by Diana Palmer
“I want to grow old with you, too,” she whispered.
“But not right away,” he murmured, easing her body fully onto his. “We’ve got a lot of experimenting to do. Now, first you put this hand, here.” He laughed at her shocked exclamation. “That’s it. Now sit up, darling…my God, what an expression! Sweet angel, didn’t you realize that we could change positions occasionally? Don’t faint just yet, Bett, let me show you…yes! Oh, yes, darling, yes…!”
“But Cul…!” she groaned.
He put his hands on her hips and helped her, and all too soon she realized that he couldn’t hear her. She gave in to the sensations that were clouding her mind and let him teach her.
* * *
Bett couldn’t remember a time in her entire life that she’d been as happy as she was in the days that followed. She moved in with Cul and they were married by a justice of the peace, with Janet and David for witnesses.
She and Cul were inseparable. They shopped together for the baby, they went places together, he sat backstage and watched to make sure she didn’t tire herself during the performances. And the baby grew and grew, like the love that linked her parents.
“I think she’s going to be a baseball team when she grows up,” Bett gasped one night several months later, holding her enormous belly after an especially grueling performance. “Did you see her kick?”
“I did, indeed,” Cul chuckled, hugging her. “Any day now, didn’t the doctor say?”
“Well, judging by what I was feeling during the last two acts, I think it could be any minute now,” Bett gasped as another pain hit her.
Cul went pasty. Janet and David came walking up behind him, gaping at his expression.
“What’s up?” David asked.
“She’s having the baby,” Cul said in a hushed, horrified tone. “Oh, my God, she’s having the baby. What do I do?”
If the pain hadn’t been so intense, Bett would have doubled over laughing. Imagine Cul, always so capable and masterful, standing there asking what to do!
“Hospital,” Bett gasped, holding on to his arm. “Quick, darling!”
“I left the car at home,” Cul burst out.
“Cab,” Bett managed. The pain was blinding.
“We’ll get one,” Janet said, pulling David along. “Bring her to the side door, Cul, we’ll get one if we have to hijack it!”
Cul picked her up, his arms strong and sure despite her weight, and carried her to the side door.
“It’s all right, darling, it’s all right,” he kept repeating as he hurried along. “I’ll get you to the hospital, it’s all right.”
David and Janet had kidnapped a cab, by the look of them, one standing in front of it, the other holding the back door open.
“My God, it’s you!” the big, burly cabdriver grinned, recognizing his companions from the deli. “Is it time?”
“It’s time,” Cul groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake, hurry!”
David and Janet piled into the cab, too.
“Which hospital?” the cabbie asked.
“I—I forget! Something General—” Cul agonized, green eyes staring horrified into the cabbie’s. “Which hospital?” he asked Janet and David.
“We don’t know, either!” Janet burst out, staring at Bett’s contorted face.
“Take us to any hospital!” Cul demanded.
“City…General,” Bett told the cabdriver.
“All right, little lady!” He grinned, pulling out into traffic. “Hold on, now.” And he stood on the accelerator.
“What if we don’t make it in time?” Cul asked. “What will we do?”
“Deliver it ourselves,” the cabbie said.
“Heavens, no!” Janet exclaimed, both hands at her cheeks. “I couldn’t!
“Me, neither,” David groaned.
Cul swallowed. “Well, don’t look at me, I’m a playwright!”
“Let’s all sing,” the cabbie suggested. “Come on, it will help her. Here we go. Row, row, row your boat…!” He sang gaily, gesturing for the others to join in. “Come on, it will relax you!”
So they sang, loudly, as the cabbie took the curb on two wheels, almost right into the back of a police car. Sirens flared, lights flashed.
“No!” Cul groaned.
The cabbie stopped quickly and rolled down the window. “Help!” he yelled as the policeman came back to lean in the window. “This is the very pregnant actress who was in Girl in a Dark Room that’s on Broadway, there’s the guy that wrote it, and the other guy is the male lead. We got a baby girl who wants to be born, and if I don’t make it to City General in about two minutes…”
“You just follow me!” The policeman grinned. “Hang on, honey,” he told Bett. “I’ve seen the play twice already. You were great!”
She tried to thank him, but he was climbing into his squad car and revving up.
“All together now,” the cabbie called over his shoulder as he screeched off in mad pursuit. “Row, row, row your boat…!”
And they rowed and rowed until the hospital emergency room came careering into view.
Eleven
Less than an hour after they got to the hospital, little Kate was born, weighing in at just over eight pounds. Thanks to the natural childbirth classes that Cul and Bett had taken, it wasn’t too difficult a delivery. And the best thing was that Cul had been with her every step of the way. He hadn’t left her until the baby was placed just briefly in his gloved hands and he looked at her with tears in his eyes. Through waves of pain, Bett smiled up at the two of them. My world, she thought.
Cul went out into the waiting room minutes later to find the cabdriver, the policeman, Janet and David, the other man from the Deli, and its waitress, and Mr. Bartholomew and half the cast of Girl in a Dark Room waiting for news.
He burst out laughing as he watched them avidly discussing the play together, and thought, only in New York….
“Well?” Dick Hamilton burst out, rising. “What is it?”
The others turned their attention to Cul. “What is it?” they echoed.
“The best production of my life,” he said with a grin. “Kathryn Helene McCullough. She weighs eight pounds, and she’s twenty inches long, and she has all her fingers and toes!”
Congratulations went the rounds. The cabdriver produced a box of pink-wrapped cigars from somewhere and presented them to Cul, who dispensed them all around.
“Coffee’s on me!” Cul announced and led the way to the hot drinks machine. Well, he reasoned, the policeman couldn’t drink on duty, after all, and where would he get a bottle of champagne in a hospital? So little Kate was toasted with black coffee and hot chocolate.
Later, sitting in a chair by Bett’s bed, Cul watched the tiny infant suckle at her mother’s breast with tears in his eyes.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, brushing his fingers lightly over the tiny head with its scattering of blond hair. “So beautiful.”
Bett looked up at him and smiled wearily. “Isn’t she precious?” she whispered. “Imagine. We did that.”
He nodded, sighing contentedly. “The waiting room was full,” he told her. “I passed out cigars.”
“Wherever did you get them?” she asked.
“The cabdriver. Mr. Bartholomew came, too, and I phoned your parents. They’re flying up.”
“Is mother well enough?” she asked, concerned.
“Your mother has been taking her medicine, for a change,” Cul replied, “and your father says she’s better than ever. He expects that he’s going to die of exhaustion any day now from keeping up with her renewed ardor.” Bett actually blushed. It was hard to think about her parents doing that sort of thing.
“Well, they were like us once,” he reminded her. “Young, holding their firstborn in their arms.” He studied the baby at her breast. “I’m glad you decided to do that,” he added. “Somehow, a bottle isn’t quite the same.”
“The doctor says that babies get a lot of immunity from nursing,” she said.
“I thought that might give little Kate a head start.”
“And besides all that,” he said with a tender light in his eyes, “it’s exquisite to watch.”
She smiled, not offended. “Did you thank the cabdriver and the policeman for getting us here in time?”
“I’m buying them both breakfast. Along with David and Janet. At the deli tomorrow morning,” he grinned. “You’ll get your breakfast here and so will baby.”
“You’re a nice man, Mr. McCullough. I’m glad I married you.”
He bent and kissed her dry lips softly. “That works both ways. She’s beautiful. Like her mama.”
She searched his eyes quietly, and wondered if he’d truly accepted that she was his daughter…wondered if he had any lingering doubts.
He smoothed away the frown between her eyes. “I was wondering,” he murmured.
“Wondering what?” she asked softly.
He glanced down at the baby against her creamy skin. “Well, they said once would be impossible, and it wasn’t. So I wondered… Do you suppose we might try again and see if we could make a boy next time, so that we’d have a matched set?” he asked with a faint grin.
Her eyes misted again. “Oh, Cul, I love you.”
He bent to her warm mouth. “I love you, too.” He tasted tears on her mouth when he kissed her, and smiled against her warm lips. Now, finally, she believed him.
He wasn’t totally convinced. It was hard to accept, that a specialist could be wrong about his sterility. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine Bett sleeping with any other man. She had a basic honesty that would have insisted she tell him, if that had been the case. But she was certain the baby was Cul’s and he accepted it at face value. Once, he even considered having the fertility test done again, but that would prove he didn’t believe Bett. It would raise more barriers, and he didn’t want that. So he simply accepted. And settled into family life with a flair.
Over a year passed, and Cul’s screenplay had just gone into full production. He was away for a couple of months on and off, seeing that things were going all right. And Bett was still starring on Broadway in Girl in a Dark Room. Janet and David were engaged and soon to be married, and baby Kate had her own private nanny who kept her backstage while mama played to a packed audience.
It was spring, and everything was bursting into blossom, and Bett waited for Cul to come home with a new and mysterious radiance.
“You look more beautiful every day,” Cul said when she ran to meet him at the airport. His green eyes wandered over her possessively, lovingly. “Miss me?”
“Terriby.” She reached up and kissed him warmly, doing sensuous things to his mouth with hers until she felt the telltale tremble in his tall, strong body. “Baby Kate is visiting grandma and grandpa in their hotel room at the Roosevelt. Nanny is off for the day. Our housekeeper finished at noon and went home. And I,” she breathed into his mouth, “have this overpowering urge to make passionate love on the living room carpet with all the windows open.”
“Bett, for God’s sake,” he groaned laughingly, his body making emphatic statements about his own needs.
“You do seem to be interested.” She grinned. “Come home with me, darling,” she vamped.
“I hope we have time to get there,” he said uncomfortably, clearing his throat as he steered her quickly out of the terminal.
It had been several weeks since they’d had any length of time alone, and they reacted to it with a sweeping passion. She couldn’t remember a time when they’d been so desperate for each other. Her teasing remark about the living-room carpet became reality the minute they got into the apartment, because they couldn’t make it any farther.
He lowered her to the floor and crushed her into the carpeting with the hard weight of his body, his mouth devouring hers in the stillness as he kissed her.
“I can’t wait,” he whispered huskily. “I’m sorry, darling, I’ll make it up to you, but I can’t…hold it.”
“Take me,” she whispered back, her eyes feverish, her hands holding him, helping him as he got only the necessary things out of his way before he pushed roughly down against her.
He caught his breath at the ease of his path, at the quick, hard rhythm that her body quickly caught up and followed. Jungle drums, she thought, looking into the forest of his eyes. Jungle drums, throbbing, throbbing….
Her voice broke as he caught her hips with his hands and jerked them upward, his body hard and heavy as it surged downward, his groan throbbing like his body, like her own as they moved fiercely together and felt the fever burst over them both at once.
She was aware of the dampness of his body, the softness of his voice at her ear, asking if she was all right, if he’d hurt her.
“Hurt me?” she laughed softly. “Oh, darling!”
He lifted his head, trembling, and looked down into her dark, soft eyes, and then at her body, which was still half clothed. “Well, my God, talk about minute men…” He laughed at his own urgency.
“Desperation,” she grinned wickedly. “Now carry me to bed and let’s do it properly. If you’re still able?” she teased.
“I’ll show you who’s able,” he replied with pure male malice, and carried her into the bedroom.”
He tossed her on the bed and proved his stamina in ways that left her gasping and trembling all over before he finally gave her the fulfillment she eventually begged him for.
“You were making some insulting remark about my stamina, I believe?” he murmured an hour later, leaning over her propped on an elbow, covered with sweat.
She could just barely breathe. “I’m dead,” she told him. “I know I am. No one could have lived through that.”
He chuckled, brushing her mouth with his. “This is what comes of spending two weeks away from you. I was half dead with hunger.”
“Good,” she laughed. “Now I know you weren’t indulging yourself with those little starlets.”
“As if one of them could ever satisfy me.” He chuckled at the old joke between them. “Feeling all right?”
“If you only knew,” she sighed. She lay back, full of dreams. She had something to tell him that was so sweet, she just closed her eyes and savored it for several long moments.
“You’re very quiet,” he murmured, tracing her mouth with his finger.
She opened her eyes and looked up into his, with all her heart showing. “Darling,” she began slowly, touching the damp mat of hair over his hard chest, “do you remember asking me once if we could make a boy?”
He sighed gently. “Yes. But, sweet, we can always adopt one,” he told her, and there was no bitterness in his tone now, no anger. He smiled. “One miracle in a lifetime is enough, and you know how I adore our Kate. I wouldn’t trade her for a boy.”
“That isn’t quite what I meant.” She tugged at a curling wisp of dark blond hair. “I went to see my doctor today.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. His taut body lay frozen beside her as he waited. “And?”
Her eyes warmed, bursting with color and light and feeling. “Oh, Cul, can’t you guess?” she whispered. “Can’t you? I’m pregnant!”
He opened his mouth to speak, and had to swallow first. He jerked her close in his arms to hold her bruisingly against his warm bareness, his head bent over hers, his entire body trembling with mingled delight and love. Because now there were no doubts left, not one. Their marriage had been heaven on earth, so close to one another that a night’s separation was torment.
Tears were burning her own eyes and she nuzzled her damp face into his warm throat. “It must be the water,” she laughed brokenly, clinging. “Either that, or we have an angel sitting on our shoulders. Cul, we really must send your doctor a birth announcement this time!”
“Yes, I should think so,” he whispered huskily. “Darling, I love you! Adore you!”
“I love you, too,” she breathed at his ear. “And if you ever needed proof, you have it now.”
His mouth searched f
or hers and kissed it warmly, tasting tears. “Didn’t you think Kate’s green eyes were proof enough?” he murmured delightedly. He lifted his head, and his eyes cherished her. “I love you. That, for me, means trust. The day I realized what you meant to me was the end of all my doubts.”
She touched his hard face with loving hands, smiling up at him. “Sometimes I thought you would never admit it,” she confessed. “There always seemed to be something missing, those first days we were lovers.”
“But I loved you even then,” he said. “I’d gotten so accustomed to being alone that I wasn’t sure I could let another person into my life. Especially a woman. But you’ll never know how it was in California.”
She pinched him. “Yes, with that Cherrie person…”
He nibbled her lower lip. “I never told you, did I, that Cherrie and her husband owned the beach house where I was staying? Bob and I went to school together.”
Her mouth fell open. “What?”
He pushed her back down again, grinning. “Men have to have a few secrets.” He smoothed her tumbled red-gold hair away from her face. “Did you know you have freckles right there?” He kissed the bridge of her nose.
“Stop that. How can I argue with you when you’re kissing me?” she muttered.
“I don’t want to argue.”
“But you let me think you were having a red-hot affair!” she persisted.
He lifted her palm to his warm mouth. “I was trying to run you off. You had such a hold on me, Bett. Those long, exquisite nights in my bed had left me grieving for you. I loved you, so desperately. I didn’t rush back for opening night to see how my play was going to fare, I rushed back to see you.”
