I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [22]
I remember hearing about the time Eddie Fisher, then married to Elizabeth Taylor, sent a telegram from Italy signed “The Princess and her love slave,” Ted thought. That’s the kind of rot I’m supposed to provide for Melissa. She’s kidding herself into thinking that she’s in love with me.
But I need her. I need her nice fat check every month. If only I hadn’t bought the building when our lease was up. It’s been draining me dry. Melissa will move on from me fast enough, he thought, as he gulped rather than sipped the gin martini. The trick is to make sure that when she decides to drop me, she doesn’t go to another PR firm and take her buddies with her.
“The same, Mr. Carpenter?” the waiter asked when he came by.
“Why not?” Ted snapped.
At midnight Melissa decided to leave for the Club. Another four a.m. morning once they get settled there. Ted knew he had to escape. There was only one way he could do it.
“Melissa, I feel lousy,” he said, speaking under the din of the noisy café. “I think I may be getting a bug or flu or something. I can’t expose you to it any longer. You’ve got a full schedule and you can’t afford to get sick.”
Keeping his fingers crossed, he saw the appraising look she gave him. Odd how her genuinely exquisite features could suddenly become distorted and lose all semblance of beauty when she was upset or angry. Her depth-of-the-ocean dark blue eyes narrowed and she twisted her long blond hair into a single curl that she pulled forward over her shoulder.
She’s twenty-six years old and as totally self-centered as any personality I’ve ever dealt with in this business, Ted thought. I wish I could tell her to go to hell.
“You’re not hooking up with your ex, are you?” she demanded.
“My ex-wife is the last woman I want to see right now. You ought to know by now that I’m crazy about you.” Taking a chance, Ted deliberately let a note of irritation creep into his expression and tone of voice. He could afford to do that only occasionally but he knew, when he did, it sent the message to her that it would be insane to imagine he could look at another woman.
Melissa shrugged and turned to the others at the table. “Teddy’s chickening out,” she laughed. “Everyone who’s going with me to the Club, let’s split.”
They all got up.
“You have your car?” Ted asked.
“No. I walked. For God sake, of course I have my car.” She tapped him on the cheek, a playful slap for the benefit of the onlookers.
Ted signaled to the waiter to put the bill on his house account as usual and the group left the café together. Melissa held his hand and stopped to smile for the paparazzi. Ted walked her to her limo, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her a long, deep kiss. A little more fodder for the gossip mills, he thought. That should keep her happy.
Her former bandmates piled into the limo with her. As his own car was brought up to the curb, a reporter stepped forward, holding something in his hand. “Mr. Carpenter, have you seen the photos the English tourist took that day your son was kidnapped?”
“Yes, I have.”
The reporter held up an enlarged version of them. “Would you care to comment?”
Ted stared at them, then taking them, he moved closer to the brightly lit window as if to get a better look. Then he said, “As I said before, I believe these pictures will turn out to be a cruel hoax.”
“Isn’t that your ex-wife, Zan Moreland, picking up your child from the stroller?” the reporter demanded.
Ted was aware of the cameras surrounding him now. He shook his head. Larry Post was holding open the door of his car. He rushed to get into it.
When he got home, too shocked to feel anything, he undressed and took a sleeping pill. His night filled with tortured dreams, he awoke aching and nauseous, feeling as though the fictitious flu bug had become a reality. Or was it those damn gin martinis? he asked himself.
At nine o’clock the next morning,