Hot Streak

the arguments had never stopped. Just like now.

Dislike for his petty nastinesses came flooding back, and she stood rigid in his grasp, her eyes scathing. “Let me go.”

“Soon,” Bart grated, angry now, apparently thwarted in his quest. “Sit.” He jerked her down so she fell awkwardly across his lap.

As Molly was struggling in his grip, a familiar voice with a coldly reined-in courtesy said, “Pardon me. I'll come back at a more convenient time.” Carey was wearing a linen jacket with stylish slacks and a shirt with intricate pleats down the front. The pale colors contrasted with his dark tan and hard masculine features. He didn't move, not a muscle, except his eyes, which took in the two wineglasses side-by-side on the glass coffee table, and the two figures entwined on the couch.

“Carey!” Molly cried, terrified at the diamond-hard coldness in his eyes.

But he was walking out of the room already, and only narrowly missed colliding into Carrie who was running in from the kitchen. Steadying her with his hands, he bent over and briefly whispered to her. Then, straightening, he strode down the hall. Molly heard his light tread running down the stairs. Then the slam of the door.

“Damn you, Bart. Look what you did now,” she exclaimed, untangling herself from his grasp.

“Who the hell was that?” he rebuked. “I like the twin names. Enlightening.” And the gray eyes he turned on Molly were flinty hard.

“Carrie, go to your room. Daddy and I want to talk,” Molly hastily interposed before anything more was said. After Carrie left she turned on Bart, her expression indignant. “Now do you have something to say?”

“I don't know who the mysterious blond stranger was,” he sneered, “but looking at the remarkable resemblance to your daughter, I'd say, he's someone a helluva lot closer to you than I ever was.”

“You're insane,” Molly snapped.

“Hardly, and not blind, either,” he curtly retorted. But then his voice changed into a taunting sweetness. “Here the little wife I thought so prim and sexually unawakened has a skeleton in her very own closet. My congratulations. You carried off the demure facade winningly all those years. And the offended wife at divorce time. I wish I'd known Mr. Blond Fashion Model before you took half the equity in the house. By the way, child support payments stop as of this minute.”

“Bart, you don't know what you're talking about. Carrie's your daughter.”

“So I always assumed-until her twin just walked into this room.”

“She was born nine and a half months after we were married.”

“So?”

“I was true to you all our married life,” she protested, her temper rising.

“Commendable, I'm sure,” Bart said, the sarcasm in his voice denigrating. “Although under the circumstances, hardly believable. Come off it, Molly. I don't care. I don't care about anything you do or did.”

“That at least is the truth,” Molly replied, her eyes smoldering with resentment. “Why don't you leave now? I'm not up to any more of your pleasant company.” And she stood, waiting for him to go.

“Who is he?” Bart asked, leisurely unfolding himself from the sofa.

“Do me a favor. Get the hell out of here.”

“Is he rich?”

“I don't know.”

“He looks rich,” Bart said mildly. “That haircut cost at least a hundred dollars.”

“He cuts his own hair,” she answered, her control dangerously near to breaking.

“He looks vaguely familiar. Carey who?”

“It was wonderful, as usual, Bart. Stay away longer next time,” Molly said, pushing his unresisting body toward the hallway.

“I'm glad you found a rich one again, Molly. You're going to need someone rich to bail your business out from time to time. Women weren't meant to be business men.”

If looks could kill, Bart would have been a puddle on the hall floor. Undeterred, he turned his sleepy eyes on her and smiled, “Ciao.”

“Right, ciao, Bart, and sayonara and write if you get work, preferably in the nether regions of the Amazon.” Keeping a tight rein on the hysteria cresting when she thought of Carey's basilisk expression, Molly pressed her temple against the doorjamb after Bart left and slowly counted to fifty. Carey wouldn't walk away without an explanation, would he? Good God, would he? But his chill eyes haunted her; she knew him so little. And what she did know had been transfigured into this world-class luminary. However, she'd have to deal with all the confusion and doubt later. Carrie needed some kind of explanation now.

Seated on the bed in her daughter's room, she explained that both Daddy and Carey had left, but-and at this point, she crossed her fingers unobtrusively to negate the fib-they'd be back.

“I know,” Carrie agreed. “Daddy always comes over on my birthday, and that's only a few days away. And Carey whispered he'd come back to see me. Did you and Daddy have another fight?” The question was posed casually, as if she had asked whether her mother thought it would rain soon.

“Well, sort of.”

“You two should learn to communicate better.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”

“Then I wouldn't have to suffer loads of childhood anxieties. I read Judy Blume and know every childhood anxiety in the whole world.”

“In that case,” Molly said with a fond smile for her precocious daughter who absorbed life like a sponge and treated it as mundanely, “I'll try to ‘communicate' better with your father and save myself thousands of dollars in therapy for you.”

“You gotta learn, Mom. Just smile and nod your head with Daddy. That's what he likes best. He never really listens, anyway. That Carey guy sure looked mad,” she went on in the same breath as though the two thoughts weren't mutually exclusive. “Doesn't he like you sitting on Daddy's lap?” Her innocent dark eyes opened wide in inquiry.

“You tell me. You seem to have the world figured out,” Molly teased, her mood lightened by her daughter's prosaic outlook on humanity.

“Well, Tammy says her mother's new boyfriend is really jealous of Tammy's dad. They had a big fight one night when Tammy's dad came over to the house to fix the filter system on the pool. Are men possessive, Mom? Tammy says they sure are.”

Molly laughed. “I don't know, honey. Some men are; some women are, too. It's not a gender-based feeling. Come on, you'd better get ready for bed. Only two more days of school before vacation, and you have tests both days.”

CHAPTER 21

A fter Molly had tucked Carrie in for the night, she went into her studio and tried to concentrate on a floor plan for the new office for United Diversified. Her mind was blank except for a disastrous feeling of loss. Would he come back? Was Carrie right? Or was he only being kind to a child, something very like the man she'd known? Should she call him? But where? Tonight was impossible; he wasn't at the only number she had for him. Damn, damn, damn, she cried. Why did Bart have to come over tonight?

An hour later the floor plan was beyond redemption, hatched and crosshatched with a multitude of revisions and revamping. Tossing aside her pencil, she snapped off the swivel-necked lamp on her drafting table and slid her chair back. This would have to wait till morning. She couldn't concentrate with the current state of her emotions.

He'd been walking since he left the apartment, anger and resentment in varying degrees forcing his long stride. He could have kicked himself. First for acting like a young schoolboy, jettisoning everything-the editing, the 220 people costing him salaries even though they weren't filming-all because some woman talked amorously on the phone and he wanted her. And then to find her with another man. He stopped at a park bench facing a quiet lake and shrugged out of his sport coat. Elbows on knees and chin in hand, he contemplated the emotions tearing him