“That someone is sabotaging your work, dear girl.”
“But who?”
“You know as well as I do.” He leaned down and whispered in a stage whisper, “Hazel Baby.”
Kathleen stood up and walked to the only window in her tiny office. “I didn’t order that Vanderslice girl a size twelve and I wouldn’t sell the same dress to two society women.”
“Precisely.”
“But why would Hazel do those things?” Kathleen asked, admitting unwittingly that his surmise might be correct.
“Because she’s so jealous of you that the poison darts literally fly through the air every time she looks at you.” He made a gesture with his hands that was so descriptive and so comical that Kathleen laughed in spite of the seriousness of the subject. “And,” Eliot continued, “if you ask me, as far as Seth goes, she doesn’t give a shit.”
“Eliot, please,” Kathleen said. His blunt language had been one thing she could never tolerate.
“All right, Chastity Ears,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “Hazel doesn’t give a damn about him, except to control him and keep him eating out of her hand. The way she manipulates him is sickening. As if that weren’t enough, he can’t see through her. He doesn’t know he’s being had.”
Kathleen didn’t want to admit it, but Eliot was right. Where his sister was concerned, Seth’s handicap wasn’t his paralysis. It was blindness.
“Watch that bitch, Kathleen,” Eliot warned. “She’s out to hurt you. I know.”
Kathleen tried to laugh at Eliot’s dire prediction, but the sound she uttered was little more than a strangled breath. Eliot came up behind her and kissed her lightly on the neck. She was accustomed to his displays of affection and didn’t mind them, knowing that they meant nothing more than friendship. Today she shrugged away from him and folded her arms across her chest protectively. She shivered with cold, though the temperature was only seasonably cool for mid-September.
“What is it, Kathleen? It’s more than Hazel Kirchoff, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said evasively.
“Yes, you do. You’re jumpy and distracted. Neither your mind nor your heart is in your work. What is it?”
My former lover and the father of my child has come back to torment me. There. Was that what she was supposed to say? Should she tell Eliot, everyone, what was the matter with her? Would they believe her? She grinned wryly. Eliot would. Some of the stories he had told her of his escapades had made her hair stand on end. This would neither surprise nor shock him.
But she had been shocked to the very core of her being by Erik’s reappearance in her life. What had happened behind the cabana was disgraceful. She wasn’t surprised that he had tried to make love to her. No, not love. Sex. And it had been doled out like punishment. If he was enough of a cad as a married man to seduce the innocent she had been two years ago, he was perfectly capable of wanting to pick up the shabby affair where it left off, even though she was married now, too.
What surprised Kathleen was how she had reacted. Why hadn’t she fought harder? Instead, she had welcomed the feel of his body against hers. She had reveled in the taste of his mouth and the heady scent of his cologne mingled with his own unique essence. The expert touch of his hands had brought her to—
God! She covered her face now with shame at the remembrance.
“Kathleen? Are you all right?” Eliot asked, his voice laced with anxiety.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’m just tired. If you can take over here, I’m going over to the main office and then home. I want to spend the rest of the day with Theron.”
She gathered up her things and left, but as she drove the few blocks to Kirchoff’s executive offices, she felt again that stabbing fear that had pierced through her when Erik had spoken his parting words.
He wouldn’t do anything to separate her from her child, would he? He wasn’t that cruel. Besides, even if he wanted to, he’d never get away with it. Theron was hers. Erik had had another wife when the baby was conceived. She could always cry desertion if it came to that. But he hadn’t really deserted her. She h
ad deserted him.
The fear of a custody trial was secondary to the initial havoc Erik would wreak on her life if he told Seth about them. It would devastate her husband. He considered Theron to be his. Since the day he had proposed marriage to her, he had never referred to Theron’s father. It was never “your child” but always “our child” when he talked about the baby during her pregnancy. He never failed to call Theron “my son.” If people speculated on Theron’s parentage, they were polite enough not to mention it. For all practical purposes, Theron belonged to Seth.
Kathleen had been scrupulously faithful, never giving anyone room to question her devotion to her husband. Seth often told her to go out more, to make friends, develop outside interests, but she had refused, pleased to be home with him. He was truly remarkable. He went more places than anyone had a right to expect of him. They took Theron on outings to Golden Gate Park. They went to Ghirardelli’s for ice-cream sodas. They went to movies and to dinner. Of course, George always went with them and handled the complicated transportation problems, but Seth had tried his utmost not to let her give up anything she liked to do for his sake.
Lately, though, he had shown a fatigue that she hadn’t noticed before. He seemed less inclined to want to go out, and seemed much more at ease sitting beside the pool while she swam or they sipped drinks and talked. His color hadn’t looked good either. She had questioned George, but his answers had been vague and patronizing. She took it upon herself to phone Seth’s doctor, but his lengthy answers to her inquiries into her husband’s health, though sounding professional, told her nothing.
These thoughts had been revolving in her head like a macabre carousel for the last few days, ever since Erik’s untimely visit to their home. They were still circulating in her brain when she arrived at Seth’s offices and found them deserted. However, there was a note on his door telling her that he and Hazel had gone to lunch and would be back shortly. She was to make herself at home. Claire’s computer was covered. She was out to lunch as well.
Kathleen swung open the wide door and closed it behind her, poignantly reminded of the first day she had walked through it. She still liked this room. Going over to the stereo components on the bookshelf, she turned the radio to an FM station. She went to the windows and drew the blinds, plunging the room into semidarkness. As long as she had to wait, maybe she would get in a nap. She hadn’t slept at all for the last few nights.
Taking off her shoes, she lay down on the comfortable leather sofa and closed her eyes. It was dim and quiet. In no more than a few minutes, she was asleep.