Just before she reached the French doors that led to the pool, they were opened by a tall blonde woman with a voluptuous figure. She wore a tiny black string bikini and a disgruntled expression.
“Don’t bother,” she told Buffy. “He’s out there arguing with some old lady and anyway, he believes he’s running a harem. The things a girl has to do to promote her career!”
“You’re a model?” The standards must have changed drastically in the weeks Buffy had been away. Models, in her experience, were sleek as greyhounds.
“I’m an actress.” She pouted and then, realizing she wasn’t impressing her audience, snatched a gauzy cover-up from a chair. “I don’t have to put up with this kind of treatment. I have talent!” She headed for the front door.
Why would an actress waste her time on Roger? Buffy wondered. The woman must be confused.
She went outside into sunshine intensified by glare on the pool’s glittering surface. Fishing her sunglasses from her purse, she studied the guests.
Buxom redhead. Languorous brunette. They weren’t Roger’s usual type, so she figured he’d hired or cajoled or borrowed the largest-breasted women he could find in order to make her feel inadequate. Judging by the dimensions of these two women and the departing blonde, he must have raided a plastic surgeon’s office.
Still, they were beautiful in a way that Buffy could never equal. She doubted Carter would be impressed, though. They all had a doll-like quality, as if a toy company had used molds to shape them.
More interesting was the older woman who stood with hands on hips, turned away from Buffy. Gray-haired and draped in a green woven pantsuit, she appeared to be scolding the man in front of her. Even though his face was hidden from view, Buffy presumed the guy with the skinny legs and overtanned torso was Roger.
Puzzled that he would let this woman take over his pool party, Buffy circled the deep end on approach. Her slinky camisole, which had pushed the envelope of near-nudity in Nowhere Junction, made her feel overdressed.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Swiveling, the tall woman surveyed her impatiently. Her pale blue eyes resembled Roger’s. “And you are...?”
“Roger’s wife,” she said. “Buffy.”
In the silence that descended, she could hear the distant burr of an airplane. “Wife?” the woman repeated. “Since when?”
“The past five years,” Buffy said.
“That was you who answered the phone?”
“Excuse me?”
“All those times,” the woman said. “I thought it was some tootsie. I’m Louise Arden, Roger’s mother.”
“From Ohio?” Buffy shook the outstretched hand. “So that’s why you never said hello.”
Half a dozen expressions flitted across Roger’s gaunt face, none of them pleasant. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, and the effect wasn’t flattering.
His heavy eyebrows, prominent cheekbones and narrow jawline gave him a striking, sophisticated air. Buffy could see how she might once have been impressed. However, the knowledge that his weasel brain was working to twist every situation to his own advantage rendered him what Zeppa might call butt-ugly.
“You never told me you were married,” Louise snapped at her son.
“It didn’t seem worth mentioning until I knew whether the marriage would take or not,” he replied. “As it happens, Buffy and I are getting a divorce.”
“Which shows good judgment on her part,” snapped the woman. “Since five years wasn’t long enough for you to inform your family about your marriage.”
“Look at the bright side,” he responded. “All those anniversary gifts you didn’t have to send.”
His mother issued a noise somewhere between a bark and a snort.
“Roger, honey, I hate to interrupt.” The red-haired woman wandered toward them. “I’m bored.”
“Why don’t you and, uh—” he gestured at the brunette “—whoever, take off?”
“Just like that?” asked the redhead.
“I’ll see you, you know,” he said. When she didn’t react, he added, “Later.”
“Oh, later. Okay.” She sauntered away, followed languidly by the dark-haired woman.
Later? Buffy wondered what that meant. Did Roger intend to carry on an affair right under her nose? She’d figured he was smart enough to behave properly in the two days before they went to court. Or did he have other plans for this evening?
She recorded a mental note to find out. In the meantime, she was curious about her mother-in-law. “What brings you here?” she asked Louise.
“A little birdie named Yoko,” the older woman said. “She told me he’s hiding his assets.”
“He’s been cheating you, too?” Buffy was astonished at the depths to which this worm would sink. His own mother!
“Whoa!” Roger held up his hands. “You two are not on the same side, Mom, for heaven’s sake, you have to trust me.”
“Like I trusted your father?” she asked. “He was a snake, too.”
Instead of looking offended, he gave her a sly smile as if he’d discovered an ace up his sleeve. “This is different. You see, Buffy wants to take it all. Yours, mine and ours.”
“Hmm,” said his mother.
“I do not!” Buffy retorted furiously. “You’re the one who insisted I come back here. You’re the one trying to take custody of my daughter.”
“Explain,” Louise demanded of her son.
“She, uh, we, uh, there’s this baby,” he said. “Not mine. But she is mine by law.”
“Your wife had a child by another man?”
“It’s not like it sounds,” Buffy interjected. “We used a sperm bank.”
At the far end of the long, one-story house, a sliding glass door opened. Out swooped Carter, his cowboy boots tapping on the cement as he whirled Allie through the air.
“You have to hear what she just said,” he called. “Say it again, sweetie. Say Mama!”
“Who is this?” demanded Louise Arden. “Your gigolo?”
Roger chortled. Then he smirked. Buffy invented a new word, smortled, to describe his expression, and then hoped she never had reason to use it again.
*
Carter could see that his timing was off. The shrimpy guy with the beetle eyebrows wore a disdainful expression. And judging by the older woman’s haughty stance, he’d bet that in a fair fight between her and Mazeppa, the smart money would be on the L.A. lady.
Of course, Zeppa wasn’t likely to let a little thing like fairness get in the way of a takedown. He decided he’d back the hometown girl after all.
There was no defense like a good offense. “Howdy!” Tucking Allie under one arm, he strode around the pool and shook the woman’s hand firmly. “I’m Carter Murchison, the nanny.”
“Carter, this is Roger and his mother, Louise Arden,” Buffy said in a warning tone. “Five years of marriage and I’ve only just met her.”
“Say hi,” he told the baby, and held her up for a good look at Louise. When Allie’s face scrunched, he feared she might scream like a banshee, a new talent she’d developed this afternoon when he tried to put her down for a nap.
“Cute,” pronounced the older woman. “For a baby.”
Allie apparently thought the better of screaming. “Bo da da,” she said. “Ma ma ma.”
“She said Mama!” Squealing, Buffy hugged her daughter. “You little cutie!”
“She’s precocious,” Carter added for the benefit of the others.
“She resembles you,” observed Louise.
“Correction,” he said. “She resembles my late mother.”
“So you aren’t related to her?” the woman asked.
“Other than by blood, no.” Usually he didn’t think this fast, but he could tell that Buffy needed help.
His words appeared to fly right past Louise, who nodded as if he’d denied everything.
“You don’t look like a nanny.” Roger had a nasal voice and an affected accent, like a societ
y character in a 1930s movie. “I’ll have you replaced tomorrow.”
Buffy heaved an exasperated sigh. “Oh, stick a spoon in it, Roger. Carter’s being a good sport. He’s the innocent victim whose sperm the clinic used by mistake.”
“This is interesting,” said Louise. “Tell me more.”
“I went to Texas because I thought he had a right to know the truth and that Allie had a right to a father. You know what a father is? It’s someone who wouldn’t demand a DNA test of his own wife,” Buffy said. “I’ll make you a deal, Roger. You give her up and we’ll sign away—”
“Nothing,” said Carter.
Everyone stared at him. He felt like staring at himself. He hadn’t known he was going to say that until this very minute.
But there was a good reason for holding firm. The man in front of them was a liar and a philanderer who’d done everything in his power to cheat his wife. It went against the grain to let him win, especially when he’d threatened claim a child he didn’t love and that wasn’t his.
“Carter...” Buffy muttered.
“This man signs a full statement listing all his assets and admitting he authorized you to go to the sperm bank,” Carter said. “Then a judge decides what’s right and fair.”
“You see what I mean?” Roger told his mother. “Buffy’s trying to take us to the cleaners.”
“I reserve judgment,” she said. “Please avoid using the pronoun `us’ when you refer to yourself and the mother you treat like soap scum.”
Allie, apparently detecting the tension among the grown-ups, began to cry, a snuffly little noise unlike the screeching Carter had feared. “She’s hungry.” Buffy patted the baby against her shoulder. “I’d better feed her. We’ll finish this discussion later.”
Carter was weighing whether to stick around and make himself obnoxious, when she added, “You coming?”
He accompanied her into the house. In any event, the elder Mrs. Arden seemed quite capable of harassing her son without Carter’s help.
*
Less than twenty-four hours earlier, she and Carter had been making wild, carefree love in a tow truck. It might have been years ago, Buffy reflected as they entered her room through the sliding door from the pool area. It might have been a different man, too.
She hardly knew this one. His casual defiance of her husband had caught her off guard. So had his flip remark to Louise about not being related except by blood.
In the past, he’d always fled when she settled down to feed Allie. This time, he stationed himself in a chair by the bed to observe.
“You’ve changed,” she said as the baby nursed.
“That’s not surprising.”
She waited for an explanation. None came. “What do you mean?”
“Things like that change a man,” he said.
“Things like what?”
He stretched his long legs and leaned back, pillowing his head on his cupped hands. “Like making love to a beautiful woman.”
Pleasure tingled through Buffy. Their shared experience had certainly changed her. She’d given part of her heart to Carter, which was why it had hurt so much to learn that he didn’t want to marry her for her own sake. Still, guys reacted to sex differently from women.
“I didn’t think men got as involved emotionally as women do,” she said. “Especially not when they’re, you know, experienced.”
“Experienced how?” he asked.
“Well, obviously, you’ve been with women before.” She switched the baby to the other breast.
When no answer ensued, she glanced at Carter. He wore a strange smile, half-embarrassed and half-amused.
That was when it hit her. He’d said that nothing had happened that night in high school when he ran off with Amy. He hadn’t mentioned any other girlfriends. “It was your first time?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You were a virgin. That’s incredible.” She hadn’t suspected a virile man like him could make it into his thirties without getting tackled. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Before or after I got up close and personal with the gearshift?”
She giggled, remembering that he’d hit the horn, too. “That was fantastic, wasn’t it? And you’d never done it before? Wow! I can’t imagine what you’d be like if you practiced.”
His laughter rumbled into her soul. It reminded Buffy of how much she wanted to be the one he got that practice with.
His face grew serious. “Out there at the pool, I wanted to make sure that man doesn’t get away with his slimy tactics. It isn’t that I care about the money. The point is to make him squirm.”
She couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. On the other hand, a viper like Roger was likely to strike back when you least expected it. “The problem is, he’ll stop at nothing to get his way.”
“Like trying to steal Allie.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned forward. “That’s why I want to teach him a lesson. Next time, he’ll think twice before trying a stunt like this.”
She laid the baby on the bed and set about changing her diaper. “I hate to disagree, but I think you should lay off. Carter, this isn’t Nowhere Junction. Roger plays hard ball, and he plays it in the big leagues.”
He unfolded from his chair, but, absorbed in dealing with Allie, she didn’t realize she’d offended him until she heard the rasp in his voice. “I said once that you had a low opinion of men in general. I didn’t realize until now that you had a low opinion of me in particular.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You may think I’m from Minor League, Texas,” he said. “But I can handle anything Roger can throw at me.” With that, he stalked from the room.
“Da da,” said Allie proudly.
“I hope you grow up just like him,” Buffy said.
Chapter Eleven
As usual when he was angry, tired or troubled, Carter stripped off his clothes and took a shower. Not until he finished did he remember that he had only one clean outfit, and he might need that in an emergency. He’d heard that people in L.A. frequently had fashion emergencies.
Heck, it wasn’t as if he’d been elbow-deep in tune-ups all day. He put the same garments back on and told himself that a little ripeness never hurt.
He’d be darned if he’d borrow anything from Roger. Not that the skinny fellow’s clothes would fit him anyway. Plus they must be permeated with snake oil.
So Buffy didn’t think he could swim with the sharks. As he combed his hair, Carter conceded she had a point. He might be on the verge of making the most neon-bright fool of himself in a long—well, medium-length—history of misadventures.
He was doing it for a good cause. Being here in this brittle, shiningly empty world aroused a longing to snatch Buffy and his daughter back to the honest simplicity of Nowhere Junction.
He planned to give it his best shot. Even if Buffy chose her old life over him, she and Allie deserved a share of Roger’s hoarded treasure to tide them over.
Carter stretched out on the bed. He intended to think more about how he might nail Roger dead to rights. Instead he fell asleep.
When he awoke, an hour had passed and the room lay in semidarkness punctuated by the glimmer of lights from the pool. He peered through the slats of the vertical blinds and saw that the area was empty although well lit. In Southern California, people wasted electricity just for show.
Hunger pangs gnawed at him. On the flight the airline had prepared peanuts in imaginative ways: roasted, stewed, garlic-flavored, braised and mummified. Nevertheless, that had been hours ago.
Carter emerged into the hallway. A few doors down, he nearly collided with Louise as she exited her room. Her already imposing frame gained additional height from a pair of high heels, and she wore an emerald gown with green feathers at one shoulder.
“You look splendid,” he said.
She surveyed him levelly. “You’re a handsome fellow, I’ll give you that. I have a weakness for sexy men, s
o I’ll tell you what Roger told me. He’s got money, but it’s all tied up in his business expansion. He won’t have any profits to share for another few years. The best your daughter and Buffy can do is the same as me—draw up the paperwork and tighten your belts. Or diaper, as the case may be.”
They walked together toward the center of the house. Carter had a feeling she was telling the truth, as far as she knew it.
“Have you had to tighten your belt a lot?” he asked.
“Considering that I’m Roger’s main investor, it’s been a big cutback,” she conceded. “I own my apartment in Cincinnati, in a nice building with services for seniors, so I don’t have to worry about shelter. But I’ve given up attending the theater and throwing parties for my friends and traveling. I had to miss my niece’s wedding in Florida last month. That’s the part that bothered me most. I only made it to California because a friend gave me her frequent flyer miles and I can stay here instead of a hotel.”
What a rotten way for Roger to treat his mother. “If my Mom were alive, I’d take out a loan before I’d let her miss her niece’s wedding,” Carter said.
“I’ll bet you would.” She stared ahead thoughtfully.
They reached a room bigger than the whole Nowhere Junction country club. A gazillion-inch TV screen and an array of entertainment equipment were nearly lost in one corner.
At the bar, Roger set down his glass. “Mom!” He eyed her costume warily. “What’s the occasion? I was planning a quiet evening at home.”
Louise cocked an eyebrow at her son’s turquoise silk suit. “Is that what you wear for lounging at home?”
“You never know who might drop by.”
She folded her arms. “As for my dress, the occasion is that my son is taking me to dinner. Fortunately, you’re dressed for it.”
“I, er, have some plans.” He drew her aside and whispered into her ear. Then, to Carter, he said, “I’m taking my mother to dinner, as you’ve heard. The housekeeper can fix something for you to eat after she’s done cleaning my office.” He pressed a button on the wall intercom. “Giorgio, bring the car around.”
Designer Genes Page 15
