Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  Derek was silent for a minute. “Your Richard?”

  She nodded.

  He couldn’t recall a Richard, working closely with Greer. “Do you know what he was doing there?”

  “No. I knew he was affiliated with one of the networks on an executive level, but he always evaded the specifics. Except when it came to you.” Disgusted with herself now, she looked away. “He wanted to talk specifics then, all right. He wanted me to talk them to him. About you.”

  Back braced against the archway with his hands tucked hard in his pockets, Derek didn’t move a muscle. His gaze was dark and direct, commanding her to explain.

  “As he told it,” she said, “he was with the competition. That was why he wanted to keep tabs on you after you were released from prison. He wanted to know what you were doing with yourself, whether you were angry, vengeful, spiteful, whether you were working or thinking of working. He led me to believe that there was a potential job in it for you, which was why”—her voice wavered—“why I went along.”

  “He wanted to keep tabs on me,” Derek repeated. His voice was cool and as taut as his jaw. “Through you?”

  She didn’t have to confirm it. Even if her expression hadn’t been guilty, he’d have known. It made sense, explained her frequent phone calls and visits, the questions that had so gotten on his nerves. If he hadn’t been so busy dealing with the anger of betrayal, he might have been relieved to learn that there was good reason why she’d been such a pest.

  Running a hand around the back of his neck, he ground out a low, “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I didn’t realize I was doing anything wrong.”

  “You’re Sabrina’s best friend! Is nothing sacred to you?”

  “I thought I was helping her out.”

  “By betraying her confidence? What she told you—what we told you—was said in large part in the context of the book Sabrina wants to write. You were here not only as her friend but as her agent. Whatever happened to professional ethics?”

  Maura stood her ground, regarding him not in defiance but as one who knew that no argument she gave could excuse what she’d done.

  Reading that in her eyes, Derek turned his head away and tried to see it from Greer’s point of view. “You had the perfect cover,” he said to the window. “Sabrina had said she wanted to write a book and you were her agent.” He looked sharply back at Maura. “How much did this Richard of yours know when he first contacted you?”

  “Just that Sabrina and I were good friends. He found out the rest while we … were getting to know each other.”

  “You actually dated him,” Derek muttered in amazement.

  “How was I to know?” she asked in dismay. “What he said sounded goddamned logical to me! It never occurred to me that I was being used—well, maybe once or twice when I felt he was asking too many questions about you and not enough about me, but it passed.” She frowned at the floor, ran a palm over the waistband of her jeans, swallowed hard. “I really liked him.”

  “And he liked you?”

  The hand that had been at her waist flew into the air. “Oh yeah, that’s what he said. He was going to take me to St. Martin next month. He was going to send clients my way.” She sighed and said more quietly, “He was going to bankroll the first of the spas that I told Sabrina about. That was the payoff, I suppose, only I didn’t know it was a payoff. I thought he was doing it because he believed in the idea. And because he believed in me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for an instant. “Christ, I’m a fool.”

  Derek was studying her closely. “You really did like him,” he said, then asked almost idly, “Richard who?”

  “Fraling. Only for all I know, that’s not his real name at all.”

  Fraling. Derek was the one to close his eyes this time. They remained shut for a brief, tight moment. “It’s his real name,” he said, refocusing on Maura, “only he rarely uses the Richard. The rest of us knew him as Greg. R. Gregory Fraling. I wouldn’t call him Greer’s right-hand man, because he’s too low to the ground for that. He’s known for doing the dirty work.” Which was perhaps one of the reasons Derek had always detested the man. Fraling stayed behind the scenes. He never soiled his hands, but he did an incredible amount of damage nonetheless. He reminded Derek of his father.

  Other than the ghost of a helpless wince, Maura’s expression hadn’t changed. But she turned and walked toward the window, where she stood with one arm wrapping her waist, the other crossing her chest. It was then that Derek saw through his anger enough to realize that she was hurt. As he thought about it, he guessed she was humiliated as well. For the first time, he felt sympathy for her.

  Crossing to where she stood, he said more gently, “He’s a bastard, Maura. He’s not worth what you’re feeling.”

  She stared silently into the darkness for a minute, and during that time, studying her face, Derek realized that she wasn’t a beauty. It was makeup that made the most of her features, playing up some, playing down others. Where that didn’t work, her hairstyle took up the slack, and where that didn’t work, the flamboyance of her personality took over. Without the flamboyance—and there was certainly none now—the rest lost something almost through a domino effect.

  Looking up at him, she said in a measured tone, “He’s married, isn’t he?”

  Derek might have spared her that final pain had Fraling already been out of the picture. But the man would be expecting to see her when she returned to New York. She had a right to the truth. She needed it.

  “Yes. He’s married.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I had a funny feeling he was. He never spent more than a night or two with me at a time, always said he had to get back to his place in case someone was looking for him. Whenever I told him to leave my number with whoever it was that might be looking, he made a joke about wanting to keep my number to himself, and he followed the joke up with”—she darted a chagrined glance at the ceiling—“well, I never pushed him on it. I never did see his place. He said he liked mine better. The restaurants we went to were always out-of-the-way and dark—he said he couldn’t stand the noise of the better-known places. He never took me to the theater or to public functions.”

  Again she pressed her lips together. Spasms of a frown crossed her brow. “The signs were all there. I should have known. The bitch of it is that I’ve always loved doing things big and being seen. But with him it was different. I liked the privacy, too. I thought I’d really found the right man.”

  She was looking sadly off into the night when she asked in a weak voice, “Does he have kids?”

  Again Derek debated. Again he yielded. “Four.”

  “Four.” She looked up at him in pained amusement. “Christ, he’s a stud—” Her voice broke at that and lost all amusement. “And I am a fucking fool.”

  “Not a fool, Maura. Just human.”

  “A fool.” She shook her head and breathed a scathing, “Shit!”

  “You thought it was for real. You were taken in by a pro. He’s a con man, a charmer. That’s his job, and he does it well. You aren’t the first one to have fallen for his lines, and you won’t be the last.”

  “Now why doesn’t that make me feel better?” she bit off sarcastically, then shook her head again and said with remorse, “I’m sorry. You’re trying to help. By rights you should be furious at me.”

  “I’m furious at the situation, which is nothing new, only now there’s another person hurt in the mess.” And that was, in fact, how he saw it. Quite unexpectedly he found that he was glimpsing not the Maura who was spirited to the point of being tipsy, but one who craved the same kind of love that her best friend had found. Derek supposed that another woman might have betrayed them out of jealousy, but he knew that hadn’t been the case with Maura. She had simply wanted to be loved, to be protected, pampered, cared for, and she’d wanted those things enough to overlook warning signs that she might otherwise have seen.

  His fingers curved around her sh
oulder. “I’m sorry you were drawn in.”

  She shrugged under his hand, then asked in a small voice, “How much damage did I do?”

  “Greer knows for sure that we’re after Ballantine, but he could have learned that easily enough without you. As for the rest, we haven’t gotten anywhere near the files, so what damage there is is minimal.”

  “Have you been followed?”

  Derek told her about the man he’d seen on three of their flights.

  Maura was visibly shaken. It was a minute before she’d recovered her composure enough to say, “I really am sorry. If there’s danger involved, you have every right to blame me. I know that you never liked me—”

  “I never had a chance to get to know you. You were always babbling on and on about me.”

  “Did you suspect me? When you realized you were being followed, you must have wondered about a leak.”

  “You were—are—Sabrina’s best friend. I trusted you.”

  “And I betrayed you.” She turned to him with an urgent expression. “Don’t tell Sabrina. Please, Derek, don’t tell her. She’s all I’ve got. My parents are gone. I only had a brother, and he’s living with the Eskimos in Prudhoe Bay and couldn’t give a flying damn where I am or what I’m doing. Sabrina is my family. We have a history. She’s the only person in my life that knows anything about the real me, but if she learns what I’ve done, she’ll hate me.”

  “She’ll understand.”

  But Maura was shaking her head. “She’ll be disillusioned. She’ll never trust me again. She’ll never trust herself again.” She held up both hands. “And it’s not that I don’t want to lose her as a client, because I won’t mention the book again. If Sabrina brings it up, I’ll tell her that I think she’d be better represented by someone else. I’ll leave you two alone, I swear I will, and I’ll be fine as long as I know that I can call Sabrina sometimes. Or see her once in a while in New York.”

  Derek closed his hands over hers to still their tremor. “You aren’t leaving. Sabrina loves you.”

  “But I’ve caused so much trouble.”

  “If anyone caused it, I did by setting my heart on those files—or Greer did, by stealing two years of my life—or Ballantine did by compromising himself for whatever the reason ends up to be.”

  “But I’ve made things worse. Sabrina will be sick when she finds out.”

  “If she finds out. She doesn’t have to. I won’t tell her if you don’t. But if you pick up unexpectedly and leave, she’ll find out, and she’ll be doubly sick.”

  Maura eyed him skeptically. “You can’t actually want me to stay.”

  “Well,” he drawled with surprising good humor—given what he’d just learned—“not forever. You were planning to head back to New York anyway in another two days. That sounds about right.” His good humor faded. “Maybe your being here will cheer Sabrina up. She’s been a little down lately.”

  “She does look tired.”

  “Any idea what’s bothering her?” he asked with deliberate nonchalance. He felt a little foolish having to ask his wife’s best friend something that, as his wife’s husband, he should know himself.

  With a semblance of her usual flair, Maura put him at ease. “The day Sabrina tells me something before she tells it to you will be the day Gary Hart becomes a monk.” She frowned and grew thoughtful. “She may be worried about Nicky. She mentioned that she wanted to get over to see him.”

  Sabrina had mentioned the same thing to Derek.

  “Has he taken a turn for the worse?” Maura asked.

  “Not that I know of. I’ll have to take her over this week. The thing is that it always upsets her, and there’s so little I can do to help. It’s a no-win situation. Frustrating as hell.”

  * * *

  What was particularly frustrating for Derek was that this time Sabrina insisted on going to visit Nicky alone. She said that she needed to do it and turned down even his offer to act as her chauffeur and sit in the car during her visit.

  So his helplessness was compounded. The four hours she was gone were difficult ones for him, and when she returned she was dry-eyed, but quiet and withdrawn. Derek was beginning to think of taking drastic steps to make her talk, when she did so of her own accord.

  Chapter 17

  THE CLOCK on the bed stand read two thirty-seven, which was three minutes later than it had been the last time Sabrina had looked. She sat up and was still for a while, then quietly freed herself from the quilt and crossed the bedroom to stand at the window.

  The night was dark and wet. There was no moon to light the sky, no snow to serve as a reflector. She was half-grateful about the last, since she was wanting desperately to think spring, and rain was a sure sign of that. She’d been feeling chilly lately. She needed the psychological edge that came with the warming of the sun.

  There was no psychological edge to be found at the window tonight. The tattoo of rain on the roof seemed somehow disassociated from the pall of darkness that hung heavy and blunt over the yard. Turning from it, she sank into the nearby bentwood rocker, drew her knees up under her nightgown and hugged them close. She rested her cheek on one knee and sat that way for a minute, then turned her head, closed her eyes and propped her chin on the other knee. Then she slowly opened her eyes to look at Derek.

  He was sprawled on his back with the quilt pulled to a point just above his waist. One arm was folded beneath his head, bunching that visible part of his chest into a contoured wall of muscle. He often slept that way. She’d initially thought it strange until she realized that Derek often fell asleep thinking—or awoke in the middle of the night and fell back to sleep thinking—and since his was a thinking pose, it made sense.

  On this night as she looked at him she felt a pulling inside, and without conscious intent, she rose from the rocker and returned to the bed. Folding a leg beneath her, she sat close by his side studying his face. Almost as though she’d willed it, he slowly opened his eyes.

  She didn’t move.

  “Sabrina?” he whispered.

  She reached for the hand he had laid on his stomach, and, taking it in both of hers, held it tightly in her lap.

  Derek was quickly awake. Something was wrong. There had been times when Sabrina had woken him in the middle of the night with a kiss here, a touch there, one caress leading to another; but there was none of that now, just a desperate kind of clinging to his hand.

  Sitting up, he used his free hand to smooth the tangle of hair from her cheeks. “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “I’m frightened,” she said in a small voice.

  “About what?”

  “Something’s happening. I don’t know how it could be happening, but I’m sure it is, and it’s scaring me.”

  He could feel the beat of his blood as it pulsed through his veins, and the hand that had been stroking her hair came to a light rest on the back of her neck. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She held his hand tighter. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Derek’s pulse tripped. He was sure he’d misheard. But even before he had a chance to ask, she was repeating herself.

  “I think I’m pregnant. I don’t know how, because I’m using an IUD and it can’t come out by itself. It’s always worked before, but my body’s doing things only a pregnant body does.”

  Derek stared at her shadowed face for a minute before twisting to switch on the low lamp by the bed. “What things?” he asked when he was facing her again.

  “Being tired all the time. And nauseated. That flu I had wasn’t the flu. It never developed into anything more than fatigue and nausea—never any fever or chills—and I still have it. My breasts feel tighter, like the skin suddenly doesn’t fit what’s inside. And I’ve missed two periods.”

  “Jesus,” Derek breathed. He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, because that depended on which Sabrina was and he couldn’t quite figure it out. Then he was distracted looking at her breasts, brushing the back of his fingers against one, finding th
at it was indeed firmer and wondering why he hadn’t noticed sooner. His eyes flew back to her face. “Pregnant?”

  Her features wore every one of the fears that had been churning inside her since she’d finally acknowledged the probability. “I’ve tried to pretend it wasn’t so. When I missed my period the first time, I told myself that it was my body’s response to all the changes that have happened to me in the last few months—the physical reaction to an emotional upheaval. And for a while I said the same thing about the tiredness, then the nausea. I didn’t have either of those with Nicky. But it was so obvious when I missed the second time. I’m pregnant, Derek, and I don’t know what to do!”

  She had begun to tremble. He drew her against him, dragging the quilt up to swaddle them both.

  “I imagined all kinds of other things,” he said in an unsteady voice that was muffled against her hair. “I imagined that you’d changed your mind about us, or that you were itching to return to New York, or that you’d found a lump somewhere and didn’t want me to know. Pregnant—pregnant I can handle.”

  Her cheek was unnaturally warm against his chest, her hand unnaturally cold on his middle. “Easy for you to say. You haven’t been through what I have!”

  “I know that.”

  “Before we were married I told you I couldn’t have another child. You knew it. I thought you accepted it.”

  “I did.”

  “I can’t do it again, Derek. I love you, but I can’t do it again.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Do you want the baby?”

  “Yes, I want the baby!” she wailed. “That’s why this is so hard!”

  Derek felt a slow elation burn its way through his system. Arms tightening around Sabrina, he took a deep breath and commanded himself to speak in a low, calm, confident voice. “It doesn’t have to be hard,” he said. “The odds are with us. Could be that once you get through this first rough stage, things will be easy as pie and the baby will be perfectly formed and healthy and beautiful and bright.”