His One-Night Mistress

by Sandra Field

  “A woman of immoderate appetites.”

  She leaned over and kissed him with sensuous pleasure. “Dumplings, lager and you.”

  “In that order?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Is this how you always relax after a concert?”

  She laughed. “I usually go back to my hotel room and pace the floor, agonizing over all the mistakes I made. This is much more fun.”

  Pink Floyd throbbed through the smoky air. “It ain’t exactly Brahms.”

  “We could dance again.”

  Seth ordered dessert and a bottle of Riesling, and this time took Lia in his arms on the dance floor. They were the only couple in formal clothes in the entire club and he, too, was having fun.

  Not a word his parents had understood.

  The level of Riesling sank in the bottle, Lia drinking most of it. The wine loosened her tongue. She talked about the ups and downs of her career and the costs to her personal life; she described some of the hilarious contretemps of working with autocratic conductors and temperamental pianists; noticeably, she didn’t talk about Marise. She also flagged the waiter and ordered a double crème de menthe, a choice that made Seth shudder. He, by now, was drinking coffee. One of them ought to stay sober, he thought, amused that she simply became wittier as her words began, very slightly, to slur. “Lia,” he said finally, “I think I should take you back to your hotel. Ivor wouldn’t approve of the lateness of the hour.”

  “I’m flying to Hamburg at noon.”

  “You and your hangover.”

  She blinked at him. “Am I drunk?”

  “A reasonable facsimile thereof.”

  “Don’t use such big words,” she said querulously.

  “Okay. You’re pretty close to plastered.”

  “It’s all your fault.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have no idea what to do about you.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Seth said wryly.

  She gave him a big smile. “You’re really cute, though.”

  Lia, sober, would never use a word like cute. “Thank you,” Seth said solemnly.

  “But I sure don’t like your family.” She swallowed the last of the sticky green liqueur, licking the rim of the glass. “Every now and then it hits me, what your mother did. The pain she caused because she was afraid I’d sink my sharp little claws into her money…aren’t you absolutely furious with her?”

  “Yes,” said Seth, not liking the way the conversation had turned.

  “Yes,” Lia mimicked. “Is that all you can say?”

  “You think I’m totally unfeeling?” Seth said violently. “I can hardly bear to think about it. About you, alone with a new baby, thinking I didn’t even care enough to pick up the phone—for God’s sake, Lia, give me a break.”

  Lia looked at him owlishly. “I pushed a button there.”

  Seth scowled at her. “You’re cut off. Black coffee from now on.”

  “Ugh—at this time of night?”

  “In that case, it’s time to leave.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m in the mood to seduce you. ’Cause the only time I’m not confused is when we’re in bed together.”

  “That goes for me, too.”

  “I love what we do in bed,” she said chirpily.

  Their neighbors at the next table were unabashedly listening. “So do I,” said Seth.

  “Why are we sitting here, then?”

  Seth dealt with the bill and got up, tucking her shawl around her shoulders. She lurched to her feet. “Ouch,” she said, “I wish they’d turn off the strobes, they’re making me dizzy.”

  Seth, wisely, didn’t suggest that lager, Riesling and crème de menthe might have some connection to dizziness. He put an arm firmly around Lia’s waist, steered her toward the door and quickly flagged a taxi; she was in no shape to walk. In the back seat, she put her head on his shoulder and fell instantly asleep.

  None of the malleable women he’d dated had ever drunk too much. Neither had they played their guts out in front of two thousand people; or made love with Lia’s generosity and wild abandon.

  By the time he got Lia to her hotel room, she was paper-pale. “I sh—shouldn’t have had the crème de menthe,” she muttered and headed for the bathroom. Seth turned down the bed, found her deliciously lacy nightgown under the pillow and briefly held it to his face. He wanted to see her wearing it; then strip it from her body. But tonight wasn’t the night.

  When she next made love with him, she was going to be wide-awake and fully aware of what she was doing.

  He wrote her a quick note, propping it up on the bedside table. Then she emerged from the bathroom, sagged into his arms and said muzzily, “Your eyes are the same color as crème de menthe. Turn off the light and come to bed with me.”

  Seth made a soothing and noncommittal noise in his throat as he pulled her evening dress over her head. Her silk underwear made his head swim; swiftly he unclasped her bra and slipped the nightgown on. As he eased her down on the bed, he noticed with huge tenderness that her dark lashes were already drifting to her cheeks. After peeling off her stockings, he covered her with the blanket. “Sleep well, darling Lia,” he said.

  But Lia was already asleep.

  At nine o’clock the next morning, a knock came at Lia’s door. She peered through the peephole, already knowing who it would be. “Good morning, Seth,” she said pleasantly.

  His jaw tight, he thrust a newspaper at her. “Have you seen this?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry about it. It happened once before and the fuss died down in no time.”

  On the front page of the tabloid, beneath a color photo of Rosnikov kissing Lia, were inch-tall headlines insinuating that the cellist was the father of Lia’s child. “Don’t worry about it?” Seth snarled. “My daughter’s being subjected to the gutter press and all you can say is don’t worry about it?”

  “This is Austria. Not New York. No one at home will see it,” Lia said reasonably, wishing her headache would go away. Not that she didn’t deserve the headache. She was never going near crème de menthe again.

  Trying to change the subject, she added, “The reviews of the concert were good, weren’t they?”

  “Lia, I won’t tolerate this kind of gossip about Marise.”

  “Why are you so upset? It’s my problem, not yours.”

  He felt as though she’d punched him, hard. “Marise is my daughter, too—don’t you think it’s about time you admitted that? I’m going to meet her, Lia. Whether you want me to or not.” Allan, his father, might have allowed Eleonore to walk all over him. He, Seth, wasn’t about to let Lia do the same. Marise was too important. Too essential, he thought, and wondered where that particular word had come from.

  “We’ll see,” Lia said, her jaw a stubborn jut.

  “Don’t try and stop me,” he said very quietly. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “You’re forgetting that Marise has a say here,” Lia pointed out. Poking the tabloid with one finger, she added, “In the meantime, you’re blowing this way out of proportion.”

  “It’s untenable—a seven-year-old’s name smeared on the front page of a cheap rag.”

  Her nostrils flared. Her temper rose to meet his. “So what am I supposed to do? Marry Rosnikov just to keep the newspapers quiet?”

  “Marry me, instead,” Seth said.

  The words echoed in his head. What in hell had possessed him to say them? He didn’t want to marry Lia. He didn’t want to marry anyone.

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  Did she have to answer so promptly? Did he mean so little to her that a proposal of marriage didn’t even make her blink? “So much for that idea,” he said sarcastically.

  “Oh, come off it,” she flared. “If I’d said yes, you’d be clocking a four-minute mile to the airport right now.”

  That she was probably right only infuriated him
all the more. “That’s precisely where I’m going…I’ll call you on the fifteenth and we’ll set up a meeting with Marise. Who, I sincerely hope, will remain ignorant of all this garbage.” He tossed the tabloid onto Lia’s bed.

  “I protect her from as much of the world’s garbage as I can,” Lia snapped. “But I’m not omnipotent, Seth. The world exists, and all children have to lose their innocence.” Her face suddenly changed. “As you did,” she whispered, resting one hand on his sleeve. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  The last thing Seth wanted was sympathy. He picked up her hand and let it drop by her side. “I hope Hamburg goes well,” he said coldly.

  “I’ll say hello to Ivor for you.”

  Her cheeks were bright pink with temper. Seth planted a very angry kiss full on her lips, feeling heat rip through his body straight to his loins. Then he turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door with a definitive snap.

  He ran down the stairs at a reckless speed and strode through the lobby into the spring sunshine. He’d had more than enough of Vienna. Manhattan, he thought. That’s where he was going next. Home, where he knew which way was up.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “LET’S go see the daffodils, Mum.”

  “Sure,” Lia said, smiling fondly at her daughter. Marise was wearing her new yellow boots and slicker, her brown curls tucked under a sou’wester. Lia took her own slicker off the hook and grabbed an umbrella before they walked outdoors.

  She took a deep breath. Wet soil, new leaves and the promise of spring. If only she could simply enjoy it.

  But she couldn’t. She had to tell Marise about Seth.

  He wasn’t going to go away. Not this time.

  Trying to calm her nerves, Lia waited until she and Marise were kneeling down picking some of the daffodils that bloomed among the birch trees. Rain pattered on the umbrella. “Marise,” she said, “I have some big news for you.”

  “Did I pass my math test?”

  Lia laughed ruefully. “You aced English, that’s all I know. This is about something else.”

  Marise had always been sensitive to shades of feeling. She buried her nose in a wet yellow trumpet, her green eyes wary. “You’re not sick like Mary Blunden’s mother, are you?”

  “No, I’m fine—I was talking to Mrs. Blunden yesterday and she’s getting out of hospital very soon, so that’s good news. This is about something else. It’s about your father, Marise.”

  Marise’s dark lashes, so like her mother’s, dropped to hide her eyes. “What about him?”

  “Years ago, when I realized I was pregnant with you, I wrote and told him about you. He never answered my letters.”

  “He didn’t want me,” Marise said with irrefutable logic.

  “That’s what I thought at the time. But I was wrong. Someone took the letters before he could read them. So it wasn’t his fault that he never got in touch with me.”

  “How’d you find that out?” Marise asked with a touch of belligerence.

  “I met him again, by chance, when I was at White Cay. Then I saw him last week in Vienna. He showed me proof about the letters. I couldn’t let you go on thinking he stayed away from you on purpose because he didn’t care about you—that’s not true.”

  “Oh,” said Marise. Methodically she started shredding the petals from a daffodil. “Will he come to my school? So the other kids can see I’ve got a real dad?”

  Lia’s heart clenched. Feeling her way, she said, “Would you like him to do that?”

  “Mmm…I’m the only one in the whole school who doesn’t have a father somewhere. The kids tease me sometimes, and call me names.”

  Lia could imagine all too easily what those names might be. “You’ve never told me that before,” she said with careful restraint.

  “What was the use?”

  What indeed? Lia snapped off a white narcissus and added it to her bouquet. It would seem the decision had been made for her: she had to allow Seth to meet Marise, for her daughter’s sake. “I expect he’d go to your school,” she said. “He really wants to meet you.”

  Marise sat down hard on the wet ground. “I won’t know what to say to him.”

  “He may not know what to say to you, either. Not the first time. But, providing you’re willing, he’d like to keep on seeing you—he’s based in Manhattan, so you could get together quite often if you wanted to.”

  “All three of us.”

  “Sometimes I wouldn’t be there,” Lia said casually.

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “No.” With a nasty clench of her stomach, Lia remembered how Seth had asked her to marry him, and how quickly she’d brushed him off.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Seth Talbot.”

  Marise now looked frightened. “He’ll change everything.”

  Lia could have denied this. But within appropriate bounds, she’d always tried to tell her daughter the truth. “He’ll change some things, yes.”

  “Does he look like me?”

  Lia had been prepared for this, and had gone on the Internet for a photo of Seth. She’d zoomed in on him, and printed his image in full color. He was standing in his office in a pinstriped suit, the Manhattan skyline in the background. His thick blond hair looking encouragingly untidy; his eyes were a startlingly clear green. “That’s him,” Lia said.

  “He’s awfully big.”

  “He’s tall, yes. But he’s not mean, not like Tommy Evans. He’d be good to you, sugarplum.”

  Tommy Evans was the local bully. “His eyes are like mine. If he’s so great, why don’t you want to marry him?”

  “You have to be in love to get married.”

  Marise frowned at the photo. “Am I s’posed to love him?”

  Her daughter had a penchant for asking difficult questions. “Love isn’t instant—it takes time. Perhaps you could start out by liking him. We could meet him in Stoneybrook, at the café there—you always enjoy their tuna melt sandwich.”

  Marise looked even more frightened. “When?”

  “I’ll call him when we go back to the house. How about Saturday for lunch?”

  “I—I guess so. Can I tell Suzy about him? And show her the photo?”

  Suzy was Marise’s best friend. “Sure you can,” Lia said and passed over the photo, watching as Marise jammed it into the pocket of her slicker.

  “Can I go see Suzy now?”

  “Just for a little while. Then you have homework to do.”

  Motherhood, so Lia had already discovered, meant accepting that her daughter might possibly tell Suzy more about her feelings than she’d tell Lia. They walked through the woods to the adjoining property, where Suzy lived, talking about anything other than Seth, Marise clutching a bouquet of daffodils for Suzy’s mother. Then Lia went back home. Not giving herself time to think, she picked up the phone and dialed Seth’s private line at work.

  “Talbot,” he barked.

  “This is Lia.”

  Seth’s heart did an Olympic high jump in his chest. “It’s only the fourteenth.”

  “I talked to Marise today. We’ll meet you for lunch at the Maplewood Café in Stoneybrook. On Saturday. Would noon give you enough time to get there?”

  A lump the size of a small mountain had lodged itself in his throat. “Yes,” he said, “I’ll be there.”

  Quickly she gave him directions. He said choppily, “Does she want to meet me?”

  “She’s scared. Wary. But she’ll be fine.”

  “Not half as scared as I am,” Seth said.

  “You’ll both be fine.”

  “Last time I talked to you, you were hellbent on keeping me a thousand miles away from her—what happened?”

  “She wants you to go to her school. So the kids know she’s got a real dad just like everyone else.” Lia’s voice faltered. “They’ve been calling her names, Seth—I didn’t know anything about it until today.”

  Seth’s expletive hung in the air. “Children can b
e crueler than any adult ever thought of being.”

  “Will you do that for her?”

  “Sure I will.” It wasn’t the best time for Seth to realize he’d do anything for Lia’s daughter. He said abruptly, “How was Hamburg?”

  “Once I got over the hangover, it went well.”

  “Whenever you look into my eyes are you going to be reminded of crème de menthe?”

  “Time will tell.”

  His voice hardened. “I notice you’re not suggesting we meet at Meadowland.”

  It would have made more sense, giving them all some much-needed privacy. “No…I’m not ready for you to be here yet.”

  “Have I got to earn the right?”

  She flinched at the bite in his voice. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Quite suddenly he’d had enough. “Saturday at noon,” he said brusquely. “I’ll get there a bit early so I don’t keep Marise waiting.”

  Lia said stiffly, “That’s a good idea. Goodbye, Seth.”

  “Bye.”

  She plunked the receiver back in its cradle and stared at the raindrops weeping down the windowpane. Three days from now she’d see Seth again. But she wouldn’t be able to touch him, or speak to him privately.

  She’d be sharing him with Marise.

  Marise’s fingers were cold in Lia’s as they walked into the café with its cheerful decor of ruffled curtains and checkered tablecloths. Seth was sitting at the table by the window that offered the most privacy. He got to his feet as he saw them come in the door.

  Lia threaded her way across the room, smiling at a couple of acquaintances. He said easily, “Lia…nice to see you,” leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Then he hunkered down and smiled at Marise. “Hello, Marise,” he said softly. “We should have met a long time before this…I’m sorry we didn’t.”

  Marise gazed at him with her big green eyes; they were, Lia saw, giving nothing away. “Mum told me about the letters. Why did somebody do that?”

  It didn’t occur to him to lie. “My mother had very definite ideas about the woman I should marry, and your mother wasn’t it. So she destroyed your mother’s letters to me.”