One Night With You (8 page)

Eldin glanced over at the baby on the floor, wondering again who the father was. They had certainly managed to produce a beautiful child, whoever the man. As a general rule, Eldin was not fond of babies, and he was not actually fond of this one, but he could admire beauty wherever he found it. And Stephanie was a lovely baby.

Still tiny, she lay on a pastel quilt in a warm patch of sunlight on the floor, her red fuzz a vivid halo around her little head, dimpled hands and feet kicking vigorously into the air. Her mother's child totally, except for the eyes. They were wide and round and dark brown, startlingly effective with her hair if it stayed that lovely color. Impossibly tiny denim shorts and a scarlet T-shirt covered her busily squirming body. Obviously Desi was already dressing the child in the same style as herself.

How a woman who looked so delicate and feminine, and who chose to live amid satin-covered chairs and lace curtains in a Victorian house, could dress so carelessly was beyond him. A soft silk shirtwaist dress, pale pink and accessorized with a strand of pearls to set off her hair and skin, perhaps, or...

"Eldin, have you heard a word I've said?"

He looked up to find Desi practically standing over his chair. Her bare feet were planted firmly on the faded Oriental carpet, her hands squarely on her hips and fire in her eyes.

"Yes, of course, luv," he said blandly. "You won't do it, you said, didn't you?"

"Yes. I mean no. I can't."

"So you see, I was listening." His glance flittered back over to the baby, who seemed to be becoming agitated, as if she sensed her mother's distress. "She looks remarkably like—"

"She looks like me," Desi snapped.

"No need to bite my head off, luv. I was only going to say how much a cherub she looks. Isn't that what every mother wants to hear?"

"You were sitting there trying to figure out who her father is," she accused him, "just like everyone else."

Eldin shrugged. "It's a perfectly understandable thing to be curious about, wouldn't you say?" he countered reasonably, refusing, as always, to let anyone else's bad temper inflame his own. Eldin prided himself, and quite rightly too, on never losing his temper.

"Maybe," she admitted grudgingly, "but I think it's disgusting the way everyone looks at Stephanie and at me and then at every man in the room, wondering if he might be the one. It's nobody's business but mine!"

"And the father's surely?"

"His least of all." Desi whirled away, hiding quick tears, and bumped a hip into side table, toppling over a pair of silver candlesticks. "Oh, now look what you've made me do," she said as Stephanie startled and began to cry.

"It's all right, darling," Desi soothed, picking up the frightened baby. "Mommie's not yelling at you." She nuzzled her hot face against Stephanie's tiny neck, breathing in the baby-powder sweetness of her. "Shush, darling. Everything's okay." She bounced the quieting baby gently against her shoulder, whispering senseless words of endearment. "No more yelling, I promise. That's my good girl. Everything's fine. Everything's fine," she repeated, shielding her own teary face from Eldin's sharp eyes by hiding it behind the curve of Stephanie's body.

Darn it! Tears came so easily, much too easily, to her lately. She rubbed her cheek gently against Stephanie's back.

"I'm sorry, Eldin. Baby blues, I guess," she said, shifting the baby to her lap as she sat down in a corner of the rose-colored sofa. It was one of her Art Deco pieces, padded and luxuriously comfortable. "I get weepy for no reason." She tried a careless smile, but it came off a little sheepishly. "Sorry."

Eldin uncrossed his legs and reached for his sherry.

"Think nothing of it," he said airily. "I understand."

"Oh, Eldin, if you only did."

"Why don't you tell me about it, then, hmm?"

Desi shook her head stubbornly.

"Come on, luv," he urged. "Tell Uncle Eldin. Why are you trying to turn down the biggest opportunity of your career?"

"Eldin, please." She looked up at him, confusion and a faint shadow of pain visible in the depths of her wide blue eyes. "Just leave it. I can't work on
Devil's Lady
and there's no point in discussing it."

"I think you owe me an explanation at least."

"No."

He gulped down the last of his sherry—terrible way to treat fine sherry—and set the empty glass on a side table, rising to move slowly around the room. His fingers lingered for a moment on the lace curtains at the window, and then he stood for a minute, staring absently into the tall glass-fronted cabinet that housed Desi's collection of beaded evening bags and fragile fans.

Desi watched him as he moved, knowing he had not dropped the subject, but was only gathering his thoughts to make another, more concerted effort to find out what was troubling her. He looked so dapper, she thought, as her eyes followed him around the room, just like central casting's idea of a well-to-do and quite proper English gentleman with his impeccable tailoring and military school bearing. His neat cap of light-brown hair was going a distinguished gray at the temples, and he wore a little caterpillar of a mustache on his upper lip.

He dressed as if he was in England, too. Sharply creased, gray slacks, with a tweed jacket over a crisp white shirt and an old school tie. Striped, of course. To look at him you would never know that it was an unseasonably warm September afternoon.

"Is it Dorothea Heller?" he asked, stopping in front of her. "I know she's a bit of an eccentric, but I felt sure you'd like her."

"I do. She's a wonderful, charming piece of work," Desi said, and she meant it wholeheartedly.

They had met at the Tadish Grill for drinks and lunch, the three of them, just yesterday. It was supposed to have been four but Eldin's other guest, this mysterious producer of his, was late and they were starting without him.

"You remind me of me when I was your age," Dorothea Heller told Desi, staring at her over the rim of a champagne glass, her black eyes sparkling with health and a sharp, biting wit. "Only I was brunet, of course, and had much more bosom. You young girls these days seem to have no bosoms at all. No hips either, come to think of it," she stated with characteristic forthrightness.

"Red hair, though, that makes up for a lot." She leaned toward Desi with the air of one imparting a priceless pearl of wisdom, "Most men do so admire red hair, dear girl. Remember that. You redheads can get away with a great deal where men are concerned if you handle it right," she rambled on. "They think it hides a passionate nature, poor fools. Even that good-looking devil, Jake, goes for redheads. He—"

Desi had stopped listening at the mention of Jake's name.

"Jake who?" she asked quietly when Dorothea paused for breath. But she already knew.

"Why, Jake Lancing, dear girl. Jake who, really." She glanced sideways at Eldin, smiling coquettishly. "I thought every red-blooded woman in the world knew who Jake Lancing was."

"Yes, of course. Jake Lancing. Is he on the picture?" Desi's voice shook a little as she asked the question.

"Why, he's the star, dear girl," Dorothea informed her grandly, "and the producer, of course. My dear, is anything wrong?" Desi's face had gone deathly pale. "Eldin, quick, I think the poor child's going to faint."

"No, Dorothea, I'm fine, really. Please, Eldin, sit down. I'm fine. It's just... I suddenly felt very weak. Maybe... maybe I'd better not stay for lunch. I think I had better go before—" She almost said before Jake gets here. "Before I get sick," she mumbled, grabbing at the first excuse that popped into her head.

She stood up and reached for her leather satchel from the floor by her chair. "It was very nice to have met you, Dorothea, thank you for the drink. I'm sorry I can't stay for lunch." She was almost running in her haste to get out of the restaurant before Jake arrived.

Jake was the producer! How could Eldin have done this to her?

Simple, she answered her own question, Eldin doesn't know. Or, he didn't know yesterday. But today? Oh, yes, before he left today Eldin would know. He wouldn't leave until she'd finally told him the truth.

"Tell me something," she said then, untangling a lock of her hair from Stephanie's chubby fist. Her eyes were deliberately on her task, avoiding Eldin's. Her voice was as casual as she could make it. "Did Jake Lancing know you were hiring me?"

"Not specifically. As art director I'm free to hire whatever staff I want. I doubt Jake has any interest in exactly who I hire? Why?"

"No special reason," she lied, feeling something inside her let go and relax. Jake didn't know that she was going to be on his picture. Her secret was still safe. She put a pink rattle in Stephanie's flailing hand.

"Jake," Eldin said then with utter conviction, as if something had just that minute fallen into place.

Desi's eyes flew to his face, to ask him what he meant, even though she already knew. Eldin's eyes were fixed firmly on Stephanie's pretty pixie face, as if searching for something in her big brown eyes.

"I didn't even know you knew him." His voice was faintly accusing and incredulous at the same time.

"I don't," Desi snapped, hoping somehow to head him off before he actually put it into words. If he didn't say it she could still pretend that he didn't know.

"Come on, luv. This is Uncle Eldin, remember?" He sat down beside her and reached for her hand. "I don't know why I didn't see it before... those eyes..."

"Her eyes are brown," Desi said. She pulled her hand away and stood up. "Just brown. Nothing unusual about that. My father has brown eyes. Even you have brown eyes."

She laid Stephanie back on the quilt. "Watch her for a minute, will you? I'm going to make us some tea," she said, and escaped to the kitchen, away from Eldin's too-knowing eyes.

If Eldin saw, who else would see? Jake's face, Jake's eyes were known all over the world. Would everyone know just by looking at Stephanie?

No, no, you're being paranoid
, she told herself.
It's just that Eldin knows Jake, and knows you
. And that silly performance at the Tadish Grill didn't help matters either. It was stupid of her to have run like a rabbit at the mention of Jake's name, stupid to have refused to work on
Devil's Lady
without giving him a reason, stupid to get all snappy and defensive when he mentioned Stephanie's eyes. It was all those things together that had led him to guess correctly. And that's all it was, a guess. He couldn't have known just by looking at Stephanie.

If she had handled it better, given him a reason for not wanting to work on
Devil's Lady
, said she didn't like Dorothea Heller; anything except what she had—or hadn't—said.

"Jake's middle name is Stephen," Eldin commented when she came back into the room with the tea tray.

"Yes," was all she said. It would be pointless to deny it now.

She added a squeeze of lemon to his tea and passed the fragile china cup across to him, then busied herself for a few minutes with her own. She took both milk and sugar, "nursery tea," Eldin had told her once, fit only for the underdeveloped palate.

"Cookie?" she offered.

Eldin waved the plate away. "Does he suspect?"

"I doubt he even recalls the incident," she said, a wry smile curving her full lips. "Oh, don't look like that, Eldin. There's no need to pity me." She paused, biting into a cookie. "I don't pity myself. I knew exactly what I was doing." She chuckled and glanced over at Stephanie, asleep now on her blanket. "
Almost
exactly what I was doing," she amended.

"He should have been more responsible," Eldin burst out, "than to run around, willy-nilly, seducing innocent young girls."

"Oh, Eldin, please," she said, laughing. "Don't play the outraged father figure. It doesn't suit you... and it doesn't suit me either. I'm hardly an innocent young girl."

"Well, I
am
outraged! Leaving you with an unwanted child to support. Getting off scot-free—"

"Now wait a minute, Eldin," she flared, instantly on the offensive against anyone who might cast a slur upon her child. "Stephanie is
not
an unwanted child. She was unplanned, yes, but not unwanted. I wanted her from the very first minute I knew I was pregnant. If anything," she continued on a calmer note, "it's Jake who's the loser in all this."

"I don't see how." Eldin's voice was still huffy.

"He'll never know he has a daughter," she explained. "He'll never get to see what a beautiful baby we made together. In a way, I almost feel guilty for keeping her from him."

"Why not tell him then?"

"No, Eldin, I've already made my mind up about that," she said, her lips set in a firm, determined line. "It's better this way, believe me."

"But—"

"Do you think I haven't thought about telling him? I have. A million times. But the answer is always the same. No. Jake Lancing doesn't even like kids. I've heard him say so at least a dozen times and so have you. Every time he's on a talk show somebody brings up those two paternity suits and—"

"I happen to know that he was in Tangiers filming
Fly by Night
when that Phillips woman claims the deed was done. And he's been supporting Lisa Kendall's child."

"He is?" Desi was flabbergasted. "But I thought... she couldn't prove it was his, could she? She lost the case."

"It didn't get to court. She knew she didn't stand a chance of proving that the child was Jake's. It could have been the offspring of any number of men from what I've heard of the lady. And I use that term loosely," he said, grimacing mildly as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. "A no-talent ambitious schemer is what she was, trying to get herself a free—"

"Then why is Jake supporting her child, if he isn't the father?" Desi wanted to know.

"
Was
supporting. He isn't any longer. She's since married—to another man who could also have possibly been the father."

"Yes, but why—"

"Oh, well, as to that." Eldin seemed a bit embarrassed. "It was possible that Jake could have been the father. He'd been intimate with her at the appropriate time."