The Insiders

She watched him across the room with the tall, black-haired girl who acted as if she didn't want to let him go. She was the prime minister's daughter, educated in England, and she was beautiful and very graceful in her red-and-gold sari with rubies in her ears and around her neck. They made a striking pair as they stood together under the lights, Brant's gold head bent down to her dark one.

The man from Town and Country took a picture, shrugging apologetically at Eve. She smiled at him, her smile brilliant and forced. Then the baby stirred in her womb, and her fear went away. When Brant came to her, she smiled at him quite naturally.

"That should have made a good picture."

"Sure. They'll all wonder, won't they? Do you, Eve?"

"About her?" Her face became thoughtful. "Not unless I should. Should I?"

"No, baby. I think I'm going to hang onto you."

He did something that surprised her then—bent to kiss her lips, tilting her face up with his fingers under her chin. The photographer got that picture, too, and they put it on the cover the following month, which was when David saw it.

Already there seemed to be a faintly curved, tawny-tinted roundness to her, where before she had been all defiant hollows and pallor. It was as if, without him to crave for and worry over, she ate more and slept better. And the story mentioned that she was "expecting."

Not able to stop himself from looking through all the pictures, reading every word of the article that accompanied them, David felt the familiar yearning tauten his loins to bursting pitch. He reviled her silently— tramp, bitch, whore! Selling herself to a depraved, decadent rake like Brant Newcomb for his money. God knew what excesses she'd been pushed to already— pushed, hell! She probably enjoyed the life. He'd always found her uninhibited in bed—she'd probably done everything there was by now. Did Newcomb, or even Eve herself, know whose child she was carrying? Damn her, considering the land of life she must be leading, she had no right to look so happy and contented—at least she appeared to be in the pictures.

His affair with Gloria had began to taper off, and he was relieved. She was too much of a bitch for any man to take in large doses, and she was selfish and demanding as well. He was beginning to avoid Gloria now— seeing much more of Wanda, Saul Bernstein's niece. Wanda had come to work as his secretary since Stella had left to marry that old fart, George Coxe. And since Bernstein was a partner in the firm, Gloria couldn't get Wanda fired. Wanda was pretty, young, and a genuine innocent in spite of the years at college. David was glad he'd discovered her before the wolves-about-town had had a chance. And he happened to know she was a virgin—real, gold-plated cherry.

Who needed Eve? Had she still been around, it would have been all over between them by now. He couldn't take her constant jealousy or the way other men looked her over appraisingly. Not to mention the guys he had to meet socially on occasion who had screwed her, like Peter Petrie. Wanda was different. He wouldn't have to wonder about other men with Wanda, nor other women, either. Maybe with Wanda, marriage might not be an impossibility. After, of course, she'd let him make love to her. And she would—he had been very careful, very restrained, but he could tell that she was close to giving in.

Just as David flung the magazine away from him with an exclamation of disgust, the telephone rang.

"David? It's me, Wanda. Darling, I wanted to tell you I'm still at the hairdresser's. Will you be very mad at me if I'm a little late?"

He had to swallow before he answered her. A good thing she wasn't here right now, in his apartment, or he would have been tempted to rape her, just to get rid of his hard-on.

"Of course it's okay, honey. Just don't be too late. You know your uncle hates late arrivals at his dinner parties."

"I know!" He heard Wanda giggle. "Uncle Solly can be such a bear sometimes, but he's really very sweet. David?" There was a pause.

"Hmm?"

"David, I—I do love you, you know!" She giggled nervously again, and he wished she wouldn't do that, it made her seem too girlish. "God, I'm so brave, aren't I? Blurting it out over the telephone because I'm afraid to say it when I'm with you. But David—I didn't want you to think I—that I say that to everyone, or that I've ever said it before. I haven't. I just want you to know that I feel—well, that I trust you, David. Completely."

She was telling him, he knew, that she would go to bed with him. He felt his erection throb, and shifted uncomfortably.

"Wanda, I hope you'll always trust me. I'd never hurt you, honey."

"I know." She sighed softly. "Oh, David, I wish we didn't have to go to dinner after all!"

"I'm beginning to wish the same thing. Think we could figure out some excuse to leave early? What time will your aunt expect you home?"

"Oh, she won't worry if I'm with you. We could say we're going dancing afterward, couldn't we?" Her voice sounded excited, tense at the same time.

So she loved him, he thought, after he'd hung up. Damn, but it was so easy to get a woman to say that. All you had to be was good in the sack, hump them like you meant it, and be tender in between. With the exception of bitches like Eve and Gloria . . . His eyes narrowed. Well, Gloria would get a shock this evening when he showed up with Wanda, making the fact that they were a twosome official.

Let Gloria work on Howard for a change; maybe he'd get it up for long enough to give it to her tonight. Because tonight it would be Wanda he'd bring back here. Tonight would be Wanda's night.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

EVERYTHING HAD BEEN WONDERFUL since the baby. Eve supposed that her real feeling was contentment. Having Jeff, who was beautiful and healthy, and learning to be friends with her husband. Enjoying their lovemaking more and more; sleeping together afterward; knowing by now exactly how to turn each other on.

They'd had no more parties since the last one when she was only a few months' pregnant. It didn't matter; she preferred—just living. They had traveled all over the island by now, and they could travel anyplace in the world if and when they felt like it—just knowing that made Eve even more content to be where she was. There were so many things to do and to learn. The climate was perfect, and the ocean warm, even at night, which was her favorite time to go swimming. When it grew unbearably hot and humid along the coast, they moved to their other house in the hill country—a former tea-planter's "bungalow" in a town whose name she still had difficulty pronouncing. Nuwara Eliya. There was a golf course there, and she was learning to golf. It came to her with a sense of surprise that she actually hadn't had time to be bored....

Marti had sent Eve a newspaper clipping announcing David's engagement, and though it had given her a kind of pang to read of it, even the thought of David seemed unreal now. She had loved him. Well, hadn't she? Or was it a conditioned reflex—was there any such thing? I'm absorbing too much of Brant's philosophy, she told herself. Maybe I'm withdrawing from the real world, too. She'd torn up the clipping, telling herself that she was much more interested in what Marti herself was doing. Acting—in the so-called soft-core porn movies—and making a name for herself. She'd written that she was going to France next, and she sounded happy. Or was "content" the operative word for Marti, too? Skimming the surface of life, not going in too deep. It was better to be content than to be caught between the two extremes of being happy and unhappy.

And then Brant, of all people (he told her he never got ill), caught malaria. His own carelessness, he told her, before the fever started climbing. He hadn't taken the pills before he'd gone on that trip to the jungle to track down a rogue elephant—an animal gone berserk, outlawed by the herd, and on a killing spree. Brant had gone on a three-day trip with two of his Sri Lanka friends, a colonel in the Army and a doctor.