She assumed Mavis was in a conservative mood, as she was wearing nothing that glowed. The fact was, she didn’t know the last time she’d seen Mavis in something as ordinary as jeans and a T-shirt. Even if the T-shirt stopped a couple inches above the waist and was covered with red and yellow fringe, it was pretty tame on the Mavis Freestone scale of fashion.
Her hair was quietly brown, with only one red and yellow tuft poofed at the crown to liven it up.
She looked a little pale, Eve noticed as she started down, then realized Mavis was wearing no lip dye or eye enhancements.
“You been to church or something?” Eve asked.
“No.”
With a frown, Eve took another survey. “Wow, you’re sort of starting to poke out. I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and—”
She broke off in horror when Mavis burst into tears.
“Oh shit. Oh damn. What did I say? Am I not supposed to say you’re poking out?” Frantic, she patted Mavis’s shoulder. “I thought you wanted to poke out with the baby and all. Oh boy.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Is something wrong with the . . . thing? The baby?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong,” she wailed. “Nothing. Everything. Dallas.” On a pathetic sob, she threw herself into Eve’s arms. “I’m so scared.”
“We should call a doctor.” She looked desperately around the foyer as if a medic would magically appear. In her panic, she actually wished, fiercely, for Summerset. “Or something.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Mavis wept on Eve’s shoulder in great, gulping sobs. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Sitting down’s good. You should sit down.” Lie down? Eve wondered. Be sedated? Oh, help me. “Maybe I should see if Roarke’s back yet.”
“I don’t want Roarke. I don’t want a man. I want you.”
“Okay, okay.” She eased Mavis onto a couch, tried not to be freaked when her friend all but crawled into her lap. “You’ve got me. Um . . . I was thinking about you today.”
“You were?”
“I had lunch at the Blue Squirrel, and . . . Oh, Mother of God,” she muttered when Mavis’s sobs increased. “Give me a hint, give me a clue. I don’t know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m so scared.”
“I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”
“No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.
“Ah . . . you and Leonardo have a fight?”
Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”
“Oh, that’s just crap.”
“It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”
“No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”
“I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”
“If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”
If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.
“What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons—short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”