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“Aren’t you?”

He let it drop softly between them and hang in the air until she heard herself utter a brief and unconvincing nervous laugh. Villiers said, “I don’t know anything about your ex-husband, but from what I hear, you had to choose between him and your business, and you chose the business. Doesn’t that suggest an unusual sort of drive?”

“That’s ridiculous. Russ and I broke up for a lot of reasons that were far too complex for you to boil down into half a dozen words. Maybe we were just two incompatible people-it happens.”

“It happens,” he agreed. “But not everybody’s father is Elliot Judd. And not every daughter of a billionaire has to prove she can succeed in business on her own, without her daddy’s help.”

“Where did you come across all this cockeyed information about me?”

“I never go into things blindfolded,” he said. “I know a great deal about you. Enough to be sure you won’t take the proposition to your father. You’ll do it with me or not at all. You may turn me down, but you won’t take it behind my back-and particularly you’ll never take it to him.”

“You’re so damned sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. I learned a long time ago that only a fool goes into anything without doing his homework.” He turned his hand over and gave her a brief hard smile.

Her apartment was on the eleventh floor of a high-ceilinged old building on East 61st Street, a co-op occupied mainly by presidents of insurance companies, banks, and industries. An elderly starched doorman leaped to open the door of Villiers’ limousine when it eased in at the curb. An elevator boy in white gloves whisked them up the eleven stories in a fast, silent elevator, and Diane stood at her foyer door with key in hand, hesitating, not wanting to admit him.

Looking at him, she saw how fragile was her standard New York armor-the defense of brittle sophistication which, to a man like him, was no defense at all.

He gripped both her arms and turned her to face him. “Invite me in for a nightcap.”

“I don’t wear nightcaps, Mason.”

“I see. And that’s all there is to it?” He smiled slightly, and she felt the pressure of his hands drawing her toward him. She said sharply, “Please, Mason.”

“You’re a bit glacial tonight, aren’t you? You know damn well you’re a beautiful woman, desirable. We’re not adolescent kids-do you really need to have me start breathing hard and whispering sweet nothings to you?”

His hard hands were against her arms. She had a swift, sudden vision of two figures on a bed, clutching at each other-it was what she wanted; it was what she feared. She stiffened; she said, “Damn it, this city’s packed full of women that want a man. Any man. Do you have to force yourself on me?”

“You’re not just any woman.”

“Please, Mason. Don’t. You’d be wasting your time, and I’d rather not disappoint you.”

“I’ll take that chance. I’ve always-”

“Damn it, what I have to tell you is difficult enough without your impatience. I’m no good in bed. Do you understand?”

Her eyes went wide; her breath stopped in her throat.

Mason Villiers said, “Do you think I can’t arouse you?”

“Mason, please, for heaven’s sake. Do you know how hard this is for me?”

She lifted her hands and pushed his arms away, and backed up against the door, feeling the hot rush of blood to her face. “Please,” she whispered, shaking her head.

He nodded slowly. “All right.” His voice was gentle enough, but his face had closed up. He turned to the elevator and pushed the button.

She clutched her arms and stared at his wide, flat back in miserable silence. He didn’t stir. The elevator came, the doors slid open, and he stepped in.

She took a pace forward. “Mason?”

He turned to regard her with a calm air of cold, arrogant disdain.

She said in a small voice, “Go ahead and start the arrangements to incorporate.”

He nodded his head an inch. “Thank you,” he said with precise courtesy, and watched her, unblinking, while the elevator doors slid shut, cutting him off from her view.

She went through the apartment turning on lights, and sat down on the living-room couch with a cigarette. She had a sudden impulse to run from the empty apartment and rush into one of the crowded bars on Second Avenue.

She was halfway to the door before she stopped and went slowly back to the couch. She could just see herself sitting in a bar, trying not to look like a pickup, fighting off men who knew of no other reason why a woman alone should come into a bar. In her strong moments she was fully capable of turning a slow burning stare on a man that would send him hurrying away, shaking his head defensively; but right now she didn’t have the courage to look a man in the face.

She said sternly, aloud, “I am not going to crack up. I absolutely refuse to crack up. It’s ridiculous-it’s absurd. I won’t!”

She went into the bedroom, drew the blinds and draperies, and removed her clothes, putting them away with care. She sat down naked at the dressing table and fluffed her hair, watching critically in the mirror.

Lamplight on the pale blue walls depressed her; she resolved to have the room repainted. She went into the bathroom and turned on the tub faucets, and walked through the apartment to the bar, where she poured half a tumbler of straight gin over two ice cubes; carrying the drink, she went around switching off lights, checked the bolt at the front door, and came back to the bathroom in time to shut off the water. She closed the bathroom door, glanced at her expressionless face in the mirror, and stepped into the steaming tub; she took a long swallow of gin, set the glass on the rim of the tub, and lay back in the hot water, thinking about nothing in particular; and then she slowly became aware of the tingling in her breasts, the vaginal tautness, the generation of hidden excitement that made her feel shamed and sick with loathing, knowing she would spend a little while pretending it wasn’t there, and a little while more hoping it would go away, and a little while more massaging her hardened nipples while a protective cloak of serenity would seem to descend around her, and in the end she would promise she would never let it happen again, but she would begin to rub herself with her fingers until she reached that terrible guilty, lonely climax.

12. Mason Villiers

The limousine turned up Third Avenue from Forty-seventh Street and cruised slowly with the lights. Taxis darted past, jumping the traffic lights, and along the window-lit sidewalks male prostitutes cruised with brazen, casual arrogance. In the back seat of the limousine Villiers became irritated with the bedraggled whine of Tod Sanders’ complaining voice and said, “I’m sick of hearing about your mother. Shut up.”

Sanders didn’t say another word until he eased the big car in at the curb in front of Villiers’ hotel. Then, blank-faced, Sanders turned in his seat and said, “You want a girl? You want me to send for a girl?”

“No, to hell with it. You go on home and sit up with your sick mother.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Tod Sanders was perpetually nodding, nervously pretending agreement before he could possibly know what he was going to be agreeing with; he was like a student-there was one in every classroom-whose head bobbed up and down the whole hour long.

“I’ll need you here at nine in the morning with the ear.”

“Yes, sir.”

The doorman had the limousine door open; Villiers stepped out and went into the hotel lobby. He glanced at the row of elevators but went on to the cocktail lounge. Drunk businessmen were crowded loud at the bar. As he moved past them, he saw a slim attractive woman sitting alone; her glance touched him, direct and interested. He sized her up as an easy lay.

She had a warm, slow smile.

He sat down and spoke: “Staying here in the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“In town long?”

“I live here.” She was still smiling.

“Work here?”