The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [203]
When the guests finally left Missie kissed Azaylee goodbye but her eyes were anxious as she watched the girl go.
“You wish she were here with us?” Zev said.
She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “Oh, no, I don’t, Zev Abramski. I want you all to myself.”
He played the piano for her and she listened for a while, hearing the emotion he usually kept locked behind his cool, reserved façade. Later she prepared herself for bed, anointing herself with perfume and brushing her smooth seal-brown hair until it shone like silk. After walking to the mirror she stared at her slender naked body, seeing it as he might, her small high breasts, the subtle curve of her hips, and her long shapely legs—and she wished she were eighteen again and inexperienced, young and unscarred by life so she might give herself to him wholly.
She slipped the soft lace-trimmed nightdress over her head, smoothed its cool satin folds against her body, and, after switching off the dressing-room lamp, walked barefoot across the soft carpet to the door. When she turned for one last glimpse in the mirror, she saw only a pale shadowy figure. In the half-light she might have been a young girl again, a bride going to her marriage bed.
A single lamp was lighted in the bedroom, and Zev was standing by the window, staring out into the night. He was wearing a claret silk robe. As he turned to smile at her, she thought how handsome he looked.
“Missie,” he said, holding out his arms as he came toward her, “do you know how beautiful you are?”
Flushed with happiness, she lay beside him on the bed. “I want to tell you how much I love you, how I’ve always loved you, but there are only these inadequate words,” he murmured, kissing her gently.
He knelt to kiss her feet, telling her how he had never felt worthy of more, and she took him in her arms and said he was worthy of better than her. They embraced passionately.
All their façades and defenses were down. They were two people deeply in love; they wanted to touch, to feel, to explore, to possess each other’s body. And when Zev Abramski finally entered her and they were one, all memories of Arnhaldt and O’Hara were expelled from Missie’s mind, and even Misha became just a dream. Zev made her his woman that night—as if her other loves had never existed. And much later, when she fell asleep in his arms, it was as if it was the one place in the world she was meant to be.
Maryland
The first faint hint of dawn touched the sky with opal as Missie said wearily to Cal, “What happened next was my fault and I will never forgive myself. But you see, I was young too, and in love. I was selfish and all I wanted was to be with Zev. I thought that Magic was not just the name of his studio but something of which he was capable. He was thirty-five years old and he had transformed himself from an uneducated immigrant into a Hollywood legend. He had taken Magic from a quick one- and two-reeler operation into a powerful studio with a glittering roster of stars and directors, and he had done it because he knew instinctively what the public wanted.
“But it was more than just his business that made him a legend. He was a mystery man with a reputation for aloofness and for avoiding the splashy Hollywood lifestyle and its gaudy publicity. There was something about him that sent hotel managers and headwaiters running to offer him their grandest suites or their best tables. He was Hollywood royalty and now I was his queen, and we were so wrapped up in each other we barely had time for anyone else.
“When Marietta in the Mountains was finished, he had planned a sequel, Marietta in Malibu. It was scheduled for production a month later, so Zev and I decided to fit our belated honeymoon into the gap. We didn’t go far, just to Catalina Island. The Hotel St. Catherine was quiet, a retreat for movie people who wanted to escape from the glare of publicity for a while. And that’s just what we did.
“We were like teenagers, doing all the simple touristy things,