‘Only trouble is it’s all cold, but one must make do.’ He brought over delicate dry crackers and pt6 in a silver dish. ‘Fois gras. Ever tried it?’
Lita spread it obediently on her cracker. It was smooth, very good. ‘No.’
‘It’s made from a goose liver. They force-feed the bird until its liver explodes.’ Blithely he lashed it on his cracker and bit in. Lita felt nauseated, but managed to swallow the rest of it. She didn’t want him to get put off.
‘Have some more.’
‘No. No, thanks, I … have to watch my figure.’
‘I suppose that’s wise, for a model. Have a glass of champagne, though. They call it the jockey’s drink. No calories.’
Lita allowed him to pour the Veuve Cliquot into her crystal flute. It was room temperature, but still absolutely delicious. She gulped at it. Rupert’s dark eyes twinkled. He poured her another.
‘Excellent. I do like a woman with a zdst for life,’ he said softly.
The alcohol went to her head. Lira’s tension seeped out of her. She
relaxed in her chair and smiled at Rupert. Man, he was handsome. ‘What’s the next course?’
He grinned. ‘Smoked salmon, brown bread and a squeeze of lemon juice. Have you ever tried that?’
‘No.’ Emboldened now, she looked right back at him. ‘We don’t get
much lois gras and smoked salmon in the Bronx.’
‘That’s where you’re from?’
‘It sure is,’ Lira said, defiantly. ‘My father drives a cab and my mama works in a garment shop. Worked. I send her money now, so she doesn’t have to.’
There wasn’t a flicker on lupert’s face. ‘And was that what you were going to do before you realized how beautiful you were?’
It took a second for the compliment to register. Then Lita felt a slow flush creep all along her cheeks.
‘No. I was going to go to college,’ she said. ‘And have a career.’ He chuckled. ‘No chance of that, my dear. Some lucky chap would
36
have snapped you up for a wedding miles before you got to be a typist in some little office.’
Lita didn’t quite see how having a career had to equal being a typist, but she kept her mouth shut.
‘I don’t think I’m the type to sit at home with babies,’ she ventured. ‘That’s only because you’re so young. I hope you haven’t been reading that Germaine Greer crap. The female eunuch, and all that. Let me tell you something, Lira. Women are all the same. They’re made for love. Just love.’
She smiled at him uncertainly.
‘Some women have to work, you know.’
‘I know. And I think it’s a tragedy that men aren’t taking up their responsibilities. Of course, an unmarried woman must take care to secure her financial future, if she can.’ He sounded doubtful about that. ‘But when a young woman marries, her husband ought to take up the slack. Children, and making a happy home. Those are significant, you know. Don’t you think so?’
‘Of course.’ She felt a bit confused. ‘The most important thing.’ Rupert beamed. ‘Absolutely. The most important thing. Love doesn’t get its full due in our modern world. We can send cosmonauts into
space, but we can’t explore our own hearts.’ Lira gazed into his dark eyes. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
After dinner he walked her to her room and kissed her hand gently. Lita drifted into her bedroom, drunk with more than wine. She felt that squirming sensation in her belly, and she was moist between her legs. She had been half hoping that he would push her into her room, thrust her down on the bed and rip her virginity from her. It couldn’t hurt as much as the girls said it did. But, no, he was too much of a gentleman.
She got it together just enough to drink two bottles of the French mineral water he had brought with him. That sobered her up, and she peeled off her clothes and fell into bed, pulling the mosquito net shut tight around her.
Just before she fell asleep, Lira remembered Why Rupert had confused her. She wanted marriage, and someday kids. But why couldn’t she work, too? Why was it one or the other?
It didn’t matter. The image of his gorgeous, thick-lashed eyes Staring into hers lingered in her brain.
He said he was all about love. Maybe Bill had it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t such a wolf after all.
37
They wrapped up the shoot the next day. Rupert had to take an earlier flight home, because he had a meeting.
‘It’s a lawyer thing. A frightful bore,’ he told her, shrugging.
‘I hope nothing bad,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘Quite the reverse, actually. But I have to take care of it.’ She missed him badly when the car came to drive him away. It was ridiculous. But she still managed to concentrate on the shoot. After all, Rupert would see it, and there was no way she was going to disappoint him. They wrapped up just as the sun began to sink, rosy light spilling all over the mountains. It was spectacular, but all Lira wanted to do was get home. New York city was where Rupert was.
They landed at JFK at half past one in the morning. Lita dragged herself off the plane, stacked her luggage on the little cart and wheeled it out to where her driver was waiting. She had half expected to see Rupert there but, of course, that was just foolishness.
I mustn’t lose my head, she told herself. I’m l
When she got home, there was a card in her mailbox. Lita ripped it open, a surge of excitement blasting through her exhaustion.
It was a Valentine’s Day card, stiff, heavy, gold-embossed edges. Inside there was a barely legible scrawl in blue fountain pen.
‘The calendar says September, but it feels like February to me. P,..’
She hugged it to her chest and didn’t fall asleep until the sun crept up over grimy lower Manhattan. ‘
38
The campaign was a huge success.
The sight of Lita sashaying across the screen, her dark eyes flashing defiantly, her firm butt encased in a gaudy swath of bright green, fruit wound into her hair like a Victorian stripper, moved jars of instant coffee off the shelves all across America. Costa 1Kica followed it with another Lita campaign, this time featuring her in a suede dress with tassels, sitting in an opulent hotel lobby, sipping the nasty brew out of a bone china cup. ‘Authentic Costa - Authentic Class,’ screamed the slogan, and their market share went up four per cent.
Lita had money. She bought her parents a house of their own and gave them the two-family as an income property. They retired without further fuss. As far as Pappy was concerned, only a fool worked unless he had to. Chico sidled up to her for money, too. Lita offered to take him to Barney’s, to get him some suits, get him a position of some kind at Benson Bailey. But he refused.
‘Jus’ give me the money, sis. I got me some investments,’ Chico insisted.
‘What kind?’ she said suspicibusly.
His face darkened. ‘I don’t want to say. I could blow it. You know how it is.’
Not really, she thought.
‘Are you going to give me the money or not? I’ll pay you back. It’s a good opportunity for you. Of course, you don’ have to. I’m only your brother,’ Chico said with heavy sarcasm.
Lira gave him the money. Four thousand in cash. She wouldn’t dream of handing Chico a cheque. What did he know from banking? It wasn’t their way. She still had the money she’d saved up in that sock. She didn’t ask for a receipt, because she knew she’d never see a dime of it ever again.
But it was worth it to paci Chico. He wasn’t exactly hrllled about her success. Whatever she could do to ease his simmering anger, she wanted to do. Lita racked her brains for something Chico could do to get him off the track of becoming her ‘manager’. She thought about
39
buying houses with two or three apartments… ‘three families’, the real estate people called them. Then Chico could be a handyman, run them for her. If only she could be sure he wouldn’t shake down her tenants for money …
But it was hard to think too much about her brother. Lita was being
swept along in a cloud of money, fame and aching hipness. Not to mention love.
Rupert had asked her out the day after she got home. Lita had sat
there, staring at the phone, willing it to ring. When it had, she jumped on it before it could even complete its first trill. It was him, and a shudder of pleasure rippled through her to hear his voice.
‘I suppose you must have thought that card was incredibly corny.’ ‘No, no, it was just perfect,’ Lita sighed, thinking he was, too. ‘I’d have sent flowers, but you wouldn’t have been there to receive
them.’
‘That’s OK,’ Lita murmured.
‘I take it that it wouldn’t be too presumptuous to hope you’d go out
with me?’ Rupert said.
‘Oh, no.’
‘No, you wouldn’t? Well, I can’t blame you. I wouldn’t either.’
‘Of course I would. I meant …’ Lita flushed.
‘I know what you meant, sweetheart. I’m just teasing you. Tell you
what. You get yourself ready, and I’ll pick you up around ten.’
‘Isn’t that a bit late?’ Lita said, then winced. She could have kicked
herself. The first date was not the time to sta}t criticizing. What did she .
know? He was the sophisticated one.
lq, upert laughed. She loved the crisp, limey accent that he had. Like a
prince or something. He was a nobleman, of course. It was a whole different world, and Lita suddenly longed to be part of it.
‘Maybe for a bourgeois dinner for two. But we’re going to a late
supper, and then we’re hitting the clubs. I want to show you off. Wear something dramatic, darling, won’t you?’
I sure will, Lita thought after she hung up, utterly excited. She raced
to her shower. Hair first … you couldn’t look great unless your hair was glossy and gleaming. She soaped every inch of her body, rubbing Chanel No. 5 body lotion into her smooth-shaven legs. Frantically she began to go through her extensive wardrobe in her mind. It felt about as important a decision as choosing a veedding dress. Lita slipped into a luxurious white towelling robe from Saks - one she’d had delivered in that glorious thick cardboard box lined with crisp tissue paper - and padded over to her closets. Sexy, but not too sexy. Even though he’d said dramatic, Lita was going to be careful. She knew she could pour
4°
herself into thigh-high white boots, a leather miniskirt that looked like a belt with pretensions and a halter-necked mesh vest with two discreet copper-wrought flowers to cover her nipples, and she’d have Rupert, and every other man she’d meet tonight, drooling at her feet. But after he’d drooled, and gotten her into bed - maybe with presents of diamond rings, the way some of the magazine guys had tried to bribe her - he’d luck her a few times, then dump her. And Lita wanted to be more than that.
She wanted to be 1Kupert’s wife.
Maybe it was crazy to think like that, and on the first date, too, but Lita didn’t care. She believed in Destiny, and Rupert Lancaster had Destiny written all over him. From that first encounter in his office, with her heart in her mouth, to him making her wait so long she thought he’d forgotten about her, to that romantic evening in Costa IKica … Oh, man, what would Mama say … her little Chiquita an English Lady, a Baroness …
Lita went through her wardrobe like a general planning a strategic attack. Something sexy, but not tarty. Hmm… She tried a minidress in silver leather, a backless ruby gown in crushed velvet and a clinging pantsuit in lemon silk, but nothing was quite right. She settled on a fitted silk top in a soft pink, set with tiny silver beads, and a white swing skirt that came to just above the knee but which lifted and moved around her legs when she walked. She spritzed herself with more Chanel, tugged on a pair of teetering high pumps and she was ready to go. Carefully, Lita tugged her robe back on so she wouldn’t stain her outfit, then went to her kitchen and fixed herself an omelette. She had a feeling Rupert would be impreCsed if she didn’t eat too much. Lira saw the models around her getting skinnier every day. The restaurant he’d take her to might be a steakhouse, who knew? But she’d do better if she just ordered a grilled chicken salad. The thought of rabbit food made her starving. She threw peppers and fried-up steak strips and a little cheese in her omelette and devoured it. A glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, and she was more relaxed.
I’m ready for this, Lita told herself.
Rupert arrived with the largest bunch of red roses she’d ever seen. ‘Five dozen,’ he said, when he saw her trying to count them. Mmm, she was a looker. Check out those tits in that tight pink top. He glanced and checked out the slight puckered shape of the nipple against the silky material. Her little white skirt showed off the curve of her calves; he imagined the firm, satiny thighs. Would her pussy be trimmed, or shaved right off?. She was so young. Completely fuckable. He couldn’t wait, really.
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Oh, well. Softly softly. She was almost ready to drop into his hands like a ripe plum. She’d be begging for it like every other piece of ass in New York soon enough.
Lira was overwhelmed. ‘Let me just put them in some water.’
He chuckled. ‘I doubt you have that many vases. Here, let me.’ He took the heavy blossoms from her, ran a sink half-full of cold water and dropped them in there. ‘After work tomorrow, maybe we’ll go to Bloomingdale’s and get you something to put them in. But don’t stare at them all night. We’ve got places to go.’
He tugged her after him out on to the street. He slipped her into a cab - for some reason she’d expected him to come in a limo, but this was refreshing. Maybe he was just trying to show her he was a regular
guy. In the car, Rupert turned to her admiringly.
‘You’ve got real style, Lira,’ he said.
‘Style is my business,’ she said, basking in the compliment.
He took her to Tavern on the Green and ordered caviar and blinis, which she loved, and a chilled bottle of champagne.
‘You shouldn’t spend so much money on me,’ Lira protested. Rupert took her hand, turned it over in his, and kissed the back of her palm, slowly and deliberately. She felt herself instantly slick up between the legs and pressed them together.