“Goodness, Kathleen, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What in the world is the matter with you, girl?” Alice asked with concern.
Alice, George’s wife, acted as housekeeper/cook and ran the house with the competence of a ship’s captain. She was as soft and plump as George was hard and lean, but they complemented each other perfectly. Kathleen knew that the couple had lost a teenage son to muscular dystrophy. While Seth was still in the hospital after his debilitating accident, George had come to see him on behalf of a paraplegic association. He had offered his full-time services to Seth. The couple had been with him ever since.
Now, Alice crossed the tiled kitchen floor, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Oh.” Kathleen laughed nervously. “I think I got too much sun. When I left the pool, I fel
t a little dizzy.” She took a deep breath. “What’s on the menu tonight? Seth brought Er—a guest home for dinner. I hope that won’t inconvenience you,” Kathleen said, despising her breathlessness.
“No. I’d planned on roast beef, so it’s already in the oven,” Alice replied absently. She was more worried about Kathleen’s pale color than how many people there would be for dinner. “I’ll fix a fresh fruit compote for an appetizer, then serve salad and vegetables with the main course. Instead of a heavy dessert, what do you think of a crème de menthe parfait?”
“Sounds wonderful,” Kathleen lied. The thought of eating was repugnant. “Well, Theron needs a bath.”
“I’m sure he could use one,” Alice said, laughing at the toddler, who was emptying a drawer of plastic measuring cups.
“Come on, Theron,” Kathleen said, taking his hand and leading him out of the room. “If you need any help, Alice, call me.” She always offered, but Alice never took her up on it.
“Don’t worry about dinner. You just dress up pretty for the company.”
Kathleen was glad that Alice didn’t see her footsteps falter as she walked across the wide entrance hall from which the broad staircase rose majestically.
As she bathed Theron, her mind was spinning with a million questions she hadn’t allowed to surface before. They did now. What was Erik doing here? What kind of business venture could he possibly have with Seth? Where had he been these past two years? What had he been doing? Was his wife with him?
He looked the same. No, he looked different. What was it? He was older. Time had etched tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. The creases on either side of his mouth were harder, less inclined to tilt mirthfully. His eyes—she shivered—his eyes didn’t dance any more with devilish humor. They were cold, cynical, callous.
She placed Theron in his playpen and indulged herself with a bubble bath. What was he doing here? Why had he come back into her life when things were going so well? Why hadn’t he come sooner?
She avoided the most important question, the one that plagued her more strongly than the others. Would he recognize Theron as his son? If he did, what would he do about it?
She toweled dry and padded into her bedroom with a bath sheet wrapped around her. Standing at her closet, she selected an ensemble, discarded it, then moved to another until she finally settled on a pair of white silk evening trousers. The accompanying strapless blouse was multicolored stripes in metallic colors. Her waist was swathed by a shocking-pink cummerbund. She slipped into white high-heeled sandals and put gold disks into her pierced ears. Two dainty gold chains encircled her suntanned neck.
Putting on makeup had never been so difficult. Her hand shook with the effort, and she smeared mascara that had to be wiped away before she could apply more. Since her butterfingers couldn’t quite cope with intricate clips and combs, she decided to let her hair hang free and loose on her shoulders.
She had learned that in the Kirchoff household it was customary to dress for dinner. In the almost two years she had been here, she had rather come to enjoy that tradition. Besides, Seth liked to see her wear fine clothes.
When she was ready, she dressed Theron in a navy-blue playsuit with “Ahoy, there!” appliquéd in white letters on the front. As she brushed his thick cap of blond curls, she marveled again at the miracle of his birth. She had known before Dr. Peters had made the proud announcement in the delivery room that the child was a boy. Her early visions of him had been mystically accurate. She shuddered whenever she thought back to the time when she had contemplated abortion. What a tremendous sacrifice it would have been never to have known the joy of loving Theron.
Would Erik feel that affinity that she did each time she looked at Theron? Did fathers have that same oneness with their children that mothers did?
She swung Theron down from his padded changing table and took his hand. “Are you ready?” she asked, the question really directed to herself. The unqualified answer was “no.” She was torn between her burning desire to feast her eyes on Erik once again and the anguish of seeing him dangerously near his son. But if she didn’t hurry, Seth would wonder what was keeping her. She couldn’t arouse his suspicions in any way. At all costs, she must remain cool and collected around Erik, for Seth must never know their former relationship. He must never be hurt. She prayed he wouldn’t see the resemblance between Theron and their dinner guest.
They descended the stairs hand in hand. Kathleen slid open the glass door that led out to the patio, and, released from her restraining hand, Theron barreled past her toward the man sitting at the round, umbrella-shaded table sipping a drink.
Erik, taken by surprise, laughed and reached down to ruffle the curls on the head pressed against his knee. “Ahoy there, Captain. Where’s your—”
At that moment, he glanced up and saw Kathleen standing in the doorway. God, she’s beautiful, Erik thought, and impatiently swallowed the lump in his throat. He had considered himself cured, able to take anything fate threw in his path, but when he had seen her coming up out of that pool this afternoon, his heart sang with joy while his mind cursed the gods who had played this despicable trick on him.
From the back, he had thought the young Mrs. Kirchoff looked familiar. Her hair had a radiance that he had seen only once before. When she had turned around and he saw the face that had haunted him for years, he had ridiculed the desire that coursed through his veins like a raging fever, threatening to ignite him from the inside out until he disintegrated to ashes. Standing as she was, wet and glistening, time rolled back to another time he had seen her coming out of the water. He still had that tape of her. Only on the most depressive days did he indulge—and torture—himself by watching it. Today she had been no image captured on electronic machinery.
Somehow he prevented himself from vaulting past Kirchoff and taking her in his arms and devouring her with a mouth that was still hungry for the taste of her lips. But the other man was in the way. The man in the wheelchair. The man whom, over the past few weeks, Erik had come to admire and respect for his courage, integrity and shrewd business acumen.
Seth Kirchoff had talked about his wife endlessly, praising her talents and beauty to the hilt, but had he ever called her by name? No, surely not, or Erik would have reacted to that name. But who would have thought that Kathleen, his Kathleen, would end up as the wife of this San Francisco entrepreneur?
That was when his previous flare of joy at seeing her turned to bitter bile in his soul. Of course. She had run away from the struggling videographer when she had been given a golden opportunity. She had probably been disgusted with herself for allowing his hands to taint her. She obviously aimed for higher things. How had she felt about giving away her most valuable bargaining asset? It hadn’t mattered to Kirchoff, Erik supposed, because she had gotten him to marry her. Congratulations, Mrs. Kirchoff. You’re a very wealthy woman.
Seth had every reason to be proud of his wife, Erik thought as she crossed the patio toward him. She was lovely, graceful, motherhood having smoothed away some of her coltish angles and replacing them with feminine curves.
She was still slender, almost too much so. No one looking at her would believe that she had carried a child. Her stomach was flat, the results of fifty faithful and vigorous sit-ups a day. If it weren’t for the generous fullness of her breasts, no one would ever know that she was a mother.