Man of the Hour: Night Of Love

“They’re much too upsetting for me,” she confessed. “No, I don’t watch the news or read newspapers unless I can’t avoid them. I know,” she said before he could taunt her about it, “I’m hiding my head in the sand. But honestly, David, what could I do to change any of that? We elect politicians and trust them to have our best interests at heart. It isn’t the best system going, but I can hardly rush overseas and tell people to do what I think they should, now can I?”

“It doesn’t hurt to stay informed,” he said. “Although right now, maybe it’s just as well that you aren’t,” he added under his breath. “See you in the morning.”

“Yes.” She stared after him, frowning. David could be pretty mysterious himself at times.

David didn’t invite Steve to the house that week, because he could see how any mention of the man cut Meg. But although Wichita was a big city, it was still possible to run into people when you traveled in the same social circles.

Meg found it out the hard way when she went to a men’s department store that her family had always frequented to buy a birthday present for David. She ran almost literally into Steve there.

If she was shocked and displeased to meet him, the reverse was also true. He looked instantly hostile.

Her eyes slid away from his tall, fit body in the pale tan suit he was wearing. It hurt to look at him too much.

“Shopping for a suit?” he asked sarcastically. “You’ll have a hard time finding anything to fit you here.”

“I’m shopping for David’s birthday next week,” she said tightly.

“By an odd coincidence, so am I.”

“Doesn’t your secretary,” she stressed the word, “perform that sort of menial chore for you?”

“I pick out gifts for my friends myself,” he said with cold hauteur. “Besides,” he added, watching her face, “I have other uses for Daphne. I wouldn’t want to tire her too much in the daytime.”

Insinuating that he wanted her rested at night. Meg had to fight down anger and distaste. She kept her eyes on the ties. “Certainly not,” she said with forced humor.

“My father was right in the first place,” he said shortly, angered at her lack of reaction. “She would have made the perfect wife. I don’t know why it took me four years to realize it.”

Her heart died. Died! She swallowed. “Sometimes we don’t realize the value of things until it’s too late.”

His breath caught, not quite audibly. “Don’t we?”

She looked up, her eyes full of blue malice. “I didn’t realize how much ballet meant to me until I got engaged to you,” she said with a cold smile.

His fists clenched. He fought for control and smiled. “As we said once before, we had a lucky escape.” He cocked his head and studied her. “How’s the financing going for the ballet company?” he added pointedly.

She drew in a sharp breath. “Just fine, thanks,” she said venomously. “I won’t need any…help.”

“Pity,” he said, letting his eyes punctuate the word.

“Is it? I’m sure Daphne wouldn’t agree!”

“Oh, she doesn’t expect me to be faithful at this stage of the game,” he replied lazily. “Not until the engagement’s official, at least.”

Meg felt faint. She knew the color was draining slowly out of her face, but she stood firm and didn’t grab for support. “I see.”

“I still have your ring,” he said conversationally. “Locked up tight in my safe.”

She remembered giving it to her mother to hand back to him. The memory was vivid, violent. Daphne. Daphne!

“I kept it to remind me what a fool I was to think I could make a wife of you,” he continued. “I won’t make the same mistake again. Daphne doesn’t want just a career. She wants my babies,” he added flatly, cruelly.

She dropped her eyes, exhausted, almost ill with the pain of what he was saying. Her hand trembled as she fingered a silk tie. “Ahmed invited us to dinner and the theater Friday night.” Her voice only wobbled a little, thank God.

“I know,” he said, and sounded unhappy about it.

She forced her eyes up. “You don’t have to be deliberately insulting, do you, Steven?” she asked quietly. “I know you hate me. There’s no need for all this—” She stopped, almost choking on the word that almost escaped.

“Isn’t there? But, then, you don’t know how I feel, do you, Meg? You never did. You never gave a damn, either.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and glowered at her. She looked fragile somehow in the pale green knit suit she was wearing. “Ahmed is leaving soon,” he told her. “Don’t get attached to him.”

“He’s a friend. That’s all.”

His silver eyes slid over her bowed head with faint hunger and then moved away quickly. “How are the exercises coming?”

“Fine, thanks.”

He hesitated, bristling with bad temper. “When do you leave?” he asked bluntly.

She didn’t react. “At the end of the month.”

He let out a breath. “Well, thank God for that!”

Her eyes closed briefly. She’d had enough. She pulled the tie she’d been examining off the rack and moved away, refusing to look at him, to speak to him. Her throat felt swollen, raw.

“I’ll have this one, please,” she told the smiling clerk and produced her credit card. Her voice sounded odd.

Steven was standing just behind her, trying desperately to work up to an apology. It was becoming a habit to savage her. All he could think about was how much he’d loved her, and how easily she’d discarded him. He didn’t trust her, but, God, he still wanted her. She colored his dreams. Without her, everything was flat. Even now, looking at her fed his heart, uplifted him. She was so lovely. Fair and sweet and gentle, and all she wanted was a pair of toe shoes and a stage.

He groaned inwardly. How was he going to survive when she left again? He never should have touched her. Now it was going to be just as bad as before. He was going to watch her walk away a second time and part of him was going to die.

Daphne was coming with him tonight or he didn’t think he could survive Meg’s company. Thank God for Daphne. She was a friend, and quite content to be that, but she was his coconspirator as well now, part of this dangerous business that revolved around Ahmed. She was privileged to know things that no one else in his organization knew. But meanwhile she was also his camouflage. Daphne had a man of her own, one of the two government agents who were helping keep a careful eye on Ahmed. But fortunately, Meg didn’t know that.

Steven was in some danger. Almost as much as Ahmed. He couldn’t tell Meg that without having to give some top-secret answers. Daphne knew, of course. She was as protected as he was, as Ahmed was. But despite his bitterness toward Meg, he didn’t want her in the line of fire. Loving her was a disease, he sometimes thought, and there was no cure, not even a temporary respite. She was the very blood in his veins. And to her, he was expendable. He was of no importance to her, because all she needed from life was to dance. The knowledge cut deep into his heart. It made him cruel. But hurting her gave him no pleasure. He watched her with possessive eyes, aching to hold her and apologize for his latest cruelty.

Her purchase completed, Meg left the counter and turned away without looking up. Steven, impelled by forces too strong to control, gently took her arm and pulled her with him to a secluded spot behind some suits.

He looked down into her surprised, wounded eyes until his body began to throb. “I keep hurting you, don’t I?” he said roughly. “I don’t mean to. Honest to God, I don’t mean to, Meg!”

“Don’t you?” she asked with a sad, weary smile. “It’s all right, Steve,” she said quietly, averting her eyes. “Heaven knows, you’re entitled, after what I did to you!”

She pulled away from him and walked quickly out of the store, the cars and people blurring in front of her eyes.

Steve cursed himself while he watched her until she was completely out of view. He’d never felt quite so bad in his whole life.

Meg spent the rest of the week trying to practice her exercises and not think about Steve and Daphne. David didn’t say much, but he spoke to Steve one evening just after she’d met him in the store, and Meg overheard enough to realize that Steve was taking Daphne out for the evening. It made her heart ache.

She telephoned the manager of her ballet company, Tolbert Morse, on Thursday.

“Glad you called,” he said. “I think I may be on the way to meeting our bills. Can you be back in New York for rehearsals next week?”