One Night With You by Candace Schuler Page A

himself might be the producer. He certainly had the connections it would take to raise the necessary money.
    But, she thought, if you were raising money from lots of backers, or maybe even just a few, you probably couldn't guarantee the author the kind of control that Dorothea Heller had been promised. That tended to point to one producer with his own money.
    Who?
    Desi got up from the bed and moved across to her desk, skirting around the sewing machine and the extra chair and the filing cabinet that had been moved into her room when her "office" had been turned into a nursery. It made her pretty blue-and-white bedroom a little cramped—cozy was the word she had used when Teddie had commented on the new arrangement—but she somehow hadn't found the time to get rid of the furniture she no longer needed. She made another mental note to call the Salvation Army as she rummaged through the desk for her address book.
    Finding it, she went back to the telephone by the bed and began to flip through the worn and lined-out pages, looking for Zek's new telephone number. She had to tell someone her good news. And Zek was the only member of her family who would really understand what this project was going to mean to her career. Maybe she could pump him a little, too. See if he knew or had heard anything about this independent producer who had bought Devil's Lady .
    She put the phone down before it had rung once. Eldin had said don't whisper a word to anyone. Anyone would mean Zek, too, she was sure. Eldin would have her head on a plate if she let it out of the bag before he, and the producer, were ready for it.
    She jumped up from the bed. She had to tell someone her wonderful news or she'd burst!
    "Mommie's going to have her name up in lights, darling," she whispered next to Stephanie's tiny ear.
    But Stephanie was sound asleep, lying on her back, dressed neck to toes in a soft pink fleece sleeper with feet. Her tiny hands were curled inward toward her body. Her wispy red hair formed a fiery nimbus around her head. Desi reached out, irresistibly drawn, to tenderly smooth her daughter's soft curls head for just a minute.
    It was such a tiny head. So innocent, so sweet, so utterly defenseless. Everything that was maternal in Desi welled up at the sight and the feel of her tiny sleeping daughter. She blinked, feeling foolish tears clog her throat and blur her vision. She had never thought it possible to love another human being as much as she loved Stephanie—with a love that was pure and sweet, untouched by lust or jealousy, totally maternal and giving.
    Stephanie had been a seven-and-a-half-month preemie. Scarcely five pounds at birth but so perfectly formed, so utterly beautiful that Desi could not stop the joyful tears that slid helplessly down her cheeks when the doctor had laid her newborn daughter on her stomach. It was then, more than at any other time during her pregnancy, that she had most desperately wanted Jake. He should have been there to see the wondrous being that they had created, to hear her first indignant cries, surprisingly hearty for such a tiny creature.
    And maybe, just maybe, it was her fault that he wasn't there when she needed him. If she had contacted him, met him in Ghirardelli Square last May, things might have been different. Now she would never know.
    She had argued and argued with herself for months beforehand. She had even gotten dressed that morning to meet him, taking the fading note from the corner of her mirror to read it over—just one more time—as if she hadn't already memorized every word. She repeated to herself now:
    "You were wonderful, my mystery lady. We were wonderful together. I'll be back in San Francisco in May. Meet me at the fountain in Ghirardelli Square. May 30 at Noon."
    That was all it said. No signature, no salutation. It could have been written by anyone, to anyone. Still, she had been tempted. The urge to see him again had almost overwhelmed her good sense. But she stood there