Donovan's Child by Christine Rimmer Page B

did him the courtesy of letting him claim the distance he needed. He was on guard constantly, waitingfor her to step over the line again, to badger him under the guise of trying to “understand” him.
    But she didn’t. She worked and she worked hard.
    In the evening, all that week, by tacit agreement, they skipped the usual cocktails in the sitting area. They saw each other in the dining room, for dinner. They spoke of the progress that had been made on the design.
    After they’d eaten, they said good-night.
    He placed an ad in the local weekly paper, the Chula Mesa Messenger, for a new assistant. No, he didn’t hold out much hope that he’d get an acceptable applicant that way. But he gave it a try.
    The ad appeared when the paper came out on Thursday. Friday morning, four days after Ben’s departure, he had three replies. He held the interviews that day.
    One of the applicants seemed worth giving a trial. Her name was Helen Abernathy, and she was a retired secretary from Austin. Helen agreed to start that following Monday. She preferred not to live in, to return nightly to her own house and her retired husband, Virgil.
    Helen’s living at home was no problem for Donovan. He didn’t really need a live-in assistant anymore, anyway. He’d become reasonably adept at taking care of himself by then. He could get into the shower by himself, dress himself, even drive himself in the specially modified van he’d bought, should he ever want to go anywhere. He only needed someone to handle correspondence, to pay the bills and field phone calls.
    Since Helen would be going home at six, that would leave only him and Abilene at dinner. And when she returned to San Antonio, which would be in three weeks now, if all went as planned, he would eat alone.
    That was fine with him. Perfect. It was the choice he had made.
    Â 
    Saturday, Abilene knocked off work at about four.
    Donovan knew she would use the pool, which he kept heated in the winter. Lately, she’d been swimming every day after she finished working.
    Donovan knew this because he’d happened to be in his rooms around five on the afternoon of the day Ben quit. He glanced out the French doors of his sitting room—and saw her by the pool.
    He watched her swim that day.
    And each day since.
    She wore a plain blue tank suit, a suit that showed off the clean, sleek lines of her body. She had slim hips and nice breasts, breasts that were beautifully rounded, high and full—but not too full. The breasts of a woman who had yet to bear a child.
    He admired her pretty body in the same way that he admired her spirit and her quick mind. Objectively. From the safe cocoon of his own isolation. He felt no desire when he watched her. It wasn’t sexual. It was simple appreciation of the beauty of her healthy, young female form.
    When she emerged from her rooms, she would toss her towel on a bench and dive right in. She would swim the length of the pool, turn underwater, and swim back to where she had started, turn again, and head back the other way.
    Back and forth, over and over. She swam tirelessly.
    After twenty minutes or so, she would emerge, breathing hard. She would towel off quickly, and disappear into her rooms again.
    That Saturday afternoon, when she climbed from the pool, as she was reaching for the towel she’d left thrown across a stone bench, she paused. She turned her headuntil it seemed to him she was looking directly at him, where he sat in his chair just inside the French doors.
    She simply stood there, water sliding off her slim flanks, her hair slicked close to her head. She stood there and she stared right at him through those eyes that seemed fully golden right then, not so much as tinged with the faintest hint of green.
    He knew she couldn’t see him, that the light was wrong—and so what if she did see him? It wasn’t any big deal, that he had seen her swimming.
    Still, he rolled his chair