Red Midnight (28 page)

Again she was met with silence. Finally, he said, “It didn’t seem necessary—”

“But I never would have said all those terrible things. I … I didn’t really mean them…. I wanted to hurt you.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter. It’s done, it’s over. I provoked you. I’m sorry. I’ll still be in about noon tomorrow.”

There seemed to be painful constriction in Erin’s throat. There was so much more she wanted to say but couldn’t. He had called with an apology—nothing more.

“Okay,” she said, trying to sound light.

He told her good-bye and hung up. She went back to bed, glad he had called her, but feeling unbearably empty.

At least tomorrow he would come home and they had apologized for the scene that had left her in such abject misery. They would at least be able to talk.

She awoke in the morning with new thoughts and doubts nagging at her. The whole thing had become a boggling, impossible puzzle. She kept trusting Sergei, but was she an idiot to do that? The man was a Russian. Apparently he had been on the square with Jarod, and blood was not always thicker than water.

Her head seemed to be pounding, and she was no longer happy simply because Jarod would be home. What good was it going to do? He had lost his perfect control and slapped her. Was he sorry for hitting her—or for losing that perfect control?

She was getting too damned tired to know if she cared.

Erin made a pot of coffee and mechanically checked the mail. Besides the batch of business letters Jarod received daily, she was pleased to discover two for herself, from Casey and Mary.

Exclaiming with pleasure, Erin took her letters into the living room to read while she sipped her coffee. Casey’s was pure Casey. Her long scrawl went on and on about how lucky Erin was, about the miracles of fate and destiny, and about how “wickedly, wickedly wonderful” Jarod surely had to be.

“Oh, Casey!” Erin murmured aloud. “You are a jerk! But a sweet one.”

She picked up Mary’s letter next, allowing it to flutter to her lap in shock after she read the first line.

Dear Erin:

Oh, honey! Congratulations! Ted and I are on our way …

“Oh, no!” Erin groaned. “Oh, no …”

She forced herself to pick up the paper again, only to read that matters were worse than she expected. To get her trip booked quickly, Mary had had to say she would be staying with friends. She had been assured she could quickly transfer to the Rossia once she and Ted had arrived, but did Erin think her new husband would mind tolerating her friends for a night or two?

“Oh, no!” she repeated aloud. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

If there’s any problem, Mary’s letter read, let me know and we’ll cancel. If not, will be arriving on the fifteenth.

The fifteenth … the day after tomorrow. Oh, dear God, the confused Russian post had taken days and days to get the letter to her.

“Oh, what the hell am I going to do?” Erin groaned. “Call her—I have to find out a way to call her … stop her. I have to think of something….”

She couldn’t put through a phone call herself. She bit her lip, and then called Gil. “Anything for you, Erin,” he assured her. “You do know that I’m in love.”

“Thanks,” Erin laughed.

Gil rang off and returned her call a half hour later. “Sorry, Erin a tape machine answers. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Leary will be out of the country for the next several weeks.”

“Oh, Jesus …”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, nothing. Thanks, Gil. I appreciate the help.”

Erin smashed out the cigarette she had been smoking and lit another. If Mary were to discover the truth of this marriage, she would worry herself sick. She was worse than a mother. She would feel more pain than Erin. She and Ted were so very dear, so caring. She couldn’t let them know, not now.

Erin closed her eyes and swallowed. At least she and Jarod were now on speaking terms. She would simply have to abandon pride for the moment and ask that he play out a certain role for the next few days.

“Oh, please, Jarod,” she thought out loud. “Please try and behave ‘wickedly wonderful’ while they’re here.”

She crushed out her cigarette and began to pace nervously, trying to plan what she would say when he returned. She looked anxiously at the clock. Two more hours …

The phone started ringing. Erin swooped upon the receiver, praying that it might be Gil, and that he might have managed to get through to Mary after all. But the voice on the other end of the line was Russian. She couldn’t understand a word that was being said, until she heard a pronunciation of her own name and then recognized the name of the Soviet doctor she had seen the other day.

“Wait—wait,” Erin pleaded. “I don’t understand … ummm …” How the hell did you say “please” in Russian? She had been picking up certain words in the language, but at this moment they were all deserting her. “Please … uh … pazhahlsta!” Call. If she could think of the word for call—“Pazavanee te! Pazhahlsta pazvanee te Tanya!”

She heard some muttering, then a comprehending “Da!”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Erin hung up the receiver, wondering why the doctor had needed to get hold of her while also being grateful that the call had come before Jarod had gotten home.

What a mess, what a mess, her mind kept repeating. Everything had been a mess since she had first stepped into the Soviet Union. But not like this, not this bad, her mind countered.

The phone rang. It was Tanya. “Erin?”

“Yes! Oh, Tanya! I’m so glad they understood me! What on earth did he need to call me for?”

“He doesn’t want you taking the pills he gave you.”

“Why on earth not? That’s what I went for.”

Tanya hesitated uncomfortably. “He doesn’t want you taking them because you’re already pregnant. Erin? Erin? Erin?”

I
T WAS TEN IN
the morning, but she was going to mix herself a drink. She wanted a drink, needed a drink, deserved a drink.

A drink! She needed endless hours of laughing gas. Because it really was hysterical.

No, she shouldn’t have a drink, and she had to stop smoking like a chimney and swilling coffee. None of her habits would be good for the baby.

Good for the baby! There couldn’t be a baby; it had to be a terrible mistake. A mix-up in the doctor’s office. Really. It was impossible. You couldn’t trust the Russians….

Erin went into the kitchen and started rummaging through the liquor supply. To feel less guilty for drinking so early she filled the glass with a generous supply of tonic and loaded it with lime. There was vitamin C in that lime, she told herself. That much would be good for the child.

What am I thinking? I have gone insane. There can’t be a child. I don’t feel anything, not a thing. They must have made a mistake.

No, I made the mistake! she quickly admitted to herself. I let my needs outweigh my logic! But that wasn’t really true either. She had tried to control her needs, and when she couldn’t she had taken precautions—inadequate now, to say the least.

She took a long gulp of the drink she had fixed and returned to the living room in a daze. She lit a cigarette, looked at it, and crushed it out.

Her nails went automatically to her teeth. Realizing what she was doing, she withdrew her hand from her mouth.

Great, Erin, she admonished herself. I can just see it. The world’s first high-fashion and commercial model with stubs for fingernails.

Then she pictured herself doing another sixty-second spot for the famous bath oil group. Instead of her knees rising above the tub and a long leg stretched out to be rinsed by a sponge her belly could rise just above the water level.

“Or diet soda! I’ll be able to do great commercials for the diet-conscious,” she blurted.

“I’m talking to myself. I’m babbling aloud like an idiot. It’s happened. I’ve really gone over. Mary can come and help Jarod get me back to the States to be committed.”

Stop, Erin, a saner voice pleaded silently. You’re getting hysterical.

Hysterical! Hysterical! Oh, no, hysterical was steps ago….

She sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing her temples with both hands. Then she slowly opened her eyes again. She saw the half-consumed drink and rose tiredly to take it into the kitchen and dump the remainder down the sink.

There might have been a mistake. Tanya had made her another appointment for next week; surely she would discover that they had made a mistake. It was so early to tell—but she knew there were tests you could buy off drugstore shelves that were reliable after ten days. Surely a doctor would be more reliable. No! she would just have to wait for next week, and until then this was all a horrible mistake.

She would deal with things one step at a time. Even if she were pregnant, she couldn’t be more than three weeks. She’d be back in the States in plenty of time.

For what? A voice charged scornfully. You never believed in abortion for yourself.

That’s not true, she thought defensively. I’ve always believed it was the only answer in certain circumstances.

But this isn’t one of those circumstances, and you know it, the voice insisted.

But she couldn’t have Jarod’s child. When she left him, he had to be gone, entirely gone, out of her life. She would remember the good that he had given her and then forget that she had ever known him, ever loved him.

She thought about telling Jarod but realized that would be insane. She knew nothing about the medical procedures here and she had to remember there might have been a mistake. There would be plenty of time to worry later about what to do.

“What are you doing?”

Erin glanced up from the sink, horrified to see Jarod standing before her. He had come in without her even hearing him. She wasn’t prepared to see him, she still had so much to sort out.

He was frowning. The blue mist of his eyes was probing as he slid out of his coat; he was watching her far too closely.

“I … uh … nothing,” she murmured. “I was going to put on some coffee. You’re earlier than I expected. Would you like some coffee? Did things go well in Leningrad?”

He slightly arched a brow as he tossed his coat over the counter. “I was able to leave earlier than I expected. Things went fine in Leningrad—it was a small clash between Finnish and Russian authorities. And yes, I’d like some coffee.”

“Fine.” Willing herself not to appear unduly nervous, Erin lowered her lashes and went about the business of brewing a new pot of coffee. Jarod finally stopped staring at her and picked up his coat. She heard him hanging it in the hall closet, then he came back to speak to her over the counter, his briefcase in hand.

“I have some paperwork to catch up on at home today,” he said. “I’ll be in the den—would you mind bringing the coffee up?”

“No,” Erin said hastily. “I don’t mind.”

She breathed a sigh of relief as he headed for the staircase. She had been granted a few minutes grace. But she found herself chewing a nail again. The news from Tanya had swept all other thoughts from her mind and she had to get herself under control and handle things one step at a time. And the immediate step was Mary.

She had to broach the subject of her friends’ arrival with Jarod, had to ask him to continue in their cordial and pleasant manner. Thankfully, he had come home in one of his politely distant moods. Things should go well.

She stared at the coffee as it began to perk against the clear glass dome; When it became a deep, dark color, she poured out two cups and set them on a tray and determinedly climbed the stairs.

The door to the den was closed. Out of purely feminine impulse she detoured to the bedroom, set the tray down upon her dresser, and picked up her brush. She vaguely noticed that Jarod’s suitcase had been set upon the bed. Sonia came to clean tomorrow, and she would sort out his laundry for the cleaners. Conscious of their supposed newlywed status, Jarod was careful to keep the bulk of his clothing in the bedroom, slipping in and out during the day with his wardrobe for the next day.

Funny, she thought, it looks as if we really are a couple. Her nightgown lay upon the foot of the bed near his suitcase. And her purse lay below the pillow where she had left it after checking her cache of rubles and kopecks that morning.

Erin realized she was driving through her hair as if she were studiously giving it a hundred strokes. She set down the brush and picked up the tray—aware that she couldn’t put off the confrontation forever. The sooner she swallowed her pride and spoke with him, the better it would be.

She tapped on the den door and opened it to his absent “Come in.”

He didn’t glance up; his silver-tipped jet head was bent low over a form with the impossible Russian characters. “Thanks,” he said briefly as she placed the tray on his desk.

Erin took a breath, feeling her determination waver. She could talk to him later today, after he had finished with business. She could make lunch, start their truce without asking. It would be easier to speak to him then.

But before she could run, he suddenly sat back, impaling her with his blue stare. He glanced at the extra coffee cup, then gazed at her again, his arched brow lifting a shade.

“You wanted to talk about something?”

Caught by his eyes she nodded, then made herself speak. “Yes,” she said clearly, taking the chair opposite his desk and leaning one elbow on the oak as she fingered the edge of her cup.

“Good, because I wanted to talk to you too,” he said dryly. Erin frowned as she watched him. His dark lashes lowered a moment over his high bronze cheekbones, his jaw twisted slightly. Then he raised his intense gaze to her once again. “You go ahead, please.”

Great, Erin, thought, he makes me even more nervous, then he tells me to begin. She blinked. What the hell, take the plunge.

“I’ve got a bit of a problem. I have a very close friend who is actually more like family. When I knew I would be here longer than I expected, I wrote her. You mailed the letter. I didn’t want her to worry about me, so I skimmed over the facts. I just told her that I had gotten married and would be here for a little while.”

He was simply staring at her—not a lot of help.

“As I said, Mary—and Ted—are really like my family. A big sister and brother if you like. They’ve been there for me through all my catastrophes and they’re … well, they’re just very, very close.