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But how will I support him? And what about Annie? I’d have to find somewhere else to live. A place where Annie wouldn’t be able to run my life and Adam’s, too.

She looked down at him. He was still staring at her, scrutinizing her actually. It’s as if he’s trying to memorize my face, she thought, another piece of her heart breaking off at the thought that this might be the last time he’d see her, except maybe in his dreams. She couldn’t give him up. Not now. Not ever.

She didn’t care what she had to do … what sacrifices she’d have to make. He’d be worth it.

My son. Mine.

Adam had turned his downy head into her chest and was rooting against the front of her gown. Laurel lifted it, and felt his mouth instantly fasten onto her nipple and begin to suck. A sharp pain as his gums clamped about her tender nipple, then she sat back and closed her eyes, feeling a strong pull in her breast, and in her groin too, as the milk let go and flowed into him.

She began to understand it… this mother-love that made fools out of sensible people, and tyrants of the timid. If she could paint it, she would need a canvas bigger than the Milky Way. And Adam would be right in the middle of it, like the first star of the evening, the one you wish on.

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Even before she could hear a voice on the phone, Dolly, listening to the humming and crackling of the transatlantic line, felt her heart leap. “Henri?” she cried. “That you?”

It had been so long … weeks since he’d last called; months since she’d seen him … months that seemed like a hundred years. “Dog years,” Mama-Jo used to call it when time crawled so you could swear you’d aged a dog’s seven years in the space of just one.

Not that she’d spent all those months doing nothing but mooning over Henri. Why, last Christmas had been her most profitable so far, and business had hardly slowed down since. And just this month she’d been to Tosca and a Kiss Me Kate revival with Bill Newcombe, who’d finally stopped trying to sell her insurance and who couldn’t have been more charming. She’d been a fund-raiser for the Bangladesh Drive. And on the committee for the sold-out ball for which they’d raised four hundred thousand dollars. And then, last month, at the annual chocolate fair at the Plaza, the display she had helped Pompeau put together had taken the second prize for Girod’s.

Oh, yeah, she’d been one busy girl, all right.

So busy that when she crawled into bed each night, she felt lonesome as a pup locked out in the cold … even on the rare nights when she wasn’t alone.

“Ma poup้e, did I wake you?” came his voice, faint and crinkly with static. Yet so dear. All at once, it seemed as if no time at all had passed.

“Not a chance,” she told him, though a glance at the faintly glowing malachite face of the clock on the mantel told her it was half past one in the morning. “I couldn’t sleep to save my life. Must be something I ate.” Only the second part was a lie.

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Actually, she was sitting here in the dark, curled up in the Eames chair, looking out her big window at the million fairylike lights of Tavern on the Green far away across Central Park, and sipping a cognac that she knew would probably make her feel worse later on. How appropriate, fateful too’, that Henri should call just when she was wearing his favorite nightgown, a peachy iridescent satin, the color of a Singapore sling, with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline guaranteed to cause pneumonia … or cure impotence, depending on whether you were wearing it or looking at it. Her skin tingled where its cool, slippery creases touched her.

“As a matter of fact, I’m having myself a pity party,” she told him.

“Pardon?”

“A pity party. It’s like this … you sit around feeling real sorry for yourself, preferably when there’s nobody ‘round to slap you on the back and say, Hey, lady, snap out of it.”

“I wish I were there,” he said, sounding amused.

“Then it wouldn’t be a pity party. It’d be a … well, I’m too much of a lady to say what it’d be. At least, not over the phone.” She smiled, and cupped the receiver against her mouth, kissing it almost. The cognac was taking effect, warming her insides—or was it just hearing Henri’s voice?

She prayed it was good news he was calling with; for one week, she’d had just about all the upheaval she could take.

The baby-Laurel deciding to keep him—was a blessing, Lord knows, but it sure had knocked her for a loop. And Val Carrera turning up like a bad penny after all these years, pouncing on Laurel when she was at her lowest, probably looking for ways to rake up all kinds of trouble—why, it gave her chills just thinking about it.

“And the fair? You were pleased with how it went?”

For a confused moment, Dolly had no idea what Henri was asking. Then she remembered that he didn’t know a thing about Laurel … or little Adam … or Val. In the old days, she’d have rushed to call him; practically

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every little thing seemed important enough to tell him then. Had they drifted as far apart as all that?

“The fair,” she said, rousing herself. “Oh, you should’ve come. It was the best ever!”

“I was very much wishing I could go. But with you making the display, and Pompeau making certain there was not one crumb of the gโteau that was not perfect, we did not do so badly, no?” She could almost see him shrugging his Gallic shrug. “Besides, I could not leave my daughter. The babies were so ill, and Gabrielle was beside herself …”

“I know.” Henri a grandfather-she still couldn’t quite get used to the idea. “Heck, it wasn’t your fault. Are they better now?”

“Little Philippe is gaining weight, but Bruno … Gaby worries about him; he has always been the sickly one. I think he will outgrow it in time, but … she is a mother, and mothers worry, no?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she told him. She would never be a mother, but with this baby of Laurel’s, wouldn’t she be sort of a grandmother? Dolly couldn’t wait to get her arms around little Adam, soggy diapers, spit-up, and all. But for that, she’d have to wait at least until tomorrow, when she brought Laurel and Adam home from the hospital. Right now, Henri was waiting. “Well, anyway … the fair. Clarisse Hopkins was one of the judges this year, though that old biddy couldn’t know a thing about chocolate. I do believe all she ever eats is sour lemons. And Roger Dillon-you remember Roger?-he said Girod’s would’ve taken first, instead of second, if it hadn’t been for Clarisse being averse to chestnuts. And brilliant me, of course I used the marrons glac้s as the centerpiece for our display.”

Henri chuckled, and Dolly felt relieved he didn’t seem to mind about second place when, for three out of the last five fairs, Girod’s had placed first in the overall category of general excellence. To some, especially the smaller chocolatiers struggling simply to survive, the Gourmand magazine awards were springboards to acceptance

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and bigger sales, and they meant everything in the world. But Henri seemed to have other things on his mind.

“C’est ็a. But I did not call you at seven-thirty in the morning-for you, I know, it is the middle of the night-to talk about the business,” he told her. He sounded tense. “Alors, where to begin?”

“Why not skip over the beginning,” she told him, feeling herself begin to tense. ^We’ve been through that part a few times already. I know it by heart.”

“Well, then-how do you say it-the happy finishings?”

Inside her chest, Dolly’s heart did a crazy bump-andgrind.

“Henri, what exactly are you trying to tell me?”

There was a pause, and she could hear his unsteady breathing. Finally, he said: “Dolly, come to Paris.”

“Henri, we have been through this again and-“

“No, no, this time, it is different. Francine and I, we have now separated.”

Dolly felt as if a thousand volts of electricity had just come zizzing down the line. She nearly dropped the receiver.

“What did you say?” she gasped.

“Francine. she has shown me the door,” he said softly, but with a small note of triumph. “It was all so very civilized. She even packed the valises for me. Though I believe she was doing this only to make certain that I was not taking anything that belongs to her.”

For once, Dolly couldn’t speak. She placed her balloon glass of cognac on the end table beside her, where it chattered against the glass top before coming to a standstill, then stood up, taking the cream-colored princess phone with her, and paced across the deep pile in front of the fireplace, her satin nightgown twitching coolly against her calves.

“Henri, no fooling? You’re really serious?”

“I assure you, ma poup้e, I have never been more

serious. It appears that my wife has taken a lover.” He

sounded fully as gleeful as he had a few months ago when

he’d told her about the birth of his twin grandsons. “As

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‘

one might expect, she is very discreet about who this man is. I would not be extremely surprised if he should be her priest.”

“No!” Dolly was surprised, shocked even.

He chuckled. “Well, perhaps I exaggerate. Qui sait? For all I care, she could seduce the pope.” His voice grew serious. “I must be honest with you, though. There will be no divorce. Francine will not accept that. In that way, I imagine, she is the true mistress of the church.”

Henri’s voice seemed to be fading, and then she realized it was her pulse pounding in her ears, not the longdistance connection, that was making it hard to hear. “Henri, what exactly are you proposing?”

“That you and I … that we live together. It is the modern way, no? After that …” His voice trailed off. He didn’t have to say what they both knew: that he would marry her in a minute if there should ever come a time when he could.

“What about your father-in-law, does he know?”

“He is old, yes, but he is not yet blind. Without question, he would do everything within his power to reunite Francine and me … but he recognizes that there are limits even to his power. All this has indisposed him. He worries about the firm, and he is feeling his years, so we now have a new agreement.”

“What kind? What do you mean?”

“I am to receive his controlling interest upon his death. I, of course, am obligated to continue supporting Francine. But it is all completed with witnesses, signatures, and the notary. This is for me a great contract, a deliverance even.”

“Oh, Henri!” Tears of happiness filled her eyes. No one could deserve it more. How he must have had to battle old Girod for this guarantee.

“Ch้rie,” Henri continued soberly, “you have not answered my question.”

Dolly sank back into the chair, the phone on her lap. Her head was spinning. She didn’t know what to think. The chance to be with him all the time, to live with him! Isn’t that what she’d yearned for, dreamt about, for almost

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as long as she could remember? Marriage was nice, but as long as she had Henri, she could do without a ring.

But she would have to move to Paris.

Paris was beautiful, and she loved it, but New York was her home. How could she leave-especially now? Laurel was going to need all kinds of help. And-okay, if she was going to be selfish about it-how, if she were three thousand miles away, could she be a proper granny to that precious little baby?

For as much as she longed for Henri, she also longed for a real family; this baby would bond her to Annie and Laurel in a way that nothing else had. And her business? She’d killed herself to build it up, and now it had become more than just a means of making money-it was a cozy place where she, and the people who came there, felt right at home. Her regulars came for their bittersweet bark or their Bouchons, then stayed to chat and somehow ended up spilling their hearts out. Nora Mulgrew, whose dentist husband was having an affair with his hygienist-she couldn’t make up her mind whether to leave him or not. Ramsey Burke, the ball-breaking litigator, who stopped in every morning on his way to work for a single bourbon truffle, and was constantly debating about quitting his shrink, since he was making no progress whatsoever in dealing with his awful fear of heights, airplanes, and elevators.

Oh, they’d survive without her, they all would. But that wasn’t the point, really. The thing was, she enjoyed all these people; she loved feeling as if she was making a difference in their lives, even a slight one. Who would she talk to in Paris? Her French wouldn’t get her past the first stop on the M้tro. And, besides, if she worked for Henri, it wouldn’t be her shop; it would be just a job, a way to be near Henri.

She loved Henri; she was nuts about him. But had she ever really considered what a move to Paris might mean? She thought of the old Chinese saying, Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

She’d been wishing for this for so long, that now that it was within her reach she felt, well, sort of cheated, as

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if she’d suddenly learned that she’d been wishing for the wrong thing all along. Or maybe it was just that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too: Henri and her life here.

“Where are you now?” she asked.

“I have a room at the Lancaster. In a week or two, perhaps, I was hoping you and I could look for an apartment together.”

“Henri, look, I-“

“Is there someone … a man?”

“No, no … believe me, that’s not it.”

“You have not stopped caring for me, then?”

“Lord, no.”

“Then what more is there to discuss? Dolly, I speak to you lightly about leaving my home … but I must tell you that after so many years in one place, it is a hard thing. I need you, ma poup้e, more than I ever have. I need us … the two of us.”

“But, Henri,” she tried to explain, “don’t you see? You’re asking me to do the very same thing … leave my home and my family, even my country. Why, I’ll bet you a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots there isn’t an American alive who doesn’t get the teeniest bit choked up when he hears ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ “