Deborah did not want to go to Randall’s bridge party. She dressed with indifference, choosing from habit clothes that would please him. Randall had decided opinions about what women should wear. In his view bridge called for cashmere sweaters, worn with a single strand of pearls, and wool skirts. Pumps, of course, and perhaps a scarf to tie back the hair. She ought to mind more than she did, Deborah thought. But the truth was, Randall’s dictatorial meddlesomeness was so like that of her parents that it served to remind her of their way of showing their love and concern.
Knotting the paisley scarf that complemented the sweater and skirt she had chosen, Deborah grinned at herself in the mirror. Her eyes shone, her skin seemed to glow. The look of love. But how could she be in love with a man she’d only known for four days? Still, everyone there tonight—and especially Randall, who knew her so well—was bound to know something extraordinary had happened.
Well, miracles had that effect. She twirled before the mirror with a laugh, unabashedly admiring her figure, happy that it turned heads. If she wasn’t in love, this was certainly the next best thing.
Arising from his rug-like sprawl on the floor, Dempsey watched his mistress with a quizzical tilt to his head. “Oh, Demps!” Deborah hugged him impulsively, heedless of dog hair on her clothes. “You like him, don’t you? Isn’t he simply wonderful?”
She had awakened that morning to the sound of water splashing in the shower. She had stretched euphorically, sensuously, then burrowed once again under the covers to relive the ecstacy of the night before. Dempsey was on his pallet. Dan must have already been downstairs to put him outside from the kitchen where he had been confined for the night, then allowed him back in. Deborah smiled to herself under the covers. He was a man who could take care of things, could make himself at home. He had found the soap, towels, the supply of new tooth-brushes she kept on hand for guests. When he finished dressing, he would probably go downstairs, bring in the Sunday paper, make coffee, and feed Dempsey. What a man! She sighed and dozed off again.
When next she opened her eyes, the sunlight was streaming through her special window. She showered and dressed hurriedly, her morning for jeans this time. She didn’t want to miss another minute of being with him, and he must be fed a hearty, man-pleasing breakfast.
“Good morning, Dan.”
She’d found him sitting at the breakfast bar with the Sunday papers, and her heart had thudded when the silver head turned. Dempsey was at his feet, obviously fed, or he would have been banging his empty bowl. The kitchen was fragrant with the smell of coffee. “You’ll stay for breakfast, won’t you?”
He had gotten up from the stool and gone to her, and with profound tenderness had taken her face between his big hands. She felt the painful, pleasurable throb, the vital hunger that he had incited the night before, and returned the deep, full, satisfying kiss. “Yes,” he said.
She prepared the Southern breakfast that had pleased her father every Sunday morning of his life: ham and eggs, grits, and red-eye gravy for the homemade biscuits. As she stirred and hummed while Dan read the paper, she only hoped he liked Southern breakfasts. Her worry vanished when she set his plate before him.
“Grits!” He sighed with pleasure. “And red-eye gravy!”
“How do you happen to know about grits and red-eye gravy?”
His eyes were on the napkin he shook out for his lap. “I’ve done a lot of building in the South,” he said.
Dan had not wanted her to go to Randall’s bridge party. He suggested they spend the day together, go for a walk in the woods, buy some steaks, and cook them on the outdoor grill for dinner.
“I can’t do that, Dan,” she had said with gentle resolution. “These Sunday bridge suppers mean so much to Randall. They’re the highlight of his week, and it would be difficult for him to find a fourth this late in the day.” As much as she had wanted to cancel, Deborah had been unwilling to disappoint the man she loved like a father. She tried to define their relationship to Dan. “He’s been my guide and mentor, my confidant and guardian ever since the first day I set foot in the Hayden firm. He took such a chance with me, Dan, when he named me head of the urban planning department immediately following my internship. He’s always supported me, as he proved the other day with the Fred and Josie issue. I have so few opportunities to repay him, to express my appreciation for all he’s done for me. That’s why I can’t cancel this evening.”
“You repay him, Deborah, by being the best urban designer in the state. You’ve brought a lot of business to the Hayden firm. As for his support of you about Fred and Josie, he pretty well knew he was safe with that gesture. He knew how badly we wanted your designs.”
“You don’t like Randall, do you?” she had asked slowly, disappointment twisting in her chest.
“He seems so possessive of you. I suppose I can understand that since he’s been a widower for so long and has no children. He dotes on you as the daughter he never had. But there can be danger in too much possession.”
Deborah had dropped the subject, but they managed the walk in the woods, taking Dempsey. Dan kept a pair of boots in the trunk of his car for site inspections, and he held her hand as they tramped along the edge of the foothills behind her house.
“Tomorrow night then?” he asked as he was leaving. She had looked up at him, so crisp against the background of the blue and gold day, and nodded. “I’ll call you at the office about a time and place.” Tilting her chin, he had kissed her, not once but several times as autumn leaves swirled around them.
Now she made a sorrowful face in the mirror. “Oh, Dan, I want to be with you tonight!”
The telephone rang on the nightstand. “I miss you already,” Dan said. “Did I thank you for a fine day?”
Deborah smiled in tender reflection. “Did I thank you for last night?”
“In the best possible way. Good night, Deborah.”
She was a few minutes late, a tardiness that provoked a faint line of disapproval between Randall’s fair brows when he opened the door of his Victorian-style residence to her. “It’s all right, my dear,” he said reassuringly, as if her “hello” had been a lengthy apology. “Traffic wreaks havoc with the most punctual among us, even on a quiet Sunday.” He kissed her cheek, remarking, “What a delightful perfume. I like it almost as much as I do my favorite, which you usually wear. You look lovely. Come on in and greet everyone. Naturally, everybody is here. What shall I get you for an aperitif?”
Good heavens, what have I done? she wondered in surprise as she followed Randall into the library where a fire had been lit and the bridge table set up. The others, a man and a woman in middle age, both lawyers, were at the fire with their drinks. They, too, had just arrived and were relieving the chill of the sudden cold front that had blown down from the Rockies. Deborah gave the evening her best, but she found the conversation dull and the play boring. She was concerned about Randall’s cool reserve toward her, carefully concealed from the others by his impeccable manners.
“Deborah, would you mind waiting for a few moments,” he requested when the evening finally drew to an end. “I have something to discuss with you that can’t wait until morning.”
Once the guests were seen off, Randall suggested, “Let us go back to the fire, my dear. I’ll not keep you long. You look tired.”
Deborah glanced at him sharply. Did she? Or was that an implication of some kind? His manner was so strange. Depressed, Deborah linked an arm through his. “What is it, Randall? Have I offended you in some way? You must tell me.”
He seemed mollified by her taking his arm and said in a conciliatory tone, “Forgive an old man who loves you as if you were his very own. I could not bear it if anything happened to you. You are the solace of my old age. Without you, I could not go on.”
“Randall, dear—” In dismay, Deborah stared at the pain-shadowed eyes, the hurt mouth. “Whatever has given you the idea that something will happen to me?”
“Before we discuss that,” he patted her hand, “let’s have some brandy to take the chill off our bones and—perhaps my words.”
Deborah rarely drank after dinner, but she accepted the snifter of brandy and watched as Randall lowered his slight, brittle frame into a velvet high-backed chair the twin of hers. With a frowning interest in the swirl of brandy, he cleared his throat and began, “Bea tells me that you left Josie’s Friday night with Dan Parker, and that you were…quite inebriated. I must confess to you frankly, my dear child, that I have been very concerned about where he took you. I can’t imagine that he knew where you lived on such short acquaintance, and you were obviously not in a state to direct him.”
Deborah set down the snifter of brandy untasted. “Randall, I’m sorry, but that really is none of your business.”
“I was afraid you might respond that way, so, lest you think that I am prying into your dealings with men like some—voyeur, let me assure you that I have a reason for asking.”
“I am anxious to hear it.”
“I sense, deep in my heart, where I’ve always unerringly been warned about matters dearest to me, that Dan Parker will hurt you, Deborah.”
“Dan—? Hurt me? Why would he do that?” she asked, seeing Randall flinch at the familiar use of the name.
“Dan Parker is a man to whom business means everything. His sole interest in life is in making money. There is no room for anything or anyone else in it, certainly not the presence of a wife and children. Dan Parker is still unmarried at thirty-eight. That ought to suggest something to you.”
“It suggests that perhaps he has never found the woman he wishes to marry,” she said quietly.
“Do you believe for a moment that you might be that woman? Oh, my dear child, believe me, you are not. Why, Dan Parker is only interested in…the lowest sort of woman. I’m surprised your research did not reveal that when you were designing his headquarters. Certainly you must have learned that he has kept steady company with the actress Alicia Dameron for years.”
“I never pay much attention to the public reputations of well-known people. It’s easy to be misled.” She had herself in mind when she spoke. It was possible that Dan, too, had used social subterfuge. But she had not known he was a womanizer. She had not known about Alicia Dameron. Where, she wondered, had Randall gotten his information?
“And you are hoping to become the one woman to supplant the others?” Randall’s exasperation produced a blunt tone. “Deborah, you must not delude yourself. You are to Dan Parker what some new and different objet d’ art is to a collector—a collector, I might add, whose origins were in poverty. The blush of owning a Rembrandt wears off quickly to a man whose sole delight in possessing it is the ability to purchase it.”
“Randall, that is quite enough!” said Deborah, getting up, aware that she was shaking from both anger and fright.
“My dear child, I am sorry,” Randall said hastily, his voice softening. “I beg you to bear with me. All I am saying is that you are an original. He has never met a woman like you before. Do have a seat, please, and hear me out?”
Deborah resumed her seat. “If you are worried that Dan will love me and leave me—isn’t that a risk one takes in any relationship?”
“Ahhh.” Randall drew it out slowly, leaning toward her. “That question brings me to my point. Do you think you have the stamina to take another deep hurt? You know how broken you were when you first came to the firm. It’s taken years to put you back together, and we’ve managed to do that by directing your energies toward the fulfillment of a creative destiny. If you were to—heaven forbid—fall in love with Dan Parker and he were to abuse that regard, what would that do to you, Deborah?”
Deborah knew that he could discern from the sudden rigidity of her features, the silence that met his question, that his shot had hit home. “You are involved with him already, aren’t you?” Randall ventured softly.
“Yes,” she said.
“I knew it! I knew it!” He leaped up with surprising agility and in distress paced away from the fire. “I knew that he had gotten to you already, the scoundrel!”
“He hasn’t gotten to me, and he isn’t a scoundrel! You’ve no basis on which to distrust him so deeply, Randall,” Deborah asserted, but she felt unsettled by a nameless disquiet and looked away from Randall to the fire. Without his composure, he seemed as exposed and vulnerable as a featherless bird. “I’m sorry if my seeing Dan disturbs you, but I am a grown woman. I can take care of myself.”
Suddenly still, Randall subjected her to a long deliberation. “Will it make any difference in the care you take of yourself, my dear, if I tell you that I have recently made a new will. You are my heir. Upon my death, the firm and all its assets go to you.”
Deborah sat speechless, unmoving. Only the merry gossip of flames broke the tense, startled silence. “Randall, that is far too generous.”
“That’s for me to decide. You are to be my successor. I’ve made my decision. Now, my dear, I must see you to the door. I am very weary tonight. No, not another word,” he admonished when she was about to speak. “Silence is best for reflection. We’ll have occasion to discuss this again.”
Under the stars, Deborah lay awake thinking about the amazing revelations of the last twenty-four hours. It was true that Randall had an uncanny perception of people, their motives and fears. But he was wrong about Dan. Dan would never hurt her, not deliberately. He possessed too much of the compassion that often comes with great strength, too much of the gentleness so frequently found in big men.
He had given her an incomparable gift—a new knowledge of herself. He had made possible a choice she had subconsciously foresworn. Intimacy, marriage, children. All that had seemed too risky, too dangerous. They offered too many ways to fail, to hurt others and to be hurt herself. She couldn’t afford that. Her career had provided a satisfying alternative, and only rarely had she thought of a future and old age without the love of a husband and family. Now Dan had freed her to consider other possibilities.
How ironic that the two men she most admired should have warned her about each other on the same day! How sad that they didn’t like each other. Why, Randall had even used that astounding disclosure about the will as an inducement to keep her from seeing Dan. Well, she had news for him! Inheriting the firm would never be enticement enough to give up Dan…if she should ever love him.
At the town house, Dan stretched out his long legs before the fire. Occasionally, his knees bothered him now, the result of several injuries he had suffered while playing lineman on his high school football team. He was treating himself to a cigar, a rare luxury, but tonight he was in need of extra comfort. His earlier five-mile jog around the nearby track had not produced an answer to a troublesome question. Staring into the fire, he smoked and thought. By the time the cigar and fire had burned low, Dan had decided how to deal with Deborah Standridge. The best plan would be first to get her to fall in love with him. And then he would spring the surprise.
Monday, which Deborah had anticipated happily, was not off to a good start. At the meeting she called to assign the construction documents for the Parker project, John Turner created a scene. These were the mechanical, electrical, structural, and architectural drawings that Dan Parker would be taking to the city planning and zoning office November twenty-second to ensure that the plans complied with Denver’s building and public safety codes.
“Now let me see if I understand you correctly.” John spoke each word distinctly. “You are proposing that I wait until you are finished with the architectural drawings of the eight support columns before I am to begin the structural specifications for them?”
“That is correct,” Deborah said patiently. “If you look at my original rendering of the lobby, you’ll see that there are certain aesthetic considerations about the columns requiring a detailed set of architectural drawings from which to figure the structural computations. That’s why I don’t want you to work from the original rendering.”
“Would that be because you don’t trust me to compute them accurately without your blasted drawings, Miss Standridge?”
“John,” Deborah sighed, “please do not reduce this meeting to a battleground. Where do you get such ideas? We all know that you’re the best structural engineer in town.” Immediately, she regretted the poor choice of compliments. John’s lip curled sardonically.
“Thank you, Deborah,” he said with an acerbic smile. “How neatly you manage to keep me in my place. May I humbly remind you that by asking me to wait for your drawings, you could put me behind in my own schedule?”
“No, I won’t. You can work on the other structural specifications. I’ll begin the drawings for the columns right away and have them to you by next Monday. I wouldn’t insist that you use them if those columns weren’t such a vital part of the headquarters building. But exposed as they are in the atrium, surely you can understand why it’s important that every feature be just right. They’re the focal point of the whole design!”
“They’re nothing but decorative folderol.” John snorted. “They impede the flow of traffic.”
“They aid the flow of traffic, John!” intervened Tony Pierson. “Just look at the rendering!”
“No thanks. I’ve been told to wait for the drawings.” He stood up, tall and thin. “How long did you say we have on this package?”
Sickened and appalled by the man’s unadulterated dislike of her, Deborah answered, “Nine weeks from today. That’s when Mr. Parker needs them. Once they’ve been approved, the steel can be ordered and work on the site begun—”
“Don’t tutor me on the ins and outs, the procedures of the building industry, Deborah. I’ve been dealing with it considerably longer than you have.” He favored the group with a bitter smile. “Well, good mawnin’ yawl. Doncha tawk about me when ahm gawn, ya heah!” he said, imitating Deborah’s accent, and strolled from the conference room.
There was an embarrassed silence when he had gone. “He gets more jealous of you every year, Deborah,” Tony maintained.
Deborah mulled over Tony’s remark on the way to her office. Each year John Turner did seem to become more intolerant of her success. His professional jealousy was alienating him from everyone in the firm, perhaps might even endanger his job if Randall were to learn of it. Randall prided himself on running a company that was like a happy family. Discordant notes were not allowed.
Deborah did not want John’s position in the firm jeopardized because of her. She felt a strange sympathy for him and even appreciated some of the engineer’s qualities that were often overshadowed by his blatant antipathy toward her. There was no one in the firm more loyal to Randall, no one more hard working or dependable than John. Because he had worked for Randall so long and because he held two degrees—engineering and architecture, a notable accomplishment in itself—John had been bitterly disappointed five years before when the urban design department had gone to Deborah. Long divorced, growing older, lonelier, and more frustrated, he seemed to nurse his grudge against her as if it were the only source of comfort in a cold and alien world.
The phone was ringing as she entered the office. “Deborah,” Bea said on the line, “would you mind talking to this woman from Phoenix? She is trying to reach Dan Parker with an urgent message and insists on speaking to someone who works directly with him.”
“A woman? All right. Put her on. Is she his secretary?”
Deborah recognized one of Bea’s dramatic pauses. “Hardly, dear,” she said after an appropriate amount of silence. “It’s Alicia Dameron, the actress.”
Good ol’ Bea; she could never resist an occasion for dramatics, thought Deborah in annoyance. She had the sensation of her blood having just frozen. “Then, by all means, put her on,” Deborah said evenly.
Alicia Dameron’s famous voice did not project the slightest inflection of urgency. It was vivacious, chatty, and confiding, the kind of voice used for old friends. “I hope you’ll excuse me for using you as a go-between for Dan and me,” Alicia said, “but there’s no answer at his town house, and I didn’t know where else to reach him. He told me your firm was handling the project he’s working on there. May I leave a message for him with you?”
Deborah, remembering the actress from a scene in one of her movies some years ago, could picture the petite, Barbie-doll actress talking on a phone by her swimming pool. She could see the silver blond hair carelessly secured behind shell-pink ears, the devastating beauty of the blue eyes, the perfect, tanned little figure barely covered by a very small bikini. A paralyzing jealousy swept over her.
“Are you there?” Alicia’s tone held a merry note of concern.
“I’m here,” Deborah answered stiffly. “I’ll be talking with Mr. Parker sometime this afternoon and will pass on your message. Does he have your number?”
“Indeed he does!” Alicia laughed gaily. “Tell you what—just have that dear man call me. I want to tell him the good news myself. And my dear, tell him that if he doesn’t call me by tonight, he’s in big trouble. Emphasize that: big trouble!” Her laughter tinkled like a crystal bell.
Deborah tried to settle down to work at the drawing board in her office but could not concentrate. Alicia Dameron’s merry voice, its intimate reference to Dan, played over and over in her mind. She was interrupted constantly by the ring of the telephone and by members of the project team with questions about their work. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, Deborah pushed the intercom button. “I’m going home, Bea. I can’t get any work done around here. Mr. Parker will be calling sometime today. Please see that he gets this message from Alicia Dameron.”
She relayed Alicia’s words and heard Bea’s sharp intake of breath. “Dan Parker doesn’t seem the kind of man to take that kind of domineering from any woman.”
“Alicia Dameron isn’t any woman, Bea. Be sure and tell Randall that I’ve left. And when Mr. Parker calls, tell him to telephone me at home.”
Deborah irritably pulled her hair out from under the collar of the ultrasuede jacket that was part of the blue ensemble she had selected for her date with Dan. Randall was quite right when he said she should wear her hair in a neckline chignon rather than loose the way Dan liked it. Worn long, it was far too much of a bother. She unfastened the gold chain with its medallion from around her neck and dropped it into a pocket. It was too heavy, an heirloom piece she wore only on special occasions. She picked up a portfolio of sketches and left the office by the side door. The day was now nothing but a sour taste in her mouth. She would go home to the sanctuary of her house and her faithful Dempsey.
Well, what did you expect? she asked herself as she drove through the changing countryside. Randall warned you about Dan. Dan Parker was a man who liked women. He was a lady killer, straight and true. No, not straight and true. A man could not have a girl in every town where he had a job site and be considered straight and true. Out-and-out would do. Dan Parker was an out-and-out womanizer who required a dependable source of feminine comfort in the city where he happened to be working.
She wondered what Dan intended to do with Alicia when his headquarters were moved from Phoenix. Or was she the constant star around which they in the lesser galaxies revolved? Well, she, Deborah, never intended to find out! Blast him! Tears stung her eyes. He had made her aware of something about love that she’d just as soon not have learned. Simply, that if it is painful to be loved, to love involves a greater agony. Not that I love him. How could I? I don’t even know him. Obviously.
That afternoon Deborah took a break from her drawing board and was in the backyard with Dempsey when she heard a car door slam. The Labrador bounded away to investigate. She ordered her features blank of all expression, furious that her heart had begun to race out of control.
“Hello, you two.” Dan’s resonant greeting floated across the leaf-strewn lawn.