Her Name Will Be Faith (18 page)

It was a sodding world, she thought. She had always
dreamed of one
day inheriting Pinewoods. The
thought that it could happen in a couple
of years… but did she want it,
now?

"All packed?" Babs asked, determined to keep
the conversation going.

"Not really. I'll pack Friday."

"You sure leave things late."

"Well, there's not all that much to pack, for
just the three of us," Jo
pointed out.
"Shorts, shirts, that's it. Anyway, I have Michael's dinner
party
tomorrow night."

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that. Will it be the
usual crowd?"

"The crew and their wives, yes."

“What are you giving them?”

Jo told her. “Followed by Baked Alaskas.”

“Isn’t that a bit ambitious for twelve?”

"Florence is a whizz with baked Alaskas. Anyway,
it won't be twelve. Only Sam and Larry are married."

"Well, you ought to have
fun." Babs hesitated, choosing her words.
She and Jo hadn't really had a chance to talk about
much for the past
three weeks or so, but
with the girl so obviously happy… and yet there
remained an undercurrent of tension. "I can't tell you how happy it
makes
Mike and me to see you… well, to feel things are okay between Michael and you
again."

"Um," Jo said.

“Sure, I know it’s one hell of a
disappointment, Michael not coming. I feel the same way about Marcia, but she
has her Benny, and they are so anxious to get their house fixed up.”

“And they’re doing something
together,” Jo said before she could stop herself.

“Jo! You’re not still angry about
that, are you?”

"No," Jo said, with
complete honesty. "Michael is welcome to spend
all the time he wants in his plastic bathtub."

"Just let him do this race," Babs
recommended. "And win his class.
That's
all he's ever wanted to do, win his class in the Bermuda. Then
we'll
talk him into letting go a little."

"Hi," Richard's voice drifted over the
phone. "Tomorrow?"

"I can't," Jo said.

"You're kidding."

"I have to prepare a dinner party for Michael's
crew."

"Hell… and you're off on Saturday?"

"So I'm free… Friday evening. I'll get a sitter.
Michael will have left for Newport by then." She waited; they had never
had the opportunity to spend even part of a night together. She had become
utterly wanton. But she wanted this to happen, and then… she knew that three
weeks on Eleuthera would give her the time to think, to know what she had to
do.

"Oh, Jo," he said.
"That'll be just marvelous. I have to do the ten
o'clock forecast."

"So I'll watch it, from your lounge."

"Sweetheart. Say, I have some news."

"Good news?"

"Well, some of it's good,
some of it's bad, and some of it's just
interesting.
What'll you have first?"

"The bad."

"Ah. JC has killed the chat show."

"No! But why?"

"Seems his ratings people have told him it hasn't
had any impact. No storms, you see."

"But there could be one."

"Sure. As a matter of fact, I'll give you the
interesting piece next."

"Shoot."

"You know that huge cloud
mass over the Cape Verdes I've been
telling
you about, and showing on the box."

"Yes." Suddenly she was breathless.

"It's started to shift."

"Where?"

"Slightly to the west. Only slightly. But
Jo" – now his own voice was excited – "Mark says there
are signs of circulation."

"Oh, boy," she said.

"Pleased about that?"

"Shouldn't I be? It'll vindicate everything
you've been saying."

"Maybe. The circulation is still very weak.
Highest sustained winds aren't much over 20 knots; that's just a good sailing
breeze."

"But it'll grow from that."

"It could. And if it does,
well… it has to come ashore somewhere.
Not
a nice thought for those people in the way."

"Where would you expect that to happen?"

"From where it is now,
anywhere. But most probably the northern
West
Indies. Say Haiti or Puerto Rico."

"So I'll worry about them.
But Richard, can't you put that infor
mation
on White's desk and convince him the show should go on at least another
week?"

"Nope. For two reasons. One, it would be begging,
and begging JC is
one thing not on my
agenda. And secondly, there is every possibility this
one will turn out to be a damp squib, just like
the other five we've had
so far. It's
still pretty early in the year, and while I'm prepared to bet
there's going to be a big storm this year, I'd
rather go for the end of
August, early
September. Anyway, if it does prove something, it'll be
mud in JC's eye.
And it'll give your article a boost. When is it out?"

"Next week. I won't be here,
but I've arranged for Ed to let you have
a
copy."

"Something to keep me warm while you're away.
Three weeks. I am going to go stark, raving mad."

"Are you?" she murmured.

"Yeah. You never asked me what the good news
was."

"No, I didn't," she said. "Tell
me?"

"Only that I love you."

"I love you too," she said.

Florence was in despair – the cooker wouldn't
work and she couldn't get anyone to come and repair it.

Owen Michael had a tummy ache all over again.

Ed phoned; would she like to do a series on Andre
Previn?

Tamsin had a fight with the girl on the floor below.

And to cap it all, Nana was sick
on the lounge carpet – the third time
in
two days.

Jo handled it all, but even the children noticed how
she repeatedly
grinned, for no apparent
reason. Florence was most impressed by the
calm way she coped with the disastrous afternoon, though she did wonder
if her young employer realized that the dinner she and her husband were
giving that night would be wrecked if someone didn't get the cooker working in
time.

Jo got on the phone and
threatened the maintenance people with
publicity
on their inefficiency – which brought a Mr Fix-It to tackle
Florence's problem within twenty minutes. She sat
Owen Michael in
front of the TV and
told him to relax – presumably he was getting worked
up over his father's imminent departure for
Newport and his own flight
to Miami
and thence Eleuthera… but if he was going to have to go
through life
with a bellyache every time he got excited he was going to have a hard time.

She sang as she scooped up the
mess on the carpet and washed the
stain,
and gave Tamsin a brief lesson on basic judo – while Ed sat at his desk
impressed, not to say overwhelmed, by Jo Donnelly's enthusiastic
reception of her latest assignment, which she
promised to research during her vacation and undertake the moment she returned.
Maybe, he thought,
she has something going for Previn.

Jo's mood lasted all evening.
Wearing a stunning little cocktail number, she welcomed Sam and Sally Davenport
– Sam was Michael's best friend
as well as his second-in-command on the yacht –
Larry and Beth Simmons,
Jon Tremayne, Pete Albicete, and Mark Godwin. Mark was as shy as
ever – he was by some
distance the youngest and newest of the crew –
but the others she had known for years. Actually, she
liked them all, and could understand the good fellowship Michael enjoyed with
them; she would have enjoyed it too had she been allowed to share. But Sally
and
Beth did not seem the least resentful of
their husbands' preoccupation,
and
joined in the enthusiastic counting up of reasons why they should
win
their class this year.

Michael was at his beaming best.
He was always a superb host, and
he was obviously pleased that Jo was making such a
magnificent effort
to
play the beautiful and loving wife. Certainly she was convinced, unless
he had been doing some locker-room confiding, that
none of the others had the slightest idea that they had not shared a bed for a
month, or that
their marriage might be on
the edge of disintegration. But then, she
supposed Michael was not aware
of the latter either.

The party was a great success. Thanks to Florence, the
meal was first-class and the Baked Alaska superb, and due possibly to the power
of Jo's cocktails and the wine that
followed, everyone became hilariously
jolly. Anecdotes and laughter
rocked the apartment – and the elevator as
the guests departed – and when Jo and Michael returned to the
lounge
after saying their goodbyes, and he put his arm round her, kissed
and
thanked her for a marvelous evening, she
was in far too happy a mood
to push him away.

So that later she found it
impossible to ban him from his marital rights,
as she had done ever since their last quarrel. But she froze. Suddenly
he
was alien and unwanted. She switched her
mind away, tried to blot out
his touch, his weight, his presence in her,
and instead distracted her brain
with
thoughts of Richard. Richard's face above hers, his breath, his arms,
his
body pressing down, filling hers… as he would be doing tomorrow night.
Momentarily her back arched ecstatically, and a moan of pleasure reached
Michael as he climaxed.

He smiled with satisfaction as he left her,
congratulating himself on standing his ground until she'd learned to control
her stupid selfishness and become human again.

Jo didn't sleep. She hadn't
climaxed, had deliberately switched off. She
felt guilty, soiled, disloyal – to Richard.
She was angry that force of habit
had led
her into allowing Michael to make love to her. She hated herself
for it; she no longer belonged to him. Jo and
Richard – Richard and
Jo.

Then, as the sleepless night
passed, reality took over, and a black cloud of gloom shadowed her mind. The
future seemed absolutely insoluble. Of
course a lot of women ran a perfectly happy marriage and
kept an
afternoon
lover on the side, but she couldn't imagine how they did it. She
couldn't make love to two men concurrently. Either she
loved – or she didn't. And now she loved Richard – not Michael. But
her whole life
revolved around being Mrs
Michael Donnelly junior, with everything
that that implied, socially,
domestically, and sexually. To refuse Michael
might
be to alert him to the fact that she no longer wanted or needed
him, and then… when she thought of the children
she felt sick. Therefore
the sensible thing to do would be to put
Richard out of her mind – never see him again.

With stinging eyes and a painful weight of dread in
her stomach, Jo fought for sleep until, sticky with perspiration, she left the
bed to turn up the air conditioning and hunt in the bathroom for the Panadol.

"I can't find my red sports shirt or my yacht
club sweater," Michael
complained,
stuffing clothes into a duffel bag. "Where have you put
them?"

"Haven't touched them," Jo called from the
bathroom, where she was desperately trying to wake up.

"Well, will you look,
please? I'm in a hurry. I want to be in Newport
for lunch."

"For God's sake, the race doesn't start until
Sunday."

"True. But there's a lot of preparing to be done.
Or hadn't you thought of that?"

"Judging by the amount of time you've spent in
Newport these last six weeks one would have thought
Esmeralda
could have
been re-fitted and ready a dozen times." She scrubbed her face with her
towel and lurched into the bedroom.

"Do you know," he remarked. "Just for a
moment, last night, I thought you had finally come to your senses – but I
can see it was just alcohol. Now for God's sake be reasonable and try to
help."

Jo strode silently into the dressing room, looked
through the neat stack of shirts and sweaters, and carefully drew out the
'missing' items. "There, under your nose," she said quietly, and
strode out again.

"You stupid bitch," he
growled. "Are you going to keep up this farcical
performance every time I go yachting, for the rest of
our lives?"