The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [201]
After replacing the photograph in the valise, she took out the Ivanoff brooch, turning it this way and that in the sunlight so that it glittered with a thousand points of light. She hesitated a moment, and then, returning to the mirror, she pinned it at the neck of her blouse. It was far too grand for her simple outfit, but wearing it somehow made her feel she had Misha’s approval for what she was going to do.
She replaced the valise and hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where Rosa and her beau, the hardware merchant from Pittsburgh, were sitting over a glass of lemon tea. Rosa’s eyes widened as they fastened on the brooch. She said, “You look as if one half of you decided to go to a ball and the other thought she would just stay home.”
Missie snatched a cookie from the batch cooling under the open window, laughing as Beulah scowled at her. “Wrong on both counts. I’m going to ask the man I love if he will marry me.”
“I wish my woman was as smart as that,” Sam Brock-man said gloomily.
“You sure you know what you’re doing this time?” Rosa asked.
Missie nodded. “Certain sure.” After snatching another cookie, she headed gaily for the door. “After all, how else is a girl to get what she wants if she doesn’t ask for it?”
“It’s not correct!” Rosa yelled after her. “The man should be asking….”
Missie stuck her head back around the door and said, “Then if he says no, I shall run home and cry on your shoulder and you can say ‘I told you so. ’”
“Crazy woman, crazy,” Rosa murmured as she departed.
“You should be so crazy,” Sam said firmly. “If you asked, I’d say yes in a minute.”
“I’m not asking,” Rosa retorted with a sniff, “and I’m not saying yes until I’m good and ready.”
“One day, maybe,” he said, and they smiled at each other contentedly.
Zev had been waiting for this moment all day—more, he had been waiting two long weeks for her to walk up the steps and back into his life again. He hurried to meet her, opening his arms wide, and she walked right into them just as if she belonged. “God, I missed you,” he murmured, burying his face in her sweet-smelling hair.
They walked out onto the terrace and leaned on the stone balustrade, listening to the cicadas and the bird calls and the cool little cataract that tumbled past on its way to the pool. His narrow, handsome face looked stern with tension.
“Don’t ever leave me again, Missie,” he said tightly, staring straight ahead. “Stay here. Marry me, please.”
She turned to look at him, astonished, but he was still leaning against the balustrade, still staring straight ahead. She laughed. “Zev Abramski, I thought you would never ask.”
He turned slowly to look at her, hope in his eyes. “Then you will?”
She nodded. “Yes, I will marry you. I love you more than I’ve loved any man.” She touched her hand to Misha’s brooch and added, “In a different sort of way.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care about such different ways. All I know is you love me.” He scooped her joyously into his arms. “What I want to know is, when?”
“Give me a month,” she said, thinking of O’Hara and their whirlwind marriage. “But just a small wedding, Zev. Just family.”
Zev got through the next four weeks in a state of nervous tension, half afraid she would change her mind. He buried himself in his work, refusing to allow his thoughts to stray to her, but secretly he was living for those precious evening hours when they were together.
Only Rosa, Rachel, Hannah, and Sonia were invited to the wedding, and Azaylee was to be bridesmaid. Dick Nevern, as Zev’s closest associate and friend, would give the bride away. The wedding was to be at Beverly Hills City Hall on Canon Drive with a reception afterward at Zev’s house.
Magic was in the middle of filming Marietta in the Mountains, starring Azaylee, a sequel to the successful Marietta, and Zev was loath to leave final approval in anyone’s hands but his own, so the honeymoon was postponed until it was finished. Meanwhile Azaylee would stay with Rosa.
But Missie realized something was wrong. Azaylee would