Harry held his daughter, his beautiful eyes glistening with wondrous tears, while the doctor and nurse saw to Amy's care.
Amy looked at her husband and this innocent, trusting child, and couldn't help being happy, at least for the moment. She had practically everything she'd ever wanted, and so what if there were slight imperfections in the fabric of her life? So what if Harry didn't truly love her and she still wondered what he did when he was away from home? Nobody had everything.
A day later, when her milk came in, Amy nursed Sara, stroking her tiny, doll-like head, and told her, "You'll be more your daddy's girl than mine, I think, but I guess I can live with that." She smiled. "Just between you and me, Sara Griffith, you'll be running the family business someday. I have that on good authority."
There was a timid knock at the door, and Ashley and Oliver trailed in, drawn to their sister and at the same time wondering how her presence would affect their places in the scheme of things.
"I'm going to need lots and lots of help from the two of you," Amy told her older children solemnly. "Raising a baby is a very hard job, even if it is fun most of the time, and I'm counting on you."
"What about Harry? Is he going to help?" Ashley asked reasonably.
The words stung. Harry adored the baby, although he seemed to hold just as high an affection for Ashley and Oliver, but he'd already started drawing away from Amy. He slept in one of the guest rooms, and when he paid a visit, it was always to see his daughter, not his wife. Soon he was traveling as much as ever, and when Sara was two and a half months old, Amy's unhappiness rose to tremendous proportions.
It was time, she decided when Harry called from Brisbane to say he'd be staying over a few days longer on business, for a confrontation.
Boldly Amy called the mainland and ordered a helicopter, since Harry had taken the jet. She kissed Ashley and Oliver goodbye and, carrying Sara while Shelt hauled the heavy diaper bag, she boarded the whirlybird and was soon on her way.
The pilot obligingly landed the copter on the roof of Harry's hotel, and not one but two bellhops were waiting to carry baggage.
"I'd like you to deliver our things to Room 373," Amy said to one of the young men, feeling more and more nervous as the elevator swept from the roof to the third floor. What was she doing?
If she caught Harry with another woman, she was going to be devastated. And if she didn't, he would be furious with her for not trusting him.
She bit her lower lip, holding Sara a little too tightly, when one of the bellhops knocked at the door of Harry's suite.
There was no answer, so the gentleman opened the door himself, using a special key, and escorted Amy inside.
Harry's clothes were hanging in the closet, but only Harry's clothes, and the dresser drawers contained his things alone. The scent of his cologne lingered in the air, but there was no tinge of perfume.
By that time Amy was beginning to feel really foolish. "I need to join one of those self-help groups for clingy women," she muttered to herself after the bellhops had taken their tips and left. She wanted to flee, to pretend she'd never done this stupid, suspicious, sneaky thing, but Sara was hungry and Amy herself was tired to the core of her spirit.
She lay down on the bed to nurse Sara, and she was lying there, half-asleep herself, when the door opened and Harry came in. Amy felt a pang when she saw the realization that she didn't trust him register in his wonderful indigo eyes.
"Well, Amy," he said, extending his arms from his sides in a gesture of furious resignation, "have you looked under the bed and checked the medicine cabinet for lipstick?"
Tears welled in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said.
Harry bent to kiss his sleeping daughter's downy head, then took the infant and laid her gently in her portable crib. He had no kiss for Amy, however, only quiet, well-controlled outrage.
"What a pity you didn't come here because you wanted to be with me," he said bitterly. "Damn! I suppose you'll be hiring a private investigator next and having me followed!"
Amy sat up, trying to close her blouse, but Harry held her hands away, kneeling astraddle of her hips on the bed. He stared at her breasts for a long time, then, with a helpless groan, fell to her.
Because he hadn't touched her in so long, Amy was instantly on fire. And the anger pulsing in the room only made the interval more exciting.
Harry enjoyed one nipple, then the other, until he had Amy tossing helplessly on the bed. Then, with no more foreplay than that, he lifted Amy's cotton skirt and took her in one powerful stroke.
Amy gripped the underside of the headboard in both hands and held on, her back arched so high that only her head, shoulders, and heels were touching the bed. Her release began as Harry delved into her, and she went wild when he grasped her hips and bid her take him deeper and deeper.
Finally, with a burst of rasped swear words and an involuntary buckling of his body, Harry reached his climax.
Amy had been as thoroughly satisfied as he had, if not more so, and that was what made her next words so hard to say. "I'm leaving, Harry. I'm going back to the States."
Her husband was quiet for so long that Amy feared he hadn't heard her. On another level, she hoped he hadn't, so that she could back down, pretend she'd never voiced the decision.
Then, still inside her, he raised himself on his palms and glowered as he searched her eyes. "What?"
She tried to squirm out from under him, but he'd pinned her, and there was no going anywhere until he set her free.
"You were right before," she said with breathless misery. "We're not ready for marriage, either of us. You're angry and frustrated all the time, and I'm turning into a shrew. So I want to go home."
He searched her eyes with angry blue ones for a long, long moment. "You'll damn well leave Sara here if you do."
Amy shook her head. "I'll never walk away from my baby, Harry," she vowed.
Harry flung himself onto his back and glared up at the ceiling, his breathing ragged, his scowl black as clouds before a tropical storm. "Damn it all, woman, you would drive a saint to drink!"
"You're going to let us go?"
He turned to meet her eyes. "Not in a million years, love," he said, his voice totally void of all traces of affection, "but I will take you back to the lighthouse. Maybe a miracle will happen and you'll be the woman I married again."
His words hurt Amy almost as much as finding him in the middle of a romantic tryst would have. She turned onto her side and cried silently, her heart breaking as she listened to the roar of the shower, the familiar, once comforting sounds of a man dressing, the crisp closing of the door.
Sara, blissfully unaware that her parents were at war, slept undisturbed in her little bed.
Within the week, the family was back in the States and, a few days after their return, they were settled in the lighthouse. Ashley and Oliver were immediately enrolled in elementary school, and Mary Anne went back to her studies at the university. Harry spent all day, every day, in the city, throwing himself into his work, and sent a steady stream of aspiring housekeepers for Amy to interview.
She finally selected an English grandmother type, Mrs. Hobbs, because the woman reminded her of Mrs. Ingallstadt. If nothing else, it was a relief not to have to review resumes and ask questions anymore.
"Main problem with you, mistress," Mrs. Hobbs announced one afternoon, when Amy was curled up in Harry's big leather chair, Sara nearly asleep at her breast, "is that you're tired. Begging your pardon, ma'am, but you've got dark circles under your eyes and every time I look at you, I want to cry because you seem so sad."
Amy gently lowered her daughter, put her bra in place and closed her blouse.
"I have everything," she confided forlornly. "It's shameful for me to feel so discontented."
"Maybe you should see your doctor," the gray-haired woman ventured kindly. "There are them as gets gloomy because there's chemicals off balance in their brain."
Smiling at the housekeeper's phrasing, Amy carried
Sara to her crib and looked out the bedroom window at the choppy gray waters of Puget Sound. "I'm pretty sure my brain's all right," she said. It's my heart that might not hold up.
Mrs. Hobbs was puttering with the bedspread, even though it was mid-afternoon and the master suite was always the first room to be cleaned, after the kitchen. "Mr. Griffith be home tonight?" she asked casually.
Amy stiffened. How astute this Englishwoman was. She'd only been in the house a few days and already she knew there was trouble. "No," she said, hugging herself because she felt a chill. "Mr. Griffith won't be home. He has a late meeting tonight and conferences all day tomorrow."
The weekend ahead looked desolate from Amy's viewpoint: Ashley and Oliver would spend it with the Ryans on the mainland, and Harry, of course, would be working.
The housekeeper picked up the pink-and-gray plaid woolen afghan at the foot of the bed and refolded it, even though it had been perfectly arranged in the first place.
"Forgive me, ma'am," she said, lowering her eyes when Amy looked at her directly, "but it wouldn't hurt if you was to doll yourself up a little and spend some time in the city, with your husband."
Amy looked down at her baggy gray sweat suit, and a grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, even though she wanted very much to cry. "Are you insinuating that I'm not on the cutting edge of fashion, Mrs. Hobbs?"
The woman's already ruddy face was flushed with conviction. "Yes, ma'am."
The idea of going to Seattle, of perhaps finding some common ground with Harry, some way to reach him, was appealing. But Amy couldn't forget the last time she'd paid him an unscheduled visit, back in Brisbane. He'd been furious at her for mistrusting him.
"I have a small baby," Amy reminded Mrs. Hobbs and herself.
"She's big enough to be left for a day or so, ma'am. It's not like I haven't looked after a nipper or two in my time, you know. You'd just have to leave some milk."
Amy sighed. She could speak honestly to Mrs. Hobbs, and that was a great relief, because Amy had felt alone for a long time. "My husband wouldn't appreciate a visit from me," she admitted sadly, at the same time yearning to shop and see a play and eat in an elegant restaurant, all without having to nurse her baby or change a diaper. "He'd think I was checking up on him."
"That's easy to remedy," Mrs. Hobbs said briskly, fussing with the pillow shams. "You just play hard to get, Mrs. Griffith. You check into another hotel—not his—and then you call and leave a message, saying you're in town. After that, you go out and buy yourself some fine new clothes, and if it's awhile before you return Mr. Griffith's messages when he calls, so much the better."
The plan appealed to Amy, whose unhappiness was rapidly escalating into sheer panic. Her marriage was turning out exactly as she had feared it would. If the relationship was to have any chance at all, she would have to stop mooning around and do something.
"You're right," she said excitedly. Then, impulsively, she gripped the housekeeper's sturdy shoulders and kissed her soundly on the cheek. "God bless you, Mrs. Hobbs, you're right!"
Amy packed hurriedly and made sure there was an ample supply of milk for Sara, who was already living mostly on baby food, anyway. When it was time for Ashley and Oliver to cross to West Seattle to meet their grandparents at the terminal, Amy kissed her infant daughter goodbye, rallied all her willpower, and got onto the ferry with them.
It wasn't easy; she and Sara had never been separated before, and the pull of maternal instinct was very strong indeed. In fact, a couple of times Amy thought she might not be able to keep herself from diving overboard and swimming back.
On the other hand, she wanted to reach out to Harry, to try to make things right between them again. She closed her eyes against a sudden swell of tears, remembering how he'd said he hoped a miracle would happen and she would turn back into the woman he'd married.
Am I so different? she wondered miserably, watching through blurred eyes as Oliver and Ashley ran happily up and down the deck on the other side of the window.
She looked down at herself.
Amy was only about five pounds heavier than she'd been before her pregnancy, but she had been neglecting her exercise program. She hadn't had a good haircut in weeks, and she often went for days without wearing makeup.
She felt a stirring of hope, because clothes and exercise and makeup and haircuts were all things within the realm of her control. Amy had read enough pop psychology to know she could change nothing about Harry, much less his feelings toward her, but she couldn't help hoping that he might be willing to meet her halfway.
After the boat docked and the Ryans had collected Ashley and Oliver, Amy drove downtown. Since Harry was staying in a suite at the Hilton, she took a room in the Towers at the Sheraton.
She called his office and left a message with the puzzled receptionist, who had offered to put her through to Harry immediately. "Just tell him I called," Amy said brightly, and then she hung up.
The phone was ringing fifteen minutes later when she was leaving the room, but Amy didn't stop to answer it. She knew Mrs. Hobbs wasn't calling about Sara because she'd just talked to the woman, and that left Harry.
Let him wonder, Amy thought, closing the door on the insistent jangling.
She walked to the nearby Westlake Center, an urban answer to the shopping mall, boasting several levels of good stores, and bought bath salts and special soaps and lotions at Crabtree & Evelyn. After that, Amy entered an upscale lingerie boutique called Victoria's Secret and purchased a sexy floral nightgown and some silky tap pants and camisoles.
Down the street from the mall, at Nordstrom, her favorite department store, Amy selected a black crepe sheath and a glittery jacket to match.
When Amy returned to her room to drop off her packages and hang up the dress and jacket, the message light on her phone was blinking. She dialed the registration desk and was told that Mr. Griffith had called twice, once from his office, once from his hotel. He'd left both numbers, as if Amy wouldn't know them.
"Thank you," Amy said with a smile. Then she took the elevator down to the lobby, had her hair cut and styled in the swanky hotel salon and charged the whole obscene price to Harry's American Express card.
On her return, Amy found two message envelopes just inside the door. Both were from Harry.
Feeling better all the time, and blessing Mrs. Hobbs for a genius, Amy yawned, set the messages aside and rustled through the Crabtree & Evelyn bag for her soap and bath salts. She indulged in a long, luxurious soak in the tub, ignoring the telephone when it rang. She and Mrs. Hobbs had worked out a system earlier; if the housekeeper needed to reach Amy for any reason, she would ring twice, hang up and ring twice again.
Amy must have fallen asleep for a little while, because the bathwater got cold. She was just reaching out to turn the spigot marked Hot when she heard the outer door open.
"Thanks, mate," she heard Harry say.
"Thank you, sir," a bellhop replied, obviously receiving a big tip for letting Harry into the room. Amy wondered if it was the cute one who looked a little like Bruce Willis.
"I think I'll complain to the management," Harry announced, stepping into the bathroom just as Amy was rising, towel wrapped, from the tub. "I could have been anybody, but all I had to do was tell them I was your husband."
Amy smiled, though she felt almost as nervous as she had the first time she'd met Harry Griffith. "I told the concierge to keep an eye out for you," she admitted. Then she made a shooing gesture with one hand. "Get out of here, please. I want to dress."
"It's not like I've never seen you naked," Harry reasoned, frowning. He was leaning back against the sink counter, his arms folded, his dark brows drawn together. "What are you trying to do, Amy?"
She put a hand to his arm and eased him through the doorway. "I'm planning to have a luxurious dinner and see a play. Tomorrow I plan to shop."
Amy closed the door and locked it.
"You're doing all this alone?" Harry called from beyond the barrier
.
"Yes," Amy answered, smiling at her reflection in the mirror. She liked her sleek new haircut; it made her look both sexy and mischievous. She waited a few beats before adding, "Unless, of course, you'd like to accompany me. I wouldn't want you to think I was crowding you, or checking up on you, or anything like that."
"Amy, this is silly. Open the door!"
Amy reached for a makeup sponge and a new bottle of foundation and leaned toward the mirror. "I'm busy," she chimed. "Maybe you could come back later."
"Damn it, I'll break this thing down if you don't let me in."
"You wouldn't do that," Amy reasoned, blending her foundation skillfully with the sponge. "Trashing a hotel room would definitely be unHarrylike. Besides, the management would be furious."
She heard him sag against the door, probably in exasperation, and her heart took wings. Maybe he didn't love her in the classical sense, maybe his attachment to her was largely sexual, but there was no denying that Harry cared.
When she turned the knob, he practically fell into the bathroom. Staring at her in angry bewilderment, he said, "I don't like being kept from my own wife."
"Tough," Amy replied, bending close to the mirror to begin applying her eye shadow. "I'm through walking on eggshells, Harry. I'm going to live my life, with or without your approval."
He filled the doorway, glowering, a human storm cloud. "What about Sara? Where does she fit into your plans, Mrs. Griffith? And where is she, by the way?"
"Sara is with Mrs. Hobbs. She's going to be one of those modern babies who goes everywhere with her mommy. I'll buy a carrier of some sort."
"Right. And when she gets hungry, you can just whip out a breast in the middle of a board meeting!" Obviously Harry was losing his perspective as well as his temper. He shoved a hand through his hair, making it unperfect. "Damn it, Amy, you can forget the whole crazy idea! You're not dragging my daughter through the corporate world like a rag doll!"
Wild About Harry Page 14