LovePlay

by Diana Palmer

  “Take care of yourself. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “I doubt that,” she murmured. It was hard not to cry. She felt as if something were ending, all at once. Her eyes searched his frantically for signs that he still cared, that this wasn’t the end. But his eyes were unreadable.

  “So long, darling,” he whispered, bending.

  It was the most tender kiss they’d ever shared. She clung to him helplessly, needing his strength to support her. Her eyes watered with tears as his mouth softly probed hers, as his arms held her close, oblivious to passersby boarding the plane through the long ramp.

  He drew back, his hands unsteady as he released her. “Be good, honey. ’Bye.”

  He gave her a last, wan smile, picked up his duffel bag, and walked down the ramp without looking back.

  She went to her apartment feeling like death warmed over, and promptly lost her breakfast.

  The infernal virus kept hanging on, sapping her strength. She managed to get through the tryout period, but it was the longest two weeks of her life. Fortunately the play was well received, without any changes being necessary. The stage manager had phoned Cul to tell him the good news about the audience’s ecstatic reception.

  “Did Cul have any message for me?” Bett asked hopefully.

  He stared at her blankly. “No. I thought he’d have called you by now,” he added with a grin. “You two were pretty thick when he left, weren’t you?”

  She managed a weak smile and turned away. So it was over. He’d have called or written if he’d meant what he’d said about loving her. He’d just wanted her. Now, with his appetite sated, he had no reason to continue the affair. By now there was probably someone else, some beautiful woman in Hollywood….

  She sat down numbly in her dressing room. Why hadn’t she seen the danger? Why had she trusted him? Damn her stupid heart!

  That night, after the last performance, she went back to her hotel room and, in desperation, phoned Cul. She’d begged his number from the stage manager. It might be a terrible lowering of her pride, but she had to hear from his lips that he no longer cared, to believe it.

  He answered the phone absently, as if his mind were on other things.

  “Cul?” she said in a trembling voice. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Bett,” he said coolly. “I hear the play’s going great.”

  “Yes, it is.” She curled the telephone cord around her fingers. “Are you coming back for the opening in New York?”

  “Afraid not, darling,” he said carelessly. “I’ve got my hands full out here.” He paused, apparently talking to someone in the room with him. “What’s that, Cherrie? No, thanks, no more for me. Sure, the towels are in the bathroom, love, go right ahead.” His voice was clear and sharp again. “Sorry, Bett, I’ve got company.”

  “Yes, so I heard,” she said quietly, hanging onto the shreds of her pride. “I’m sorry I bothered you. Goodbye.”

  She hung up the receiver and cried as if her heart would break. Cherrie. At least she hadn’t let him hear the torture she was feeling; she’d been very cool, very calm. Oh, God, why had she been stupid enough to trust him? Well, at least she knew the truth now, at least she’d been spared the humiliation of having him snub her in front of the cast. She got over him before, she’d do it again. Of course she would.

  But she felt so weak that it was getting harder just to move around. David was worried about her, and showed it.

  “Look, I’ve got a pal who just opened a medical pratice,” he said when they were safely back in New York and a day away from the opening. “Let me take you to him, okay?”

  She sighed wearily. “Okay,” she agreed, resigned. “If you’ll stop worrying. I think it’s just emotional.”

  “Yes, I know you do,” he muttered. “But I don’t agree.”

  She went to the doctor, and sat motionless, not even breathing, when he began asking more specific questions.

  Her jaw dropped. “You think I might be pregnant?” she burst out.

  “Yes, I do,” he replied gently. “There, there, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t you like children?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Doctor, I’m not married,” she whispered. “I’m the leading player in a show that’s opening on Broadway tomorrow night. I am dead broke, and the man who got me this way just walked out on me. Yes, it’s the end of the world!”

  He calmed her, had his nurse get her a cup of coffee, and spoke gently. “We’ll have the results of the tests tomorrow morning. We’ll know for sure then. Meanwhile, I’m giving you the name of a good obstetrician, just in case. And you’ll need to get a lot of rest and eat plenty of protein.”

  She smiled wanly. “The end of the world,” she murmured, and went out into the waiting room to join David.

  “What did he say?” he asked as they walked down the street.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He stopped dead. “What?”

  “He thinks I’m pregnant,” she repeated dully. She laughed. “Cul just said a very definite goodbye, the play’s hardly started, I have no money… Oh, David, I do have such a knack for fouling up my life. I loved him. That was my only crime, I loved him so much. Damn him!”

  “You’ll have to tell him,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you’ve got a choice in the world.”

  “Oh, he’ll just love knowing what I’ve done,” she grumbled. “Not that he isn’t equally to blame,” she added, remembering his careless attitude toward precautions.

  “He has the right to know.”

  She glanced up at him. “I’m sorry if I’ve destroyed any illusions for you,” she said, feeling oddly guilty. “I’ve loved him since I was eighteen. I couldn’t help it, David.”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” he said, and held her hand protectively. He studied her wan face and smiled. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll even marry you, if he won’t. How’s that? God knows, we’ll starve to death, but maybe the kid can learn to like fish and chips….”

  She turned and hugged him, like a sister. “David, I love you,” she whimpered.

  “None of that,” he grumbled, pushing her gently away. “I said I’d take care of you, and I will, but don’t start making passes. And in your condition! I’m shocked!”

  She laughed delightedly, clinging to his hand. “Well, there’s still the one pale chance that I’m not pregnant,” she said as they walked. “I’ll just cross my fingers.”

  Crossing them didn’t help. The next morning, the doctor’s nurse called to tell her the test results. She was very definitely pregnant.

  Four

  Bett hung up the phone with a strange feeling of calm. Actually hearing it was different from imagining how it would feel. The sense of responsibility that came along with it forced her down into a chair, where she sat and stared blankly at the telephone.

  Pregnant. Her slender hands touched her stomach lightly, protectively, and she looked down at it as if she expected to see the baby through it. She and Cul had created a human being. The thought was awesome. She caught her breath under its impact.

  She’d wanted children ever since the day she met Cul, wanted them with the same wildness she’d felt with wanting him. It was, to her, such a natural part of loving that she accepted the fact of her pregnancy with quiet pride. Surely now he’d want her. Surely he wouldn’t want their child born without a name. The only thing was, how was she going to tell him?

  She sat down heavily on the sofa, her hands at her stomach, wondering at the miracle of life. A tiny smile touched her mouth and she sighed. A baby. After all the years of dreaming about it, it had happened.

  She wondered if Cul would be as overwhelmed as she was. He’d admitted that he loved her, and surely it was true. How could he have been so tender if he hadn’t? But in the same breath she remembered his slow withdrawal from her, the look in his eyes when she’d gotten upset about his going to California. And then, too, there was the girl he’d been talking to the last time she’d phon
ed him. Cherrie.

  Her fingers traced an idle pattern on her now tight jeans. Cherrie. Was she a pickup, or someone he already knew? Oh, heaven, what if he’d been hungering for Cherrie and had taken Bett to bed out of frustration?

  She got up and paced the floor. It had all seemed so simple earlier. She’d call Cul and tell him, and he’d be ecstatic and come rushing back home to marry her. But she was beginning to realize that it was more complicated than that.

  He’d repeated over and over that he didn’t want marriage, that he didn’t want ties. Did she have the right to force him into it? If he didn’t want fatherhood, mightn’t it be better for the baby to just have the mother who wanted and loved him?

  All the worrying made her tired. She crawled into bed and closed her eyes. She had a little more time that she’d begged off from Dick Hamilton, the stage manager. She’d use it to sleep. Tonight was opening night, and too much depended on her role now to blow it over concern for Cul’s reaction. She’d worry abut that later.

  She woke up still worried and undecided. She dressed hurriedly and went to the theater.

  “Feeling better?” Dick asked, smiling at her from his perch on a chair backstage as technicians and prop people scurried around actors getting things set.

  She smiled back. Dick was bald and fiftyish, with a comforting manner. Nobody could ask for a better manager. “Much better,” she lied. “Just a bug.”

  He studied her. “Feel like going on?”

  “On opening night? You’ve got to be kidding!” She laughed.

  “Okay, let’s get to it.”

  Everyone was nervous, even David. He stopped by her dressing room, with a pair of worn green socks in hand. “Feeling okay?” he asked with smiling concern.

  She grinned. “Just great, thanks.”

  “Told Cul yet?”

  The smile faded. “No.”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll be tickled pink,” he assured her. He held up his socks. “My good luck charm. I never go out on opening night without them.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you wash them?”

  He chuckled. “Well, yes, but the sentiment’s there, all the same. What’s yours?”

  She sighed, tugging a tiny sterling silver cross out of her neckline and holding it up. “My mother gave it to me when I started summer stock. I never take it off through a performance.”

  “Actors are nuts.” He chuckled.

  “Eccentric,” she corrected. “Cul always used to carry a turquoise key chain along with him. I suppose we’ve all got our little quirks.”

  “I suppose. Well, break a leg, darling.”

  “I’ll do my best. You, too.”

  He winked and was gone. She sat staring into the mirror as she put on her stage makeup. Her heart hammered as she wondered if Cul would be out there tonight to watch. Surely he wouldn’t miss opening night, even of a revival. If he came, then she could tell him after the show.

  What if it wasn’t a success? She frowned. No, that was defeatist thinking. Of course it would be a success. It was Cul’s play, wasn’t it? Would he bring Cherrie with him? Her heart fell. Damn men everywhere!

  She was putting on the final touches when the door suddenly opened and Cul walked in, bigger than life in his dark evening clothes. The hand mirror she was holding slipped out of her nerveless fingers and hit the table with a clatter.

  “Surprised to see me?” he asked.

  “A little,” she confessed. She wanted to get up and run to him, but the expression on his deeply tanned face was forbidding. “You look well.”

  “California is good for any ailment,” he murmured, studying her carelessly. “Nervous?”

  “I’m always nervous before a performance.” She ran the brush through her hair again, trying to will her hand not to tremble.

  “I tried to ring you this morning. You were out, so I called Janet. She said you were with David.”

  “Yes,” she said noncommittally. “Did you want something?”

  “To wish you luck.”

  “I make my own luck,” she said, feeling suddenly strong and capable. She stared at him in the mirror. “How’s Cherrie? Did you bring her with you?”

  His face hardened. “Bett…”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a scene,” she assured him. Her eyes searched his face.

  “I never thought you were.” He frowned, studying her. “You’re different.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that; it was pure nervous reaction to his odd behavior. But it was too late for regrets. She watched him, trying desperately to find some kind of reaction.

  He lifted an eyebrow over hard green eyes. “You’re what?” he asked.

  “Pregnant.”

  “Yes, I know. It’s in the script.”

  She swallowed. “Cul, it’s not only in the script. Not now.” She searched his face, fascinated by the slow draining of color, by the sudden wild glitter of his eyes. She laughed nervously. “Well, I did mention that we hadn’t taken precautions….”

  His breathing was ragged. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, he seemed to grow taller, broader. His eyes were frightening.

  “Pregnant by whom?” he asked in the coldest tone she’d ever heard.

  “By you, of course,” she faltered. “You know I was a virgin.”

  “Were, yes,” he agreed. “But you’ve been with Hadison a lot since I left.”

  “I never slept with him,” she said softly. “There was only you.”

  He started to laugh, slowly, bitterly. He threw back his head and roared, leaning back against the door, with his hands in his pockets. “So you’re pregnant, and it’s mine.”

  She felt an icy finger run down her spine. “Of course it’s yours.”

  He caught his breath and the expression on his face could have stopped an armed combat veteran. “Well, that’s interesting. A biological miracle.”

  “Miracle?” She stood up slowly, feeling her legs wobble. “We slept together!”

  “Of course we did, darling,” he drawled mockingly. His eyes narrowed, so cold they made her shiver as they ran down her body. “Just as I’ve slept with a dozen other women. But none of them got pregnant, and we never had to worry about precautions.”

  Her lips trembled. He wasn’t making sense.

  “You don’t understand yet?” He lifted his head at an arrogant angle and smiled at her. “If you’re really pregnant, Bett, and this isn’t some wild last-ditch stand to get me in front of a minister, you’ve put your foot in it for good. You see, darling,” he added, with ice dripping from his voice, “I can’t father a child. One of the foremost experts in fertility in the country told me that it would take a miracle for me to get a woman pregnant. I’m sterile.”

  Sterile, sterile, sterile… The word kept echoing in her mind like a litany. He said something else, something insulting, but she wasn’t hearing him anymore. Her eyes were wide and horrified as what he was telling her penetrated the mists. He was telling her that he didn’t believe the child was his. That it couldn’t be his. But she knew for an absolute fact that it was, because there hadn’t been another man!

  “There wasn’t anyone else,” she whispered numbly.

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “And this is one for the record books, isn’t it?” He shouldered away from the door. “But, Bett, if you tell anyone that baby’s mine, I’ll sue you to hell and back. I won’t have my inadequacies paraded in a paternity suit and let the papers have a field day with me.” His eyes glittered dangerously. “Beyond that, I’ll make damned sure you never work again. So keep your lies to yourself, darling.”

  Her mind seemed to freeze. “But the baby…” she whispered shakily.

  “That’s Hadison’s problem. not mine,” he said, turning on his heel. “Let him take care of you.”

  “Cul!” she screamed.

  He glanced at her from the open door, his look so contemptuous that it made her want to hide. “You ne
ver knew, did you, why I wrote so many plays about pregnant women? Or why I walked away from you when you were eighteen? You wanted children so much….” He laughed coldly. “I wish I’d had a camera when I told you. The look on your face was a revelation. Did you think I’d break my neck to marry you, once I knew?”

  She knew her face was white, and she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. She sat down quickly, trying to breathe steadily.

  “Not feeling well?” he asked mockingly. “I’ll call the proud papa. I’m sure he’ll be only too anxious to look after you. Break a leg tonight, Bett. I want you on that stage if you have to drag yourself onto it, understand?”

  He walked out, slamming the door after him. She thought of every foul name she’d ever heard and used them all, with her head between her knees, until the nausea passed. She was devastated, but she wasn’t going to let that animal know it. She’d go on, all right. And she’d give the performance of her life!

  She got to her feet just as David walked in the door, looking pale and ragged around the edges.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I should be asking you,” she replied, and inside she was numb and proud. “Did he hit you?”

  “No. But he might as well have. My God, is he blind?” he asked curtly. “Why won’t he accept the baby?”

  “He doesn’t want to be a father, of course,” she returned smoothly. She couldn’t tell him the truth, she didn’t have the right. She took a deep breath. “David, I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, unless it’s believing that fourteen karat s.o.b.,” he said. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll take care of you. We’ll get married.”

  “No.” She walked close and kissed his cheek gently. “You’re like a big brother to me, and if you’ll think about it, that’s not a bad thing to be. I love him, David. I’ve never stopped and I never will, even though right now I could strangle him.”

  He laughed softly. “Want me to lend you a hand?”

  She leaned against him. “No, never mind. But thank you, all the same.” She closed her eyes. “David, thank you for caring.”