “Now, leave. I will see you tonight.”
“—Pascal. I—love you. . . .”
Von Holden stared at her.
“You should know that