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When she had finished her phone call, she undressed and began getting ready for her evening with Prince Stefan Marko Brancuzi. Wrapping herself in a silk robe, she walked into the tiled bathroom where plump cakes of her favorite soap sat by the roomy tub, along with her customary brand of American shampoo. The Connaught made it their business to know their guests' grooming preferences, along with the papers they read, how they wanted their coffee in the morning, and, in Francesca's case, the fact that Teddy collected bottle caps. A supply of unusual European beer caps always awaited her in a neatly tied parcel when she checked out. She'd never quite had the heart to tell them that Teddy's idea of collecting bottle caps was based more on quantity than on quality, with Pepsi currently beating out Coke by 394.
She eased herself into the hot bathwater and when her skin had adjusted to the temperature, settled back and shut her eyes. God, she was tired. She needed a vacation so badly. A small voice nagged at her, asking how much longer she was going to go on like this—leaving her child to fly all over the world at the drop of a hat, attending endless production meetings, skimming stacks of books every night before she went to sleep? Lately Holly Grace and Naomi had been with Teddy more than she had.
Thoughts of Holly Grace pushed her mind in a slow circle back to Dallas Beaudine.
Her encounter with him had taken place so long ago that it no longer seemed anything more than an accident of biology that he'd fathered Teddy. He wasn't the one who had given birth, or gone without nylons in those early years to pay for corrective baby shoes, or lost sleep worrying about raising a child whose I.Q. was a good forty points higher than her own. Francesca, not Dallie Beaudine, was responsible for the person Teddy had become. No matter how hard Holly Grace pushed, Francesca refused to let him back into even the smallest corner of her life.
“Aw, come on, Francie, it's been ten years,” Holly Grace had complained the last time they'd talked about it. They had been lunching at the newly opened Aurora on East Forty-ninth, sitting on a leather banquette off to one side of the granite horseshoe bar. “In a few weeks Dallie's going to be in the city talking to the network about doing color commentary for their golf tournaments this spring. How about you relax your rules for a change and let me take Teddy to meet him? Teddy's heard stories about Dallie for years, and Dallie's curious about Teddy after listening to me ramble on about him so much.”
“Absolutely not!” Francesca speared a morsel of duck confit lightly coated in hazelnut oil from her salad and made the excuse she always made when the topic came up, the only one Holly Grace seemed to accept. “That time with Dallie was the most humiliating period of my entire life, and I refuse to bring back even the smallest memory of it. I won't have any contact with him ever again—and that means keeping Teddy away, too. You know how I feel about this, Holly Grace, and you promised you wouldn't push me again.”
Holly Grace was clearly exasperated. “Francie, that boy is going to grow up queer if you don't let him associate with more members of the male sex.”
“You're all the father a boy needs,” Francesca replied dryly, feeling both exasperation and deep affection for the woman who had stood by her through so much.
Holly Grace chose to take Francesca's remark seriously. “I sure haven't been able to make a success of his athletic career.” She stared glumly toward the frosted globes hanging over the bar. “Honest to God, Francie, he's got more left feet than you do.”
Francesca knew she was too defensive about Teddy's lack of a father, but she couldn't help herself. “I tried, didn't I? You made me pitch balls to him when he was four years old.”
“And wasn't that a great moment in baseball history,” Holly Grace replied with withering sarcasm. “Helen Keller pitching and Little Stevie Wonder catching. The two of you are the most uncoordinated—”
“You didn't do any better with him. He fell off that awful horse when you took him riding, and he broke his finger the first time you threw a football at him.”
“That's one of the reasons I want him to meet Dallie. Now that Teddy's getting a little older, Dallie might have some ideas about what to do with him.” Holly Grace extracted a sprig of watercress from beneath a flaky piece of smoked sea bass and munched on it contemplatively. “I don't know—it must be all that foreign blood Teddy's got. Damn, if Dallie really had been his father, we wouldn't have this problem. Athletic coordination is programmed in all the Beaudine genes.”
A lot you know, Francesca thought with a wry smile, as she lathered her arms and then moved the soapy l
oofah over her legs. Sometimes she found herself wondering what wonderful, wayward chromosome had produced her son. She knew that Holly Grace was disappointed that Teddy wasn't better looking, but Francesca had always regarded Teddy's sweet, homely face as a gift. It would never occur to Teddy to rely on good looks to get through life. He would use his brain, his courage, and his sweet, sentimental heart.
The water in the tub was growing tepid, and she realized she had barely twenty minutes before the driver arrived to take her to Stefan's yacht for dinner. Although she was tired, she was looking forward to spending the night with Stefan. After several months of long-distance phone calls with only a few rushed face-to-face meetings, she felt that the time had definitely come to deepen their relationship. Unfortunately, working fourteen-hour days since she had arrived in London hadn't left her with any spare time for sexual frolicking. But with the last show on tape, all she had left to do tomorrow was stand in front of various British monuments for some tourist shots they planned to use at the end of the broadcast. She had made up her mind that before she flew back to New York, she and Stefan were going to spend at least two nights together.
Despite the pressures of the clock, she picked up the soap and absentmindedly rubbed it over her breasts. They tingled, reminding her of how glad she would be to end her year of self-imposed celibacy. It wasn't that she'd planned to be celibate for so long, it was just that she seemed psychologically incapable of bed-hopping. Holly Grace might mourn the passing of the one-night stand, but regardless of how much Francesca's healthy body nagged at her, she found sex without emotional attachment an arid, awkward business.
Two years ago, she had nearly married a charismatic young California congressman. He was handsome, successful, and wonderful in bed. But he nearly went crazy whenever she brought home one of her runaways and he hardly ever laughed at her jokes, so she had finally stopped seeing him. Prince Stefan Marko Brancuzi was the first man she'd met since then whom she cared enough about to sleep with.
They had met several months before when she'd interviewed him on her show. She had found Stefan both charming and intelligent, and he had soon proven himself to be a good friend. But was caring the same thing as loving, she wondered, or was she just trying to find a way out of the dissatisfaction she had been feeling with her life?
Shaking off her melancholy mood, she toweled herself dry and slipped on her robe. Knotting the sash, she moved to the mirror, where she applied her makeup efficiently, allowing no time for either scrutiny or admiration. She took care of herself because it was her business to look good, but when people raved about her sage green eyes, her delicate cheekbones and gleaming chestnut hair, Francesca found herself withdrawing from them. Painful experience had taught her that being born with a face like hers was more of a liability than an asset. Strength of character came from hard work, not smoky-thick eyelashes.
Clothes, however, were another matter.
Surveying the four evening outfits she had brought with her, she passed up a silver-studded Kamali and a yummy Donna Karan, deciding instead on a strapless black silk faille designed by Gianni Versace. The gown bared her shoulders, cinched her waist, and then fell in soft, uneven tiers to mid-calf. Dressing quickly, she gathered up her purse and reached for her sable. As her fingers brushed the soft fur collar, she hesitated, wishing Stefan hadn't given her the coat. But he'd been so upset when she'd tried to refuse it that she'd eventually given in. Still, she disliked the idea of all those furry little animals dying so she could be fashionably dressed. Also, the lavishness of the gift subtly offended her sense of self-reliance.
With a stubborn set to her jaw, she passed over the fur for a flaming fuchsia shawl. Then, for the first time that evening, she really looked at herself in the mirror. Versace gown, pear-shaped diamond studs, black stockings sprinkled with a mist of tiny jet beads, slim Italian heels—all luxuries she had bought for herself. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she draped the fuchsia shawl around her bare shoulders and made her way to the elevator.
God bless America.
Chapter
24
You're sellin' out, is what it is,” Skeet said to Dallie, who was scowling at the back of the cab driver's neck as the taxi crawled down Fifth Avenue. “You can try to paint a pretty face on it, talkin' ‘bout new opportunities and expanding horizons, but what you're doin’ is giving up.”
“What I'm doing is being realistic,” Dallie answered with some irritation. “If you weren't so goddamn ignorant, you'd see that this is just about the chance of a lifetime.” Riding in a car with someone else driving always put Dallie in a bad mood, but when he was stuck in a Manhattan traffic jam and the man behind the wheel could only speak Farsi, Dallie passed the point of being fit for human company.
He and Skeet had spent the last two hours at the Tavern on the Green, being wined and dined by the network brass, who wanted Dallie to sign an exclusive five-year contract to do color commentary during their golf tournaments. He had done some announcing for them the year before while he was recovering from a fractured wrist, and the audience response had been so favorable that the network had immediately gone after him. Dallie had the same humorous, irreverent attitude on the air as Lee Trevino and Dave Marr, currently the most entertaining of the color commentators. But as one of the network vice-presidents had remarked to his third wife, Dallie was a hell of a lot prettier than either one.
Dallie had made a sartorial concession to the importance of the occasion by putting on a navy suit, along with a respectable maroon silk tie neatly knotted at the collar of his pale blue dress shirt. Skeet, however, had settled for a corduroy jacket from J. C. Penney's along with a string tie he'd won in the fall of 1973 pitching dimes into goldfish bowls.
