“Jeanine is gone, for the time being at least,” Mrs. Holbrook volunteered. “I should have known better than to tell her I was expecting you and Mark.”
Carly lowered her eyes for a moment. The phrase “beauty queen” was still lodged in her mind like a nettle, and she wondered why Mark hadn’t spoken of her as a journalist, or even an assistant. It hurt to be defined with a long-defunct pageant title when she’d worked so hard to learn to write. “It’s all right, Mrs. Holbrook,” she said.
“Please,” the woman said gently, holding out a hand to Carly. “Call me Helen. And what do you say we give Mark the slip and have our sandwiches in the garden? He’s on the telephone with his father.”
Carly smiled and nodded, and she and Helen went downstairs together.
The garden turned out to be a terrace lined with budding rosebushes and blooming pink azaleas. There was a glass-topped table with a pink-and-white umbrella and a splendid view of the Golden Gate. A salty breeze blew in from the water, rippling Carly’s hair, and she had a strange sensation of returning home after a long, difficult journey.
“Did you know Mark wrote a play about his marriage and divorce?” she asked when the maid had brought their sandwiches, along with a bone-china tea service, and left again.
“I’m not surprised,” Helen said, and there was a sad expression on her still-beautiful face. “He deals with most things by writing about them.”
Carly had known Helen Holbrook for less than an hour, and yet she felt safe with her. “It’s absolutely brilliant,” she went on. Just recalling the powerful emotions the play had stirred in her almost brought tears to her eyes. “And he’s not going to do anything with it.”
Helen sighed. “Sometimes,” she reflected, “I delude myself that I understand my son. Mostly, though, I accept the fact that he’s a law unto himself.”
Carly nodded. “He gave me the play,” she said. “He told me I could do anything I wanted to with it—that it was mine.”
Helen’s gaze met Carly’s, and in that instant the two women came to an understanding. “Then I guess you’d be within your rights if you took certain obvious steps,” Helen said.
Before Carly could respond, Mark appeared in the gaping French doors that led from an old-fashioned, elegantly furnished parlor. He was carrying a sandwich and a tall glass of ice tea. He winked at Carly, in a tacit reminder of the episode upstairs, bringing a blush to her cheeks.
“Jeanine’s bringing Nathan over in an hour,” he said.
Carly felt like an intruder, but didn’t move from her chair. And she knew then that they hadn’t flown to San Francisco to work on the article, but to come to terms with Mark’s past.
Helen looked extremely uncomfortable. “Jeanine’s been drinking more and more lately,” she finally confided.
Carly was about to make an excuse and retreat to her room when Mark reached out and closed his hand over hers, indicating that he wanted her to stay. She felt a charge go through her that probably registered on the Richter scale.
“And she was drunk when she had the accident,” Mark ventured.
His mother pressed her lips together in a thin line for a long moment, then said, “I think so, but she denies it, of course.”
Mark slammed his fist down on the glass tabletop and bounded out of his chair to stand facing the Bay, his hands gripping the stone wall that bordered the garden. “One of these days she’s going to kill him.”
Carly longed to help, to change things somehow, but of course there was nothing she could do.
Mark finally came back to the table, but he was too restless to sit. He put one hand on Carly’s shoulder and squeezed, and she pressed her fingers over his.
Helen’s lovely blue eyes moved from Carly’s face to her son’s. With a perceptive smile, she rose from her chair. “I think I’ll make myself scarce for a little while,” she announced, and then she vanished.
Carly stood and slipped her arms around Mark’s waist. “I like your mother,” she said.
He kissed her briefly. “So do I, but I don’t think she’s the topic you really want to discuss.”
Carly shook her head, resting her hands on the lapels of his lightweight tweed jacket. “You’re right. I want to know how you met Jeanine, and what made you fall in love with her.”
“I didn’t ‘meet’ Jeanine—I’ve known her all my life,” Mark answered, and there was a hoarse note of resignation in his voice. “We were expected to get married, and we didn’t want to disappoint anybody, so we did.”
“You must have loved her once.”
Mark shook his head. “I didn’t know what love was,” he answered huskily. “Not until Nathan came along. As soon as Jeanine realized how much I cared about our son, she began using him against me.”
I know, Carly wanted to say. I read your play. But she only stood there, close to Mark, her head on his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the capricious Bay.
“I want him back, Carly,” he went on. “Not just for weekends, or holidays or summer vacations. For keeps.”
She wasn’t surprised. “From what you’ve said,” she answered softly, “the chances of that aren’t too good.”
“I can fight her. I can sue for custody.”
Carly turned so that she could look up into Mark’s face. She saw determination there, and fury, and she had a glimmer of what he’d meant when he’d spoken so bitterly of fathers’ rights. Her heart went out to him. “You might lose,” she said.
“Life is full of risks,” he answered.
Carly and Mark were in the parlor when Jeanine returned, bringing Nathan with her.
He was a handsome, serious boy, so like his father that Carly’s heart lurched slightly when she saw him. He was wearing jeans and a red-and-blue striped T-shirt, and there was a cast on his left arm, covered with writing.
He beamed, showing a gap where his two front teeth had been. “Hi, Dad,” he said a little shyly.
Carly noticed the tears in Jeanine’s eyes as she stood behind her son, and felt a moment’s pity for the woman. Perhaps Mark had been telling the truth when he said he’d never loved Jeanine, but Carly knew for certain that Jeanine had once loved him. Maybe she still did.
“Come here,” Mark said huskily, and the child rushed into his arms.
“Have him back by nine o’clock,” Jeanine said crisply, her chin high. “And don’t give him sugar. It makes him hyper.”
Mark ruffled his son’s rich brown hair and nodded at Jeanine, and that was the extent of his civility. Carly was relieved when the other woman left the room.
“I want you to meet somebody,” Mark told the boy, putting an arm around Nathan’s shoulder and gently turning him toward Carly. “This is my—friend, Carly Barnett. Carly, this is Nathan.”
Carly held out her hand in a businesslike way, and Nathan shook it, looking up at her with solemn, luminous eyes.
“Hello,” he said.
Again Carly had that peculiar sensation of déjà vu that she’d had in the garden. She could have sworn she’d met Nathan before. “Hi,” she replied, smiling.
He crinkled his nose. “Mom said you were a queen. I thought you’d be wearing a bathing suit and a crown,” he informed her.
Carly laughed. “I’m a reporter,” she said, spreading her hands. “No queens around here.”
Once Mark had hustled them out the door, they drove to Fisherman’s Wharf in Helen’s sedate Mercedes and watched the street performers. There were mimes and banjo players and even acrobats, all combining to give the place the festive flavor of a medieval fair.
Carly busied herself exploring the little shops for an hour or so, while Mark and Nathan sat quietly on a bench, talking. Occasionally she checked on them, and it twisted her heart that the expressions on their faces were so serious.
Having no real idea what ten-year-old boys liked, Carly selected a
deck of trick cards in a magic shop, along with a bottle of disappearing ink. When Mark and Nathan had had an hour to talk, she joined them.
To her relief, they looked delighted to see her.
“I’m hungry,” Nathan announced.
Mark glanced at Carly in question, and she shook her head. She was still full from lunch.
He bought hot, spicy sausages for himself and Nathan, and they ate as they explored the waterfront. When the wind off the water became chilly, they went back to the car.
“I bought you something,” Carly told Nathan a little shyly, holding the bag from the magic shop out to him.
He reached between the car seats to accept the gift. “Thank you,” he said politely. The bag crackled as he opened it. “Wow! Disappearing ink!”
Mark was pulling the expensive car into traffic. “Just don’t spill it. Your grandmother wouldn’t appreciate that.”
Nathan gave a peal of delighted laughter. “She’d never know, Dad—it would disappear!”
They went to an adventure movie after that, and then to dinner at a rustic place on the waterfront.
By the time the evening was over, Nathan was asleep in the backseat of Helen’s car, the deck of magic cards still clasped in his hand.
Just looking at him made Carly’s heart swell inside her until it seemed to fill her whole chest.
Mark brought the car to a stop in front of a town house on a steep, winding street, and Jeanine appeared on the porch as he awakened his son. “Come on, Buddy,” he said quietly. “It’s time to hit the sack.”
Nathan woke up slowly and gave Carly a sleepy grin. “Would you sign my cast? Please?”
Carly swallowed and nodded, rummaging through her purse until she found a pen. She wrote her name beneath Pauly Tosselli’s, and drew a heart beside it.
“Thanks,” Nathan said. “When you come back, I’ll know a whole bunch of card tricks.”
“Okay,” Carly replied in a small voice.
She waited in the car while Nathan and Mark approached the house. When Mark returned, his expression was strained.
She laid a hand on his arm. “It’s progress, Mark. A few weeks ago Jeanine wouldn’t even let you see him.”
“She smells like she spent the afternoon at the bottom of a bourbon bottle,” he answered tightly.
They drove back through darkened, picturesque streets that could only have belonged to one city.
“You neglected to mention,” Carly ventured teasingly, her hand caressing the leather-upholstered car seat, “that your parents are rolling in money.”
Mark relaxed a little and flashed her a grin. “Darn. I was going to tell you I’d started as a lowly paperboy.”
“Is this the old stuff, or are you nouveau riche?”
“It’s been around a few generations—my great-great-grandfather was a forty-eighter.”
“A what?”
“He got here a year before the other guys.”
Carly laughed. “And more than a hundred years later you’re still carrying on the tradition,” she said.
Mark’s grin broadened and took on a cocky air. “Yeah.”
When they reached the Holbrooks’ house, Mark’s father was home. He was an imposing man with a full head of snow-white hair, a ready smile and a firm handshake.
“So this is the reporter I’ve heard so much about,” he said, winning Carly’s heart with a single sentence. “It’s about time my son had a little competition.”
The four of them had nightcaps together and talked, and then Carly excused herself, wanting to give Mark and his parents some private time.
She almost jumped out of her skin when she came out of the guest bathroom, freshly showered and dressed in an oversize T-shirt, to find Mark sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed. He was wearing a pair of black-and-gray striped pajama bottoms and nothing else.
“Eleanor laid them out for me,” he said a little defensively when Carly giggled. “The least I could do was wear them.”
“Get off my bed, Mr. Holbrook.”
He fell back against the pillows, pretending to pull at an arrow lodged in his chest, and when Carly bent over him to repeat her order, he grabbed her and flung her down on the mattress beside him.
Her squirming struggles ended, as usual, when he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and scooted close to him.
Presently he tore his mouth from hers, his eyes dancing. Rising off the bed, he pulled Carly with him and led her toward the inner door, one finger to his lips.
His room was shadowy, but she could make out pennants on the walls, and framed pictures of athletes. “Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about this?” he whispered.
“What?”
He set her down on the edge of the bed and bent to subdue her with another kiss. “This,” he finally answered long moments later when she was rummy and disoriented. “Sneaking a girl into my room.”
Carly giggled. “Come on. You don’t expect me to believe you never tried that!”
“I tried, and my mother, Helen the Terrible, always caught me. She’d rap on the door and say, ‘This is a raid.’ It always threw cold water on the moment, if you know what I mean.”
Despite their bantering, Carly was trembling with excitement. She sighed when Mark laid her back on the mattress and began raising the T-shirt. Finally he pulled it off over her head, and she lay before him, naked except for a mantle of shimmering moonlight. Her nipples tightened and flushed dark rose under his perusal.
“You’re so beautiful, Carly,” he said, his voice low and husky. His hand came to rest lightly on her belly. “So remarkably beautiful.”
She reached up and clasped her hands behind his head. “Come here and kiss me,” she said, and drew him down to her mouth.
He moved his hands in ever-broadening circles. With his fingers he explored her satiny thighs, then parted them to venture into the tangle of silk.
Carly tried to wriggle farther onto the mattress, but Mark wouldn’t let her. He kissed his way down her body until he was kneeling beside the bed, the undersides of her knees clasped gently in his hands.
“I can’t be quiet,” she choked out in a panic. “Not if you do that.”
“Then don’t be quiet,” he answered, and Carly pressed the corner of a pillow against her mouth to stifle her involuntary cry when he took her into his mouth.
She tossed her head from side to side as he enjoyed her, and she bit down on her lower lip to keep the noise to a minimum.
Mark was ruthless. He brought Carly to an excruciating release that arched her back like a swan’s neck, his hands fondling her breasts as she whimpered, swamped in pleasure, unable to stop the violent spasms of her body.
Finally she collapsed to the mattress, gasping for breath, her skin glistening with perspiration.
Mark wouldn’t let her rest. Seated on the floor now, with his back to the bed, he made her stand over him while he teased and tempted her, always stopping just short of appeasing her.
When she pleaded in broken gasps, he laid her down and came into her in a long, gliding thrust. After a few measured strokes, Carly’s feeble control snapped. She hurled her body upward to meet his as a resonant string was plucked deep inside her, its single note shuddering throughout her body.
But her greatest satisfaction was in hearing Mark groan as her flesh consumed his, drawing on him with primitive greed. He was made to give everything.
“Are you using anything?” he gasped a full fifteen minutes later when they were both coming out of their dazes.
Carly laughed. “Now’s a nice time to think about that, Holbrook. I love it when the man takes responsibility.”
He lifted his head from her breast, and the moonlight caught something strange and somber in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, entangling her fingers
in his hair. “I bought something while we were out.”
“Carly.” The name came out as a rasp.
She stroked the sides of his face. Maybe he hadn’t made up his mind what he felt, but she knew her side of things. She was desperately in love. “What?”
“If I asked you to, would you give me a baby?”
Carly gazed up at him for a long time before she answered. “That depends on whether you planned to walk off with the little dickens or let me have a hand in raising it.”
“We’d raise it together.”
She sighed. “How do we know we wouldn’t want to break up in six months or six years?”
“How does anybody know that, Carly? If everybody had demanded a guarantee, the human race would have died out before the dinosaurs did.”
“I’d need some promises from you, Mark. Some pretty heavy-duty ones.”
He lowered his head to her breast and circled the nipple with his tongue, causing it to jut out in renewed response. “How’s this one, Scoop? As long as you want me, I’ll be around.”
Carly’s eyes were wet. “This is scary,” she said. “A month ago I was minding my own business, getting ready to come out here and start a new job. I’d never met the man who could get past my defenses. Now all of a sudden I’m lying in bed with you and talking babies.”
Mark raised himself to look into her face, and kissed away her tears. “I know what you mean,” he said, his voice a gentle rasp. “It’s kind of like being caught in an avalanche.”
Carly’s laughter caught on a sob. “Such tender, romantic words.”
Just then there was a light knock at the door.
“It’s a raid!” Mark whispered, and jerked the covers up over Carly’s head.
“Good night, son,” his father called from the hallway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HOLBROOKS HELD an impromptu brunch the next day, and Carly was surprised at the variety of people who attended on such short notice. Mark introduced her to a bank president, a congressman and a film agent before she’d even finished her orange juice.
When Jeanine arrived, he excused himself and approached his ex-wife. Carly knew he was going to ask for custody of Nathan, and she crossed her fingers for him and stepped out onto the terrace to look at the Bay. The fainter blue of the sky and the deep navy of the water blended into azure at the horizon, and Carly yearned to hide the sight in her heart and carry it away with her.
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