The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [181]
The wedding breakfast at the Hotel Hollywood was so riotous with laughter and music that other guests popped their heads in to see what was going on and stayed to join in the party. O’Hara presented Azaylee with a ruby heart pendant that sent her into raptures of delight and Rosa with a diamond bracelet that stunned her into silence. He made a short speech in which he said he loved them all, and would they excuse him but he was taking his wife off to San Francisco for a week’s honeymoon.
Azaylee smiled as she watched them leave in a flurry of rice and rose petals and hugs and kisses. She patted the heart pendant at her throat and held Viktor back as he lunged howling down the steps after Missie, thinking maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad. Maybe O’Hara liked Hollywood so much he would decide to come and live at Rosemont. And maybe things would stay the same after all.
If Missie had any misgivings about the honeymoon after her experiences at the cruel hands of Eddie Arnhaldt, they were dispelled that first night. Big O’Hara, with his hard, strong, comforting body, his face alight with love and the wonder of her beauty, kissed her as reverently as a queen, holding her in his arms and stroking her hair, caressing her face, kissing her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth. He told her how much he loved her, how very lovely she was, how he was the happiest man in the world. And when he made love to her he trembled with passion, crying out his love to her as she wrapped herself around him, lost in the discovery of new senses and the pleasure of being with the man she loved.
The week passed in a flash and before she knew it they were back on the Pullman heading for Los Angeles.
“You’ll have to be packin your things quickly, me girl,” O’Hara said as the train slid into the station. “We’ll have to be gettin’ back to New York to see to me new business.”
“New York?” Missie blanched. “But I thought we would be staying in Hollywood. Azaylee is so happy here….” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she was being stupid. O’Hara’s business was in New York and Chicago, and as his wife he would expect her to go with him.
“Don’t worry yourself about Azaylee, I’ll make sure she’s happy,” he promised. “She’ll attend the finest girls’ school in New York. She’ll be a real little princess now with King O’Hara as her father.”
If only you knew that she is really a princess, Missie thought silently, but there was no way she could tell him the true story of their lives and expect him to understand. Better to keep her old secrets and fears to herself, and perhaps now, as Mr. and Mrs. O’Hara and their daughter, protected by layers of different identities, they would finally be safe from the Arnhaldts as well as the Russians.
New York
The penthouse at the Sherry Netherland proved too small for O’Hara and his new family, and he moved them atop a turret on swanky Park Avenue: four bedrooms and bathrooms, a paneled library already stocked with books, a drawing room with two marble fireplaces, and, behind the big kitchen, spacious quarters for Beulah and her two assistants.
Azaylee had refused to bring Viktor with her. “No,” she had said, pale and tearless and looking very small and thin on the morning they were to leave. Even her flaxen hair had lost its luster. “Viktor will stay with Rosa. He’ll be happier here on his shady porch than cooped up in some stuffy New York apartment.”
Remembering Viktor sprawling on the fire escape at Rivington Street, Missie thought he could probably be happy in Manhattan again but Azaylee was firm.
“I’ll come and visit you often, Viktor, milochka,” she whispered, kissing his soft head, and she covered her ears against his howls as they drove away.
She tried her best to be happy in the beautiful Park Avenue apartment where she had her own luxurious room. She was back once more at