JANET GAVE CARLY a tearful hug in the parking lot behind their building. “Be happy, okay?” she said.
Carly nodded. Happiness was a knack she hadn’t quite mastered yet, but she had the baby to look forward to and the challenge of another new job in another new city. “You, too,” she replied. Janet was dating Jim Benson regularly, and things looked promising for them.
The two women parted, and Carly got behind the wheel of her car and began the drive to San Francisco. She would live in a hotel until she found an apartment, and her dad was breaking all precedent to fly out for a short visit.
Carly wanted to tell him about the baby in person.
As she wended her way out of Portland, she considered his possible reactions. After all, in Don Barnett’s day women just didn’t have babies and raise them alone—they married the father, preferably before but sometimes after conception.
Mentally Carly began to rehearse what she would say. By the time she drove into San Francisco two days later, she had her story down pat.
When Carly checked in at the St. Dominique Hotel, she was told that her father had arrived and wanted her to call his room immediately.
He met her in the hotel lobby, looking like a real-estate agent in his black slacks, white shirt and blue polyester sports jacket. His graying brown hair was still thick, and his skin was tanned. Carly was pleased to realize he’d been spending a reasonable amount of time out of doors, away from the filling station.
She hugged him. “Hi, Dad.”
Don kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Hello, doll,” he answered, and his voice was gruff with emotion.
Carly was tired from her trip, and she wanted to have something light to eat and lie down for a while, but she knew her dad had been eagerly awaiting her arrival. She couldn’t let him down. “How was the flight out?” she asked as she dropped her room key into her purse.
He grinned broadly. “Wasn’t bad at all. In fact, there was this cute little stewardess passing out juice—”
Carly laughed. “They call them ‘flight attendants’ now, Dad. But I can see that you’re up-to-date on your flirting.”
He smiled at that, but there was a look in his eyes that Carly found disturbing. “For all this success you’re having,” he said as they gravitated toward one of the hotel’s restaurants, “there’s something really wrong. What is it, button?”
Tears were never very far from the surface during these hectic days, and Carly had to blink them back. She waited until they’d been seated in a quiet corner of the restaurant before answering. “Dad, I hate to be so blunt, but it wouldn’t be fair to beat around the bush. I’m pregnant, and there’s no prospect of a wedding.”
Don was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable. But then he reached out and closed a strong, work-callused hand over Carly’s. “That character with the Pulitzer Prize?” he asked. “I knew I should have blacked his eyes.”
Carly couldn’t help smiling at her dad’s phrasing. “That’s him,” she said. Her eyes filled, and this time there was nothing she could do about it.
“Does he know?”
“Not yet. I’ll send him a registered letter after I’m settled.”
Her father looked nonplussed. “That’s what I like to see—the warm, human touch.”
Carly averted her eyes. “It’s the best I can do for now. I’m taking things one minute at a time.”
“You in love with him?”
Carly sighed. “Yeah,” she admitted after a long moment. “But I’ll make it through this, Dad.” She paused, thinking of that photograph of her crawling out of the Deschutes River. “I’m a survivor.”
“There’s more to life than just surviving, Carly. You shouldn’t be hurting like this—you deserve the best of everything.”
“You’re prejudiced,” Carly informed him as a waiter brought menus and water.
Don studied his choices and chose a clubhouse sandwich while Carly selected a salad. During the meal they discussed the latest gossip in Ryerton and Carly’s prospects of finding an apartment at a rent she could afford.
“You need money?” her dad asked when they’d finished eating and were riding up in the elevator.
Carly shook her head. “There’s still some from the endorsements I did,” she answered.
“But a baby costs a lot,” Don argued.
She waggled a finger at him. “I’ll handle it, Dad,” she said.
At the door of her room, he kissed her forehead. “You go on in and take a nap,” he ordered. “As for me, I’m headed over to take the tour at the chocolate factory.”
Carly touched his face. “We have a date for dinner, handsome—don’t you dare stand me up.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” he answered. “It isn’t every day a fella gets to go out on the town with a former Miss United States on his arm.”
With a laugh and a shake of her head, Carly ducked inside her room and closed the door.
There were a dozen yellow rosebuds waiting in a vase on the desk. The card read, Welcome aboard, Carly. I’m looking forward to working with you. Hope.
Carly drew in the luscious scent of the roses and made a mental note to call Hope and thank her as soon as she’d had a shower and a brief nap. When she awakened, though, it was late, and she had to rush to dress and get her makeup done.
Wearing a pink-and-white floral skirt and blouse, Carly met her father in the lobby, bringing along one of the rosebuds for his lapel. They had dinner at a place on the Wharf, then took in a new adventure movie.
The next morning Carly called Hope first thing, thanked her for the flowers and made arrangements to meet for lunch. Hope said she’d had her assistant working on finding an apartment for Carly, and there were several good prospects for her to look at.
“You’re spoiling me,” Carly protested.
“Nothing is too good for you, kid. Besides, I want to hook you before you find out what a slave driver I am.”
Carly laughed, and the two women rang off. Three hours later they met at one of the thousand-and-one fish places on the Wharf for lunch.
“I can see where Carly gets her good looks,” Hope said to Don when the two had been introduced.
Don blushed with pleasure, and Carly reminded herself that he was still a young man. Half the single women in Ryerton were probably chasing him.
Lunch was pleasant, but it ended quickly, since Hope had a busy schedule back at the magazine’s offices. Carly promised to report for duty at nine sharp the following Monday, then accepted the list of apartments Hope’s assistant had checked out for her.
She and her father spent the afternoon taxiing from one place to another, and the last address on the list met Carly’s requirements. It was a large studio with a partial view of the water, and it cost more to lease for six months than her dad had paid to buy his first house outright.
Carly left a deposit with the resident manager, then she and Don went back to the hotel.
She was exhausted, and after calling the moving company in Portland to give them her new address, she ordered a room-service dinner for herself and Don. They had a good time together seated at the standard round table beside the window, watching a movie on TV while they ate.
“You going to be okay if I go back home tomorrow?” Don asked when the movie was over and room service had collected the debris from their meal. “I hate to leave you way out here all by yourself. It’s not like you couldn’t find somebody in Ryerton who’d be proud to be your husband—”
Carly laid her index finger to his lips. “Not another word, Gramps. San Francisco is my town—I know it in my bones—and I’m going to stay here and make a life for myself and my baby.”
Respect glimmered in her father’s ice-blue eyes. “Maybe you could come home for Christmas,” he said.
“Maybe,” Carly answered, her throat thick.
Her dad left then, and Carly took a brief bath, then crawled into bed and fell asleep. She didn’t open her eyes again until the reception desk gave her a wake-up call.
Carly and Don had breakfast together, then he kissed her goodbye and set out for the airport in a cab. Even though he’d obviously been reluctant to leave her, he’d been eager, too. The filling station was the center of his life, and he wanted to get back to it.
At loose ends, Carly went to the offices of Californian Viewpoint to tell Hope she’d found an apartment.
Hope was obviously rushed, but she took the time to show Carly the office assigned to her.
“You didn’t forget,” Carly began worriedly, “that I’m pregnant?”
Hope shook her head, and her expression was kind and watchful. “I didn’t forget, Barnett. And your dad told me who the father is—I must say, I’m impressed. With genes like yours and Holbrook’s, that kid of yours is going to have it all.”
Carly laid her hands to her stomach and swallowed. “I should skin Dad for spilling the beans like that. When, pray tell, did he manage to work that little tidbit into the conversation?”
Hope smiled. “When we were having lunch and you went to the restroom. Does Mark know you’re here in San Francisco, Carly?”
“No,” Carly said quickly. Guiltily. “And he doesn’t know I’m pregnant yet, either, so if this is one of those small-world things and he’s a friend of yours, kindly don’t tell him.”
Cocking her head to one side and folding her arms, Hope replied, “It is a small world, Carly. I went to college with Mark.”
Carly sighed. “I suppose that means I’m going to be running into him a lot,” she said.
Hope was on her way to the door. “Worse,” she said, tossing the word back over one shoulder. “I want you to interview him about his new play.” With that, Carly’s new boss disappeared, giving her employee no chance to protest.
There was no escape, and Carly knew it. She’d signed a lease on an expensive apartment and she needed her job. She was going to have to face Mark Holbrook, in person, and tell him she was carrying his child.
All through the weekend she practiced what she would say and how she’d say it. She’d be cool, dignified, poised. Mark could have visitation rights if he wanted them, she would tell him. If he offered to pay child support, she would thank him politely and accept.
Despite two solid days of rehearsal, though, Carly was not prepared when she rang the doorbell at Mark’s town house at ten-thirty Monday morning.
Nathan answered, and his freckled face lit up when he saw who’d come to call. “Carly!” he cried.
She smiled at him, near tears again. “Yeah,” she answered. “Learn any good card tricks lately?”
The child nodded importantly and stepped back to admit her. “You’re here to see my dad, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice and expression hopeful. “He’s really going to be surprised—he was expecting a reporter.”
He’s going to be more surprised than you’d ever guess, Carly thought, but she smiled at Nathan and nodded. “Where is he?”
“I’ll get him,” Nathan offered eagerly.
Carly shook her head. “I’d rather not be announced, if that’s okay with you.”
The boy looked puzzled. “All right. Dad’s in his office—it’s up those stairs.”
Carly drew a deep breath, muttered a prayer and marched up the stairway and along the hall.
Mark was sitting at his computer, his back to her, his hands cupped behind his head.
Carly felt a pang that nearly stopped her heartbeat. “Hello, Mark,” she said when she could trust herself to talk.
He swiveled in his chair and then launched himself from it, his face a study in surprise.
All weekend Carly had been hoping that when she actually saw Mark, she’d find herself unmoved. The reality was quite the opposite; if anything, she loved him more than she had before.
His expressive brown eyes moved over her, pausing ever so briefly, it seemed to Carly, at her expanding waistline. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone lacking both unkindness and warmth.
Carly shrugged. “I’m supposed to interview you for Californian Viewpoint.”
“What?”
“I work there,” she explained, wondering how she could speak so airily when her knees were about to give out.
“You’ve living in San Francisco?”
She nodded.
“Oh.” Mark looked distracted for a moment, then said abruptly, “Sit down. Please.”
Gratefully Carly took a seat in a comfortable leather chair. Her hands trembled as she pulled her notebook out of her oversize handbag, along with a pencil. “Hope tells me you’re writing a new play.”
Mark looked confused. “Hope?”
“McCleary. Editor of Californian Viewpoint and your friend from college.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mark replied, and his gaze dropped to Carly’s stomach again. Was the man psychic?
Carly crossed her legs at the knee and smoothed her soft cotton skirt. “A photographer will be along in a few minutes,” she said. “Before we get started, how’s Jeanine doing?”
Although Mark still looked a little off balance, he was obviously recovering. The ghost of a grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “She’s out of the hospital and attending regular AA meetings,” he answered.
“Obviously Nathan is still with you.”
Mark nodded. “He’s had a lot of upheaval in his life during the past few years. Jeanine and I agreed not to jerk him back and forth between her place and mine.”
In the distance the doorbell chimed, and Mark frowned at the sound.
“My photographer,” Carly said brightly, though she begrudged the precious few moments she’d had with Mark and didn’t want to share him.
“Great,” Mark said, and the word was raspy.
Carly had been introduced to Allen Wright, the photographer, that morning in Hope’s office. Besides his talent with a camera, she’d learned, he was a computer whiz.
True to form, Allen barely greeted Carly and Mark before zeroing in on Mark’s computer and looking it over. A handsome young man with brown hair and blue eyes, he turned to grin at the master of the house. “Nice piece of equipment,” he remarked.
Mark was looking at Carly; she could feel the heat and weight of his eyes. That extraordinary brain of his was probably developing one-second X rays of her uterus. “Yeah,” he said pensively. “Great equipment.”
Carly urged Allen to take the candidly posed photos needed for the layout and then shuffled him out the door.
When he was gone, she turned to Mark, her eyes feeling big, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. She was going to have to tell him now but, God help her, she couldn’t find the words.
He made it all unnecessary. “My baby?” he asked in a husky voice, his gaze dropping again to Carly’s stomach.
Her face flushed with color. “Who told you?” she demanded. “My dad? Hope?”
“Nobody had to tell me,” Mark said, shoving splayed fingers through his hair.
Carly picked up her notebook again. “Let’s just get the interview out of the way, okay? Then we can go our separate ways.”
Mark shocked her by wrenching the notebook from her hand and flinging it across the room. “How the hell can you be so calm about this?” he demanded. He was gripping her upper arms now, forcing her to look at him. “Did you think I was just going to say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and read off my entry in Who’s Who for your damned article?”
Carly pulled free. “I told you about the baby, Mark. That’s the end of my obligation.”
“The hell it is,” he grated.
Carly’s old fear that Mark might want to take her child from her when it was born resurfaced in a painful surge. “I’d better send someone else to do the interview,” she said stiffly.
With a harsh sigh, he turned away from her. “I’d rather just get it over with, if it’s all the same to you.”
Legs trembling, Carly made her way back to her chair and sank gratefully into it. Mark picked up her notebook and brought it back to her.
“I want a place in this baby’s life, Carly,” he said.
She nodded briskly, unable to look at his face, composed herself and asked, “How’s the new play going?”
“Well enough,” Mark answered, falling into his own chair. “But I think I prefer nonfiction.”
It was a relief to have things on a professional level again. “Does that mean you’ll be going back into the newspaper business?”
He considered the question for a long moment, then shook his head. “I think I’d like to do books,” he responded finally.
“Starting with?”
“One about what’s happening in China, I think. I’d like to write about how the cultural and political conflicts interweave.”
“Doesn’t the prospect of danger bother you?” Carly asked, only marginally aware that she was the one troubled by the idea of Mark risking life and limb.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “There are a lot of hazards in everyday life,” he reasoned. “I can’t hide in a closet, hoping the sky won’t fall on my head.”
Carly lowered her eyes for a moment, then shifted the conversation back to the craft of writing plays. “How about your Broken Vows?” she asked moderately. “Whatever became of that?”
Mark smiled sadly. “Not a subtle question, Scoop, but I’ll answer it anyway. Edina sold it to a movie producer, and it’s being filmed in Mendocino even as we speak.”
Shock and fury flowed through Carly’s veins like venom, and she scooted forward in her chair. “After all you put me through, Mark Holbrook, you went ahead and sold that play?”
He nodded. “I read it and decided I’d been a jerk about the whole thing.”
Carly recalled Jim Benson saying that Mark would eventually come to exactly that realization. It was too bad, she reflected to herself, that he hadn’t felt any compunction to tell her about his change of heart.
She supposed there was someone else in his life now, and the thought filled her with pain.
“Well,” she said, standing. “I’d better get back to the magazine and start writing.” She offered her hand. “Thanks for the interview.”
THE MOMENT CARLY was gone, Mark raced up the stairs, down the hallway and into his bedroom suite. In the nursery a painter’s helper was just getting ready to strip the pink-and-white striped paper from the walls.
“Stop!” Mark yelled, making the guy jump in surprise.
He didn’t stay to explain, however. He ran back downstairs to his office and flipped through the phone book until he found the number for Californian Viewpoint.
When the receptionist answered, he identified himself and asked for Hope.
CARLY SAT AT the computer in her office, her fingers making the keys click with a steady rhythm as she worked on the draft of her article about Mark. A rap at her door interrupted her concentration, and she raised her eyes to see Hope standing in the chasm.
She pulled off her glasses and set them aside on the desk. “I told him,” she said.
Hope nodded, her eyes eager. “And what did he say?”
“Not much, actually. He wants to be part of the baby’s life.”
Hope closed the door. “Didn’t he—well—ask you to dinner or anything?”
Carly gave her boss a wry look. “No, Yenta, he didn’t,” she answered. And then she sighed and sat back in her chair. “This is going to be an odd situation, I can see that right now. It’ll be like being divorced from a man I was never married to in the first place.”
“There isn’t any hope that the two of you might get back together?” The editor looked disappointed, like a kid who’d expected a pony for Christmas and gotten a stick horse instead.
“Even if Mark Holbrook came to me on bended knee,” Carly said with lofty resolution, “I wouldn’t take him back. He was absolutely impossible when I showed that agent his play—there was no reasoning with him. If you think I want a whole lifetime of that, you’re a candidate for group therapy.”
Hope had drawn up a chair, and she leaned forward in it, looking at Carly in amazement. “You gave someone his play, without even asking him about it?”
Carly swallowed. “I know it sounds bad, but you have to consider my motives—”
“What would you do if you’d written a play and somebody snitched it and passed it on to an agent?”
“I’d have a fit,” Carly answered defensively. “But I’d also forgive that person, especially if I happened to love him.”
Hope let out a sigh that made her dark brown bangs rise from her forehead. By tacit agreement the two women dropped the subject of love. “How did the interview go?”
“It was great,” Carly answered, her gaze drifting toward the window. She could see a bright red trolley car speeding down a hill, looking for all the world as though it would plunge into the Bay. She swallowed hard. “After all of it, he’s letting them produce the play. It’s being made into a movie in Mendocino.”
“So in a way you won,” Hope reasoned, spreading her hands.
“Right,” Carly answered forlornly. “I won.”
At the end of the day Carly went home to her apartment, where she’d been roughing it, waiting for her furniture to arrive. Her new kitten, Zizi, greeted her at the door with a mewling squeak.
Whisking the little bundle of white fur to her face, Carly nuzzled the cat and laughed. There was something about a baby—no matter what species it was—that always lifted her spirits.
She fed Zizi the nutritious dry food the pet store had recommended, then changed her cotton skirt and blouse for cut-off jeans and tank top. She was just opening a can of diet cola when the telephone rang.
He won’t call, Carly lectured herself as she struggled not to lunge for the phone. So don’t get your hopes up.
For all her preparations, her voice was eager when she lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Carly,” Janet greeted her. “I’m calling with big news.”
Carly closed her eyes for a moment, knowing perfectly well what her friend’s announcement would be. She was happy for Janet, of course, but she felt a little left out, too.
“Jim and I are getting married!” Janet bubbled.
Carly smiled. “That’s great,” she said, and she meant it.
“I want you to be my maid of honor, of course.”
Always a bridesmaid, Carly thought. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She generated enthusiasm befitting the situation. “What colors are you going to use?”
“Pink and burgundy,” Janet answered without hesitation.
Carly remembered when she’d first arrived in Portland, and Janet had been talking about getting married. At that time her ideas about the institution had been practical, but hardly romantic. “Have you decided that love isn’t a myth after all?” she asked.
Janet laughed. “Have I ever. Jim’s my man and I’m nuts about him.” She paused. “Speaking of nuts, have you and Mark been able to touch base or anything?”
Carly sighed. “I interviewed him this morning,” she said sadly. “And I told him about the baby.”
All the humor was gone from Janet’s voice. “Don’t tell me he didn’t ask you to marry him on the spot?”
“Of course he didn’t,” Carly replied breezily. “It’s over between Mark and me—has been for a long time.”
“Right,” Janet replied, sounding patently unconvinced. “Now that the two of you are in the same city again, the earthquake people had better keep an eye on the Richter scale.”
Carly shook her head. “It’s really over, Janet,” she insisted. Her words had put a definitive damper on the conversation, and it ended about five minutes later.
Zizi came to amble up Carly’s bare legs and sit down on her stomach. “Reooow,” she said sympathetically.
“Ain’t it the truth?” Carly sighed, sweeping the kitten into one hand as she got back to her feet. She cuddled Zizi for a few moments, then put her down again. There was no sense in moping around the apartment, waiting for a call that was never going to come. She’d go down to the market and pick out some fresh vegetables and fish for supper.
After finding her purse, she left the apartment. She walked to the market, since it was a warm August evening and the sun was still blazing in the sky.
She chose cauliflower, and broccoli and crisp asparagus, then purchased a pound of fresh cod. As she climbed back up the hill to her building, she was filled with a sort of lonely contentment. Maybe her life wasn’t perfect—whose was? But she lived in a city she was growing to love, worked at a job that excited her and, come winter, she would be a card-carrying mother.
Those things were enough. They had to be.
Carly didn’t know whether to be alarmed or encouraged when she saw Mark’s car parked in front of her building. When she went inside, she found him sitting on the bottom step, a big bouquet of pink daisies in his hand.
Her traitorous heart skipped over one beat as he stood, a smile lighting his eyes. He took her grocery bag from her and handed over the flowers.
Carly looked at him with wide, worried eyes. “What do you want?”
“Now there’s a cordial greeting,” he observed, putting a hand to the small of Carly’s back and propelling her gently up the stairs. “I guess I should be grateful you aren’t shooting at me from the roof.”
“If this is about the baby...” Carly began as she stopped in front of her door and rummaged in her purse for the key.
“It’s about you and me,” he said in a husky voice. “Carly, I came here to ask you to marry me.”
She’d forgotten how old-fashioned Mark could be. Obviously he meant to do his grim duty, however distasteful he might find it.
She stepped into the apartment, snatched her groceries from Mark’s arms and shoved the riotously pink daisies at him. “Don’t trouble yourself,” she snapped, and slammed the door in his face.