Rhapsody (5 page)

"Well, old chap, outdid yourself tonight."
Manny Cygelman, resplendent in custom-made Savile Row white tie and
tails, sidled up to Misha and Vera.

Misha smiled. "Yes. It did go very well,
didn't it, Manny?" he said.

"Extremely pleased," Manny said in his most
affected voice. "Everybody. Dazzling performance. Certainly won't
hurt your career to have played this concert."

"No," Misha said, "I guess not."

"See you've met the queen of the European
music festivals, Princess von Wallenburg."

"Yes," Misha said. "Vera knows her. She seems
very nice."

"Pays to know her," Manny said. "Good woman
to have on your side. Wouldn't want her for an enemy." He
scrutinized his prize client closely. "Feeling all right, old boy?
You seem a bit ...bothered."

"Just tired," Misha said again. "I think I'll
go on back to the hotel, Manny." He turned to his wife. "You don't
mind, Vera, do you? Manny loves to squire you around. I'll send the
limousine back to fetch you."

Vera put a hand on his arm. "If you want to
leave, darling, I'll go with you."

"No, no," Misha said. "You two stay and enjoy
yourselves. Work your very special magic on the crowd." He squeezed
her hand. "Have a good time. I feel like being alone awhile to come
down from the performance. Maybe I'll turn in early."

"Are you sure?" Vera asked, a worried
expression on her face.

"Yes," Misha said definitely. "Don't worry.
I'll be fine. I just need to rest." He turned to Manny. "You'll
take care of this beautiful lady?"

"With pleasure, old boy," Manny said, taking
Vera's arm.

Misha leaned down and gave Vera a peck on the
cheek. "I'll see you in the morning, darling."

"You rest," Vera said in an even tone that
she hoped didn't belie her concern and curiosity.

Misha turned and swiftly made his way through
the crowd, not stopping until he was outside in Schonbrunn Palace's
five-hundred-acre park, where the Mercedes limousine's chauffeur
awaited him. In moments he was speeding off in the darkness toward
his suite at the Palais Schwarzenberg, and the telephone.

Serena flung the door shut behind her, then
slumped against it. "Oh, God!" she gasped, her chest heaving
mightily. After a moment she half staggered into her hotel suite,
still breathless from her nightly jog. Despite the chill Viennese
winds outside, her body was sheathed in a sheen of
perspiration.

She pulled off her red fleece gloves, briskly
rubbing her hands together for warmth, then shrugged herself out of
her silver nylon warm-up jacket, the one with the orange reflective
stripes, and pulled the fleecy hot pink watch cap off her head,
dropping everything onto the opulent suite's carpeting in a heap of
mismatched color.

Without bothering to untie them, she nudged
her long, slender feet out of her gray Nikes, one at a time,
kicking the running shoes off and across the sitting room, where
they thunked to a stop against an antique table. Then she leaned
over and peeled off her sweat socks and tossed them in the
direction of the heap on the floor.

"Basket!" she cried to the empty suite. Some
of her hostility vented, she padded into the bathroom on bare feet,
still more than a little angry with herself because of tonight's
jog.

Running lukewarm water, she rinsed her hands
off and splashed her face several times, then dried off vigorously,
a little winded yet from her run. She ran the towel around the back
of her neck, patting the sweat there.

No more Wildschwein for this girl! she
thought. No more yummy pastries, either! All those beautiful little
confections for which Vienna was so justly famous had undeniably
affected her jogging tonight, weighing her down, tiring her
faster.

She hadn't cut her run short, though. Oh, no.
That was not Serena. She had run all the faster, covering more
distance, telling herself that she could work off all that
enormously caloric, body-abusive, and richly satisfying food she
had so voraciously partaken of today.

Coral was right, she thought, with a grimace.
But then, she always is. I shouldn't be doing this to my body.

She eyed the big bathtub and thought that she
would run a tubful of water, hot as she could stand it. I'll have a
long, languid soak in aromatic, foamy bath salts. Let all the
tension and strain of the day and her nightly jog slowly ease their
way out of her muscles.

First things first, she thought. She retraced
her steps to the suite's sitting room, where she poured herself a
glass of mineral water at the wet bar. She took long, thirsty
swallows, finishing off the tall glass, and poured herself another.
She sashayed into the bedroom, her long raven hair swinging behind
her, and gradually peeled off the rest of her clothes, tossing them
onto a chair. Then she grabbed a thick white terry cloth bathrobe,
slipped it on, and tied it around her waist. Finally, she plopped
down on the immaculate bed.

Her gaze shifted around the room, eventually
coming to rest on the telephone, sitting on the nightstand next to
the bed. Maybe, she thought, maybe I should wait to bathe. She shut
her eyes, blotting out her view of the telephone. Yes. Maybe I
should wait. What if Misha calls while I'm in the bathtub? Or …
maybe ...maybe I should take a quick shower instead? That way I
won't be too long. She had already checked downstairs at the desk,
and there'd been no messages, so she knew he hadn't tried her
yet.

The she reminded herself that he was
performing tonight. He'll probably be at Schonbrunn Palace until
midnight or later, she thought. Hobnobbing with all those
charity-circuit bigwigs. She quickly glanced at the little travel
clock at her bedside: ten-thirty.

Should I wait? she wondered. Or shouldn't I?
What the hell should I do? Then she abruptly sat up, slamming a
fist into the bed.

"Shit!" she exclaimed aloud. "Shit, shit,
shit!"

She leapt out of bed and marched purposefully
to the bathroom.
I will not let this happen
, she told
herself. I will not fall into that deadly trap again. Not like I
did the last time. Waiting for Misha Levin to call. Ha! What a
joke! I'm a changed person now. Oh, yes, I am. Yes, indeed! I don't
need this. I don't need him! I am invulnerable to him and his
charm.

She twirled on the taps with a vengeful
forcefulness, poured scented bath salts in—a potent and erotic
combination of musk, vetiver, and citrus—then tromped back into the
bedroom. She snatched up the latest copy of L'Uomo Vogue to look
once again at the fashion shoot she had done for it some months
ago.

Back in the steamy bathroom, she turned off
the taps and eased herself down into the tub, now filled with
foamy, exotically perfumed water. Ah, yes! she thought, delighting
in the heat of the steamy water on her weary flesh. This is more
like it.

She began leafing through the magazine,
studying its layouts, nodding to herself with satisfaction at the
photos from her shoot and the way they had been used. The art
director had done an excellent job, she decided, piecing together
the story line in the photos in an artistic way. She never had to
worry that her work would look cheap or be poorly displayed in the
Italian fashion magazines.

Leafing back and forth, back and forth, she
abruptly sighed and tossed the magazine over the side of the tub.
It landed on the floor with a bang. She lay back, staring at the
wall. All those male bodies in the latest fashions only served as a
reminder of her own unattached and chaste state. At least for
now.

But what will tomorrow bring? she wondered.
And then it started again.

Thinking of him. Of Misha. And how
extraordinary it was that she had run into him today—in Vienna of
all places.

God, he looked so wonderful, she thought.
Better even than he did five years ago, if that were possible. She
could envision the wind in his longish blue-black hair, that
prominent nose and those sensuous lips. His strong cleft chin and
high cheekbones. And those piercing, liquid, dark, dark eyes. All
of it embellishing a tall, strong Adonis of a body that she
remembered only too well.

She felt that old sweet, maddening, almost
uncontrollable physical urge—an urge that she had never felt with
anyone else—suffuse her body with longing. She'd had a lot of men
in her thirty years. Too many men, she thought. Some of them had
been rich, some famous, some of them no more than feral brutes.
Many of them had a foggy indistinctness in her memory. But in that
pantheon of lust, none of them had compared with Misha Levin.

No, she thought, none of them had held a
candle to Misha Levin.

Her hands traveled over her voluptuously
charged body—neck, shoulders, breasts, torso, thighs, mound—
remembering his hands on all those places, relishing the imprint
they had left there, never to be forgotten.

Oh, my God
, she wondered.
Why did
he have to come back?

Then:
Thank God he has
.

At the three-hundred-year-old Palais
Schwarzenberg, Misha hurried through the striated-marble lobby, for
once ignoring the breathtaking beauty of its noble antiques and
Baroque gilt and crystal. He went straight up to his suite. Once
inside the antique-filled duplex, he closed the door and poured
himself a scotch neat, and drank it down in one swallow. Loosening
his tie, he poured another one to nurse, this time adding ice cubes
and a splash of water. Then, taking his drink and the bottle of
scotch, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. There, he slowly
began to undress, neatly hanging his clothes in the closet,
although they would be taken to the cleaners when he was back in
New York.

Once naked, he spread out on the luxurious
bed and sipped his scotch, mentally preparing himself to telephone
Serena. You want to do this, he told himself. Yes, you may regret
it for the rest of your life if you don't. Then, before he could
lose his nerve or change his mind, he set down his drink and dialed
Serena's number at the Konig von Ungarn.

"Hello?" She picked up on the first ring, her
voice breathy.

"It's Misha," he said.

"I know," she said, a hint of amusement in
her voice.

"What have you been up to?" he asked. "You
sound like you're out of breath."

"Nothing really," Serena replied. "I was just
finishing up in the bathroom. I had a nice, long soak after my jog
tonight."

"So you're still running," he said. He could
see that long, lithe body of hers, speeding through the
streets.

"Yes," Serena answered. "And I bet you're
still torturing yourself with racquetball and swimming and the
weight-lifting thing." His body, in all its masculine definition
and hardness, flashed before her mind's eye.

"You know me too well," Misha said with a
little laugh. He paused a moment, then said: "I ... I still can't
quite believe we ran into each other today."

"It is a coincidence, isn't it?" Serena said.
"All those years with both of us living in New York, and we've
never once crossed paths."

"Maybe it's fate," Misha said
uncertainly.

"I don't know that I believe in fate," Serena
said warily.

"Whatever it is," he said, "I'm glad,
Serena."

"I am, too, Misha," she replied.

She sounds as if she really means it, he
thought. Maybe ...just maybe ...something will...He quickly tried
to put his hopes and desires on hold.

"Do you think we can get together tomorrow?"
He was making an effort not to sound too pushy or too anxious. I
mustn't scare her off, he thought.

"Yes ... I think so," Serena said. "But I ...
I don't want to mislead you, Misha. I mean, I don't want you to
think that we can just pick up where we left off."

"No, no, no, Serena," Misha rushed to assure
her. "I don't have any expectations. I just ... I just want to see
you."

"I'd like that," she said. "Very much." Do I
sound too excited? she wondered. Will he think I'm desperate to see
him?

"Is sometime around four okay?" he asked.

"Make it four-thirty," Serena said. "Is that
okay?"

"That's perfect," he replied. "Shall we meet
at your hotel ... in the bar downstairs?"

"Come on up to the room," she said. "I have
several appointments, so it would be easier for me."

"Great," Misha said. "I'll see you then."

"Bye," Serena said. She hung up the telephone
and took a deep breath. If he only knew! she thought. How I can
hardly wait to see him!

"Good night, Serena," he said, then realized
that she'd already hung up the telephone.

Misha took a sip of his scotch and closed his
eyes. He could see her, that lush raven black hair, her long swan's
neck, those huge hazel eyes and sensual, even lascivious, lips.
Then: her perfect, small, but ample breasts with their strawberry
nipples, her long trim torso and narrow waist, and the beautiful
mound of black lusciousness between her creamy thighs.

He felt a stirring in his loins that he
hadn't felt in— How long has it been? he wondered. He couldn't
remember, but he knew that it had been too long. Far too long. And
now, the sensation was both intoxicating and irresistible.

Later, after a long, hot shower, he lay in
bed thinking about the past, all those years ago when he and Serena
had spent time together. It had been a torrid affair of
operatically dramatic highs and equally dramatic lows. They'd
always seemed to be devouring each other with an all-consuming,
lusty sexual passion—a passion he hadn't known could exist.

Serena, Misha knew, had been all wrong for
him. In fact, he thought, had he tried to conjure up the worst of
all possible choices in a lover, she would have surely been that
woman.

He was of Russian descent and Jewish, though
non- practicing. Serena was American, southern—a Florida cracker,
really—and a Protestant, though she had long since abandoned faith
in anything or anybody but herself. He was obsessed with his career
and needed a woman who would devote herself to him and his music.
Serena was equally as obsessed with her own career and wasn't about
to sacrifice herself to him and his ambitions.