by Robyn Carr
His manner and tone were as sincere and good-natured in bed as at any other time in his day-to-day living. He seemed not to notice how skilled he was. She was astounded by his talent; she had not guessed at his abandon, the shameless fun he had making love. It intrigued her, for she had little experience and had never considered that men had such a good time with sex. It had seemed to her that men were driven by some need that, once fulfilled, was forgotten. She had not thought of men as giving of their bodies, until Mike. Mike was the only man she had ever known who was so completely sure of his feelings that, as a lover, he trusted himself and her completely.
Chris had thought of lovemaking as give-and-take; one gave, one took, alternating perhaps. With this man she was a participant. He pushed her up, up, up, ruthless in his determination to push her over the edge, relentless in his stubborn wish to blind her with pleasure, and then he held her tenderly in her shuddering release. And again. Sometimes there was a little request for himself. He had, after all, earned that much. “Come up, here, like this. Yes, just like this. For me, my way. Oh, God.”
Deep in the night, while she lay on her back beside him, he on his side with one large hand spread flat against her stomach, he whispered, “I love you, Chris.”
She was silent. She bit her lip in the blackness but turned her face toward him. She had never felt so much love in her life as she had today, yet the words wouldn’t come. Not even now.
He turned, fell onto his back, removed his hand. In the silent darkness, still humid with the past hours, he sighed deeply, with hurt.
“Mike…”
“Never mind. No big deal.”
“I’m afraid to say—”
“What you feel? Come on. I didn’t ask you for anything!”
“Didn’t you?”
“No! Saying what you feel doesn’t mean you’re promising anything.”
“I love you, too,” she said, her voice small and terrified. “It’s just that—”
“Shh,” he said, calmer now. “It wouldn’t be a good time to talk. Anyway, I already know what it ‘just is.’”
She was awakened in the morning by the sound of Mike’s moving around in the bedroom. She opened her eyes, and, as if he felt her awareness, he turned toward her. He had showered and shaved, and he was putting on his pants and fireman’s T-shirt. He smiled at her, and she saw that his joy had survived the hurt of her reluctant words.
He came to sit on the edge of the bed. “I have to go to work,” he said.
“I know.”
“Stay here and sleep. The kids are okay—I checked them. Want a T-shirt?”
“Yes, please.”
He fished one from a dresser drawer, held it for her when she sat up to put it on. He playfully pulled her hair, wild and woolly, through the neck, then kissed her lightly on the lips. “You taste like a good night of it.”
“I feel like I fell down the stairs.”
He laughed, proud of himself.
“Mike, yesterday was wonderful. The whole day. And night. Your family is…well, they’re just plain incredible.”
“My family?”
“And you.” She smiled.
“Thanks. Anytime.”
“I think I should call my Aunt Florence. Let her know I’m all right. That the kids are all right. I haven’t even contacted her in years. You understand.”
“Family is family.” He shrugged. “You gotta be good to ’em. You can’t let family slip away. She deserves to know you’re okay.”
“Yeah, she does. Don’t worry.”
“One thing? Don’t surprise me. Please.”
His eyes were begging her, his brows furrowed over his nose. She thought about the long-ago phone call telling her that her parents were dead. She thought about the call Mike might have gotten. She remembered her shock and dismay when Steve had not come home. For the past several years she had put so much energy into deciding whether or not this person or that could be trusted, she seldom wondered whether she, herself, was trustworthy.
She summoned courage. She bravely faced the fact that she had crossed a certain line with him. Not ignorantly, perhaps foolishly—time would tell—but not unknowingly. Even if she remained afraid to trust, she must prove trustworthy. Must. If she wanted to be able to live with herself.
She touched his eyebrows with her fingertips, trying to smooth them out. “I won’t do that to you. I’ll make plans and talk to you. You won’t come home and find me gone. I promise.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Chapter 7
She could not help making the comparison. If Mike knew her thoughts, he would say she was overthinking it. But the last time Chris had made love, Kyle had been conceived. Sexy old Stever, the last of the red-hot lovers, devil-take-the-hindmost man of the world…had not really liked sex all that much. They had not made love often; he was busy and preoccupied. He had been talented, not sensitive. Expressive and creative, not tender. Chris had been drugged by his sexual skill, for he could satisfy her quickly and efficiently, but the satisfaction was fleeting; she always felt unfinished. There was a lot left undone. Orgasm and fulfillment, she now realized, were not the same thing. Maybe that was why she hadn’t really missed that part of her life. Maybe it simply hadn’t been that great. Perhaps her body had felt Steve had not really loved her long before her mind knew it.
She got out of Mike’s bed before her children awakened. She went down to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of the coffee he had made and stepped out onto the patio in T-shirt and bare feet. And breathed. Down to her toes. Feeling wild with life, positively smug with gratification. She thought about the differences between then and now, the differences between Chicago and Los Angeles and Sacramento. The sun was brighter here, the air crackling clean, cool, clear. If she looked over the fence she would see the mountains. Los Angeles, on the other hand, would be balmy and thick with humidity and smog, sort of like a dirty piece of crystal. She would be happy never to see Los Angeles again. Chicago would be dank, dirty, old. Like a woman planning to start her diet on Monday, Chris decided she couldn’t face Chicago before spring. Today—and maybe for one day only, but maybe for a week, or a month, or many months, who knew?—she felt she was where she ought to be. That was almost a first, at least since she had buried her parents.
Feeling she belonged prompted other comparisons, as well. Though she suspected she was not extremely clear-headed—she was, after all, nearly limping with pleasure—she remembered how wrong she had felt during the years of grappling with Steve and Aunt Flo. Clearly she hadn’t felt right about what Steve talked her into doing; not only had she cried a lot, but she had frantically sought alternatives to suing her aunt, options other than completely estranging herself from Flo. Nor had Flo’s suggestions given her a feeling of warmth and safety; she had ached at the thought of giving up Steve, only to be managed by Flo.
She had had to choose. Between her only family and the only man she had ever loved. And the move to L.A. had been so painful and scary that she cleaved tighter to her man, her husband, in loneliness and fear. It had felt so wrong that she had struggled even harder to make it feel right. She had had to slam the door on her own feelings, her instincts. Now, barefoot on the fireman’s patio after a wonderful night, she realized that when something was right, it just was. You couldn’t make it so.
Then she heard the sirens. All her life she had ignored sirens, unless they made her pull off to the side of the road. Now, because Mike rode the engine, she took sirens far more personally. She had never realized there were so many emergencies in a quiet, residential part of town. Four times she heard that trill, that scream. Because the big firefighter had crept into her body and heart, she sucked in her breath in fear when she heard the sirens.
The nurturer in her wanted to keep Mike out of harm’s way. In that and other ways she was like her mother. She had been certain nothing could satisfy her as much as to live the kind of life Arlene Palmer had lived. That was what had prompted her to fall in love w
ith Steve; she had wanted someone to whom she was so intimately connected that his life became her life, and together they would create more life. That tendency helped make her a good mother; it also made her miss the aunt who was now her only family, even though Flo could be an ordeal in herself.
And then, of course, there was what she had done last night with Mike, which made her shiver in after-shocks this morning…. She nested well.
And all of this made her hate the sirens. Mike went into burning buildings. Still, he was experienced, right? He’d been a firefighter for more than a decade. A fireman had not been killed in a fire in Sacramento in years. Years?
She went back into the house and turned on the TV to check the local news. There wasn’t any—at least none pertaining to fires. Not satisfied that there wouldn’t be, however, she played the local radio station while she got ready for work.
She had only been at her cash register for thirty minutes when it happened. The event that overturned all the safe, peaceful, nesting feelings she had decided to indulge for the past week, especially the past twenty-four hours. Chris had been in a better mood than usual, joking with the customers, bagging groceries quickly, clicking those old buttons like a demon. Then she pulled one of those gossipy rags past the cash register between a box of Tampax and a pound of hamburger, rang up the price and saw the tabloid cover. Her face stared back at her.
Missing Heiress Speaks from the Grave.
No! She picked it up, stricken. The customer held a credit card out to her. Chris threw the tabloid after the other groceries. Please, God, no. She rang up the total, and the customer, unaware that Chris’s life had just flashed before her eyes, authorized the payment. Chris stood frozen, panicked, paralyzed. Just when she started to think things were going to be okay, she tripped over some major event. Like smoke pouring out of the vents. Like this.
On automatic pilot she bagged the groceries, then checked two more shoppers through her aisle. At the first lull, she spoke across the partition to Candy, a college student who worked weekends and holidays. “I have to take a quick break. I’m closing for a minute, but I’ll be right back.”
She locked her register and grabbed a copy of the scandal sheet. Her face stared out between equally poor pictures of celebrities she couldn’t name. Good Lord. In the worst of times life had not seemed as grotesque as this. She raced to the bathroom, closed the door and read.
“You should never be surprised,” Aunt Florence had once said, “at what you read about yourself in the newspaper if you have a lot of money. Or fame. Or whatever.” Chris wanted no part of money or fame; she had simply wished to disappear and re-create herself. But it looked as if she were stuck with her past.
In Chicago, where the Palmer family had been considered among the upper crust of local society, their names had occasionally appeared in the society column. They had had a minor scandal once, too—a manager of one of their stores sued Randolph for wrongful firing—but it hadn’t come to much. And of course Chris had had a debutante’s ball, there had been the death of her parents, and then her horrid suit against her aunt and the estate. But that had been the extent of press coverage on the Palmers.
Now, however, someone had written a book about her and Steve Zanuck. Steve, her ex-husband, was apparently dead. As was his wife, Mrs. Zanuck. Months ago a luxury yacht headed for some Caribbean island had left Miami and never been seen again. Recently a piece of the vessel with the name of the boat on it had been found. The authorities suspected an onboard explosion.
Chris was not that Mrs. Zanuck; yet, she realized, not everyone knew that.
According to the article, Aunt Florence was not certain whether or not it was her who perished. “The last time Florence Palmer talked to her niece was four years ago, when Christine Palmer Zanuck, then a Los Angeles resident, was discussing divorcing Zanuck.”
Chris had married Steve in Chicago. A small ceremony with only a few friends. Florence had grudgingly gone along with this; she was even a little relieved that they didn’t want a big wedding, since she didn’t expect this “fling” to last. Chris had been twenty. And absolutely dumb with passion.
She had gotten pregnant instantly. Was pregnant, in fact, when she turned twenty-one and Steve insisted that the hundred grand per year she received from her trust fund would simply not do. Not when there were millions, at least, to be had, and he was an attorney, for goodness’ sake! They had very politely asked Aunt Florence to fork it over, please, so that they could get on with their lives. She had said no.
It had taken a while for Chris to be completely convinced by her charismatic, con-artist husband that it would be logical to sue the executor of the estate, the trustee, for that money. And it had taken two years for them to win the lawsuit. Chris had already had precious little Carrie when she was given 3.75 million. And they moved to Los Angeles, where Steve was going into business. The high life, then. What had she been high on? She lived in a palatial house on the side of a hill and went to many parties and opening nights. They went on cruises—Steve more often than she because she wanted to make a home with her child. Steve invested in films and other things and, according to his secretary, had a legal practice. Oh, Chris had seen the office and staff on occasion, but Steve didn’t like to discuss business with her. And she, big dummy that she was, had plopped her entire fortune into a joint account. She trusted him. Why wouldn’t she? In her grief and loneliness, he was all she had.
She began to suspect him of having an affair that year, for his attention toward her, his desire to keep her perpetually happy, had started to flag. Affair? That would have been easy by comparison. So she asked him to set up a trust for Carrie, and he said, “Sure, babe, we’ll get that taken care of pretty soon.” He was very busy with clients; he had a lot of socializing to do. She became pregnant with Kyle. Steve had to leave town on business. The phone calls began to pour in. Where was Mr. Zanuck? Bills had to be paid. The mortgage was due. The office had been closed. The secretary had vanished. The film company he claimed to be investing in had never heard of him.
Too ashamed to ask Flo for help, Chris had not known what to do besides call a lawyer. The long and short of it turned out to be that, during the first three years of marriage, the degenerate monster had lived on the hundred grand a year from her trust, and during the last year he had been busy either losing, spending or stealing her money. She had never been entirely sure whether he had converted it, moving it out of her name and into his, or whether he had actually lost it. But it was gone. Out of all that money she could only lay her hands on one account of around thirty thousand dollars. Was this an oversight? Or had he left her a few bucks purposely so she could take care of herself while getting a divorce? The rest was really and truly gone.
Kyle was born, and when she came home from the hospital, her house was locked against her. For the next two years she rented one tiny apartment or another, working as a receptionist, housekeeper or waitress, living mostly on the goodwill and generosity of friends she had made since moving to L.A. But those friends had been lied to, if not swindled by, Steve Zanuck, too, and, burned, they drifted away from her. The attorney stuck by her for a while, believing he was eventually going to get a big hunk of dough out of either Steve or Aunt Florence. Instead, he got most of the thirty thousand.
Steve Zanuck never reappeared in Chris’s life. Though he was found, the money wasn’t. Chris was left exhausted, afraid, weak. Once she understood what had been done to her, she committed the unpardonable sin in her lawyer’s eyes. She wanted the divorce, period. The jerk she had married didn’t even know or care that he had a son. She wanted to be Chris Palmer again. She refused to ask Flo to bail her out, refused to have Steve Zanuck prosecuted, refused to hire detectives to track down the money. “Let me out,” she had said.
Though she couldn’t ask Aunt Flo for help—not after what she had done to her—she did call her right after Kyle was born. “Yes, Flo, I’m all right, I guess,” she had said. “And you were right. I married
a real scumbag.”
“Are you coming home?” her aunt had asked, her voice tight.
“Maybe when I can get myself together a little bit. I just had another baby.”
“When are you coming?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I can.”
“Are you going to divorce that bastard?”
“Yes,” she had said, and cried. Cried her heart out. And for what? For grief; he was gone, and she wanted him back. For fear; she was alone, all alone, unless you counted Flo, who was very angry. For shame; this was her fault, really. And maybe for love; though he made a mockery of that, she had loved him. “I am. I will. And…I’m sorry.”
“I should think so.”
She had hung up on Flo then, not answering the phone when her aunt rang back.
She should have gone home right then. She should have taken the little money that was left, gotten on a plane and told Flo to do whatever she wanted to do. Hire the lawyers, lock Steve up, have him knocked off, anything. The broken bird should have flown back under Flo’s wing. Her aunt might have been angry, bossy, outraged, but she loved Chris. It wasn’t Flo’s fault that she didn’t know how to give the unconditional, selfless kind of love and caring that Arlene had found so natural; that didn’t mean it wasn’t real love. And Flo would have forgiven her, eventually. But Chris had screwed up so badly and wanted so desperately to salvage something, she had only made it worse.
Every day since Kyle was born, for three long years, she had lived day-to-day, barely able to afford anything, but had not called on Flo for help. She had tried to find a way to rectify her mistake, to pull herself out of it. She wasn’t sure she even knew why. Pride, maybe. Guilt and humiliation, probably. Also, a deep wish not to have Flo take care of her, which meant Flo would run her life.