“Mark, is it all right?” Her voice hadn’t changed either. It was still slightly husky and low, with a heart-stopping hesitancy. And he loved her.
“It’s all right, my love.” He kissed her forehead, her brows, tilted up her chin and brushed his mouth across hers. “But I do think you ought to have that early night you talked about. I think you’re tired out. That’s my fault. I’m sorry. Give me a little time to get used to what’s happened, okay?”
She pushed him back against the pillows and leaned over him. “I might forgive you,” she said. Her hair slipped across his jaw and neck, and she kissed him. “If you’re very, very good from now on.”
Something stirred in his belly. Her breasts were firm on his chest. “All you have to do is tell me what to do, ma’am, and I’ll try to straighten up and fly right,” he said against her slowly moving lips.
She kissed him fully, and sat up to take off her robe and to pull her nightgown over her head. “Sir, I think you just handed down your own sentence.”
He watched her. Her stomach was slightly rounded, her breasts fuller. She was a lovely woman, ever lovelier to him—especially carrying their child. The excitement came, wild, surging, and he laughed. “Okay, Your Honor, let me have it. What do I get for my sins?” He spanned her ribs, stroked her body, and shifted slightly at the urgency of his erection.
Laura’s pupils dilated. She unbuttoned his shirt. “An early night for you, my man. Disrobe.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LAURA ALWAYS GAVE Sara and Evan the same guest room, a large L-shaped room with a sitting-room arrangement in one end and a king-size bed in the other. The “bed-sitter,” she called it.
Sara nestled herself against Evan in the big bed, and felt his body curve around hers in their customary manner. She smiled into the darkness at the small sound of contentment he always made.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked softly.
“You mean about Subject A, I guess,” he muttered into her hair.
“Not necessarily, darling. We can do the San Francisco fog bit, or, now, those crepes were really good, weren’t they? We did all right for two people who had lost their appetites.” She felt him laugh silently against her.
“Kidding aside, Sara. Can a nineteen-year-old girl really be in love?”
“Certainly,” she answered briskly. “I believe Juliet was only fourteen—”
“Be serious,” he interrupted. “I’m talking about Donna. What happens if Donna, who believes she loves this jerk—”
“Now, Evan—”
“Jerk, I repeat…what if she really isn’t in love, and gets over it after they’ve been together six months? Then what happens if by that time she is pregnant?”
Sara moved out of his arms to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. They faced each other.
“That’s a lot of ifs, Evan.”
“Life is full of ifs, love. We should know, we’ve both encountered a few. And I’ve got a funny sickness in my gut about this.”
“Well, for that matter, so have I,” Sara agreed. “True, I hadn’t thought to call it a funny-sickness-in-the-gut, but the description does fit. What do you have in mind, Evan?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve said half a dozen times that you’re going to talk to ‘Fenton.’ I’m with Donna there, by the way. You’re going to have to stop calling him that. You keep saying you’re going to talk to him, but talk to him how? What do you intend to say to him? Walking in with your trusty hunting rifle is a little out-of-date.”
“I don’t own a trusty hunting rifle. You know that. I’ve never hunted. If the animals don’t shoot at me, I won’t shoot at them. I was thinking more, I suppose, of a clout in the kisser.”
“Oh, that would be just great. That would be one terrific way to solve the problem. Thank God you’re only kidding.” But she looked at him sharply, not really sure he wasn’t serious.
“Clouts are out, huh?”
“Absolutely out, Evan. Bruce is very smooth—”
“You can say that again.”
“Don’t be nasty, Evan. You didn’t let me finish. He’s very smooth and sophisticated. I won’t have you going in there and looking like a fool coming on as the heavy father.”
“Okay, let’s review the ground rules.” Evan twisted around, punching up his pillow so he was sitting up, braced against the headboard. “I can’t call him Fenton. I can’t clout him. I can’t look like a fool. I can’t come on like a heavy father. Do you have anything that I can do?”
“I would suggest we listen to him and Donna first,” she said softly, rubbing her hand gently back and forth over his muscular shoulder.
“Well, I may have it all backward, but I kind of think it is their place to listen to us, dammit. A few months ago at home in Vancouver, we could have won first prize in any perfect-family contest, and now, a matter of weeks later, all our plans for Donna are knocked into a cocked hat and she’s completely out of control. And it’s all that jerk’s fault. And I’m supposed to listen?” Evan was outraged. He punched the pillow again, savagely.
“Ssshhh. Keep your voice down. Think about it a minute. Has Donna ever been ‘out of control’—and that’s your phrase, not mine—before?”
“No. Of course not.”
“In fact, back a few years you were grousing because she was too self-contained, too controlled. You said you didn’t want her to turn into a tight-mouthed, little old woman, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I suppose that sounds familiar.”
“Then my thinking is that she wouldn’t be ‘out of control’—”
“I know, and that’s my phrase not yours,” he said, mimicking his wife.
“This business of breaking out of our customary guidelines, of resorting to subterfuge, which she did, is totally unlike Donna. So something made her do it. Something cataclysmic has occurred somehow to change her.”
“Cataclysmic? What do you mean by that in this context?” Evan’s voice sounded tentative, and all his attention was on her.
“I mean,” Sara said patiently, “it makes me think that this is far, far more important to her than perhaps anything else in her life has ever been. Suppose Bruce really is the big love of her life, Evan, and it just happened a little early? Don’t you see that if we handle the situation incorrectly, it could be very damaging? To all of us?”
Evan was quiet, staring at the ceiling.
“Do you see, Evan?”
“The big love, when it hits,” he murmured, “can be pretty cataclysmic. You think that step one is just to listen to what they have to say, then?”
“I do, lover. Regardless of the funny feeling in your gut, regardless of your anger—and it is justifiable anger—first, we just listen to what they have to say. Okay?” Sara waited a moment and then repeated, “Okay?”
He regarded at her for several seconds before he leaned over to kiss her. “Okay,” he said against her mouth, and then bent slowly to kiss her neck and her shoulder. “Anything you say, wise one. I may get an ulcer out of this, but I’ll try to keep my cool.”
“HE’S HOME, BECAUSE there’s his car,” Donna said as she pulled Laura’s small car to the curb behind Bruce’s. “Now, Dad, you’re going to keep cool. Remember, you promised.”
“Oh, I’m cool, all right,” Evan said somberly. “That’s why I waited until today to speak to him. If we’d come over last night…” He left the sentence unfinished and opened the car door to get out, turning to help Sara.
Evan had spent part of the day at the office with Mark, since Fenton and Hunt handled his legal affairs in the States. Sara and Laura had talked together for hours. The announcement of Laura’s pregnancy had done a lot to ease the tension, somehow. Evan and Laura were old, old friends and, once assured that the pregnancy was probably a safe one, Evan had been pleased. He would have been more pleased if his mind hadn’t been taken up with Donna, Bruce, and the Tsung matter.
Bruce had apparently been watching for them, and
he came out onto the porch to greet them. He held open the double doors to let them pass through.
“Hello, Bruce. It’s nice to see you again,” Sara said graciously, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek the way she always did. Bruce gave her a tentative smile and held out his hand to Evan, which Evan either didn’t see or deliberately ignored. Donna cast Bruce a pleading look as she followed her parents inside.
She glanced quickly at the antique clock on the mantel. It was not quite three. They would never get through this afternoon.
“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” Bruce said with an expansive gesture. “Is it too early to offer you a drink?”
“Too early for me. Anyhow,” Evan said curtly, “this isn’t a social call.”
“No, of course not,” Bruce said quickly.
“I’ve always loved this old place,” Sara interjected, trying to smooth the waters, and Donna gave her mother a grateful look. They had both insisted on coming along.
“It was nice of you to arrange to come home early for this, Bruce. You probably had plenty to do downtown,” Sara went on, evidently determined to set a peaceful tone.
“Better here than the office,” Bruce grinned, “in case Evan has decided to punch my face in.”
Evan glanced at him sharply. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it, Fenton.”
“I’m sure you have,” Bruce said quietly. “And I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same way in your place.”
Evan made a little wordless grunt, and Donna murmured a placating, “Now, Dad.” Then she added quickly, to change the subject, “Bruce, is that new? The chess set?” She got out of her chair and went to lean over and look at it more closely. The set was spread on its black-and-white board on a small table beneath a window. The afternoon light came through the curtain and shone through the delicately carved almost translucent, white pieces.
“It’s new to me,” Bruce said, “but actually pretty old, I’d say. Couple of hundred years.”
“What’s it made of? Alabaster?”
“Jade. Black and white jade.”
Sara had walked over to it. “It’s lovely, Bruce. Where did you get it?”
“I got it by messenger last evening. It’s from Raymond Tsung. Just a little token of his appreciation, his note said, for introducing him to Donna.”
“He didn’t!” Donna said, almost laughing. She had showed her parents the jade necklace the previous evening. They had admired it, but their dismay had been evident. She had put it sadly back into its velvet box. The gift had, more than anything, made Raymond Tsung real to them. Now she wished that, somehow, she’d been able to refuse the necklace.
“That’s another little loose end we’ve got to tie up today,” Evan said. “We’re going over there to see him at four. We’ll tell him thanks for his interest and so on, but Donna has a complete set of parents with whom she’s satisfied—at least, I’m assuming she is—and she doesn’t need any more. Goodbye, etcetera.”
“Good luck.” Bruce smiled. “He’s hard to put off.”
“I think I’ll manage,” Evan answered grimly. “And shall we get to the point here?”
“Yes, of course,” Bruce agreed, straightening up. He had been leaning against the mantel. Donna couldn’t take her eyes off him. He hadn’t changed from his business suit, and he seemed formal and, in a way, remote. He half-bowed to Evan and waited. She saw—watched—felt—all of him, the lean form, the loose fair hair, the worried, guarded look on his face. Never, never had she loved him so much.
Evan stood up, one fist inside the other palm. He kept beating them together. There was a brief, almost ugly silence, and there was the tense sensation of the two men circling one another. It passed in a moment. Then, invisibly, control of the meeting shifted from Evan, who was angry, hurt, and frustrated, to Bruce. He had taken charge.
“First, I will say…to you both…to all three of you…that I am sorry,” he said gently. “I will be sorry all of my life. I was way out of line. I didn’t handle this right at all. When Donna first broached the subject, I should have picked up the phone and called Vancouver. I didn’t. And Evan, if you want to take a poke at me, man, you’re entitled. Go ahead.”
“I’ll pass,” Evan muttered. Then he exploded. “But God damn it, did you have to—” He choked on his words.
“No, I didn’t, Evan. If she was in love with me, and—after a while—I knew I loved her, I should have left it there.”
“Well, what’s done is done,” Sara murmured. “It isn’t the end of the world, you know. As I recall, Evan, we didn’t exactly wait until after the ceremony ourselves.”
“You weren’t a teenager,” Evan snapped, turning his eyes back to Bruce. “I’m listening.”
“You know how it started, with that cooked-up story about locating her original father, Donna being sure he wasn’t around to locate. Almost as soon as I found him, Donna began to have second thoughts about it and leveled with me.”
“And the soup hit the fan,” Evan said glumly.
“No, Dad, the soup didn’t hit the fan until I told Bruce I was in love with him. Then it did,” Donna said with a look of chagrin. “I see Bruce is going to be all gentlemanly and skip that part. He shouldn’t. I threw myself at him, is the basic fact of the matter.”
Evan turned a brooding look in her direction. “Don’t interrupt, Donna.”
“One more thing,” she persisted, “then I’ll shut up. I had to do something, Dad. To Bruce’s mind I was still a thirteen-year-old. I had to jolt him out of that notion.”
“And did she?” Evan asked, his eyes on Bruce.
A reluctant grin tugged at Bruce’s lips. “I would say so,” he said mildly. “It set me thinking. ‘Out of the mouths of babes’ and so on. I don’t remember really just when I realized she was right. I love Donna. I did not know how deeply I could love until I loved Donna.” He made another little bow, this time in her direction. It was a private tribute, brief and delicate, just between the two of them, and she cherished it.
Evan cleared his throat. “So that leaves us where? You love my daughter. She loves you. She is still only nineteen years old and hasn’t even started college yet.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ve worked out between us,” Bruce continued, “and see what you and Sara think about it. Right now, Donna likes to think that being my wife is all the existence she wants. ‘The world well lost for love’ and all that. I know better. We’ll have had a good summer. Both of us have made discoveries—too many to take without thought and consideration—kind of a waiting interval. We have tentatively planned that she go to school in Vancouver for the fall quarter.” He paused.
“So far, so good,” Evan said grudgingly.
“At the end of the quarter, if we still feel the same way, we’ll be married and Donna will transfer down here to complete her college—and graduate work, if she decides to go on with some special training.”
Evan uttered another of his little wordless grunts.
“During the interval,” Bruce went on, “we will not be in touch at all. By that I mean we will not see each other, we will not talk or write to each other. It will be a time of being absolutely apart.”
Donna swallowed hard and kept her eyes as wide open as she could. She must hold onto her composure, but it sounded like a death knell. The idea of being completely apart from Bruce, even for a few months, seemed unbearable at the moment. But she must bear it.
Evan turned to her. “Donna?” His voice was gentle. “You go along with this? With what Bruce is promising?”
“Yes,” she said clearly, “this is what we’ve decided.” And she took pride in sounding controlled.
“Well,” Sara said, “we certainly can’t ask for anything fairer than that, Evan.”
“I…guess I must agree, certainly,” Evan said after a moment. A near-smile touched his lips. “Bruce talks about a jolt. I guess the biggest jolt I’ve had is that Donna—”
“Grew up?” Sara asked softly.
&
nbsp; “Yeah, I guess.” A look of sadness and confusion, mingled with just a touch of pride, came and went on Evan’s face. His expression made them laugh, and he joined in.
The tension which had filled the room melted away. Evan held out his hand to Bruce.
“Okay,” Sara said briskly. “Next stop, Mr. Tsung, I suppose.” She made leave-taking motions. Donna knew it was actually too early for her parents to leave in order to reach Tsung’s office by four, but by tacit agreement they all accepted the small breathing space Sara offered. Her mother and father needed some time together, and so did she and Bruce. They would meet again later, when all were gathered at the Hunts’ house for dinner.
AT TEN MINUTES past six, Donna watched her parents come into the Hunts’ living room with slightly bemused expressions on their faces. They had visited Raymond Tsung. She exchanged a quick glance with Bruce.
“Welcome. Just in time,” Mark said, getting up from the couch, where he had been sitting close to Laura. “What would you like? We’ve started the unwinding hour.”
“I don’t know if we need to unwind or not,” Evan said, as he put a bulky package he’d been carrying on the table. “I feel a bit unwound already. Just Scotch on the rocks, Mark.”
“Same for me,” Sara said, “but add a splash of water, will you?” She, too, was carrying a package, which she still held when she sat down.
“Were you shopping, Mother?” Donna asked, grinning maliciously.
“You know we were not,” Sara said, returning the grin.
“Wow,” Evan exclaimed. “That Raymond Tsung is quite a guy, I must say.”
“Quite,” Bruce agreed, holding up his glass for Mark to refill. “I take it you came away carrying gifts. Are you going to show us what he gave you?”
“All in good time,” Evan said, accepting his drink from Mark. “I’ve got it figured out, though.”
“Terrific,” Bruce laughed. “Tell the rest of us. Each time Donna and I see him, it’s for the specific purpose of saying goodbye forever, but somehow or other it just doesn’t happen.”
“It’s simple,” Evan said, smiling. “It’s two things, actually. One, he is such a damned nice guy. Two, you can’t help liking him. It’s tough, under the circumstances, to say, ‘Hi, Raymond. Goodbye forever.”’
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