The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [196]
She thought Zev looked particularly handsome tonight. He caught her hand and said at last, “It’s the moment of truth. Are you ready for it?”
He set up the reel, turned out the lights, and came to sit beside her. The story of Marietta was a simple one of an orphaned girl who makes good. It had both pathos and humor and a great director in Dick Nevern. The images flickered and the credits rolled and suddenly there was Azaylee staring at her from the screen, her eyes wide and frightened as she asked where her mother and father had gone. There was a low urgency in her voice that gripped the heart immediately, and for the rest of the movie it was impossible to take your eyes off her.
Missie was silent while he changed the reels, watching without comment until the end, and then she burst into tears. “I didn’t know she could be like that, Zev.” She sniffed. “I didn’t know she could break hearts.”
“But I did,” he said softly. “I knew it the minute I saw her.”
A month later Marietta premiered simultaneously in New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco to rave reviews. The critics showered young Ava Adair with praise, hailing her as “a find,” “a star in bud,” and best of all, “an accomplished young actress.” She was just sixteen and it seemed silly to suggest she go to college with such a glittering career in front of her. So Missie took her and Rachel for a holiday.
“Take her down to Mexico, to Agua Caliente,” Zev suggested. “Magic will pick up the tab.”
Unlike nearby honky-tonk Tijuana, Agua Caliente was a high-class spa resort featuring hot springs and mud baths, a golf course, tennis courts, and a huge marble swimming pool, said to have cost $750, 000. The hotel boasted fifty luxurious bungalows with pink bathrooms and tortoise-shell fittings, and the dining room featured gold flatware with European food and the finest French wines. Zev wanted nothing but the best for his future star and his future wife, even though he had not yet asked her to marry him because he wanted to give her time to forget the tragedy of O’Hara.
Agua Caliente was also famous for its horse racing and dog track, and the hotel attracted a varied clientele of gamblers, celebrities, and socialites taking a rest in the sun. Rachel and Azaylee spent most of the day dipping in and out of the immense pool, sipping iced lemonade from tall glasses, and giving the silent treatment to any boy who tried to flirt with them, collapsing in a heap of giggles when he retreated, baffled by the silent amusement of two pairs of beautiful, challenging eyes. There was one man they both rather fancied, a rakish-looking Mexican by the name of Carlos del Villaloso. He was older, at least thirty they guessed, and after a single lingering glance that had made their toes curl up, he never looked at them. To their chagrin, he seemed to pay attention to every other woman in the hotel except them—even Missie.
She was taking a stroll through the gardens in the cool of the evening when she was aware of a long stride matching her own and glanced up to see him walking beside her.
“Such a beautiful evening, señora,” he said with a dazzling smile. “I see that, like myself, you are a lover of nature. Beautiful gardens are one of the world’s great joys. France, Italy, England, of course they are perfection, their climates guarantee it. But today I believe my native Mexico does not fare too badly. It is most disturbing. I always believe my own estate is the most lovely until I see somewhere else.”
She paused under an arbor of bougainvillea. “It would be difficult to choose which is best,” she replied with a cool smile. “I have decided that the happiest policy is to love the garden you are standing in best.”
He clicked his heels together in a formal bow. “Con su permisión, señora. Carlos del Villaloso.”
He was tall, slender, and elegant in a white dinner jacket, and his olive skin was so smooth it looked polished. He had