Gratefully Carly took a seat in a comfortable leather chair. Her hands trembled as she pulled her notebook out of her oversize handbag, along with a pencil. “Hope tells me you’re writing a new play.”
Mark looked confused. “Hope?”
“McCleary. Editor of Californian Viewpoint and your friend from college.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mark replied, and his gaze dropped to Carly’s stomach again. Was the man psychic?
Carly crossed her legs at the knee and smoothed her soft cotton skirt. “A photographer will be along in a few minutes,” she said. “Before we get started, how’s Jeanine doing?”
Although Mark still looked a little off balance, he was obviously recovering. The ghost of a grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “She’s out of the hospital and attending regular AA meetings,” he answered.
“Obviously Nathan is still with you.”
Mark nodded. “He’s had a lot of upheaval in his life during the past few years. Jeanine and I agreed not to jerk him back and forth between her place and mine.”
In the distance the doorbell chimed, and Mark frowned at the sound.
“My photographer,” Carly said brightly, though she begrudged the precious few moments she’d had with Mark and didn’t want to share him.
“Great,” Mark said, and the word was raspy.
Carly had been introduced to Allen Wright, the photographer, that morning in Hope’s office. Besides his talent with a camera, she’d learned, he was a computer whiz.
True to form, Allen barely greeted Carly and Mark before zeroing in on Mark’s computer and looking it over. A handsome young man with brown hair and blue eyes, he turned to grin at the master of the house. “Nice piece of equipment,” he remarked.
Mark was looking at Carly; she could feel the heat and weight of his eyes. That extraordinary brain of his was probably developing one-second X rays of her uterus. “Yeah,” he said pensively. “Great equipment.”
Carly urged Allen to take the candidly posed photos needed for the layout and then shuffled him out the door.
When he was gone, she turned to Mark, her eyes feeling big, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. She was going to have to tell him now but, God help her, she couldn’t find the words.
He made it all unnecessary. “My baby?” he asked in a husky voice, his gaze dropping again to Carly’s stomach.
Her face flushed with color. “Who told you?” she demanded. “My dad? Hope?”
“Nobody had to tell me,” Mark said, shoving splayed fingers through his hair.
Carly picked up her notebook again. “Let’s just get the interview out of the way, okay? Then we can go our separate ways.”
Mark shocked her by wrenching the notebook from her hand and flinging it across the room. “How the hell can you be so calm about this?” he demanded. He was gripping her upper arms now, forcing her to look at him. “Did you think I was just going to say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and read off my entry in Who’s Who for your damned article?”
Carly pulled free. “I told you about the baby, Mark. That’s the end of my obligation.”
“The hell it is,” he grated.
Carly’s old fear that Mark might want to take her child from her when it was born resurfaced in a painful surge. “I’d better send someone else to do the interview,” she said stiffly.
With a harsh sigh, he turned away from her. “I’d rather just get it over with, if it’s all the same to you.”
Legs trembling, Carly made her way back to her chair and sank gratefully into it. Mark picked up her notebook and brought it back to her.
“I want a place in this baby’s life, Carly,” he said.
She nodded briskly, unable to look at his face, composed herself and asked, “How’s the new play going?”
“Well enough,” Mark answered, falling into his own chair. “But I think I prefer nonfiction.”
It was a relief to have things on a professional level again. “Does that mean you’ll be going back into the newspaper business?”
He considered the question for a long moment, then shook his head. “I think I’d like to do books,” he responded finally.
“Starting with?”
“One about what’s happening in China, I think. I’d like to write about how the cultural and political conflicts interweave.”
“Doesn’t the prospect of danger bother you?” Carly asked, only marginally aware that she was the one troubled by the idea of Mark risking life and limb.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “There are a lot of hazards in everyday life,” he reasoned. “I can’t hide in a closet, hoping the sky won’t fall on my head.”
Carly lowered her eyes for a moment, then shifted the conversation back to the craft of writing plays. “How about your Broken Vows?” she asked moderately. “Whatever became of that?”
Mark smiled sadly. “Not a subtle question, Scoop, but I’ll answer it anyway. Edina sold it to a movie producer, and it’s being filmed in Mendocino even as we speak.”
Shock and fury flowed through Carly’s veins like venom, and she scooted forward in her chair. “After all you put me through, Mark Holbrook, you went ahead and sold that play?”
He nodded. “I read it and decided I’d been a jerk about the whole thing.”
Carly recalled Jim Benson saying that Mark would eventually come to exactly that realization. It was too bad, she reflected to herself, that he hadn’t felt any compunction to tell her about his change of heart.
She supposed there was someone else in his life now, and the thought filled her with pain.
“Well,” she said, standing. “I’d better get back to the magazine and start writing.” She offered her hand. “Thanks for the interview.”
* * *
THE MOMENT CARLY was gone, Mark raced up the stairs, down the hallway and into his bedroom suite. In the nursery a painter’s helper was just getting ready to strip the pink-and-white striped paper from the walls.
“Stop!” Mark yelled, making the guy jump in surprise.
He didn’t stay to explain, however. He ran back downstairs to his office and flipped through the phone book until he found the number for Californian Viewpoint.
When the receptionist answered, he identified himself and asked for Hope.
* * *
CARLY SAT AT the computer in her office, her fingers making the keys click with a steady rhythm as she worked on the draft of her article about Mark. A rap at her door interrupted her concentration, and she raised her eyes to see Hope standing in the chasm.
She pulled off her glasses and set them aside on the desk. “I told him,” she said.
Hope nodded, her eyes eager. “And what did he say?”
“Not much, actually. He wants to be part of the baby’s life.”
Hope closed the door. “Didn’t he—well—ask you to dinner or anything?”
Carly gave her boss a wry look. “No, Yenta, he didn’t,” she answered. And then she sighed and sat back in her chair. “This is going to be an odd situation, I can see that right now. It’ll be like being divorced from a man I was never married to in the first place.”
“There isn’t any hope that the two of you might get back together?” The editor looked disappointed, like a kid who’d expected a pony for Christmas and gotten a stick horse instead.
“Even if Mark Holbrook came to me on bended knee,” Carly said with lofty resolution, “I wouldn’t take him back. He was absolutely impossible when I showed that agent his play—there was no reasoning with him. If you think I want a whole lifetime of that, you’re a candidate for group therapy.”
Hope had drawn up a chair, and she leaned forward in it, looking at Carly in amazement. “You gave someone his play, without even asking him about it?”
Carly swallowed. “I know it sounds bad, but you have to consider my motives—
”
“What would you do if you’d written a play and somebody snitched it and passed it on to an agent?”
“I’d have a fit,” Carly answered defensively. “But I’d also forgive that person, especially if I happened to love him.”
Hope let out a sigh that made her dark brown bangs rise from her forehead. By tacit agreement the two women dropped the subject of love. “How did the interview go?”
“It was great,” Carly answered, her gaze drifting toward the window. She could see a bright red trolley car speeding down a hill, looking for all the world as though it would plunge into the Bay. She swallowed hard. “After all of it, he’s letting them produce the play. It’s being made into a movie in Mendocino.”
“So in a way you won,” Hope reasoned, spreading her hands.
“Right,” Carly answered forlornly. “I won.”
At the end of the day Carly went home to her apartment, where she’d been roughing it, waiting for her furniture to arrive. Her new kitten, Zizi, greeted her at the door with a mewling squeak.
Whisking the little bundle of white fur to her face, Carly nuzzled the cat and laughed. There was something about a baby—no matter what species it was—that always lifted her spirits.
She fed Zizi the nutritious dry food the pet store had recommended, then changed her cotton skirt and blouse for cut-off jeans and tank top. She was just opening a can of diet cola when the telephone rang.
He won’t call, Carly lectured herself as she struggled not to lunge for the phone. So don’t get your hopes up.
For all her preparations, her voice was eager when she lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Carly,” Janet greeted her. “I’m calling with big news.”
Carly closed her eyes for a moment, knowing perfectly well what her friend’s announcement would be. She was happy for Janet, of course, but she felt a little left out, too.
“Jim and I are getting married!” Janet bubbled.
Carly smiled. “That’s great,” she said, and she meant it.
“I want you to be my maid of honor, of course.”
Always a bridesmaid, Carly thought. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She generated enthusiasm befitting the situation. “What colors are you going to use?”
“Pink and burgundy,” Janet answered without hesitation.
Carly remembered when she’d first arrived in Portland, and Janet had been talking about getting married. At that time her ideas about the institution had been practical, but hardly romantic. “Have you decided that love isn’t a myth after all?” she asked.
Janet laughed. “Have I ever. Jim’s my man and I’m nuts about him.” She paused. “Speaking of nuts, have you and Mark been able to touch base or anything?”
Carly sighed. “I interviewed him this morning,” she said sadly. “And I told him about the baby.”
All the humor was gone from Janet’s voice. “Don’t tell me he didn’t ask you to marry him on the spot?”
“Of course he didn’t,” Carly replied breezily. “It’s over between Mark and me—has been for a long time.”
“Right,” Janet replied, sounding patently unconvinced. “Now that the two of you are in the same city again, the earthquake people had better keep an eye on the Richter scale.”
Carly shook her head. “It’s really over, Janet,” she insisted. Her words had put a definitive damper on the conversation, and it ended about five minutes later.
Zizi came to amble up Carly’s bare legs and sit down on her stomach. “Reooow,” she said sympathetically.
“Ain’t it the truth?” Carly sighed, sweeping the kitten into one hand as she got back to her feet. She cuddled Zizi for a few moments, then put her down again. There was no sense in moping around the apartment, waiting for a call that was never going to come. She’d go down to the market and pick out some fresh vegetables and fish for supper.
After finding her purse, she left the apartment. She walked to the market, since it was a warm August evening and the sun was still blazing in the sky.
She chose cauliflower, and broccoli and crisp asparagus, then purchased a pound of fresh cod. As she climbed back up the hill to her building, she was filled with a sort of lonely contentment. Maybe her life wasn’t perfect—whose was? But she lived in a city she was growing to love, worked at a job that excited her and, come winter, she would be a card-carrying mother.
Those things were enough. They had to be.
Carly didn’t know whether to be alarmed or encouraged when she saw Mark’s car parked in front of her building. When she went inside, she found him sitting on the bottom step, a big bouquet of pink daisies in his hand.
Her traitorous heart skipped over one beat as he stood, a smile lighting his eyes. He took her grocery bag from her and handed over the flowers.
Carly looked at him with wide, worried eyes. “What do you want?”
“Now there’s a cordial greeting,” he observed, putting a hand to the small of Carly’s back and propelling her gently up the stairs. “I guess I should be grateful you aren’t shooting at me from the roof.”
“If this is about the baby...” Carly began as she stopped in front of her door and rummaged in her purse for the key.
“It’s about you and me,” he said in a husky voice. “Carly, I came here to ask you to marry me.”
She’d forgotten how old-fashioned Mark could be. Obviously he meant to do his grim duty, however distasteful he might find it.
She stepped into the apartment, snatched her groceries from Mark’s arms and shoved the riotously pink daisies at him. “Don’t trouble yourself,” she snapped, and slammed the door in his face.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CARLY CLOSED HER eyes and leaned against the door, Mark’s knock causing the wood to vibrate.
“I’m not leaving until you hear me out, Carly,” he called. “And I’m as stubborn as you are—I can keep this up all night, if necessary!”
“Go away!” Carly cried as the kitten, Zizi, brushed her ankles with its fluffy, weightless body.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mark retorted. “Damn it, let me in—I have things to say to you.”
Carly shook her head, even though there was no one to see the gesture. “Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything you have to tell me.”
He was silent for a moment, and the knocking stopped. “Because inquiring minds want to know,” he finally responded.
Carly’s lips curved into an involuntary smile. She crossed the room to set her grocery bag and purse on the counter by the stove.
The knocking started again. “Carly!”
She sighed. At this rate the neighbors would be summoning the police any second. “All right, all right,” she muttered, returning to the door and sliding the bolt. “Come in!”
Mark stepped inside the spacious studio, looking irritated. He fairly shoved the pink daisies at her. “Here,” he snapped.
“Thanks,” Carly retorted just as shortly, but there was a softening process going on inside. Mark was getting to her in spite of her efforts to keep him at a distance.
She found a cut-glass vase in one of the cupboards and put the flowers into it with water. Then she set them on the sunny windowsill above the sink.
She stiffened when she felt Mark’s hands come to rest, ever so gently, on her shoulders. He said her name hoarsely, and turned her to face him.
“I was wrong.”
Carly jutted out her chin. “You can say that again.”
The merest hint of a smile flickered in his eyes. “But I won’t,” he answered. “Carly, I love you. And I need you.”
“Why?” she asked in an ironic singsong voice. “You’ve got everything—a son, money, a career anyone would envy—why do you want me?”
“Why do I want you?” He
arched one eyebrow, and his voice was gruff. “Because you gave my life a dimension and a perspective it’s never had before or since. With you I was one hundred percent alive, Carly.”
She touched her upper lip with the tip of her tongue, watching Mark with wide eyes. “I know what you mean,” she admitted softly, reluctantly. “I’ve got a great job, and I’ve proven to myself that I can make it on my own. And for all that, something vital is missing.”
Mark’s dark gaze caressed her. “Please,” he said, “give me a chance to prove to you that I’m nothing like that jerk who threw such a fit over a play.”
Without moving at all, he had pulled her to him. She came to rest against his strong chest, her body trembling, and he moved his hands over her back, soothing her. She slipped her arms around his waist, telling him physically what she could not say in words.
His lips moved, warm, against her hair. “I know now that I was scared of what I felt for you, Carly—and then there was getting Nathan back and Jeanine’s accident. I distanced myself from you, thinking that would keep us both from getting hurt, but it didn’t work.” He paused to draw in a deep, ragged breath. “I promise I’ll never do that again, sweetheart. When we have problems in the future, we’ll stand toe-to-toe until they’re worked out—agreed?”
Carly lifted her head and nodded. “Agreed.”
He curved a finger under her chin. “I love you,” he said, and then he lowered his mouth to hers.
Carly gave a little whimper as he kissed her, and her arms went around his neck. The feel of his hard frame against her set her flesh to quivering beneath her clothes.
He rested one of his hands, fingers splayed, against her belly. The muscles there leaped against his palm in response, and Carly smiled as she drew back from the kiss. In a few months he would be able to lay his hand there and feel the movements of their child.
“Marry me,” he said, kissing her neck. He unsnapped her jeans and slid his fingers down over the warm flesh of her abdomen to find the swirl of silk.
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