LovePlay

by Diana Palmer

  “You look better,” he said, studying her in the faded green bathrobe she was wearing over a long cotton gown.

  She put a slender hand to her tangled hair and moved it away from her face. “I feel better, thanks.”

  He came inside, wearing jeans and a pullover shirt that was as green as his eyes. “I brought you something.” He held the box out to her.

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you bringing me presents?”

  “It’s from the whole production company,” he said, shrugging. “Dick’s idea,” he added, watching her through narrowed eyes so that he caught the faint gleam of disappointment in her dark eyes before they lowered to the box.

  She opened it and found three maternity outfits inside, all very chic and pretty and just her size. She held up a cream and beige one, a skirt and overblouse combination with a jabot collar. “It’s lovely,” she said breathlessly, and laughed. “Oh, how sweet of them! You know, I’ve been buying my things from yard sales….”

  His face went hard and he turned away, his hands jammed deep in the pockets of his jeans. “We thought you might like something new to wear.”

  She glanced at his rigid back. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

  “I’ll make it,” he murmured gruffly. “Your idea of coffee is hot water with a drop of brown food color in it.”

  “Coffee is expensive!” she shot at him.

  He whirled. “Then I’ll buy it for you!” he rejoined. “God, you exasperate me! It’s a fight all the way to do anything for you.”

  “I’m proud,” she replied coldly. “I don’t want charity from you. I don’t want anything from you!”

  “Not even the baby you’re carrying?” he asked quietly.

  “It isn’t yours, remember?” she asked, her smile plainly malicious. “You said so.”

  She looked cold. All the lovely color had drained from her face, the bright joy of the gifts siphoned off like water from a silver bowl.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized, his deep voice echoing around the room. “I didn’t come to upset you.”

  That was new. Cul never apologized. Perhaps one of his women was busy reforming him.

  She sat down on the arm of the sofa and touched her pretty new things, smiling softly. “I can wear one of these to church on Sunday,” she remarked absently.

  “I didn’t know you went.”

  “I didn’t used to,” she agreed. “Mr. Batholomew decided that it might help my outlook, so he bundled me up one Sunday and took me with him.”

  He glared at her. “I don’t like that.”

  She glared back. “I can go to church if I want!

  His eyes glittered at her as he turned from the coffeepot he’d filled and started perking. “If you want to go to church, I’ll take you.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “You wouldn’t know what the inside of a church looked like.”

  “So I’ll find out,” he returned. “That off-key baritone has no business hanging around you!”

  “Suppose it’s his baby?” she asked sweetly.

  He ran a furious hand through his thick blond hair. “Give me strength,” he muttered. “Of course it’s not his baby!”

  She clicked her tongue and folded her arms over her breasts. “You’re narrowing down the possibilities,” she said disapprovingly. “Before long, you’ll run out of possible fathers. Just think what an exciting christening it’s going to be,” she mused, smiling. “David and Mr. Bartholomew, the hot dog man, the mailman…”

  He moved toward her with eyes that blazed, and before she could retreat, he had her up in his hard arms. Amazing, she thought through her apprehension, how strong he was.

  “I could…” he said through his teeth.

  “You could what?” she asked, staring up at him.

  His expression wavered between words and actions. “Elisabet,” he said in a voice husky with strain and frustration. And then his mouth covered hers.

  She wanted to struggle, but she was afraid she might make him drop her, and that wouldn’t be good for the child he didn’t think he’d fathered. So she let him kiss her, lying acquiescent in his strong arms while his mouth took a slow, fierce toll of her soft lips.

  “This won’t solve anything, Cul,” she whispered into his mouth as it lifted just slightly to catch a breath.

  “It might stop the ache,” he whispered back. His cheek nuzzled hers as he dropped down onto the sofa with Bett across his lap.

  “Don’t you have enough women to do that?” she asked accusingly.

  He looked down into her dark, quiet eyes and smiled. “I’d say there’s a lack of trust on your part as well as mine, wouldn’t you?” His hand slid from her cheek to her shoulder and lifted, to follow the path of his eyes to the slight swell of her stomach. He touched her there and she stiffened.

  “No, don’t fight me,” he said, his voice quiet, almost tender. “I don’t have to tell you how I feel about pregnancy. All my adult life, I’ve wanted a child of my own. But I’ve never touched a pregnant woman. I’ve never seen one, not close, like this. I want to know everything.” His eyes watched his hand moving, and he talked as if he were talking to himself. “I want to know everything about it. How it feels, how it looks. I want to know the changes it makes.”

  “You could go to medical school,” she suggested with her last vestige of protective humor. The sound of his voice, the seductive touch of his tanned fingers was robbing her of her defenses.

  His hand spread, covering the firm mound, warm and oddly protective. “How does it feel?” he asked, lifting his eyes back to hers.

  “I’m sick most of the time.” She averted her eyes to his broad chest, to its quick rise and fall under the soft knit of his green shirt. “I tire easily. It’s hard to stay awake at night. I’m very sore in certain places.”

  “Where?”

  She touched her breasts. “They swell. And there’s the heartburn… I think it’s the worst of all.”

  “How does it feel?” he persisted, stressing the word as he searched her eyes.

  “Marvelous, darling,” she breathed. “The most awesome experience I’ve ever had. In a few months, he’ll begin to move, and then he’ll be born, and I can hold him, touch him. I won’t be alone anymore, ever. I’ll belong to someone. I’ll have someone who belongs to me.” She sighed quietly and smiled. “You don’t understand that, do you, Cul? Belonging, I mean. You’ve never really wanted that kind of closeness and commitment. You’ve been single all your life, and you like it.”

  “I want a family,” he returned curtly.

  “No,” she argued. “I don’t think you really do. I think you like believing that bull about being sterile. Because it protects you from getting involved. It’s your security.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” he said, his voice cutting. He stood up, moving away to light a cigarette. Funny, she thought, watching, she hadn’t seen him smoke in a long time.

  “Am I?” she demanded, standing. “I’ve hit on it, haven’t I? Your terrible secret. You can’t let yourself admit that this is your baby, because then all the walls would come down around you. You’d have to prove that you really wanted that family you claim you covet, the security of marriage. And you couldn’t, could you? It would involve something you know nothing about—giving!”

  “I’m no miser,” he began, facing her.

  “Emotionally, you are,” she corrected. She linked her hands behind her to study his rigid figure. He had a perfect physique, she thought dreamily, and had to mentally shake herself to get back to reality. “No caring man could have done to me what you did in Atlanta,” she said. “You humiliated me in front of the whole cast, and you knew you were doing it. You said it was to save me from a childless relationship with no hope of marriage, but that wasn’t really true. It was to save yourself.”

  He sighed roughly. “No.”

  “Yes, darling. Even when we started getting involved here, you fought it every step of the way. It was desire that prop
elled you into my bed, Cul, not undying love and devotion. I mistook it for that. But one phone call to California gave me the proof of your devotion. Cherrie, wasn’t it…?”

  “She was just another girl,” he murmured. “And we didn’t…”

  “Didn’t you?” she asked, her eyes unbelieving. “I called to tell you I was pregnant, and you went through the roof. It wasn’t yours, you were sure. Even though you knew,” she stressed fiercely, “that I was too much in love with you to let another man make love to me. You knew that! But you gave me hell for accusing you of being my child’s father.”

  “I’m not,” he said huskily.

  “Poor Cul.” She shook her head. “You’ve grown so accustomed to your own company that you don’t want any intruders in your life. You won’t trust anyone enough to love them. Or be loved by them. You say you want a child, but you don’t. You don’t want anyone, Cul. Because love demands unselfishness and blind trust—two qualities you simply don’t possess.”

  “That’s not true,” he replied, and his voice was icy cold. “I’d give anything for a child of my own, for a wife and a home.”

  “Of course you would,” she agreed, humoring him. She walked to her front door and opened it. This, she thought, was getting to be a habit. “That’s why you have an unending supply of groupies in your life, and hot and cold running women in your apartment.”

  He was glaring at her, his cigarette firing up curls of smoke, his eyes frankly unpleasant.

  “Think what you like,” he told her.

  “Thanks for your permission. Good night, Cul.”

  “It isn’t night.”

  “Don’t clutter up my life with a lot of irrelevant facts. Please leave, I’m having an orgy this afternoon, and I have to peel two pounds of grapes.”

  Once he would have laughed at that, but his face was rigid and cold. The real man, under the veneer that he’d worn for so long. He stared at her and for a instant he did hate her, because she’d shown him a side of his own personality that he didn’t want to see. There was some truth in her accusation, but he wasn’t ready for it.

  “If I walk out that door, I won’t come back,” he warned quietly. “I’ll ask you once more to marry me. Only once.”

  “I don’t want to marry you,” she said. “You may see yourself as the perfect mate. You’re rich and sexy and great in bed and you have an impeccable family tree. But I wouldn’t fit in that august company, you see. I want a down-to-earth man who loves me. As husband material, honey, Mr. Bartholomew has aces up on you. He has a heart as big as all outdoors, even if his singing voice does sound like a dull saw on tin.”

  “Then marry the sweet old gentleman,” Cul told her as he walked through the open door, “and to hell with him, for all I care!”

  “Don’t trip on your ego, big man!” she threw after his retreating figure, and slammed the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall.

  After the temper, of course, came tears. She sat down and did what she’d done most in past days. She bawled. Damn men everywhere, and Edward McCullough most of all! She hoped she never saw him again in her whole life!

  Nine

  Bett worried about what she’d said to Cul, despite her anger toward him. Like her, he used cynicism for a shield to keep people from hurting him. But she’d hit home. He was afraid of the responsibility of loving, and that was why he ran from commitment. Perhaps he’d never known much love in his early life. She knew very little about that part of him; it was something he’d never liked to discuss.

  Although her heart was breaking, pride kept her going on stage. She couldn’t let the production company down. She put every spare shred of emotion into her characterization, and she was proud of the reviews that raved about the revival of Cul’s excellent play.

  Cul might have vanished into thin air after that night he came to her apartment. No one saw him or heard from him. Bett was almost certain he was back out in California, working on the screenplay that he hadn’t quite finished, but she’d stopped listening to conversations that included him. He was no longer a part of her life. Now there was only the baby to think about. Only her child.

  Thanks to the increased medical care she was getting because of the company’s generosity, she was feeling better by the day. She had more energy. The anemia was under control. She was enjoying the role she played more and more. The only thing missing from her life was the man she loved. Cul would probably never forgive her for what she’d said to him. On the other hand, it would take her a long time to forgive the things he’d accused her of. And, especially, for denying the child that could only be his.

  Three long, lonely weeks passed before Bett found out that Cul was still in town.

  “Dick went to see Cul last night,” Janet remarked one evening after the performance, while Bett removed her heavy stage makeup in her dressing room.

  Bett’s heart leaped, but she didn’t let her excitement show. “Did he?”

  “Apparently he’s decided to work himself to death,” Janet said on a cold laugh. Cul wasn’t one of her favorite people, not after the way he’d treated Bett. “He’s locked up tight in his apartment, and not even eating some nights. Dick told David that Cul threw out everything he’d been working on and has started the new screenplay from scratch. He had a set deadline, so that meant he had to double up on time to make it.”

  Bett couldn’t help but wonder if Cul’s feverish schedule had anything to do with what she’d said to him. Her conscience twinged a little. She knew from past experience that he was capable of pushing himself all too hard on deadlines. He’d go for days without eating or sleeping, he’d literally work himself into exhaustion.

  “Surely you aren’t feeling sorry for him?” Janet demanded. “Not after what he’s done to you?”

  “Of course I’m not feeling sorry for him,” Bett said defensively. She brushed her hair briskly but her troubled eyes met Janet’s in the mirror.

  “You and your conscience,” Janet chided softly, smiling. “It’s going to be your undoing someday. Cul isn’t your responsibility.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Anyway, it’s just work,” Janet persisted stubbornly. “Just work, not anything to do with you, and you know it.”

  But Janet didn’t know about that last, bitter argument. She didn’t know that Bett had hurt him.

  It was too late to do anything that night, but the next day she cornered Dick long enough to ask him what was going on with Cul.

  “Honest to God, I don’t know,” he admitted, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I’ve seen him overwork himself before, but nothing like this. The last time I saw him, he was as pasty as cornmeal, and about as coherent. If he’s writing in that condition, it must be pure gibberish. He won’t eat. He’s drinking.”

  “Cul?” She was shocked. She’d never seen him take more than a social drink, and he was reluctant to do that. He’d mentioned once that watching his father toss it back at cocktail parties had cured him.

  “It doesn’t sound like him, does it?” he mused. “Well, there’s nothing I can do. I mentioned that it might be an idea if he got out of his apartment for a while, and he told me…well, the gist of it was to get out and leave him alone. I have excellent survival instincts. I won’t go back unless I’m asked.”

  “Was he sick?” Bett asked gently, her eyes wide and soft with helpless concern.

  “Yes, I think he was, Bett,” Dick told her reluctantly. “How sick, I don’t know. Perhaps that was the reason for the booze. It’s supposed to kill germs, isn’t it?”

  Despite Janet’s assertion that Cul’s health was none of Bett’s business, and over all her own genuine misgivings, she still felt guilty about what Dick had told her. Cul was the father of her child. Could she, in all good conscience, allow him to work himself to death?

  No, she thought. There had been some good times. For the sake of those, and the baby, she had to do something for him.

  She swallowed her pride and went to his apartmen
t the next evening she had off, trying not to remember better days and happier visits here. Well, apparently he was willing to see her, at least, because when she buzzed his apartment, he let her into the building. But it took five minutes to get him to the door after she got upstairs.

  The man who faced her across the threshold looked as if he’d been raised from the dead. He was thinner. His unshaven face had a whitish tint, and his green eyes were bloodshot. His hair looked more brown than blond and had lost its bright gleam. He was half in, half out of an expensive Cardin bathrobe and he looked terrible.

  “Bett?” he asked, dazed.

  “The very same,” she agreed. “Oh, Mr. McCullough, how you have changed.”

  His chin lifted pugnaciously and he glared at her, swaying a little on his bare feet. “What do you want? Have you come to give me another character reading? Well, no thanks, lady, one was enough!”

  “Don’t growl, you’ll upset the baby,” she said calmly, easing past him into the apartment. It would have given a veteran cleaning woman heart failure. Bett had never seen such a mess. Full ashtrays, dirty plates and glasses everywhere, clothes strewn from one visible corner to another, wads of paper here and there, even a couple of typewriter ribbons unwound on the carpet.

  “Go away,” Cul said shortly, glaring at her from the door, which he was holding open.

  She stripped off the long beige sweater coat she’d found at a close-out sale, disclosing her pretty yellow maternity dress with its short puffy sleeves. It felt like spring, even though it would be a few more weeks until warm weather actually came. “Shut up, darling,” she said carelessly, shaking her head as she stared around at the disarray. “Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll make you something to eat.”

  “There’s no food,” he muttered.

  “Then I’ll go and get some. Go on.” She went past him to close the door and started to push him toward the bedroom.

  “Now, look here, Bett,” he began, stopping in his tracks.

  “You look here, or you’ll fall over your big feet. Shower first, then food.”