Now and Forever

by Danielle Steel

  “I’m scared too, Jess. But it’s going to be okay.”

  “How can it be okay if you’re going to change everything after we get through this? You want me to sell the shop, have a baby, and you’re going to stop writing and get a job and make us move and … oh, Ian! It sounds horrible!” She sobbed in his arms again and he laughed softly as he held her. Maybe she was all he needed. Maybe it wasn’t even normal for a man to want a child as much as he did. Maybe it was just an ego trip. He brushed the thoughts from his mind.

  “Jesus, did I say I was going to change all that? It does sound pretty heavy. Maybe we should just pick a couple of things, like I’ll have a baby, and you get a job, and … I’m sorry, babe, I didn’t mean to hit you with ten thousand things at once. I just know that something needs fixing.”

  “But all that?”

  “No, probably not all that. And not unless you agree with me. It wouldn’t work otherwise. We’ve both got to want it.”

  “But you make it sound like our life will never be the same again.”

  “Maybe it won’t, Jessie. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re not going to, either, huh? Look at you, hunched over like an Indian squaw, trying not to hear anything I’m telling you, with an ant crawling up your arm …” He waited. It took half a second. She leapt to her feet with a scream.

  “A what?”

  “Oh … tsk … how could I forget? That’s right, you’re afraid of ants.” He brushed her sleeve lightly as he stood up next to her and she punched him in the chest.

  “Goddam you, Ian Clarke! We’re having a serious talk and how can you do that to me! There was no ant on me, was there? Was there?”

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “I hate you!” She was still trembling with a jumble of emotions, terror and fury and fear because of the ant, and the much more real emotions of moments before. He’d invented the ant to lighten the mood.

  It was a reprieve. Ian was good at them.

  “What do you mean, you hate me? You said I made you happy.” He looked all innocence as he put his arms around her.

  “Don’t touch me!” But she was limp in his arms and trying hard to conceal a smile. “You know”—her voice was soft again now—“sometimes I wonder if you really love me.”

  “Sometimes everyone wonders stuff like that, Jess. You can’t have the kind of ironclad guarantees you want, sweetheart. I love you just as much as your mother and father did, just as much as Jake did, just as much as … anyone. But I’m not them. I’m me, your husband, a man, just like you’re my wife, not my mother. And maybe one day you’ll get sick of me and walk off into the sunset with someone else. Mothers aren’t supposed to do that to their kids, but wives do that sometimes. I have to accept that.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” She was suddenly stiff in his arms.

  “No, silly, only that I love you. And that I can only be and do so much. I think I’m trying to tell you not to be so insecure and not to worry so much. Sometimes I think that’s why you put up with so much shit from me, and pay the bills and all the rest, because that way you know you’ve got me. But I’ll tell you a secret—that way you don’t got me. As it so happens you’ve got me, but for all the other reasons.”

  “Like what?” She was smiling again.

  “Oh … like the beautiful way you sew.”

  “Sew? I can’t sew.” She looked at him strangely and then started to laugh.

  “You can’t?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “You’re adorable.”

  “Come to think of it, lady, so are you. Which reminds me. Reach into my pocket.” Her eyebrows lifted with interest and she grinned mischievously at him.

  “A surprise for me?”

  “No, my laundry bill.”

  “Creep.” But she slipped her hand carefully into his jacket pocket as they talked, her eyes sparkling with excitement. It was easy to find the little square box. She pulled it out with a grin and held it clutched in her hand.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  “This is the best part.” She giggled again and he grinned at her.

  “It’s not the Hope diamond, I promise.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Oh, for Chrissake …” And then she suddenly snapped open the box. And he watched.

  “Oh … it’s … oh, Ian! You nut!” She gave a whoop of laughter and looked at it again. “How in God’s name did you get it?”

  “I saw it, and I knew you had to have it.”

  She laughed again and started to put it on. It was a thin gold chain with a gold pendant shaped like a lima bean. The thing she had hated most in the world as a child.

  “Good God, I never thought I’d see the day when I’d wear one of the bloody things. And in gold, yet.” She laughed again, kissed him, and tucked in her chin to look down at the small gold nugget on its chain.

  “Actually, it looks very elegant. If you didn’t know what it was, you’d never guess. I had a choice between a kidney bean, a lima bean, and some other kind of bean. They’re done by the same very fancy designer, I’ll have you know.”

  “And you just saw it in a window?”

  “Yep. And I figured that if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can move mountains and all that stuff. So hell, if you have faith like a lima bean, you can probably move half the world.”

  “Which half?”

  “Any half, sexy lady. Come on, let’s go back to the hotel.”

  “Lima beans … sweetheart, you’re crazy. May I ask how large a portion of your fortune this sensational lima bean cost you?” She had noticed that it was eighteen-karat gold and that the box was from a very extravagant store.

  “You most certainly may not. How can you ask such a thing?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “Well, don’t be so curious. And do me a favor. Don’t eat it.” She laughed again and bit his neck as she reached over for the rest of the wine.

  “Sweetheart, there is one thing you can bet on. I ain’t never gonna eat lima beans. Not even a gold one.” And then they both burst into laughter, because that was exactly what she had told him the first time he had cooked dinner for her at his place eight years before.

  He had fixed roast pork, mashed potatoes, and lima beans. She had devoured the meat and potatoes, but he had found her rapidly shoveling lima beans into her handbag when he’d come back from the kitchen with the glass of water she’d requested, and she had looked at him, thrown up her hands, burst into laughter, and said, “Ian, I ain’t never gonna eat lima beans. Not even if they’re solid gold.” And this one was indeed solid gold. For the tiniest of moments, her stomach felt queasy at the thought of the expense. But that was Ian. They were going down the tubes in style. With picnics and passion and gold.

  The mood for the rest of the weekend was sheer holiday spirit. Jessica flashed her gold lima bean at every possible opportunity, and they teased and hugged and kissed. L’Auberge restored their love life to what it had always been. They had dinner by candlelight in their room—a feast of fried chicken from a nearby take-out place, devoured with a small bottle of champagne they had bought on the way back to the hotel. They giggled like children and played like honeymooners, and the threats of the morning were forgotten. Everything was forgotten except Ian and Jessie. They were the only people who mattered.

  The only sorrow, and it was a hidden one, was Ian’s hope of a child, now put away. Insanely, desperately, he had wanted to father a child, now, before the trial, before … what if … who knew what was coming? A year from then he could be in prison or dead. It wasn’t a cheerful way to look at things, but the realities were beginning to frighten him. And the possibilities were even more terrifying when he let himself think of them. A baby would be a fresh blade of glass springing from ashes. But now that he understood how panicked Jessie still was, the subject was closed. His books were his
children. He would simply work that much harder on the new book.

  On Sunday, Jessie bought Ian a Sherlock Holmes hat and a corncob pipe. They shared a banana split for lunch, then rented a tandem bike and rode around near the hotel, laughing at their lack of precision. Jessica collapsed when faced with a hill.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? Come on, Jessie, push!”

  “The hell I will. You push. I’ll walk.”

  “Stinkpot.”

  “Look at that hill. Who do you think I am? Tarzan?”

  “Well, look at your legs, for Chrissake. They’re long enough to run up that hill carrying me, let alone bicycling.”

  “You, sir, are a creep.”

  “Hey … look at the spider on your leg.”

  “I … what? … Aaaahh … Ian! Where?” But he was laughing at her, and when she looked up she knew. “Ian Clarke, if you do that to me one more time, I’ll …” She was spluttering and he was laughing harder than ever. “I’ll …” She hit him a walloping blow on the shoulder, knocking him off the bicycle and into the tall grass next to the path. But he reached out and grabbed her as she stood laughing at him, and pulled her down beside him. “Ian, not here! There are probably snakes in here! Ian! Dammit! Stop that!”

  “No snakes. I swear.” He was reaching into her blouse with a leer that made her giggle.

  “Ian … I mean it.—no! Ian …” She forgot about the snakes almost immediately.

  Chapter 14

  “Well, how did you like my favorite hideaway in Carmel?” With a smile, Astrid poked her head in the door of Jessica’s office.

  “We adored it. Come on in. How about some coffee?”

  Jessie’s smile said it all. The two days in Carmel had been a peaceful island in a troubled sea.

  “I’ll skip the coffee, thanks. I’m on my way downtown to talk to Tom’s attorneys. Maybe I’ll stop by again on my way home.” Jessica showed her the gold lima bean, gave her a brief, expurgated account of the weekend, and blew Astrid a kiss as she left. For the rest of the day, Lady J was a madhouse.

  There were deliveries, new clients, old customers who wanted something new but needed it altered “right now,” invoices that got misplaced, and two shipments that Jessie needed desperately never showed up at all. And Katsuko couldn’t help, because she was swamped with details for the fashion show. So Zina juggled the customers while Jessie tried to untangle the problems. And the bills. The next two weeks were more of the same.

  Harvey Green appeared twice at the boutique to discuss minor things with Jessie, things about Ian’s habits and her own, but she had little to tell him. Neither did Ian. They led a simple life and had nothing to hide. The two girls in the boutique still didn’t know what was happening, and the weeks since Jessie’s frantic and erratic disappearances from the shop had been too hectic for questions. They assumed that the problem, whatever it was, had blown over. And Astrid was careful not to pry.

  Ian was lost in his new book, and the two subsequent court appearances went smoothly. As Martin had predicted the bail was not revoked: there was never even a suggestion of it. Jessica joined Ian both times in court, but there was nothing to see. He would walk to the front of the courtroom with Martin, they would mumble for a few moments in front of the judge, and then they could all leave. By now it seemed like an ordinary part of their everyday lives; they had other things to think about. Jessie was worried about part of the fall line that hadn’t moved, another shipment that had never shown up, and the money that was draining from her bank account. Ian was troubled by chapter nine, and incoherent about anything else. That was what their real life was about, not mechanical appearances before a bored judge.

  It was a month later when Harvey Green came up with the first part of his bill. Eighteen hundred dollars. The statement arrived at the boutique, as she had requested, and Jessica gasped when she opened it. She felt almost sick. Eighteen hundred dollars. For nothing. He hadn’t unearthed a damn thing, except the name of a man Margaret Burton had gone to dinner with twice and never slept with. Peggy Burton appeared to be clean. Her coworkers thought her a decent woman, not very sociable, but reliable and pleasant to work with. Several mentioned that she was occasionally distant and moody. She had no torrid love affairs in her past, no drug problems, no drinking habits to speak of. She had never returned to any hotel on Market Street in all the time Green had been tailing her, nor had she had any men into her apartment at any time since the surveillance had begun. She went home alone every night after work; had gone to three movies in a month, again alone; and an attempt to pick her up on the bus had totally failed. An assistant of Green’s had made eyes at her for several blocks, gotten an encouraging look in response, he said, and had then received a firm “No, thanks, buster” when he’d invited her out for a drink. He had said she’d even looked pissed at him for asking. At worst, she was confused. At best … she was the second best thing to the Virgin Mary, and Ian’s case would look very flimsy in court. They had to find something. But they hadn’t. And now Harvey Green wanted eighteen hundred dollars. And they couldn’t even let him go. Martin had said the Burton woman would have to be watched right up until the trial, possibly even during the trial, although both he and Green admitted that the police had probably told her to behave herself. The prosecution didn’t want their case shot down by a random piece of ass Miss Margaret Burton might indulge herself with a few weeks before the trial.

  Green hadn’t even been able to come up with any dirt on her past. She had been married once, at the age of eighteen, and the marriage had been annulled a few months later. But he didn’t know why, or who she had married. Nothing. And there was no record of it, which was probably why she hadn’t admitted to it at the preliminary hearing. (What he knew he had learned from a woman Margaret Burton worked with.) What Jessie was paying for was a clean bill of health on the woman.

  Jessie sat at her desk, staring at Green’s bill, and opened the rest of her mail. A statement from Martin for the five thousand they still owed, and nine statements from New York for her purchases for the spring line. Ian’s bill for his physical two months before, still due, for two hundred and forty-two dollars, and her own chest X ray for forty, as well as a seventy-four-dollar bill from a record store where she’d splurged before she’d gone to New York. As she sat there, she wondered what had ever made her think that seventy-four dollars for records wasn’t so awful. She could still remember saying that to Ian at the time. Yeah … not so awful if you haven’t found yourself with ten thousand dollars in legal bills in the meantime … and the florist … and the cleaner’s … and the drugstore … she could feel her stomach constrict as she tried not to add up the amounts. She reached for the phone, looked at the card in her address book, and called.

  She phoned the bank before going to the appointment, and she was lucky, more or less. Based on the previous performance of her account, the bank was willing to leave her loan uncovered by collateral. She could sell it. She had been secretly hoping that they wouldn’t let her. But now she had no choice.

  She sold the Morgan at two in the afternoon. For fifty-two hundred dollars. The guy gave her “a deal.” She deposited the check in the bank before closing, and sent a check of her own to Martin Schwartz for five thousand dollars. He was paid. It was taken care of. She could breathe now. For weeks she had had nightmares about something happening to her and nobody being able to help Ian with the bills … horrible fantasies of Ian begging Katsuko for the money, and being refused because she wanted the money to buy kimonos for the shop, while Barry York threatened to drag Ian back to jail. Now they were saved. The legal fees were paid. If something happened to her, Ian had his attorney.

  She then borrowed eighteen hundred dollars from Lady J’s business account to pay Green his fee. She was back at her desk at three-thirty—with a splitting headache. Astrid showed up at four-thirty.

  “You’re not looking too happy, Lady J. Anything wrong?” Astrid was the only one who called her that, and it made her smile ti
redly.

  “Would you believe everything’s wrong?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. But—anything special you want to tell me?” Astrid sipped the coffee Zina had poured for her and Jessie sighed and shook her head.

  “Nothing much to tell. Not unless you have about six hundred spare hours to listen, and I don’t have that much spare time to tell you anyway. How was your day?”

  “Better than yours. But I didn’t take any chances. I got up at eleven and spent the afternoon having my hair done.” Jesus. How could she tell her? How could Astrid possibly understand?

  “Maybe that’s where I went wrong. I washed my hair myself last night.” She grinned lopsidedly at her friend, but Astrid didn’t smile. She was worried. Jessie had been looking tired and troubled for weeks, and there was nothing she could say.

  “Why don’t you call it a day, and go home to your gorgeous young husband? Hell, Jessica, if I had him around, wild horses couldn’t keep me here.”

  “You know something? I think you’re right.” It was the first real smile Jessica had produced all day. “Are you heading home? I could use a ride.”

  “Where’s your baby?”

  “The Morgan?” She tried to stall. She didn’t want to lie, but … Astrid nodded, and Jessie felt a pain in her heart.

  “I … it’s in the shop.”

  “No problem. I’ll give you a ride.”

  Ian watched Astrid drop her off from the window in his studio, and he looked puzzled. It was time to take a break anyway—he’d been working straight through since seven that morning. He opened the door for Jessie before she got out her key.

  “What’s with the car? Did you leave it at the boutique?”

  “Yes … I …” She looked up and she could almost feel the color draining from her face. She had to tell him. “Ian, I … I sold it.” She winced at the look on his face. Everything stopped.

  “You did what!” It was worse than she had feared.

  “I sold it. Darling, I had to. Everything else is tied up. And we needed almost seven thousand bucks in the next two weeks for Martin’s fee, and the first half of Green’s bill, and Green is going to hit us with another one in two weeks. There was nothing else I could do.” She reached out to touch him and he brushed her hand away.