“Hi, pretty girl, can I show you around Rome or is someone meeting you?” He kissed her playfully on the forehead and she giggled, turning her face up toward his with her dazzling Miss America smile.
“Sure, soldier, I'd love to see Rome with you.” She slipped a hand through his arm and squeezed tightly, and B.J. had to fight not to close his eyes, so afraid was he that they would show his feelings. He didn't want to do this, didn't want to play games with her or be funny. He wanted to tell her the truth as they stood there at the airport, looking at each other.… Pattie, I fell in love with another woman.… I have to break our engagement.… I want to marry her.… I don't love you anymore.… But was that true? Didn't he love Pattie Atherton anymore? He didn't think so as he watched her. In fact as he picked up her suitcase and followed the fur coat out of the airport, he was almost sure.
He had arranged for a car and driver, and a moment later they were sitting side by side in the backseat of the car … when suddenly she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth, leaving a bright red imprint of the lipstick that so perfectly matched her hat.
“Hey, babe, take it easy.” He reached quickly for his handkerchief while the driver stowed her bag in the trunk.
“Why should I? I came four thousand miles to see you.” Her eyes glittered a little too brightly, as though already she knew, as though she sensed something different. “Don't I get a kiss for all that?”
“Sure you do. But not here.” He patted her hand and as she took off her gloves he saw the sparkle of the engagement ring he had given her only that summer. And now it was not yet Thanksgiving and he was already having second thoughts.
“All right.” She looked at him matter-of-factly, and he could see shades of her domineering mother in the way her jaw set. “Then let's go back to the palace. Besides,” she smiled sweetly, “I want to see it. Daddy says it's divine.”
“It is.” He felt a tremor pass through him. “But wouldn't you rather go to where you're staying first? Where are you staying, by the way?”
“With General and Mrs. Bryce.” She said it smugly, like Congressman Atherton's daughter, and for a moment he hated her for her arrogant ways. How different she was from gentle Serena, how harsh she seemed in comparison. Was this really the pretty girl he had spent so much time with in Newport, and taken out so ardently last summer when he'd been home on leave? She didn't seem nearly as attractive now as they sat here, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye as he asked his driver to take them to his home.
He looked at the sleek waves of her bobbed hair and the expensive red wool hat. “Partie, what made you come over here now?” B.J. had put up the window between them and the driver and now he looked Pattie straight in the eye as he sat back in his seat. He was on his guard, though he wasn't sure why. “I told you I'd try to come home at Christmas.”
“I know.” She attempted to look at the same time petulant and alluring, and she was almost successful. Almost. “But I missed you too much.” She kissed him playfully on the neck, leaving her imprint on him once again. “And you're such a lousy correspondent.” But as she looked at him there was something searching. She was asking him a question, if not with her words, then with her eyes. “Why? Do you mind my coming over, Brad?”
“Not at all. But I'm awfully busy just now. And”—he stared out the window, thinking of Serena, before he looked back at Pattie again with reproach in his voice and his eyes—”you should have asked me.”
“Should I?” She arched one eyebrow, and again he found the resemblance to her mother striking. “Are you angry?”
“No, of course not.” He patted her hand. “But, Pattie, six months ago this was a war zone. I have work to do here. It won't be easy having you around.” In part it was true, but the real reason was hidden beneath. And Pattie seemed to sense that as she looked him over appraisingly.
“Well, Daddy wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday, and this was it. Of course”—she looked at him with faint accusation—”if you're too busy to see me, I'm sure that General and Mrs. Bryce will be happy to take me around, and I can always go on to Paris. Daddy has friends there too.” It all sounded so petulant and so petty, and it annoyed him. He couldn't help listening to the contrast between her veiled threats of “Daddy” and Serena's solemn, whispered explanations about “My father,” as she told B.J. about his conflicts with his brother, their implications, and the political pressures that had eventually led to his death. What did Pattie know of things like that? Nothing. She knew of shopping and tennis and summers in Newport, and deb parties and diamonds and El Morocco and the Stork Club and a constant round of parties in Boston and New York. “Brad.” The look which she gave him was part angry, part sad. “Aren't you happy that I came to see you?” Her lower lip pouted, but the big blue eyes shone, and as he watched her he wondered if anything really mattered to her. Only that she got her own way, he suspected, from Daddy or anyone else.
The summer before, he had found her so charming, so cute, and so sexy, and so much more amusing than the other debutantes he had known before the war. But he had to admit now that the only thing different about her was that she was a little bit shrewder and a lot smarter. He suddenly wondered if she had manipulated the engagement. She certainly had had him panting for her body on the summer porch in Newport. A diamond ring had seemed then a small price to pay for what lay between those shapely legs. “Well, B.J.?” She still wanted an answer to her question, and he had to pull his mind back to the woman sitting beside him in the car hurtling through the streets of Rome.
“Yes, Pattie, I'm happy to see you.” But it had the dutiful ring of an unhappy and long-married husband. He didn't feel like a lover as he sat beside her in the car, glancing at the pretty face, the red hat, and the fur. “I think I'm just a little surprised.”
“Surprises are nice though, B.J.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “I love them.”