One Night With You by Candace Schuler Page B

in front of the mirror on that fateful day, the note still in her hands, and looked at the woman staring back at her. A pretty woman, perhaps, if you could see through the toxemia that had swelled her whole body—not just the six months' swell of her belly, but her ankles and hands and face as well—so that she looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy in drag.
    What could she have said to him?
    "Hello, Jake. Surprise!"
    Oh, God, she could just see his face if she had done that.
    She could see murder flaming out of those big brown eyes. See the anger narrowing that firm sensual mouth. And, could she, in all honesty, have blamed him? She asked herself that question now, as if she hadn't asked it a hundred times before... a thousand times before. As if she hadn't questioned herself and her motives daily, almost hourly, starting from the first minute that she had known for sure that she had conceived a child.
    His child.
    Their child.
    "My child," she whispered, leaning over to kiss the sleeping baby. "My beautiful little Stephanie."
    She left the room quietly, pulling the door closed behind her.
    The trouble, she acknowledged wryly to herself, was that, in a way, she did blame him. He had been there, too. He should have considered the possible consequences of that weekend, even if she hadn't. He should have tried to find her when she didn't show up in May. Like one of the heroes he played so well, he should have scoured the town for her, knocking on every door until he found the right one.
    Never mind that he knew virtually nothing about her. Or that she was the one who refused to tell him anything about herself. Not where she lived. Not where she worked. Not even her last name. At the time, to tell would have taken the experience out of the realm of dreams and risked crashing it against reality. And reality was too harsh. Looked at in the cold light of day, she was nothing but some overeager groupie he had picked up on an airplane and taken back to his hotel for fun and games.
    He knew only that her name was Desiree. And that her hair was red.
    "A redhead all over," she remembered him saying as they lay on the bed, naked together in the bright afternoon light. His big hands had run lightly over her slender body, touching her intimately, learning her responses. He smiled when his fingers finally made her gasp, her body stiffening against his caressing hand.
    "Red curls mask the fires of hell, you know," he whispered in her ear. It was a line, slightly altered, from one of his movies. It made Desi laugh, as he had intended it to. And then, amid her delighted laughter and even more delighted gasps of pleasure, he made slow, languorous love to her all through the rest of that afternoon, until it was time to finally put some clothes on so that room service could bring up their dinner.
    It was, curiously enough, memories like those that fed her resentment. If he had really cared at all, if he had really meant a word he had said, a caress he had given, he would have tracked her down. That he hadn't found her, hadn't even tried to find her, meant that he didn't care. And if he didn't care about the slim sexy Desiree he had left asleep in that hotel bed, just how would he have felt about the very pregnant Desi who might have waddled into the Square?
    But why should he care about either Desi, she asked herself, fighting back sudden tears. She meant nothing more to him than a brief pleasant fling in a town he had just been passing through on his way to somewhere else. Someone he had thought it might be fun to have another fling with in six months' time when he would be passing through again.
    It was the same way she had meant to remember him. She had known from the first minute that it wasn't real. That it was just a dream and couldn't last. She would remember him that way eventually, she insisted stubbornly. He would be a fleeting memory of shared passion, nothing more.
    If only she weren't reminded of him so constantly in the meantime; every