A Kiss Before Loving Page 3

  Surprisingly, he found himself eager to get back to her — to take up where they had left off. That, in itself, made him wonder because it had been a long time since he’d felt this way.

  At her door, he knocked.

  Sissy opened it, somewhat sleepy of eye. She obviously hadn’t been to bed, although she was in a negligee of the texture of woven spider thread, so revealing as to be almost nonexistent.

  She looked at him, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other.

  Shell held up her purse. “You left it in the cab,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, almost whispering it and then went on, “I wondered what excuse you’d find.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Shell said, following her into the room.

  “I’ve made a couple of drinks for us, as nightcaps,” she went on, turning to him.

  He was already thinking, Wow, what a night. I’ve made plenty — much better than usual — it’s been fun, with the exception of the wet blanket, Brett-James, and now … this. That negligee must have cost a fortune and it conceals absolutely nothing. This girl has an unbelievable figure.

  The nightcaps were sitting on a cocktail table. Mike bent to pick one up, turning away from her momentarily. When he turned back, Sissy had allowed the negligee to part, revealing two halves of proud, almost arrogant breasts.

  Without taking his eyes off her, Shell placed the drink back on the cocktail table. Sissy, satisfied with the effect her strip-tease was having, thrust one leg forward, separating the negligee further to expose a restless, well-rounded thigh. Then, with one quick move, she squirmed, shrugged her shoulders and the negligee wafted rather than slid down her body and settled to the floor.

  Now she walked to him deliberately, flaunting every inch of her manificent figure, her breasts bouncing in rhythm to her stride. For the second time that evening she thrust herself at him, threw her arms around his neck and urged, “Now show me how they make love in Paris.”

  They never got around to their drinks.

  Chapter Two

  SHELL WOKE FIRST. From the light streaming through the large windows, it must have been somewhat after noon, he figured. For a brief moment he had to orientate himself — a slight hangover … last night on the town … the American girl and the Englishman …

  It all came back in a rush.

  He turned on his side. Her hair, against the white of the other pillow was dark gold. He remembered her strip-tease of the night before and the way she had urged him to greater and greater ecstasy.

  Shell Halliday decided that Sissy Patterson was one of the few women he’d met who looked better completely nude than in clothing. Contrary to considerable belief, complete nudity is seldom as attractive as when a woman wears some minimum of clothing, a thin nightgown, a bikini, or even a G-string in a strip-tease. Once the last article of provocative clothing is shed, the mystery is gone.

  But this girl had such a perfect collection of feminine attributes that the generalization just didn’t apply.

  She lay now in such a way that her body was evident from the navel up, and her face was serene in sleep, as though she’d never dreamed of alcoholic indulgence beyond some slight sipping of Aunt Minnie’s blackberry wine, come Thanksgiving, and was as virginal as all seven of the Vestals.

  Only a sheet covered her. The night before had been warm and their exertions hadn’t cooled it. With deliberation, Shell stretched forth a hand and gently pulled the sheet away. Yes, her feet, calves, knees, thighs and hips were as perfect as he had remembered them, and he remembered them well. She was a Venus de Milo, with several inches added to her breast measurements to bring her up to modern American specifications.

  Felicity Patterson had an attractive face, but her surpassing beauty was in her figure. Shell extended a finger toward a nipple so coral as to be suspect of cosmetic addition.

  Sissy opened one eye and frowned at him.

  “You’re awfully forward for a comparative stranger,” she said accusingly.

  He grinned at her, unabashed. “I’m not as strange as all that,” he said.

  “You’re pretty strange,” she said. “Where’d you learn some of those things you did to me last night?”

  “What things?”

  “You know.” She brought the sheet up around her neck and brought her arms tight against her body and shivered slightly. “Scary. But not at the time, of course.”

  He pretended to leer. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Humph,” she said, “I come by my experience honestly, through two marriages. While I have a sneaking suspicion that you’ve accumulated yours by picking up poor little tourist waifs who have lost their way in Paris — and taking them off and seducing them.”

  “Them’s harsh words,” Shell protested. He felt a comfortable languor and was unprepared for the bombshell that came.

  Sissy had put one of her hands behind her head and was staring up at the ceiling. After a moment she said, as though idly, “You could have kept the purse, you know. We probably spent quite a bit last night, but I imagine there’s a couple of thousand dollars in francs, dollars and pounds in it.”

  He couldn’t have been more surprised had she suddenly ground her cigarette into his face.

  “What?” he said.

  She knew he had heard her correctly.

  “What brought that on?” he wanted to know after a pause. “Do you think I’m a crook?”

  She looked at him obliquely, drew on her cigarette again. “What are you, Shell?”

  He said indignantly, “You know what I am. I’m an American painter, living here in Paris.”

  She said softly, “Do you really do any painting?”

  His eyes pried at her.

  “I’m not as scatterbrained as I sometimes seem,” she said. “Oh, I’m scatterbrained, I’ll admit, but not completely stupid.”

  “What’s all that mean?” Shell snapped.

  “It didn’t mean so much at Robert’s when you went in to have a word with Pierre, the chef. By the way, is there really a chef there named Pierre?”

  “Yes,” Shell said flatly.

  “But in the next place there was also a reason to go off with the headwaiter for a moment, after the check had been paid. Then the third time.”

  “And …?” Shell said.

  Sissy yawned. “And then I stopped paying any attention.”

  “Look,” he said bitterly. “Why didn’t you call it quits if that’s what you thought?”

  She looked at him. “Why? I was having the time of my life. Your company is excellent. You really do know Paris. Why should I object to paying for your guide services?”

  “And my gigolo services afterwards, eh?” he muttered.

  She flushed. “That was uncalled for.”

  She was right, damn it. Shell Halliday was sorry he had dragged that in. “You’re right,” he said grudgingly. “I apologize. As for the rest, you’re right, of course. I get a percentage for bringing tourists into most of those places we were in last night.”

  Sissy shrugged her shapely shoulders. “So you earn your money. At least, your way of making a living is more honest than mine. I don’t do anything.”

  He frowned at her.

  Sissy laughed sourly. “I have a trust that nets me a thousand a week. My father knew that if he left me his money in a chunk I’d probably get done out of it before the year was through. So he left a trust. A thousand a week. I have a hard time getting rid of it, Shell.”

  He grunted and stared up at the ceiling. “At least, your father made it,” he said. “If he wanted to leave it to you, that’s his business. He wasn’t a bum living off tourists, a steerer, a shill, a tout.”

  “Hey, laddy,” she said, her voice suddenly compassionate. She turned to him and took him in her arms, as though she were twenty years older, and he twenty younger. Suddenly she was eternal womanhood, protecting a male-child, soul-hurt by a less than clement world.

  She kissed him passionlessly on his forehead. “You�
��re too young to be bitter, laddy.” There was a tender quality in the girl which amazed him. His snap judgments of the evening before — and the night — melted away.

  He snorted in self-deprecation. “Thanks, Sissy. You’re a nice guy.”

  “Almost everybody does the best they can, laddy, including you. You’re a nice guy, too.”

  He snorted again but said nothing.

  She was stroking his head gently. “Want me to scratch your back?”

  That surprised him. “How did you know I like to have my back scratched?”

  She laughed gently. “All little boys like to have their backs scratched.”

  He was unaccountably uncomfortable with this new Sissy. He didn’t feel that he wanted this sort of thing, this real intimacy from one of his tourist pickups. He wanted to bring the thing back to their earlier flippancy. She was capable of giving, and was giving, more than he wished to take — from any woman. There was a certain strength he could find in his bitterness — and she was robbing him of that bitterness.

  He pulled her to him roughly, wanting to hurt her for daring to invade his innermost privacy. He cupped one of her lush breasts in his hand. Almost instantly, the nipple hardened beneath his palm and his mood changed abruptly.

  He pressed closer and she could evidently feel his maleness against her since an expression at once tense and still sensually slack passed over her face. She moaned, “Good Heavens, you’re amazingly virile,” and her eyes rolled upward.

  Shell reacted in surprise. He had never met a woman who responded so quickly, whose needs were so immediate.

  That one hand over her breast turned on an excitement that was as intense as it was real. Her mouth sought his immediately, her tongue brazen, inviting and demanding more intimacies.

  Shell ignored the urgency of her need, anxious to dwell for a time on provocative preliminaries, both hands now caressing her breasts with a feathery touch which made Sissy gasp with pleasure.

  “Laddy, laddy,” she cooed, “you’ve got it made, you’ve got it made …”

  The rebellion in him was fading fast, but its residue made him hold off. He felt, somehow — despite his own need for the ultimate intimacy — that he had to make her wait and, perhaps, even beg.

  His right hand slid down her breast, traced its way down the now quivering slope of her belly and then stroked an inner thigh, again with that feathery touch which had forced words from Sissy before.

  She shook as if with fever and her arms drew him down onto her as she moaned, “Goddamnit! I can’t wait another second — not another goddamn second …”

  Her voice trailed off into a whimper as she shifted her position to accommodate him … Before all thoughts were swept away in their passion, the last thought he was conscious of was: Is this girl a nympho, or a near one? She was as wildly Lilith now as, a moment before, she had been eternal Eve.

  After the tidal wave of climax, they relaxed with their cigarettes, comfortably and warmly close, but not touching at any body area. They watched their smoke ascend through the unstirring air, toward the highly decorative ceiling.

  Finally, she said softly, “Before we so beautifully interrupted our conversation, you were belaboring yourself about your method of making a living. Do you know how my father made his?”

  “No, of course not.” He wondered vaguely what difference it made.

  “He was the biggest bootlegger in Florida during Prohibition,” she said evenly. “After repeal, he was well established in the liquor business and became the biggest distributor in the Deep South.”

  What could he say to that? Shell frowned but remained silent. It was nothing to beat herself about. The way her father made his money wasn’t her responsibility.

  “You know all those old saws: Money won’t buy everything, Crime doesn’t pay, and Honesty is the best policy, that sort of thing? Well, I’ll tell you something, Shell. You know why they lasted long enough to become old saws? Because as corny as they might sound to wise-acre cynics like you and I think we are, they’re true. They’re true, Shell.”

  “True or not,” he said sourly, “I doubt if I’d turn down a thousand a week if somebody handed it to me. I don’t think I’d spend time thinking how the money had been made.”

  She remained quiet for a long moment. “No, I suppose not,” she sighed. “I probably sound like a fool to you, Shell.” She turned on her side, propped herself on her elbow and frowned down at him.

  “I’m twenty-eight years old, Shell. You know what my score is? Two husbands, two divorces, and one nine-year-old child. If I had to count the number of persons I can truly consider to be real friends — those not just interested in my money — I could do it on one hand and have several fingers left over.”

  She grunted self-derision. “As you’ve discovered, I like men. My appetites are normal and I’m not quite thirty, so why shouldn’t I? I like masculine companionship, and not just in bed. I’m a born wife. I like to cook. Believe it or not, Shell, I even like to do things like sew buttons on men’s shirts. I like the smell of a man around the house. You know, pipes and things.” She snorted self-contempt again.

  “That shouldn’t be hard for a girl like you to — ” he started to say.

  “Even in Florida, the daughters of men who become rich by bootlegging aren’t exactly acceptable in the best circles,” she cut in wearily. “I suppose Dad thought he could take care of that situation as I grew older. Well, he learned his lessons as I learned mine.” Her mouth twisted without humor. “I remember his taking me to a top girls’ school in Maryland. They’d accepted me by mail.”

  Shell was looking at her narrowly. He saw that no comment was expected from him.

  “Evidently, the old biddy in charge had checked further on our background. They couldn’t have been more gentle about it, but suddenly there was no room for Felicity Patterson. The school was full up.”

  She grimaced again. “Dad was furious. He wanted to buy the place and fire all the snobs running it. What he probably really wanted to do was send some of his heavies up to deal with this problem as he’d dealt with all the others in his career.” She shrugged. “Obviously, that’s not an answer. I found out there was no answer.”

  She remained quiet for a moment, then wound it up quickly, as though tired of the subject. “So when you grow up, you kind of automatically drift into the hard-drinking, sleeping-around set. My first husband was a bartender. The second was, supposedly, a movie star. Actually, he turned out to be a bit player. Even that was before he married the Felicity Patterson fortune. He stopped working entirely, afterward. He was the father of Bunny.”

  “Bunny?”

  “My daughter. She’s in a school in Switzerland now.”

  Shell wondered why in the world she was giving all this to him. But, in a way, he supposed he knew. You have to talk to somebody. Sooner or later, you have to talk to somebody. And why not him? At least, Shell wouldn’t repeat it to anybody who made any difference.

  And there was another angle. If you want compassion, go to those who have their own troubles. Go to the poor and the beaten by life, if you want sympathy. Those who have suffered themselves know how it is. Sissy probably sensed that Shell’s own life hadn’t exactly been a boundless success.

  “Sorry, kid. It sounds rugged,” he said softly.

  She stubbed her cigarette out, as though defiantly. “I talk to much,” she said.

  “What’re you doing in Europe, Sissy?” Shell asked, his voice gentle.

  She laughed suddenly, and her laugh was bitterly harsh. “Looking for Number Three — a husband.” She added, sharply, “Bunny needs a father. A father and a normal home life. Let’s get up, Shell. I could use some breakfast.”

  • • •

  The Ritz is centrally located at 15 Place Vendôme. When Shell Halliday eventually emerged into the square, the day was well into afternoon. He looked up at the statue of Napoleon there at the top of the bronze pillar made of captured enemy cannon — Napoleon in the toga
of a Roman emperor and with a laurel wreath on his head. In such garb, the little corporal looked ludicrous.

  The day was such as only Paris in early summer can provide. Shell decided to walk back to his own hotel. Among other things, he wanted to think. Sissy had brought on a mood of recapitulation.

  He strolled down Rue Castiglione toward the Tuileries gardens, hands in pockets.

  What was it she’d said? He could have kept the purse, there was probably several thousand dollars in it.

  Actually, it had never occurred to him. But had he taken it, she would have made no effort to apprehend him. And even if he had, there would have been no proof. Sissy had shown that with a few drinks in her, she had no sense with money. She’d left her bag once at the Sphinx, and again at the homo hangout, Carroll’s. She’d been lucky Shell had noticed and gone back to retrieve it before some light-fingered citizen got his hands on it. No, she never would have been able to prove Shell had taken it.

  So why hadn’t he? It was possible for him to live a year or more on what Sissy had been carrying around. Admittedly, Sissy was unique. He’d never met, in his years of steering tourists in Paris, anyone quite like her. Anyone so quickly compassionate at another’s woes.

  But the real question was, would he have taken it had it been anyone except Sissy? And if not, why not?

  A matter of conscience? Don’t be funny. Where do you start and where do you stop?

  You start by being a free loader, a guy who goes to all the parties but never gives one, a guy who fails to ever pick up the check. Finally, you make deals for taking your supposed friends to places that will kick back to you.

  You even stoop, at times, to being a gigolo, although you don’t call it that, and neither does the tourist woman. But what it amounts to is sleeping with a woman who, ordinarily, you’d think too old or unattractive, a woman who picks up the check when you take her out.

  What was the next step? Pimping?

  He crossed the Rue de Rivoli and entered the Tuileries. To his right was the Jeu de Paume museum with its treasury of impressionist paintings from Corot to Van Gogh and Gauguin. Ordinarily, he might have stopped off, but he wasn’t up to it today. He wasn’t up to looking at the work of men who’d really had it.