as though she had reached deep inside him and touched his heart. He looked startled and gentle and deeply touched. “The nicest part of all that is that I love you too.”
“It's funny.” She looked at him and he took her hand. “I came to see my sister, and in the last few days I've forgotten about her most of the time.” For a moment Vanessa looked embarrassed. “All I think about is you.”
“I've been falling in love with you since you got here, my love, but I didn't think it was right… a beautiful young girl and such an old man.”
“Stop saying that.” She looked hurt. “You're not old.”
He looked at her in an odd way. “I will be very soon.”
“Does that matter?” Her voice was very soft, and she could feel his breath, soft on her face as he sat very close to her. “It doesn't matter to me, Andreas, not at all.”
“Perhaps it should.” His voice was as soft as hers.
“What about the falling stars? Don't we have a right to be falling stars too, for one moment before we fall out of the heavens, never to be seen again?”
“Is that what you want, only a moment instead of a lifetime? My darling, you deserve much more.”
“You told me that I was wrong, that I should search for the moment, and not the lifetime.”
“Ah.” He smiled gently at her. “You see … the foolish things that I say.…” But he was looking at her so profoundly and with such love that she moved gently toward him, and a moment later she was in his arms and he was kissing her as he hadn't kissed a woman in half his lifetime, and all he wanted in what remained of his life was this splendid young girl. “I love you, Vanessa … oh, darling.…”He held her close. He wanted to take her upstairs to her hotel room, but more than that, he wanted to take her home with him. He laid some money on the table, stood up with a gentle smile, and held out his hand to her. She asked no questions. She followed him out of the hotel, got in his car, he drove her home, and ten minutes later they were standing in his palatial home with the fountains and the atrium and the courtyard, the exotic plants and the priceless objects he had collected from around the world. Quietly, holding her hand, he led Vanessa to his room, closed the door and locked it, so none of the servants would surprise them in the morning, and then led her to the small study where he often sat, staring into the fire. He threw a match into it now, and in a moment there was a cozy blaze before them, and he sat beside her and kissed her, and then knelt before her, with her face in his hands. He touched the lines of her face and ran his fingers through her hair, touched her throat and her neck and her breasts and circled her waist with his hands. He touched her and held her and caressed her, until the fire began to grow dim, and then he looked at her gently and asked her permission to take her to his bedroom.
“Will you come with me, Vanessa?” He said it so gently that she would have gone to the ends of the earth with him. She followed him quietly, let him undress her, and a moment later they lay side by side in his bed. Here again he lingered over the graceful curves of her long, supple body, and marveled at how beautifully she was made, and at last, gently at first, and then with ever greater urgency, he took her. She cried out at first and he knew that it hurt her, but he held her close to him, sharing her pain, and when it was over, he held her and caressed her and loved her, and in a little while they made love again.
When she woke up beside him in the morning, there was a smile on her face and a look of peace in her eyes that had never been there before, not so much because she had made love with Andreas but because she had given her heart to him, she had come to trust him, and with that, she had at long last unlocked the long-hidden door she had never, until that moment, been able to find.