“Very clear.”
He looked at his watch. “Time to go.” He turned to the waiter. “Check, please.” He rose to his feet.
“Can we have lunch next week?” Lara asked.
“No. Maybe I’ll see you again when your next building is finished.”
And he was gone.
That night Lara dreamed they were making love. Paul Martin was on top of her, stroking her body with his hands and whispering in her ear.
“You ken, I maun hae ye, and onie ye…Gue forgie me, my bonnie darlin’, for I’ve niver tauld you how mickle I love ye, love ye, love ye…”
And then he was inside her and her body was suddenly molten. She moaned, and her moans awakened her. She sat up in bed, trembling.
Two days later Paul Martin telephoned. “I think I have a location you might be interested in,” he said crisply. “It’s over on the West Side, on Sixty-ninth Street. It’s not on the market yet. It belongs to a client of mine who wants to sell.”
Lara and Howard Keller went to look at it that morning. It was a prime piece of property.
“How did you hear about this?” Keller asked.
“Paul Martin.”
“Oh, I see.” There was disapproval in his voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Lara…I checked on Martin. He’s Mafia. Stay away from him.”
She said indignantly, “He has nothing to do with the Mafia. He’s a good friend. Anyway, what does that have to do with this site? Do you like it?”
“I think it’s great.”
“Then let’s buy it.”
Ten days later they closed the deal.
Lara sent Paul Martin a large bouquet of flowers. There was a note attached: “Paul—please don’t send these back. They’re very sensitive.”
She received a call from him that afternoon.
“Thanks for the flowers. I’m not used to getting flowers from beautiful women.” His voice sounded gruffer than usual.
“Do you know your problem?” Lara asked. “No one has ever spoiled you enough.”
“Is that what you want to do, spoil me?”
“Rotten.”
Paul laughed.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“Why don’t we talk about it at lunch?” Lara asked.
Paul Martin had not been able to get Lara out of his mind. He knew that he could easily fall in love with her. There was a vulnerability about her, an innocence, and, at the same time, something wildly sensual. He knew that he would be smart never to see her again, but he was unable to control himself. He was drawn to her by something more powerful than his will.
They had lunch at the “21” Club.
“When you’re trying to hide something,” Paul Martin advised, “always do it out in the open. Then no one will believe you’re doing anything wrong.”
“Are we trying to hide something?” Lara asked softly.
He looked at her and made his decision. She’s beautiful and smart, but so are a thousand other women. It will be easy to get her out of my system. I’ll go to bed with her once, and that will be the end of it.
As it turned out, he was wrong.
When they arrived at Lara’s apartment, Paul was unaccountably nervous.
“I feel like a fuckin’ schoolboy,” Paul said. “I’m out of practice.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Lara murmured. “It will come back to you. Let me undress you.”
She took off his jacket and tie and started unbuttoning his shirt.
“You know that this could never become serious, Lara.”
“I know that.”
“I’m sixty-two years old. I could be your father.”
She went still for an instant, remembering her dream. “I know.” She finished undressing him. “You have a beautiful body.”
“Thanks.” His wife never told him that.
Lara slid her arms along his thighs. “You’re very strong, aren’t you?”
He found himself standing straighter. “I played basketball when I was in…”
Her lips were on his and they were in bed, and he experienced something that had never happened to him before in his life. He felt as though his body were on fire. They were making love, and it was without a beginning or an ending, a river that swept him along faster and faster, and the tide began to pull at him, sucking him down and down, deeper and deeper, into a velvet darkness that exploded into a thousand stars. And the miracle was that it happened again, and once again, until he lay there panting and exhausted.