“Did you talk to Mark?” the agent asked immediately.
Carly sat on the corner of her desk, the telephone receiver pressed to her ear. “No,” she said. “I shouldn’t have given you the play without talking to Mark first. I want you to send it back.”
There was a short, stunned silence on the other end of the line. “Ms. Barnett, this is a very special property, and I could have half a dozen producers fighting over it by nightfall.”
“I just wanted your opinion, remember?” Carly said, pulling her reading glasses off and setting them aside on the desk with a clatter. “Please. Just express it back to me—”
“I can’t do that, I’m afraid. I’m going to call Mark myself. We’re old friends—maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
Carly fairly leaped off the desk. “You can’t do that,” she cried in a frantic whisper. “He’ll be furious—”
Edina sighed indulgently. “Mark is quick-tempered, I’ll give you that. But once he’s had time to think—”
“Send back the manuscript!” Carly broke in.
“If Mark asks me to—personally—I will.”
Rage and panic filled Carly as the door of her office opened and Mark peered around it. “Ready to go out and talk to the man in the street?” he asked.
“Goodbye,” Carly said into the receiver, and slammed it down.
Mark’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Who was that?”
Carly tried to smile, and failed. She wanted to tell Mark the truth, but she was afraid.
They went back to work after that, and for the next three days, they were busy. By the time Mark was ready to draft the first version of the article, Carly was sure they’d talked to every divorced father in Portland.
Mark worked on the computer on his desk at home, and the keys clicked rapidly as his fingers raced to keep up with his thoughts. Carly stood behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder, reading the little words as fast as they appeared on the screen.
“Biased,” she commented, when he finally reared back in his chair and pushed the Print button. “Some of these guys are card-carrying sewer rats and you know it. I could go to their wives and get an entirely different story!”
Mark turned far enough in his chair to give Carly a challenging look. “So do it,” he said.
Carly pulled her notebook from her purse and reached for the phone. “Okay, I will,” she replied, already punching out a number. She’d have to do some investigating to reach most of the ex-wives of the men she and Mark had interviewed, but she had information on a few.
When Carly arrived home late the following night, Janet brought her an express package that had been left with her by the building manager. Carly opened it right there in the hallway and found Mark’s play inside.
Unconsciously she raised one hand to her heart in a gesture of relief.
Janet looked horrified. “You mean you haven’t told him?”
“We’ve been so busy with the assignment—”
“Thin ice,” Janet said as Carly left her to walk down the hallway to her own door. “You’re walking on thin ice.”
In the privacy of her own apartment, Carly stood holding the manuscript, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Despite everything she’d said about telling Mark, Edina had returned the play. That meant she’d changed her mind—didn’t it?
She laid the play down on the table and went to the desk. As usual, she had several messages. Carly played them, steeling herself against an angry call from Mark or some kind of threat from Edina, but all the messages were from women she’d been trying to reach for interviews.
In calling them back and taking notes, Carly was able to forget her outstanding problem for a while. She wrote rapidly, nodding to herself as the divorced mothers told stories about the former husbands she and Mark had interviewed about fathers’ rights.
Late that night when she’d roughed in the outline for the first draft of her article, Carly held Mark’s play in both hands for a moment, then dropped it into her desk drawer. Out of sight, out of mind, she thought with a pang of guilt.
She spent the next day interviewing, and the day after that squirreled away in her office, writing. She had just turned the finished product, an article rebutting Mark’s, in to Allison when she was called to Mr. Clark’s office.
Filled with nervous excitement, Carly obeyed the summons.
After telling her to sit, Mr. Clark launched right into the assignment. There was a new shelter for battered women opening in the city, and the director had some innovative ideas. He wanted Carly to get an interview.
Carly fairly danced out of his office. Here was her chance to really show what she could do. Carly Barnett, girl reporter, she thought with a happy grin. She stopped by Emmeline’s desk.
“Is Mark—Mr. Holbrook in yet?”
Emmeline shook her head, seemingly unconcerned. “His hours are flexible,” she said. “He pretty much sets them himself.”
Carly sighed and nodded, then vanished into her office. She had work to do.
* * *
MARK STOOD GRIPPING the telephone receiver, a glass of orange juice in his free hand, his body rigid with shock.
“So you see,” Edina Peters finished up, “I really think it’s time you stopped hiding this jewel of a play in your desk drawer and let me sell it. It could be adapted for the screen in five minutes, and we’re talking major money here, Mark.”
His muscles finally thawed, and he flung the orange juice at the fireplace. Glass shattered against brick. But his voice was deadly calm. “Carly showed you the play,” he said like a robot, even though Edina had already told him that. He guessed he was hoping the agent would say no, she’d made a mistake, it had been someone else.
“She meant well,” Edina said. “Afterwards she had an attack of conscience and begged me to send it back to her. I did—after making a few copies.”
Mark closed his eyes tightly. His stomach twisted inside him, and an ache pounded at his nape. Carly, he thought, and the name splintered against his spirit the way the glass had against the fireplace.
“Mark?” Edina prompted.
He felt sick. He forced himself to speak evenly, to relax his grip on the receiver. “I’m here, Edina,” he rasped.
“Will you let me sell it?”
My guts are in that play, he thought. It’s an open door to my soul. “No,” he answered.
“But—”
“The discussion is over,” he broke in. And then he hung up the telephone with only a moderate amount of force.
He’d planned to work at home that day on a human-interest piece he and Clark had been discussing, but now that he knew what Carly had done, he could only think of one thing—confronting her. Resolute, he strode into the bathroom, stripped off the shorts and T-shirt he’d worn for a late-morning run and showered.
He dressed hastily, and drove away from the house with his tires screeching on the asphalt. He shouldn’t have trusted Carly, he thought as he sped down the freeway. He shouldn’t have loved her.
He jammed one hand through his hair and cursed when he heard a siren behind him, then glanced into his rearview mirror. A silver-blue light whirled on top of the squad car—sure enough, he was the man the officer wanted to see.
Filled with quiet rage, Mark pulled over to the side of the road and waited.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CARLY HAD BEEN down in the morgue in the basement of the newspaper building, reading up on past articles about shelters for battered women, and her heart did a little leap when the doors whisked open in the lobby to reveal Mark.
Her instant smile faded when their eyes linked, however, and she knew in that moment that she’d waited too long to tell him about the play. She wanted to explain, but when she tried to speak, no sound came out of her mouth.
Mark jabbed a button on the panel and the do
ors closed. The look in his eyes was cold and remote. “I guess I didn’t lose those bets with my buddies after all,” he said, his voice as rough as gravel in a rusty can. “I wasn’t in love—just lust.”
Carly sagged against the wall of the elevator, her hands gripping the stainless-steel railing. “That was cruel,” she said. “I had a reason for what I did.”
He struck another button, and the elevator stopped where it was. His hands came to rest against the wall on either side of Carly’s head, and his eyes bored into hers. “Oh?” he rasped.
She swallowed, wanting to duck beneath his arm and start the elevator going again, but unable to move. She was like a sparrow gazing into the eyes of a cobra. “I wanted a professional opinion,” she managed to say. “I was h-hoping to persuade you to let Broken Vows be produced.”
Mark ran the tip of one index finger down the V of her blouse in a impudent caress. “And make lots of money? The joke’s on you, baby—I already have a fortune. And until an hour ago I would have given you anything you wanted.”
Carly’s eyes stung with tears of humiliation and frustration. “Will you stop being a melodramatic bastard and listen to me, please? I don’t give a damn about your money—I never did! I wanted to see the play produced because something that good should be—”
“Shared with the world?” he interrupted acidly, arching one eyebrow. “Come on, Carly—that’s a cliché.”
“I’m not the one who said it,” she pointed out, battling for composure. “You did.”
He turned away, touched another button and set the elevator moving again. “Goodbye, Carly,” he said. His broad shoulders barred her from him like a high, impenetrable wall, and when the doors opened on their floor, he stepped out.
Carly couldn’t move, she was so filled with pain. And she let the elevator go all the way back to the lobby before she pressed the proper button. Reaching her floor, she hurried into her office, glancing neither right nor left, and closed the door.
She was sitting behind her desk, still trying to pull herself together, when Emmeline buzzed her and announced, with a question in her voice, that Helen Holbrook was on the line.
“Hello, Helen,” Carly greeted Mark’s mother sadly, not knowing what to expect. Despite their conversation in the garden that day in San Francisco, the woman was probably furious with her, and Carly steeled herself to be harangued.
“Edina told me about the play,” Helen said, her voice calm. “She said Mark wasn’t pleased that you’d shown it to her.”
Recalling the way he’d looked at her in the elevator, the cold, bitter way he’d spoken, Carly was anguished. “I’d say that was an understatement,” she got out. “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with me now.”
Helen sighed. “Mark can be positively insufferable. He’s hardheaded, just like his father.”
A despairing smile tugged at the corners of Carly’s mouth. “You’re being very kind,” she said, “but there’s something else you’re trying to tell me, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Helen confessed in a rush. “Carly, something has happened, and I don’t want Mark to be told about it over the telephone. I must ask you to talk to him for me.”
Images of another automobile accident, with Nathan seriously hurt, filled Carly’s mind with garish sounds and colors. “What is it?” she whispered.
“Jeanine has crashed her car again,” Helen said sadly. “Nathan wasn’t with her, thank God, but naturally he’s very upset.”
Carly’s forehead was resting in her hand. “And Jeanine?”
“She’s in a coma, Carly, and not expected to live.”
Carly squeezed her eyes closed, remembering the beautiful auburn-haired woman who had once been Mark’s wife. “My God.”
“Jeanine has her parents, but Nathan needs Mark. Carly, could you please go to him and tell him, as gently as you can, what’s happened?”
After swallowing hard, she nodded and said, “Yes.” Her heart twisted inside her to think how frightened Nathan must be. “Yes, Helen, I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you,” Helen replied with tears in her voice. Then she added, “I’ll try to reason with Mark while he’s here. He loves you, and he’s an idiot if he throws away what you’ve got together.”
Carly thought of the look she’d seen in Mark’s eyes and grieved. She knew that as far as he was concerned, their relationship was over. “Thanks,” she said softly. Then the two women said their goodbyes and hung up.
Carly found Mark in his office, standing at the window and glaring out at the city. His name sounded hoarse when she said it.
He turned to glower at her.
“Mark, there’s been an accident,” she said in measured tones. She saw the fear leap in his eyes and added quickly, “Nathan wasn’t hurt—it’s Jeanine. She’s—she’s not expected to live.”
The color drained out of Mark’s face, and Carly longed to put her arms around him, but she didn’t dare. In his mood, he would probably push her away, and she knew she couldn’t bear that. “Dear God,” he said, and turned around to punch out a number on his telephone.
Carly slipped out of the office and closed the door.
Mark left five minutes later without saying goodbye, and Carly went into the women’s restroom and splashed cold water on her face until she was sure she wouldn’t cry. Then she went back to work.
When quitting time came, the relief was almost overwhelming. She stuffed her files and notes into her briefcase, snatched up her purse and drove home in a daze. When she pulled into her parking space in the apartment lot, she was ashamed to realize the drive had passed without her noticing.
She went to her apartment without stopping for the mail or a word with Janet, dropped all her things just inside the door and then raced into her room, flung herself down on the bed and sobbed.
After a while, though, she began to think that if Mark was so easily angered, so lacking in understanding or compassion, she didn’t want him anyway.
At least, that was what she told herself. Inside, she felt raw and broken, as though a part of her had been torn away. Carly showered, put on shorts and a summer top and went downstairs to exercise.
When she got back to her apartment, the phone was ringing. Carly made a lunge for it and gasped out an anxious hello, praying the caller was Mark. That he’d come to his senses.
She was both disappointed and relieved to hear her father’s voice. “Hello, Carly.”
Instantly Carly wanted to start blubbering again, but she held herself in check. Her dad was hundreds of miles away, and there was nothing to be gained by dragging him into her problems. “Hi, Dad. What’s up?”
“I just thought I’d tell you that I liked that piece you sent me about the food contest. That was really good reporting.”
In spite of everything, Carly had to smile. Don Barnett wasn’t interested in soufflés and coffee cakes, she knew that. He called purely because he cared. “Thanks, Dad. I’m expecting a Pulitzer at the very least.”
He chuckled. “I never was very good at coming up with excuses. I want to know what’s the matter, and don’t you dare say ‘nothing.’”
Carly let out a ragged sigh. “I finally fell head over heels and it didn’t work out.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work out?” her dad demanded. “What kind of lamebrain would throw away a chance to make a life with you?”
“One named Mark Holbrook.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” Carly answered, making a joke to keep from crying. “You can eat a banana split in my honor. I’d like to drown my sorrows in junk food, but if I do, none of my clothes will fit.”
“Maybe you should just get on a plane and come back here, sweetheart. Ryerton may not be a metropolis, but we do have a newspaper.”
Carly was already shaking her head. “No way, Dad—I’m
standing my ground. I have as much right to live in Portland and work at the Times as Mark does.”
“Okay, then I’ll come out there. I’ll black his eyes for him.”
Carly smiled at the images that came to her mind, then remembered that Jeanine was lying in a hospital, near death, and was solemn again. “I’m okay,” she insisted. “If you want to come out and visit, terrific. But you’re not blacking anybody’s eyes.”
“Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll just get on an airplane and come out there.”
“That would be great, Dad,” Carly said, knowing her father wouldn’t leave Kansas except under the most dire circumstances. He hadn’t been on a plane in twenty years.
Five minutes later, when Carly hung up, she dialed the Holbrooks’ number in San Francisco, and Mark’s father answered.
“Hello,” he said when she’d introduced herself, and there was a cool note in his voice.
Carly wondered what Mark had told him about her. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to know if there was any news about Jeanine.”
Mr. Holbrook sighed. “She’s taken a turn for the better,” he said. “The doctors are pretty sure she’ll survive, though how long it will take her to recover completely is anybody’s guess.” His voice was a degree or two warmer now. “Shall I ask Mark to call you when he comes in, Carly?”
She shook her head, forgetting for a moment that Mr. Holbrook couldn’t see her. “No!” she said too quickly. She paused, cleared her throat and tried to speak in a more moderate tone. “Please don’t mention me to Mark at all.”
“But—”
“Please, Mr. Holbrook. It will only upset him, and he needs to be able to concentrate on helping Nathan right now.”
Mark’s father didn’t agree or disagree; he simply asked Carly to take care of herself and said goodbye.
* * *
JEANINE WAS LYING in the intensive care unit, tubes running into her bruised and battered body, her head bandaged. She opened her eyes when Mark took her hand, and her fingers tightened around his.
“Nathan...?” she managed to rasp.
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