Read Online One Night With You by Candace Schuler - Free Book Online Page A

to let anyone else's bad temper inflame his own. Eldin prided himself, and quite rightly too, on never losing his temper.
    "Maybe," she admitted grudgingly, "but I think it's disgusting the way everyone looks at Stephanie and at me and then at every man in the room, wondering if he might be the one. It's nobody's business but mine!"
    "And the father's surely?"
    "His least of all." Desi whirled away, hiding quick tears, and bumped a hip into side table, toppling over a pair of silver candlesticks. "Oh, now look what you've made me do," she said as Stephanie startled and began to cry.
    "It's all right, darling," Desi soothed, picking up the frightened baby. "Mommie's not yelling at you." She nuzzled her hot face against Stephanie's tiny neck, breathing in the baby-powder sweetness of her. "Shush, darling. Everything's okay." She bounced the quieting baby gently against her shoulder, whispering senseless words of endearment. "No more yelling, I promise. That's my good girl. Everything's fine. Everything's fine," she repeated, shielding her own teary face from Eldin's sharp eyes by hiding it behind the curve of Stephanie's body.
    Darn it! Tears came so easily, much too easily, to her lately. She rubbed her cheek gently against Stephanie's back.
    "I'm sorry, Eldin. Baby blues, I guess," she said, shifting the baby to her lap as she sat down in a corner of the rose-colored sofa. It was one of her Art Deco pieces, padded and luxuriously comfortable. "I get weepy for no reason." She tried a careless smile, but it came off a little sheepishly. "Sorry."
    Eldin uncrossed his legs and reached for his sherry.
    "Think nothing of it," he said airily. "I understand."
    "Oh, Eldin, if you only did."
    "Why don't you tell me about it, then, hmm?"
    Desi shook her head stubbornly.
    "Come on, luv," he urged. "Tell Uncle Eldin. Why are you trying to turn down the biggest opportunity of your career?"
    "Eldin, please." She looked up at him, confusion and a faint shadow of pain visible in the depths of her wide blue eyes. "Just leave it. I can't work on Devil's Lady and there's no point in discussing it."
    "I think you owe me an explanation at least."
    "No."
    He gulped down the last of his sherry—terrible way to treat fine sherry—and set the empty glass on a side table, rising to move slowly around the room. His fingers lingered for a moment on the lace curtains at the window, and then he stood for a minute, staring absently into the tall glass-fronted cabinet that housed Desi's collection of beaded evening bags and fragile fans.
    Desi watched him as he moved, knowing he had not dropped the subject, but was only gathering his thoughts to make another, more concerted effort to find out what was troubling her. He looked so dapper, she thought, as her eyes followed him around the room, just like central casting's idea of a well-to-do and quite proper English gentleman with his impeccable tailoring and military school bearing. His neat cap of light-brown hair was going a distinguished gray at the temples, and he wore a little caterpillar of a mustache on his upper lip.
    He dressed as if he was in England, too. Sharply creased, gray slacks, with a tweed jacket over a crisp white shirt and an old school tie. Striped, of course. To look at him you would never know that it was an unseasonably warm September afternoon.
    "Is it Dorothea Heller?" he asked, stopping in front of her. "I know she's a bit of an eccentric, but I felt sure you'd like her."
    "I do. She's a wonderful, charming piece of work," Desi said, and she meant it wholeheartedly.
    They had met at the Tadish Grill for drinks and lunch, the three of them, just yesterday. It was supposed to have been four but Eldin's other guest, this mysterious producer of his, was late and they were starting without him.
    "You remind me of me when I was your age," Dorothea Heller told Desi, staring at her over the rim of a champagne glass, her black eyes sparkling with health and a sharp, biting wit. "Only I was