Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

"I was afraid of this when you moved into the hotel. But then I told myself not to be a fool, you weren't the sort to encourage total strangers."

With malice, Lucinda enquired absurdly: "Are you reproaching me with relaxing from the conventions of my former milieu, Mr. Summerlad?"

"You know very well what I mean, Linda."

"You think, perhaps, I'm growing to be a shade too free and easy?"

"If you must know, I do."

"But this is, after all, Hollywood."

"No excuse for doing as the Hollywoodenheads do."

"Then, I take it, you think it might be more discreet of me to stop going about with you alone."

Since the same roof no longer sheltered them, the Lontaines had ceased invariably to include Lucinda in their plans and gaddings, as when social courtesies were extended them by people whom Lontaine met in the way of business and to whom Lucinda was not known at all. So she was enjoying some little time to herself, when Summerlad's attentions permitted; and when they didn't, felt free to follow her inclination and dispense with chaperonage on occasion, irrespective of the looks of the thing. (If anything could be held to have any particular "looks" where principles of laissez-faire and assiduous attention to one's own concerns were so generally vogue.) Linda Lee, furthermore, could do as she pleased when her pleasure must have been taboo to Mrs. Bellamy Druce.

"O Lord!" Summerlad groaned. "I might've known better than to start an argument with a woman."

"I don't relish being reproached by you for lack of decorum."

"Decorum! I'm only anxious you shan't get in with the wrong sort, be victimized or worse."

"Touching thoughtfulness on my behalf… But Lynn: what do you mean by 'worse'?"

"Not sure I know, myself. I don't want anything to happen to worry you."

"What could?"

"Oh, I don't know. If I did, I could take measures to prevent its happening. But not so long as you insist on living here. A hotel's no place for a woman alone. People all the time coming and going… Who knows who and what they are? You might be recognized."

"So that's what's on your mind?"

"I don't like to think of any outside influences working on you just now."

"Just now?"

"Distracting your attention from really important matters, like me and what you're going to do about me. I'm so desperately in love with you, Linda."

Lucinda said nothing for a little. She had been expecting this for days. Now that it came it found her, of course, unprepared. Nothing to complain of in that; a declaration of love always finds a woman unprepared, no matter how long she may have been preparing for it. The primitive instinct of flight from the male is deathless, though it manifest only as in that one brief moment of panic that Lucinda knew.

She was glad of the darkness of that section of the hotel veranda where they had been sitting for a quarter of an hour after returning from dîner à deux in the city. It had seemed early to part, as people interested in each other reckon the age of an evening together – not much after ten – and since no one was visible on the veranda, Lucinda had suggested that Summerlad stop and chat a while. Now she wished she hadn't.

Not that it made much difference. This had been bound to come before long. One knew the signs in a man who had held his peace about as long as he could. Five weeks since that night when, in the Beverly Hills bungalow, she had concluded that Summerlad's interest in her was neither impersonal nor of a transitory nature…

An amazingly long time for him to wait, had she but known, a tribute to the sincerity of the passion she had inspired, to the respect in which he held her whose training had not been such as to encourage much respect for women in general. Almost anybody in Hollywood would have told her that Lynn Summerlad was "a fast worker." That no one had done so was probably due in most part to an impression that to carry such information were work of supererogation…

The worst of it was, she was glad.

How strange (and what proof of her heart's unique intricacy!) that she should be affected by such paradoxical displeasure in the pleasure it gave her to hear Lynn profess a passion of which she had been so long and well aware; as if it grated upon some slumbering sense of what was fitting; as if any reason today existed why Lynn shouldn't be in love with her and, for the matter of that, she with him (only, of course, she wasn't) or why he need hesitate to speak and she be loath to listen…

"Well, Linda?"

She put away her pensiveness, smiling softly in the darkness that enfolded them, smiling to see Summerlad bending forward in his chair, whose arm just failed to touch the arm of hers, anxiously searching her face for a clue to her mind, but with the anxiety of impatience more than the anxiety of doubt. He wanted to have her in his arms. A pleasant place to be, perhaps; but she wasn't ready yet, she was not yet sure…

"Well, my friend!" she said in amused indulgence – "so it seems you love me."

"How long have you known it?"

"Quite as long as you have loved me."

"And you – ?"

"I don't know yet."

He ventured too confidently: "I don't want to hurry you – "

"You couldn't, Lynn. And – you won't be wise if you count on me."

"You don't mind my loving you, Linda?"

"No. I think it makes me happy."

"Then I'm going to count on you – unless you want me to think you're merely amusing yourself."

"But you don't think that. So be patient."

"I'm not at all sure patience and love are even related."

"Then I'm afraid the only kind of love you know is not the kind that lasts."

"If so, I'm glad I've known none that lasted; that leaves me free to be truly in love with you."

"That's rather clever of you, Lynn, almost too clever."

"I've got to be clever, I guess, to make you love me."

"Lynn, I'm afraid you're artful. Yes – and much too experienced! You'd better go now before you talk me into something that isn't real and… If you do love me, you aren't wanting anything else."

"You'd really like to get rid of me?"

"For tonight, yes. I need to be alone to think – about you."

"Fair enough – if that's a promise."

"It's a promise."

Lucinda stood up, a maneuvre that lifted Summerlad unwillingly out of his chair. He took her hand and sketched an intention of using it to draw her to him. But she laughed quietly, shaking her head.