Seth made a soothing and noncommittal noise in his throat as he pulled her evening dress over her head. Her silk underwear made his head swim; swiftly he unclasped her bra and slipped the nightgown on. As he eased her down on the bed, he noticed with huge tenderness that her dark lashes were already drifting to her cheeks. After peeling off her stockings, he covered her with the blanket. "Sleep well, darling Lia," he said.
But Lia was already asleep.
At nine o'clock the next morning, a knock came at Lia's door. She peered through the peephole, already knowing who it would be. "Good morning, Seth," she said pleasantly.
His jaw tight, he thrust a newspaper at her. "Have you seen this?"
"Yes. Don't worry about it. It happened once before and the fuss died down in no time."
On the front page of the tabloid, beneath a color photo of Rosnikov kissing Lia, were inch-tall headlines insinuating that the cellist was the father of Lia's child. "Don't worry about it?" Seth snarled. "My daughter's being subjected to the gutter press and all you can say is don't worry about it?"
"This is Austria. Not New York. No one at home will see it," Lia said reasonably, wishing her headache would go away. Not that she didn't deserve the headache. She was never going near crème de menthe again.
Trying to change the subject, she added, "The reviews of the concert were good, weren't they?"
"Lia, I won't tolerate this kind of gossip about Marise."
"Why are you so upset? It's my problem, not yours."
He felt as though she'd punched him, hard. "Marise is my daughter, too-don't you think it's about time you admitted that? I'm going to meet her, Lia. Whether you want me to or not." Allan, his father, might have allowed Eleonore to walk all over him. He, Seth, wasn't about to let Lia do the same. Marise was too important. Too essential, he thought, and wondered where that particular word had come from.
"We'll see," Lia said, her jaw a stubborn jut.
"Don't try and stop me," he said very quietly. "You'll regret it if you do."
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm telling you the truth."
"You're forgetting that Marise has a say here," Lia pointed out. Poking the tabloid with one finger, she added, "In the meantime, you're blowing this way out of proportion."
"It's untenable-a seven-year-old's name smeared on the front page of a cheap rag."
Her nostrils flared. Her temper rose to meet his. "So what am I supposed to do? Marry Rosnikov just to keep the newspapers quiet?"
"Marry me, instead," Seth said.
The words echoed in his head. What in hell had possessed him to say them? He didn't want to marry Lia. He didn't want to marry anyone.
"No, thanks," she said.
Did she have to answer so promptly? Did he mean so little to her that a proposal of marriage didn't even make her blink? "So much for that idea," he said sarcastically.
"Oh, come off it," she flared. "If I'd said yes, you'd be clocking a four-minute mile to the airport right now."
That she was probably right only infuriated him all the more. "That's precisely where I'm going … I'll call you on the fifteenth and we'll set up a meeting with Marise. Who, I sincerely hope, will remain ignorant of all this garbage." He tossed the tabloid onto Lia's bed.
"I protect her from as much of the world's garbage as I can," Lia snapped. "But I'm not omnipotent, Seth. The world exists, and all children have to lose their innocence." Her face suddenly changed. "As you did," she whispered, resting one hand on his sleeve. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't thinking."
The last thing Seth wanted was sympathy. He picked up her hand and let it drop by her side. "I hope Hamburg goes well," he said coldly.
"I'll say hello to Ivor for you."
Her cheeks were bright pink with temper. Seth planted a very angry kiss full on her lips, feeling heat rip through his body straight to his loins. Then he turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door with a definitive snap.
He ran down the stairs at a reckless speed and strode through the lobby into the spring sunshine. He'd had more than enough of Vienna. Manhattan, he thought. That's where he was going next. Home, where he knew which way was up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"LET'S go see the daffodils, Mum."
"Sure," Lia said, smiling fondly at her daughter. Marise was wearing her new yellow boots and slicker, her brown curls tucked under a sou'wester. Lia took her own slicker off the hook and grabbed an umbrella before they walked outdoors.
She took a deep breath. Wet soil, new leaves and the promise of spring. If only she could simply enjoy it.
But she couldn't. She had to tell Marise about Seth.
He wasn't going to go away. Not this time.
Trying to calm her nerves, Lia waited until she and Marise were kneeling down picking some of the daffodils that bloomed among the birch trees. Rain pattered on the umbrella. "Marise," she said, "I have some big news for you."
"Did I pass my math test?"
Lia laughed ruefully. "You aced English, that's all I know. This is about something else."
Marise had always been sensitive to shades of feeling. She buried her nose in a wet yellow trumpet, her green eyes wary. "You're not sick like Mary Blunden's mother, are you?"
"No, I'm fine-I was talking to Mrs. Blunden yesterday and she's getting out of hospital very soon, so that's good news. This is about something else. It's about your father, Marise."
Marise's dark lashes, so like her mother's, dropped to hide her eyes. "What about him?"
"Years ago, when I realized I was pregnant with you, I wrote and told him about you. He never answered my letters."
"He didn't want me," Marise said with irrefutable logic.
"That's what I thought at the time. But I was wrong. Someone took the letters before he could read them. So it wasn't his fault that he never got in touch with me."
"How'd you find that out?" Marise asked with a touch of belligerence.
"I met him again, by chance, when I was at White Cay. Then I saw him last week in Vienna. He showed me proof about the letters. I couldn't let you go on thinking he stayed away from you on purpose because he didn't care about you-that's not true."
"Oh," said Marise. Methodically she started shredding the petals from a daffodil. "Will he come to my school? So the other kids can see I've got a real dad?"
Lia's heart clenched. Feeling her way, she said, "Would you like him to do that?"
"Mmm … I'm the only one in the whole school who doesn't have a father somewhere. The kids tease me sometimes, and call me names."
Lia could imagine all too easily what those names might be. "You've never told me that before," she said with careful restraint.
"What was the use?"
What indeed? Lia snapped off a white narcissus and added it to her bouquet. It would seem the decision had been made for her: she had to allow Seth to meet Marise, for her daughter's sake. "I expect he'd go to your school," she said. "He really wants to meet you."
Marise sat down hard on the wet ground. "I won't know what to say to him."
"He may not know what to say to you, either. Not the first time. But, providing you're willing, he'd like to keep on seeing you-he's based in Manhattan, so you could get together quite often if you wanted to."
"All three of us."
"Sometimes I wouldn't be there," Lia said casually.
"Are you going to marry him?"
"No." With a nasty clench of her stomach, Lia remembered how Seth had asked her to marry him, and how quickly she'd brushed him off.
"What's his name?"
"Seth Talbot."
Marise now looked frightened. "He'll change everything."
Lia could have denied this. But within appropriate bounds, she'd always tried to tell her daughter the truth. "He'll change some things, yes."
"Does he look like me?"
Lia had been prepared for this, and had gone on the Internet for a photo of Seth. She'd zoomed in on him, and printed his image in full color. He was standing in his office in a pinstriped suit, the Manhattan skyline in the background. His thick blond hair looking encouragingly untidy; his eyes were a startlingly clear green. "That's him," Lia said.
"He's awfully big."
"He's tall, yes. But he's not mean, not like Tommy Evans. He'd be good to you, sugarplum."
Tommy Evans was the local bully. "His eyes are like mine. If he's so great, why don't you want to marry him?"