“And you can take the sun, though not excessively. And you can do anything you want to for the rest of your life. What's first on the agenda?”
“Work.” She chuckled and sat down on the little swivel stool he had abandoned, and with her legs tucked up under her chin she spun herself around.
“God, she's going to break a leg in my office. That's all I need.”
“If I do, I'm walking out of here anyway, love. I have a life to celebrate this morning.”
“I'm glad to hear it.” And apparently Fred was, too. He jumped up, wagged his tail, and barked, as though he had understood what she had said. They both laughed and Peter stooped to pat his head. “Are we still having lunch?”
There was an anxious look in his eyes and she was touched. She understood what he was feeling, too. Abandonment Anxiety. Would she still want him in her life when she didn't need him anymore? He looked very vulnerable to her as he stood there, and she held out a hand to him. “Of course we're having lunch, silly. Peter …” Her eyes held fast to his. “There will always be time in my life for you. Always. I hope you know that You're the only reason I have a life.”
“No. Someone else is responsible for that.” Marion Hillyard. But he knew how much she hated to hear the older woman's name, so he didn't say it. He never understood why Marie reacted that way, but he humored her on that point. “I'm glad I was around to help. I always will be, if you need me… for… for other things.”
“Good. Then see that you feed me at twelve thirty.” The conversation had been serious enough. She stood up and shrugged her way into the new coyote coat. “Where shall we meet?”
He suggested a new restaurant down at the docks, where they could watch the tugboats and ferries and tankers cruising by on the bay, and the hills of Berkeley beyond. “Does that sound all right to you?”
“It sounds perfect. I may just hang around down there all morning and do some shooting.”
“I'd be disappointed if you did anything else.” He swept open the examining room door with a bow, and she winked as she left, but she did not go straight to the docks as she had said. Instead, went downtown to shop. Suddenly, she wanted to buy something fabulous to wear to lunch with Peter. It was the most special day of her life, and she wanted to enjoy every bit of it. In the cab, she glanced at her check-book and was grateful for the money she had made before Christmas on some of her work. It would allow her to be extravagant for herself, and to buy Peter something as well.
She found a pale fawn cashmere dress which molded her figure breathtakingly beneath the fur coat, and she stopped at the hairdresser and let him do her hair. It was the first time in years that she had worn it back, revealing her whole face. She bought big wonderful gold earrings at the costume jewelry bar, and a beige satin rope with a gold seashell on it. Beige suede shoes and a bag, and the perfume she had always loved best, and she definitely looked ready for lunch with Dr. Peter Gregson. Or just about anyone else. She was a woman who would have stopped any man's heart.
Her last stop was at Shreve's where, as though by prearranged plan, she found precisely what she had wanted but hadn't known she would ever find. It was a little gold face made up as a watch fob, and she knew that Peter had a pocket watch he was fond of and occasionally wore. She would have the date engraved in it for him later, but for the moment this would have to do. She had it gift wrapped, hailed a cab, and arrived at the restaurant just as he was sitting down. She thought she might explode with joy as watched his face while she approached. There were a number of others in the restaurant who watched her appreciatively too, but none with the tenderness of Peter Gregson.
“Is it really you?”
“Cinderella at your service. Do you approve?”
“Approve? I'm overwhelmed. What did you do all morning? Run around shopping?”
“But of course. This is a special day.”
She did things to his feelings that he had thought couldn't be done. He wanted to kiss her there, in the restaurant. Instead he held tightly to her hand, and smiled a long happy smile. “I'm so glad you're happy, darling.”
“I am. But not just because of the face. There's the show tomorrow, and … and my work, and my life … and … you.” She said the last word very softly.
The moment meant so much to him that he could only make light of it. “I come after all those things, eh? What about Fred?”
They both laughed and he ordered Bloody Marys for the two of them, and then he thought better of it and changed the order to champagne.
“Champagne? Good heavens!”
“Why not? And I closed the office for the afternoon. I'm as free as can be—unless, of course—” He hadn't even thought of it—“you have other plans.”
“Doing what for God's sake?”
“Working?” He felt sheepish for even asking.
“Don't be ridiculous. Let's go do something fun today.”
He laughed at her answer. “Like what? What would you like to do most?”
She tried to think and couldn't come up with anything, and then she looked at him with a broad smile.
“Go to the beach.”
“In January?”
“Sure. This is California after all, not Vermont. We could drive over to Stinson, and go for a walk.”
“All right. You're certainly easy to please.” But beach walks with him had become special to her and she wanted a special place to give him her gift. She wasn't sure if she could hold out till then. But she did. She waited until late that afternoon, when they were walking hand in hand along the windswept beach. The furcoat protected her from the stiff breeze that was coming in with the fog.
“I have something for you, Peter.” He looked at her in surprise as she stopped walking, as though he didn't quite understand, and then she pulled out the little gift-wrapped box. “I'll have it engraved, if you like it.”
“Marie, that's outrageous. You shouldn't … I didn't want.…” He was touched and embarrassed as he opened the little box, and delighted when he saw the beautiful fob. He put an arm tightly around her shoulders. “Why did you do a thing like that?” he scolded softly.
“Because you're such a creep and you never do anything for me.” He laughed at the mischievous look in her eyes and this time took her in his arms for a long, tender kiss that told her all that he felt. And this time, she kissed him as she never had before, with her body as well as her heart. It made him hungry for her in a way he could barely control.
“You'd better watch that, young lady, or I'll rape you here on the beach.”
She swept open the coat with a teasing smile and laughed. “So?”
He only laughed back and pulled her into his arms again. What an extraordinary girl she was, and how well worth the wait she had been. He could let his feelings soar now: she was no longer his patient. “Darling … Marie….” She silenced him with a long hungry kiss, and he pulled away for a moment, wondering if he was reading into her response the feelings he wanted to be there. But a current of desire was running between them that he knew he wasn't imagining. “Shall we … maybe we'd better go back.”
She nodded quietly and followed him back to the car, but her expression wasn't as somber as his, and when they reached her apartment, she turned and looked at him with a smile. “I have something else for you, Peter. I'd like you to come upstairs if you have time.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
She walked up the stairs ahead of him in silence, and when she opened the door of the apartment, she didn't turn on the lights. She walked straight across the living room, turned her easel away from the window, and then turned on the light. What he saw was her landscape with the boy sitting partially hidden in the foliage of a tree. She had finished it for him before she left on her vacation, but she had been saving it for this day, if not for this moment. He looked at her now as though he didn't understand.