Severe Clear (Stone Barrington 24)

Kelli laughed. “Oh, yes, ‘Arrington Barrington.’ How did you ever resolve that point?”

“We ran through the options, and it seemed to her that ‘Arrington Carter Barrington’ worked, separating the two names just enough. This was after she had accepted my proposal.”

“Why did it take you so long to marry?”

“Pretty simple—she married someone else.”

“And how did that happen?”

“It was winter. We had planned a vacation bareboating in the Caribbean, on the island of St. Marks. We were to meet at the airport. I arrived first, it had begun to snow, and I was concerned that she might have trouble getting there. Finally, she called and said that the New Yorker had asked her to write a profile of the movie star Vance Calder, and that she had to meet with him, since he was returning to L.A. the following day. She promised to get a flight to St. Marks the next day.

“I went ahead to the island, but my flight was the last one out before they closed the airport. Turns out, Arrington was snowed in in New York for several days, and so was Vance Calder. We were communicating by fax, this being before e-mail was prevalent and before St. Marks got good cellular service, and after a few days, I got a fax saying that she was going back to L.A. with Vance, and that it was over between us.”

“Pity.”

“Yes, I had bought a ring and was going to pop the question.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Well, yes. Took me a while to get over that.”

“And by that time, Arrington was pregnant?”

Stone froze; she had boxed him in, and this was a question he did not want to address. “It happens to married people.”

“It also happens to unmarried people,” Kelli said, “and to people who have not yet decided to marry.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And it happened to you and Arrington.” It wasn’t a question.

“We had been living together.”

“So how did she know whose son she was carrying?”

“She didn’t,” Stone replied. “I think it was many years later that it became clear to her, when the child was growing up.”

“No paternity test?”

“Not until much later, and that was nearly by accident.”

“And when did she tell you?”

“After Vance’s death. She felt she owed it to him to maintain the status quo while he was alive, and she did.”

“So why didn’t you marry immediately after his death?”

“By this time we had very different lives, on opposite coasts, and they seemed incompatible. Then she decided to take Peter back to Virginia, her home state, and build a house there. I invited them both to come to New York for Christmas, and after that, things developed very quickly. Peter and I got along immediately, and he quickly guessed that I was his father. There’s a photograph of my father in my study, and Peter resembles him closely. When he saw it—that was all he needed. I had promised Arrington I wouldn’t tell him without her approval, and I didn’t. But Peter is a very bright young man.”

“I saw that in him when we met in Virginia,” Kelli said. She had come down for the housewarming of Arrington’s new house with her boyfriend, James Rutledge, who was photographing the place for Architectural Digest.

Joan came into the room. “Lunch is served in the kitchen,” she said.

Stone led Kelli from his office through the exercise room to the kitchen, where his housekeeper, Helene, had laid the table for two, and he seated his guest.

Stone poured them glasses of Chardonnay, and they dug into a seafood risotto.

“May we talk about money for a minute?” she asked.