One Night With You (6 page)

"Yes, she did," Desi answered for her infant daughter. "And now she's wet."

Teddie looked almost horrified. "Well, don't just stand there, go change her." He stroked the downy head again. "The poor darling might take a chill. And we can't have that. Go on—" he waved her up the stairs "—I'll get the rest of your groceries and put the car away." He held out his hand for the keys.

"In the car," she told him, moving on up the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

"Haven't we told you a million times how careless that is?" he began to admonish her almost automatically. "Anyone could just walk by and drive it away. And then where would you be?"

"Without a car?" she guessed, teasing him. "Oh, all right, Teddie. You're right. It is careless of me. I won't do it again."

He continued to glare up at her sternly.

"Okay, I'll
try
not to do it again," she promised, and he went out to get the rest of her groceries, muttering something to himself, she was sure, about how careless women should not be allowed to have charge of babies.

Honestly, since Stephanie had been born it was like having her mother—or a nursemaid—living in the apartment downstairs. Not that she was complaining. Having Teddie and, to a lesser extent, his partner Larry living so conveniently close and being so concerned about her and the baby was a godsend at times, and a comfort always.

He had been a bit uncertain at first when she had informed him that she was expecting a baby and asked him, as her landlord, whether or not he would prefer her to move out of her apartment on the top floor of his lovely Victorian. She knew he and Larry had put a lot of work into restoring the gracious old house and thought that they might not be willing to put up with the eventual wear and tear, not to mention noise, that a baby living upstairs would mean.

"Let me talk it over with Larry," he'd said to her when she first approached him.

A few days later she was invited down to their apartment for a drink to discuss the terms of her continued occupancy. The mother-henning had started then, that very night, when she was given fresh orange juice instead of the cocktails they were drinking because, Teddie said, he had read that alcohol was bad for the developing fetus.

In the months to come they had more or less taken charge of her "delicate" health and would have, if she had let them, tried to run her entire life. It was Teddie who helped her paint the bright cartoon circus animals that marched around the walls of the baby's room and it was he, an interior designer who worked at home, who watched for the delivery truck that brought the new, snow-white nursery furniture.

Hardly a week went by when she didn't find another recipe for some vitamin-packed health drink or some informative article on prenatal care stuffed into her mailbox, with the important parts always highlighted with a yellow marker pen.

It was Larry who had fortunately been at home that Sunday morning to drive her to the hospital when she started having labor pains nearly two months early. He had stayed on at the hospital during her surprisingly brief labor and was the one who called her mother with the news that there was another redhead in the family.

So much, in fact, did her two neighbors seem to enjoy their new, self-appointed roles as surrogate fathers that Desi's mother, who had come to stay with her for those first few weeks after the birth, had delicately tried to suggest that perhaps one of them was Stephanie's daddy.

The thought made Desi laugh out loud, jiggling the baby enough to wake her.

"You slept through traffic jams and exercise class and Pavarotti," Desi accused her, smiling fondly as she unstrapped the carrying pouch to lay her child on the wicker changing table, "but
now
you wake up. Why is that, I wonder?" she asked the baby, who continued to stare up, following the sound of her mother's gentle voice with round, wondering eyes.

Jake's ey
es, Desi thought, for the hundred-thousandth time.

They had lost that unfocused blueness common to most newborns within two weeks and were now a dark, Hershey-bar brown. Very definitely her father's eyes; bright and curious and meltingly sweet, in a tiny face that was otherwise a baby-sized replica of Desi's.

Desi sighed, resolving once again to put all thoughts of Jake out of her mind. He was no part of her life now. He had never been, really. But it was hard, so very hard, not to think of the man when she looked at the daughter he had given her.

"Come on, darling," she said, scooping up the now-dry baby. "Let's you and me go get us a little snack. All that exercise made me hungry."

She carried the baby down a short hallway papered with scattered sprigs of blue forget-me-nots and yellow primroses, and into the bright sun-filled kitchen.

Whatever else anyone might say about Teddie, she thought absently as she strapped Stephanie into her infant seat, they couldn't fault his excellent taste. The kitchen was a rather narrow room, more long then wide, high ceilinged like the rest of the apartment, the walls covered in blue-and-white checked gingham. White cotton-lace curtains fluttered at the bay window, and the gleaming golden-oak cabinets were glass fronted with blue forget-me-nots hand painted on the white ceramic knobs. A white wrought-iron chandelier decorated with twining green leaves and blue flowers hung over the table. Not strictly Victorian, but antique nonetheless and perfectly in keeping with the rest of the room.

The furniture and accessories in the apartment were Desi's own. Most of them were neither Victorian nor even truly antique. Somehow, though, her mixture of graceful white wicker, starkly modern chrome and glass, with a few pieces of early Americana and Art Deco thrown in for good measure made a pleasing, if somewhat eclectic, whole.

"Won't she be cold wearing just that?" asked Teddie, dropping the last load of the groceries on the blue-tiled counter.

Desi glanced over her shoulder to where Stephanie lay in her infant seat, staring with wide, fascinated eyes at a Boston fern as it slowly swayed in the warm breeze coming in through the half-open window. The "that" she was wearing was a clean diaper and a tiny neon-yellow T-shirt with the words,
Born to Boogie
splashed across the front. It was a gift from her seventeen-year-old Uncle Court.

"The fresh air is good for her," Desi said, suppressing a smile as Teddie tenderly and somewhat peevishly rearranged the T-shirt, smoothing it down over Stephanie's little round belly.

"She ought to have a sweater on at least."

"Sweaters are something babies wear when mommies—or in this case—Uncle Teddies are cold," Desi informed him as she continued to put away the groceries.

It wasn't really the lack of clothes that Teddie was objecting to. It was the clothes themselves. His baby gift to her had been a very beautiful and far-too-expensive ivory lace christening dress, the sort that only royalty used now. Left to him, Stephanie would have spent these first six weeks of her life lovingly smothered in more of the same. To Teddie's way of thinking, baby girls should be dressed exclusively in pink lace dresses and ruffled bonnets.

"Well, I still think—"

"Teddie." Desi turned from the counter to face him. His concern was appreciated, and she was grateful for everything he had done for her and Stephanie, but sometimes all this unsolicited advice
did
tend to grate on her nerves a little. "Stop being such a worrywart, will you? She's fine."

"Well, you're her mother," he said, making it clear that he thought that particular circumstance to be an unfortunate state of affairs for the child involved.

Lord, now she had hurt his feelings! "Here," she offered, by way of apology, handing him the bottle of formula that had been warming in a pan of hot water. "Feed her for me, will you? I have to check my messages."

There was nothing Teddie seemed to like better than a chance to hold the baby, and Desi left them cooing and gurgling at each other while she went down the hall to her bedroom to check the telephone answering machine.

The phone must have been ringing incessantly all morning, she thought. Her mother with a "just checking" message, the pediatrician's nurse with a reminder about Stephanie's six-week checkup tomorrow, a couple of calls from Joanne at the agency about some possible free-lance assignments and, lastly, one from Eldin Prince.

"Hello, luv. Got a job to discuss with you. Big one," his voice with its distinctly upper-class English accent boomed into the room. "Call me," he ordered, and reeled off a number with a 212 area code. That meant New York. She hadn't known Eldin was in New York.

Desi switched off the recorder and flung herself back onto the blue-and-white patchwork quilt covering her modern brass four-poster. A job, he'd said, a big one. She stared up at the white plaster ceiling, her eyes absently following the detailed dips and swirls that had been so painstakingly restored.

A big one
.

The words echoed through her mind again, and a little thrill of anticipation snaked its way down her spine. She was itching to get back to work. Stephanie was already six weeks old, and because of a sudden case of toxemia, Desi had quit working full-time much earlier than she'd planned, taking on only the occasional free-lance job through Joanne's agency when she was feeling up to it. Part-time work was okay; giving makeup lessons or doing up society ladies before big charity "dos" paid pretty well, and it was interesting—for a while. But it wasn't like working on a movie, especially a movie with Eldin.

A big one
, he'd said.

And if Eldin, who had once referred to an invitation to the White House as a dreary social obligation, was excited enough about a new project to call it big, then it must be very big.

Her head began to whirl with possibilities. He meant big names, probably big money. She searched her mind for any bits of gossip or conversation she had heard in the last few weeks before she had quit working to have Stephanie, but could recall nothing out of the ordinary. There had been the usual tripe about who was sleeping with whom and what names were on their way up or down. She had been more or less out of touch for—what?—almost four months now. Four months was a long time in the movie business. Anything could have happened. She sat up and reached for the phone.

"Sherry-Netherland Hotel," announced the voice on the other end of the telephone wire. "May I help you?"

"Eldin Prince, please." Desi twisted the telephone cord nervously. "I don't know his room number."

Teddie poked his head around the bedroom door while she was on hold. "I've put Stephanie down for her nap," he said, and backed out as Desi silently mouthed her thanks.

"I'm sorry. Mr. Prince's room doesn't answer. May I take a message?"

"Yes, please. Tell him Desi...." She paused, glancing down at her watch. It was almost two-thirty, which made it almost five-thirty on the east coast. "Could you page the bar for me, please?" she asked the operator. Eldin never missed the cocktail hour. It was, he said frequently, the most civilized part of the day.

"Damn you, Eldin," she swore without heat when he came on the line. "How could you leave a message like—"

"Ah, Desi, luv," he interrupted smoothly. "How nice to hear your lovely voice. How's our little mother doing?"

"I'm doing just fine, thanks. Eldin—"

"And the baby? He's well?"

"She. Yes, Stephanie's fine, too. Now what does this message—"

"She. Yes, of course. How forgetful of me. You did send me a picture, didn't you?" he rambled on. He
knew
she was dying to know about this big new project of his. "Couldn't tell much from a photograph, though," he continued. "All eyes and no hair to speak of. Could have been a boy, if you ask me."

"Well, I didn't ask you," she retorted, stung by his last remark. Stephanie was very obviously a girl. "And she does, too, have hair. It's red."

"Another redhead for the world. How nice," he said with a sigh, and Desi could almost see his clipped gray mustache quiver as he did it. "Stephanie did you say her name was? Rather an unusual name, that. Goes well with Weston, though. Good theatrical sound to it."

Something in his voice changed, alerting her. Stephanie wasn't an unusual name at all and he knew it. Eldin was fishing for something.

"I imagine that's why you picked it?" His voice rose on the last word, making it a question.

"I picked it because I like it," she said, shrugging carelessly as if he could see her through the telephone wires. "No special reason."

There was a special reason, though. Stephen was Jake's middle name. She had looked it up. Jacob Stephen Lancing, the father of her child. It had seemed a safe way, at the time, of forging a link, however small and invisible, between father and child. But now she wasn't so sure. Eldin was not the first person who had tried to make something significant out of Stephanie's name.

Teddie and Larry had openly speculated about every man named Stephen that they, or she, knew even remotely. And Court had hinted about a boy named Steve that she had dated once in high school, wondering out loud whether she'd seen him lately.

Everyone, it seemed, was trying to figure out who her baby's father was.

Well, let them try
, she thought rebelliously, fire in her big blue eyes. She wasn't telling.

"About this big job, Eldin," she tried again to change the subject, "what—"

"They're making a movie out of
Devil's Lady
." He announced it in a whisper, as if he didn't want anyone else to overhear them.

Desi lowered her voice automatically. "
Devil's Lady
? But that's..." Words failed her.
Devil's Lady
had been a blockbusting bestseller, a first novel by an unknown author. A stereotypical, grandmotherly little lady of eighty-odd years, as it turned out, who had written the most torrid bestseller of the year. Every major studio was after the movie rights, but so far as Desi knew Dorothea Heller wasn't selling.

Desi had seen her just last week on the "Late Show." A proud and proper-looking woman, the kind who brings to mind old Boston wealth, in a rather plain black dress, demurely high necked and long sleeved, her snowy hair arranged softly around her lined aristocratic face. But she also wore a magnificently gaudy set of the most enormous rubies Desi had ever seen; necklace, earrings and bracelets on both wrists, with several rings on each of her hands.