Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  "You've got too much to worry about," Laura said. "It makes you feel smothered. You have to lock some things up and only worry about one at a time."

  Kelly looked at her and nodded slowly. "You really do that, don't you? Is that how you stay so cool? God, Laura, I love you and I love having you here, but you make me feel so sloppy, all my emotions hanging out while you're so smooth and together, like one of those fortune-teller's globes that doesn't have any seams. Don't you ever let loose and scream or cry?"

  Laura clasped her hands. "No."

  "Everybody cries."

  "Maybe if you concentrated on the resort and let things settle down between you and John—^"

  "Okay, you don't want to talk about crying. Concentrate on the resort? John gets jealous—can you believe it?—if I pay more attention to it than to him. And if I concentrate on him" —she spread out her hands—^'*he's loaded for bear, that man. You saw it just now; talking along nice and easy and—pow! —we're fighting. Even in bed, one of us says a simple word —well, maybe not always so simple—and that's it, no lovemaldng that night, just another argument. And I tell you, that is not much fiin."

  "I know." But I don't think about that. I don't miss making love; I don't want it; I don't even remember what it was like to

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  want it. I know I used to think it was lovely but I'm not interested anymore. "Maybe if you went somewhere, just the two of you . . . this is only the middle of March—we have two months until we get busy—isn't this a good time for you to get away?"

  Kelly tilted her head. "You trying to get rid of us, my friend? Itching to take over and run the place yourself?**

  Laura lau^ied and shook her head. "I wouldn't even try. I was thinking of you, not me.**

  "But you must want to run your own place,** Kelly said probingly.

  "Someday. We all have dreams we tuck away for the future.**

  "It*s one big headache, you know. You're better off staying with us. Lifetime security.'*

  They laughed, but inwardly Laura said no. The only real security was earning her way in a place of her own. Then no one could ever kick her out again.

  *Think about it,** Kelly urged. "Fm serious. We'd make you a partner.'*

  "1*11 think about it,** Laura said, "if you think about a vacation. I still say this is a good time for you to get away."

  "It would be if we could, but we can*t. Cutting expenses, you cut yoiu- own pleasures first. You know about that; you've cut down a lot.** She gazed at Laura. 'That's one of the jackets you brought with you—and it's a Ralph Lauren or I'll eat my non-Ralph Lauren hat—and you haven't bought anything since. And there's that closet^l of clothes, and those old leather-bound books I was looking at the other day. . . . Not that I'm prying**—she saw the involuntary smile that curved Laura*s lips—^'*well, I am, but only a little bit. Mainly I'm interested in size, not cost, and I'm envious: every time I look at you I dream of being size eight instead of fourteen.'*

  Laura smiled again, liking Kelly's openness and affection, thinking what a good place this was, and how lucky she was to be here, for however long she stayed. And then the telephone rang, and it was Ansel Rollins. The trial was set for July.

  Chapter 12

  LENI Salinger sat on the edge of the wide, satin-hung bed, leaning back, gazing beneath heavy eyelids at the bright red hair of the young man kneeling before her, his head between her thighs. She let herself float on slow waves of pleasure as he played his tongue on her sensitive flesh and thrust deep inside her wet darkness, and small shocks of sensation swept through her like iced vodka and warm honey, transforming her lean white body to a fluid line of feeling. She sensed rafier than saw the brocade and velvet room, and the hypnotizing glow of a single lamp, and then her eyes closed as the young man suddenly lay on her, forcing her back on the satin spread, and thrust inside her, hard and d^p. He moved within her, then raised himself so the tip of lus penis caressed her small, hardened flesh, and then he plunged into her again so their bodies locked, and he pulled out and thrust again and again until the threads of Leni's body gathered together in a knot and then flew apart, giving her a few seconds of the ecstasy she kept locked inside her, waiting until she could find the secrecy and safety to release it.

  The young man's breathing was as rapid as hers, and she put her arms around his muscular shoulders, pleased that he had found pleasure, too. But then she turned her wrist to see her watch. "I have to go," she murmured, and immediately he moved away so she could sit up. In the beginning, months ago, he had tried to keep her with him, but no longer he knew if he wanted to see her again, he had to follow her lead.

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  "Let me help,'* he said; it was one of the games they played. He pulled on her hose and half-slip, fastened her brassiere, buttoned her sheer blouse, and tied the bow at her throat. Her body cooling, Leni drew her skirt over her hips, fastened a red snakeskin belt around her waist, stepped into gray snakeskin pumps, and picked up her jacket.

  The young man was buckling his own belt. "Will you be here next week?"

  "I don't know.** She picked up the red Hermes Constance handbag she always used when she came to New York, and slung it over her shoulder. "I'll try, but I have four board meetings and that doesn't leave much time. Besides," she added lightly, "if I don't give you some free afternoons, when will you get your homework done?"

  "At night."

  "You should be dating at night."

  "I don't date."

  "All college students date."

  "I can't. I can't even look at anybody else—^"

  *Tor," she said with a note of warning. "I would be very distressed if you changed anything in your life because of me.

  "Well— '* As always, he said what he had to say to keep her from looking for someone else. "I do go out, lots, I just (tidn't think you'd like to know. That's no problem, finding girls . . ."

  "Then do your homework in the afternoon," she said gently, liking him, enjoying his infatuation more than she would admit to him or to herself. She stood before the full-length mirror. Pearl-gray shantung suit, white silk blouse, pearl silk gloves, a cherry red Adolfo straw hat tilted over one perfect eyebrow. Her mascara and eyeshadow were unsmudged. She freshened her lipstick; the case made a loud snap as she closed it. "I'll call you when I can get away," she said and kissed him briefly. In another minute she was in the brightly lit corridor of the Waldorf Towers, two steps from the elevator that took her to the lobby where she was one of dozens of well-dressed women spending their afternoons shopping, lunching, and perhaps adjourning for a couple of hours with a friend in the exclusive privacy of a high-priced hotel room.

  Judith Michael

  The late afternoon air was warm and still; even the crowds on the streets seemed to move more slowly in the June afternoon as the sun slid lower in the sky. Leni stopped at Tiffany's, then caught a cab to the airport in time for the five o'clock shuttle to Boston. And by seven she was sitting at dinner with Felix, the French doors open, the blue and silver flowers on the French wallpaper seeming to sway in the ocean breeze. "I found the tie clip you wanted," she told him. "The last one Tiffany's had. It seems people now give gifts for Easter, especially jewebry."

  "Good news for the merchants," he said absently, then, as if reminding himself, looked up and thanked her for the tie clip. "Did you have a pleasant day?"

  "Very."

  "What did you do besides shop?"

  "I stopped in at the Waldorf."

  His eyes took on a glazed look. "Ladies' lunches. I'm afraid I have no interest in what you did at the Waldorf. No matinee?"

  "You mean the theater?"

  "What else would I mean? Oh, concerts. There are none on Tuesday, as far as I know."

  "Nor at the theater, either."

  "Well, whatever you did, I'm sure you were able to amuse yourself. I assume you're amused; you're there most of the time, it seems, and it can't be for those deadly board meetings."

  'They're not deadly; they mak
e me feel useful." She took a second helping of vesd and wild rice; she was always ravenous after a trip to New York. "How was your day?"

  "Good. Very good. We saw a videotape of progress on the Elani in Honolulu; we should be able to open this fall. And I met with a group of bankers from Chicago about building a new hotel there, on the lake; we shouldn't have trouble financing it. They may even help us sell the old one; they think they know of a possible buyer."

  "You can't sell that hotel; it isn't yours.**

  "It will be next month, after the trial. You wouldn't expect me to wait until then to make plans; I intend to be ready to move the minute that mess is settled."

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  Leni was silent.

  *There*s not much demand for small hotels—no real way to make them profitable—but some junior-college people are interested in Chicago, and a nursing home director in Washington. If things go well, all four of those relics will be off our hands within a couple of years.'*

  She looked at him. "Owen took pride in those hotels."

  "And so you're sentimental about them. He knew as well as anyone they can't compete with modem ones. I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted."

  "That is not true," Leni said coldly. "He would have been extremely angry. He would have glared at you and called you a narrow-minded opportunist kickmg aside the past just as you kick aside anyone who gets in your way." Her voice grew wistful. "And his mustache would have quivered like long wings on each side of his mouth, about to take off— '* There were tears in her eyes. "I miss him. He was so alive. Paul said the same thing the other day, how much he misses that wonderful sense of life Owen brought to everything he did ..."

  Felix picked up the carafe. "More wine?"

  "I suppose so. Yes."

  "I didn't know you talked to Paul. Where is he?"

  "Rome, I think. He doesn't stay anywhere very long; I've never known him to be so restless. I asked him if he was doing any photography and he said he'd met someone who wants to be a model and he's begun photographing her. I wish he'd find a woman he could love."

  "He'd do better to find a job. He's been wandering around the world for months; nothing but a wastrel."

  "I don't think so; I think he's trying to find something to believe in. It's the same with Allison. I know her trip to Europe was my idea, but I didn't think it would turn out the way it has: the way she's going from country to country, and dragging Patricia with her, it seems more like she's fleeing. Bo3i of them, Paul and Allison, acting as if they're trying to get over a bad love affair. It's astonishing that one young woman could wreak such havoc. . . ."

  There was a silence. **I had some of my father's things moved over here today," Felix said.

  Leni Crowned. **You took things from Beacon Hill? You're not supposed to touch anything involved in the court case—^

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  Judith Michael

  **I would appreciate it if you would stop telling me what I cannot do. Fve done it, and what anyone says about it is irrelevant. I decided it was time we get some use out of those things; theyWe been sitting in that house for a year, with nobody there— ''

  "Rosa is there."

  "She shouldn't be; she would have been gone long ago if you hadn't raised such an incredible fuss."

  "I want her to live in this house, with us."

  "I will not have her here."

  *Then she'll stay in Beacon Hill."

  "She will not. As soon as that house is mine, I'm going to sell it."

  "You won't. Felix, you may succeed in taking those hotels from Laura, but I won't let you—^"

  *7 will take back what is mine! My father was terrorized into cutting me out of his will!'*

  "Don't be ridiculous. He left you ahnost everything he had."

  Felix's fist was clenched around the stem of his wineglass, and it suddenly snapped in his hand. A ruby rivulet ran along the daric mahogany table, staining the snowy place mat before him.

  "Did you cut yourself?" Leni asked with faint concern. "I'll ring for Talbot."

  "It's nothing." He wadded a napkin in his pahn. "My father would never have done what he did if he'd been in lus right mind. He trusted me, he cared for me more than anyone, he wanted me to keep his name as powerftil after his death as it was in his lifetime. He knew I was the only one who could do that; he depended on me. He would never make a fool of me in the eyes of the world. The hotels were meant for me; his stock in the company was meant for me; his corporation was meant for me. And so was his house."

  "If you win the case, that house will be ours,'* Leni said bluntly. "And it will not be sold."

  Felix tightened his fingers against the linen napkin, pressing it into his throbbing palm. What the hell had happened to her? She'd been changing ever since Owen died and that witch had been sent packing in disgrace. Sometimes he hardly lec-

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  ognized her, she'd lost much of that charming passive serenity she'd developed over the years to mask whatever dissatisfactions she felt. Now, when she didn't agree with him, she told him so.

  He had always dominated Leni. He used her elegance and style to make him feel powerful—the envy of other men— but his hold seemed to be weakening and it occurred to him that after twenty-two years of marriage he did not know her well enough to have any idea how to get it back.

  Once he thought he knew everything necessary to make her his and to keep her. That was when she was nineteen, in hot rebellion against her wealthy, shipbuilding, churchgoing, publicity-shy family. Felix had met her on a street in Greenwich Village; she was with a man who glanced at him briefly, then, again, piercingly, and stopped him with his deep, gravelly voice. "By all die gods of the Salingers, if it isn't Felix the robber baron: Felix Salinger in the healthy and well-dressed flesh."

  "Judd," Felix said flatly. He couldn't believe it: he never saw a familiar face in New York; it was an article of faith with him that the city made everyone anonymous. Yet here was Judd Gardner, whom he had long since wiped out of his thoughts, looking slightly seedier but otherwise not much different from years before. He would have walked away, but as he turned he got a good look at the girl whose arm was linked in Judd's. She was tall and spare, with tangled blond hair and sloppy clothes—and a way of holding her head, an elegance of style, that would have been at home in a palace. It was that elegance that caught Felix: he knew, with the same instinct that served him brilliantly in business, that a man who owned that elegance would have the power tfiat came from the envy of other men. And he knew he would not leave. "How are you?" he asked Judd.

  "Barely," Judd said with a thin smile. "I barely am. But I see that you very much are."

  "Judd, I'm cold," said the girl.

  The April wind was bitter; it whipped around the comer with a raw chill. Felix was conscious of the girl's bare legs and his own fiir-lined coat, leather gloves, cashmere scarf. "Do you live nearby?" he asked.

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  "Around the corner."

  *Then we'll go there."

  Judd*s eyes had been sliding from Fehx to the girl and back again as he saw Felix's fixed gaze. "Sorry, how rude I am. Leni Van Gris, Felix Salinger. Felix is known for taking what he desires, Leni, so be on your guard. Or perhaps I should be on mine. What do you think?"

  "I think we should say good night and go home."

  "But Felix wants a reunion," he said. "We can drink to old times. Except that we haven't got anything to drink. We'll have to stop on the way and get some su{^lies."

  "We don't need any," she protested.

  "We always need any," Judd said, and Felix realized he was in that perpetual state ojf drunkenness in which alcoholics can function for long stretches at a time before one more drink tips them into incoherence or stupor. "And Felix will pay."

  "Judd, let's go home. Alone."

  "No, no, Felix will join us. Felix is Bacchus, god of wine. And here we are."

  The store was small and Judd was known there. Felix p
aid for wine and whiskey, and soda for Leni, and they carried it to a neaiby fourth-floor walk-up in a brick building with a dry cleaner and pawnshop on the street level. The apartment had three rooms along a narrow hallway, like a train car, and Judd sat down in the front room in one of three chairs around a folding table set with assorted china and a wine bottle with candle wax dripping down the sides. One window was filled with a piece of plywood where an air conditioner had once been installed; beneath it was a stain the shape of Africa. And everywhere, on the walls, the furniture, the floor, were bright posters.

  **The idea is to go somewhere," said Judd. He poured two straight scotches and a soda, and handed a glass to Felix and one to Leni. "I'd like to take this lovely child away from here. But in case I can't manage it, we stare at exotic sights to swell our spirits with the wonders of a world where beauty is all that matters."

  "Judd, shut up," Leni said nervously. She sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor beside Judd, the overhead light casting a shadow across her face that emphasized her cheekbones

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  and the angular lines of her head and figure. Felix stood, staring down at her, knowing overwhelmingly that he wanted her and would do whatever he had to do to get her. It wouldn't be the first time, he thought dispassionately, that he had taken something he wanted from Judd Gardner.

  Without being asked, he sat in one of the chairs at the table, across from Judd, and took a long look at him. Tall, blond, his hair falling to his shoulders, he was still good-looking, though not as extraordinarily handsome as Felix remembered him from the days when he had envied those golden classic features, and wished he himself were less dark. Judd's voice was still rough, but his eyes and mouth, when he talked to Leni, were tender. "Where do you want to go?" Felix asked him.

  "Paradise. Where I can pick the golden apples of the sun and the silver apples of the moon and give them all to Leni, because, poor child, she thinks I'm romantic, since I'm poor and we met in an art gallery one rainy afternoon, and now she thinks she loves me."