Chapter14
Savannah had just walked into work the next day when Leo, who was reading the newspaper, gasped loudly and rushed to her, pushing the newspaper in front of her. There, on the society page, was an enormous photograph of her and Lucas.
The caption with the photograph read, ‘Carrington’s downtown girl gets serious’. She picked it up and read it, her mouth open in shock as her eyes moved over the words in the article. It said that she was spending time with Lucas Carrington and his family at the polo match charity event, and how it must be such a big change from the gallery where she worked on Fifth Avenue. Frowning in irritation, she closed the paper and handed it back to Leo.
“That’s such trash. You know, it doesn’t matter what the papers say because I’m falling in love with him, and I really don’t care what anyone else thinks of it. He wants me just as much as I want him, and he loves me, too. It’s not strange that I work here, and it isn’t a problem in our relationship!” She huffed as she began to pace a little.
“What is strange is to be seen by total strangers as a society couple. We’re not. That isn’t what we are at all. I’m not part of his society, and I don’t feel like that’s really who I am, or who he is, to be totally honest.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I think that’s just the point that the report was trying to make, though. Which is so awful. We’re not worlds apart, like they want everyone to believe that we are. Just because we come from two different worlds doesn’t mean that those two worlds can’t come together.”
Leo looked at her sympathetically and offered her a tender smile. “Is it worth it to try to fit into his world, if that winds up becoming a necessity in order to keep him?”
Savannah didn’t even have to stop and think about it. “Yes, definitely. He’s absolutely worth it, and I am sure that he’d say the exact same thing about me.”
***
The room was nearly all dark and sparsely decorated, even for a hotel room. There was a small table and one chair in the corner beside the window where an ancient curtain hung, all of it looking like it had been left over from the seventies, with perhaps a cleaning or two since that decade.
There was a single-sized bed near the wall and a small, hollow makeshift nightstand beside it, with a battered looking lamp on it. The lamp worked, but it was naked with no lampshade, and the bulb glowed dimly, offering what little light it could to the remainder of the space around it. There was an old-fashioned rotary telephone, avocado green, sitting on the nightstand beside the old lamp.
On the bed was a shabby bedspread that might have seen better years. On it was a tin ash tray, holding the gray remnants of the cigar that was burning in the hand of the man who was sitting on the bed with his legs stretched out before him.
Vincent brought the cigar up to his teeth and bit down on it, puffing long and slow and making the cherry at the end of it glow red before he exhaled. In his other hand, he held a fifth of bourbon. When the last of the smoke had curled from his lips, he lifted the bottle and took a long pull off of it before setting it down on the bed beside him again.
There was a newspaper spread over his lap. He was perusing the want ads and some of the articles. He reached over to the corner of the page on the right and pinched it, pulling it left and dropping it. He brought his hand toward his mouth again to take another puff on his cigar, but as his eyes moved over the page, his hand stopped in midair, and he frowned and stared at the photograph before him and the print below it.
Grinding his back teeth a little, he brought his cigar to his mouth and took another long drag off of it. He blew the smoke out in a slow stream that spilled over the faces of Lucas and Savannah. Then he took his cigar and placed the burning cherry of it directly on top of Lucas’ face, pressing down as the paper singed and burned away from it, leaving nothing but a hole where his head had been.
Vincent pulled the cigar away then and turned his attention to the woman in the picture. His eyes narrowed. “I wonder… who is this pretty little thing?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.