“It looks as though you were pregnant with Carrie when you married,” he said. “You never had a period, after all.” His gaze captured her blue eyes and held them in a glance that demanded an answer. “Did you?”
“I don't know. It was years ago,” Molly dissembled, trying to avoid the collision course facing her, too confused now with complex emotional conflicts to want to come to terms with the unbelievable idea Carey was so relentlessly pursuing.
“All you have to do is look at her and you'd know.”
He was right. The physical resemblance was the most telling argument, the most damning evidence. Carey and her daughter were so remarkably similar, she marveled at her obtuseness all these years. “It can't be,” she declared with a stubbornness that still clung to the tenuous substance of her own misplaced convictions. “Carrie was born too late. She was born almost ten months after the wedding.”
“My mother's pregnancy was close to ten months. It was a family joke, how I didn't want to leave the security of the womb.”
“No, don't say that,” she pleaded, her eyes huge and liquid. “It's too unreal.” Covering her face with her hands, she sat there trembling. “It's not the way it happened,” she whispered, looking up. She was holding back tears, the struggle visible on her face.
He only said, “Thank you for giving me a daughter.” And then, uncurling himself from the depths of the chair, he walked over and lifted Molly. He held her protectively in his arms, kissing her tear-streaked cheeks, murmuring, “I love you, Honeybear. I always have. Always… always…”
Nestling close, she clung to him like a small child clinging to the only security it's known.
He whispered his love and brushed his warm lips over hers. “I'm going to take care of you both,” he murmured.
Molly lifted her head from his shoulder and gave him the beginning of a smile. “I can take care of myself…”
He smiled back. “Well, I can kiss away the tears while you're taking care of yourself, smartass.”
“Deal,” she whispered.
“Now if you'll tell me,” he murmured, glancing over her head to assess the direction of the bedroom, “where the spare bedroom is, I think I'll turn in for the night.”
“It's early,” she teased, licking his chin.
“Fatherhood is exhausting.” He winked at her. “Arguing with the mother of my child is what's exhausting,” he amended, starting down the polished parquet hallway.
“I'm not accomplished,” she whispered, thinking of all the women in his past, “like all… all those-”
“I don't want that, Honeybear,” he murmured, crossing the threshold of the bedroom. “I just want to feel your warm body next to mine, feel the woman I love in my arms, touch your sweet face. I don't want accomplishments, sweetheart, only you, my Honeybear, the mother-” his voice grew ragged “of my child.” It frightened him how helpless he was to the deep emotion he'd thought long vanished.
“Promise me something,” Molly said, her arms tightening on his shoulders.
“Anything.”
“Keep your girlfriends in the closet.”
He set her on her feet and placed his hands very gently on her shoulders. “No girlfriends,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “I'll promise that instead.”
Her eyes shone with happiness, and he smiled because she meant to be practical and civilized but was as jealous as he.
“I don't want any other woman. I'd be a fool to waste my time. I'm holding you every night… and every day,” he added emphatically, “until we're ninety-two.”
“And then what happens?” she teased, sliding her arms around his waist.
“We start on the second ninety-two years.”
Molly's eyes filled with tears. “Sometimes I'm not as strong as I say I am.”
“That's what I'm here for,” he whispered, reaching up to brush away a tear. “I'll take up the slack when you're too wacked out to be strong.”
“Like now. Oh, Carey, everything's happening too fast,” Molly cried. “All I know for certain is I love you. The rest-” Panic was closing in. “Tell me the rest will be fine,” she softly entreated, overwhelmed by the sudden changes in the fabric of her life.
His life had been full of attractive people and congenial events, visited by success, insulated by wealth. Not in a grandiose way, but with a security he'd never had to question. What makes one person so special to you that life dims without them? He didn't know the answer. But only Molly could evoke this happiness, and until now he'd never comprehended the extent of his own sadness. He needed her.
“I love you, Honeybear,” he whispered, “more than anything. And everything's going to work out. From now on,” he vowed, “life is going to be perfect. Guaranteed.”
CHAPTER 22
T he following morning in Rome, Shakin Rifat was seated at his desk an hour earlier than usual. Even for a man trained to give away nothing in his expression, the fire of triumph couldn't be disguised. He was leafing through a dozen black-and-white photos taken with a telephoto lens, developed in a private jet that flew across the Atlantic the previous night and landed at the secluded airstrip thirty miles north of Rome an hour after daybreak.
The photos were of a blond man talking to a young girl with shoulder-length hair. The sequence of shots showed her placing her bicycle in an elaborate stand, then handing the man a package, only to take it back in the next two frames. Both subjects had the same color hair; both subjects had winged black brows; the similarities had been definitively cataloged by Shakin Rafit, his gratification heightened with each enumerated resemblance. Nose, eyes, chin, the same subtle curve of upper lip. The child was a girl, of course, so the strength of form was modified, but in a way, a girl was much better for his purpose. A father would do anything to save his helpless young daughter from harm.
Shakin pushed the photos into a neat pile, a gold signet ring on his left hand catching the light, then leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his dark, aquiline face, a quality of animal assurance in his relaxed posture.
At last he had a way to put pressure on Egon.
Leisurely reaching out, he rang for his secretary. When the young man walked in and noted Shakin's satisfied smile he said, “The photos were pleasing?”
“Very. Mete told you?”
“Only that the young girl appears to be-”
“Is, Ceci… no question about it. How soon can you get the team ready?” Ceci Kiray had been aide-de-camp to Rifat in Turkey's First Air Corps prior to General Evren's takeover in 1980. With inbred military custom and a deferential nod of his head, Ceci silently asked permission to sit. Less punctilious than his young subaltern, Rifat casually waved him into the chair facing his desk. “I'd like to move on this as soon as possible, Ceci. A large shipment of gum base is coming out of Turkey next week, as you know, and our operating capital will be nicely maximized after the sale to the French chemists. You also know how desperately Brazil wants the prototypes for the new weapon. Seсor Jorge has been calling daily. It's an opportune time with our war chest in good order to step into the arms manufacturing business.”
“Jorge is amenable to a percentage cut?”
“He'd prefer buying the technical data outright, but I'm not so inclined. Everyone wants this prototype. All the third-world nations currently producing arms under license will pay for it. But Brazil will pay the most. Have you ever been to Rio?” Rifat leaned back in his chair and looked at his secretary who still bore the stamp of a hardened officer beneath his tailored suit and custom-made shoes. “You'll like it,” Rifat continued with a smile, answering his own question, aware of Ceci's postings over the last ten years.
“What sort of timetable will you give to Colonel Jorge?”
“That depends on how soon you can kidnap the girl.”