Belinda (8 page)

“That explains it, of course.” Reeve couldn’t
disguise the indulgent tone of his voice. When Belinda told a
story, she had a way of involving the listener, so that right now,
standing in the middle of his generic hotel room with its standard
puffy comforter on the bed and its ubiquitous white towels hanging
on the bar in the bathroom and its strip of paper certifying that
the toilet was sanitary, he was caught up in Belinda’s make-believe
castle.

The fantasy made him homesick. He couldn’t
remember the last time he’d been homesick.

“Quincy’s down on the floor now, growling. Do
you hear her?”

Belinda must have held the receiver out
toward the castle, for Reeve caught the sounds of laughter and a
deeper, more guttural sound that must have been Quincy’s
dragon.

“Did you hear her?” Belinda sounded
breathless and cheerful. He wondered if she was wearing stockings
with rhinestone hearts on the sides.

“She sounded right fierce to me.”

Belinda’s laughter pealed through the
receiver, the happy sound filling his drab hotel room, making it
seem less lonely. “I’ll tell her you said that.”

“Please do. Tell her if she keeps on making
such a good dragon, I might have to increase her salary.”

Reeve was feeling more cheerful himself. He
hadn’t engaged in frivolous small talk in years.

“My, my, it’s just grand to hear your voice,”
Belinda said.

That sobered Reeve quickly enough. It would
be best not to foster any false hopes she might have. “May I speak
with my children, please?”

“Oh...” Her voice was colored with
disappointment. There was a brief pause, and then her voice came
back to him as perky as ever. “Well, naturally that’s why you
called. I knew that all along—Mark!” she called, then another
pause. “He’s coming. He just had to park his horse. Oh, wait till
you hear about the moat we’re planning to build around the castle.
It was all Mark’s idea. We’re going to... Wait a minute. Here’s
Mark.”

His son came on the line and Belinda Diamond
was gone. Suddenly the emptiness of his hotel room struck Reeve,
and a great lonesomeness settled in the pit of his stomach.

Reeve spent the next ten minutes listening to
his children’s happy chatter, and it wasn’t until he had hung up
the phone that he remembered he had never found out about the moat.
He could just picture it: Belinda digging a trench in his Persian
rug, and his children dumping in buckets of water. Quincy, of
course, would be standing by with the mop, laughing her head off.
She had always encouraged rowdiness in his children.

Reeve smiled. What did a Persian carpet
matter? Happy children were the most important thing. And from the
sounds of things, they were certainly happy with their new
temporary nanny.

o0o

Reeve called home again that evening. He
didn’t usually make two calls home in the same day, but he figured
these were unusual circumstances. After all, Belinda was new to the
job, and he would be foolish not to make sure that her first day
without him around had gone smoothly.

When she answered the phone, he smiled. He
went on smiling as long as she kept saying into the receiver,
“Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?”

“It’s Reeve.”

“Reeve.” She sort of sighed his name.

“I just called to...” His mind drifted off
again.
To hear your voice,
he thought.
To make myself
smile. To feel your presence in this lonesome hotel room.

“Yes?”

“...to see how the children are.”

“They’re wonderful, of course. All bathed and
fed and tucked into their beds, right on schedule. Well, almost. We
were a little late with the baths on account of Mark’s moat getting
out of hand.” She paused for breath, and Reeve hung on to the
receiver, waiting for the sound of her voice. “See, we got kind of
carried away cutting up all that blue paper for the water, and then
Betsy decided it was hot in the castle under the table, and Quincy
brought an oscillating fan out of her room, and the paper started
blowing everywhere—I’m afraid some of it might still be lurking
around in the top bookshelves.”

Reeve had a wonderful time imagining the four
of them chasing after the paper moat. They would have been laughing
like crazy. He wished he’d been there.

“You’re awfully quiet, Reeve. Does this mean
I’m fired?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Are you having trouble on your end of the
phone?”

“No. Why?”

“Because all of a sudden you seem to be
roaring.”

Of course he had been roaring. Just the
thought of firing Belinda Diamond was enough to make him bellow
like a bull. How anybody could be heartless enough to fire the
woman was beyond him.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Belinda. I must
have had a frog in my throat.” He cleared his throat for effect. It
was clearly time to end this conversation. “Keep up the good work,
Belinda.”

“Will you call again?”

There was a long silence. Then Reeve said,
“Yes, I’ll call again.” Another silence in which the sound of their
breathing mingled over the long-distance line. “I’ll call every
day—to check on the children.”

“Oh. Well, goodbye. Sweet dreams, Reeve.”

He spent so long thinking about sweet dreams
that she had hung up the phone before he could say goodbye. It was
just as well. Things were getting out of hand in San Francisco as
surely as they had in Tupelo.

Maybe it was his age. Maybe thirty-five was
too old to cope with bringing up two children and dealing with a
succession of nannies.

He stretched himself across his bed and
stared up at the ceiling. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything back
home were settled into such a perfect routine that he didn’t have
the constant worry of keeping everything in control with his bare
hands and the force of his iron will?

o0o

The next morning when Reeve awoke, the first
thing he thought of was calling home. He picked up his watch and
looked at the luminous dial. It was a good time to call, but he
decided to wait a few hours.

Right before his luncheon meeting he slipped
upstairs to his room and dialed home. Quincy answered, and
disappointment washed over him.

“Mr. Reeve! You ought to see the children.
Happy as pigs in the sunshine. That Belinda Diamond is somethin’
else, I tell you. Hmm-mm.”

She said all that before he even had a chance
to do more than identify himself.

“Quincy,” he said, “Quincy—”

But she rattled on. “Miss Belinda’s been
showin’ the children how to cook.” Her booming laughter sounded
over the line. “You ought to see this kitchen. Looks like a cyclone
hit it. Chocolate everywhere.” She laughed again. “The children
haven’t had this much fun in a month of Sundays.”

“May I speak to them?” Reeve asked when
Quincy paused for breath.

“They’re all up in the tree. Let me see which
one is closest to the ground.”

Reeve heard her heavy footfalls, then the
sound of her voice yelling, “Miss Belinda! Telephone!”

Quincy got back on the line. “She’s a-comin’.
Now don’t you worry about a thing. Just go on and have a high time
out there. I’m getting along with Belinda just like a house on
fire. Here she is.”

Funny how the sound of a voice could put a
shine on the entire day. Reeve found himself smiling from the
minute Belinda said her first lilting hello.

“Hello? Hello? I’m so out of breath. Can you
hear me, Reeve?”

“I hear you.”

“We’ve been climbing a tree.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It was Mark’s idea. That son of yours is
quite lively.”

“I suppose you climbed the tree, too?”

“Well, naturally. You don’t think I’d let
your children try something before I did. I had to check and see if
all the limbs were sturdy enough.”

“And were they?”

“Well, I got down in one piece except for a
little scratch on my arm.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Shoot, no. Betsy kissed it and made it
better.”

“I see.” Reeve imagined kissing Belinda’s arm
to make it better. He could almost smell the roses on her skin. His
breathing got shallow, and he forgot what he’d been going to say
next.

Fortunately Belinda didn’t notice his
silence. She talked on, as cheerful as a salesman in a car
commercial, and all he had to do was listen to her stories and the
musical sound of her voice.

o0o

The four days he was in San Francisco,
calling home twice a day got to be a habit. And it was funny how
often he hoped Belinda would be the one who answered the phone. As
Quincy would say, “That just goes to show...” He didn’t try to
figure out what it went to show; he just drifted along, enjoying
knowing that Belinda was making his children happy and that she was
happy herself, and counting the days till he would be home.

o0o

Belinda was the first to see his car coming
up the drive. “Reeve’s home!” she yelled, and went racing through
the front door and down the porch steps.

When he stepped out of the car, so handsome
with the late-afternoon sun shining in his hair, she came to a
screeching halt. Dear Lord in heaven, what was she thinking of?
Fixing to jump into her boss’s arms like he was Charlie Crocket
come home on payday with a bonus in his pocket? Even Charlie hadn’t
much liked her habit of jumping all over him with big hugs and
kisses. She could just imagine what Reeve Lawrence would do. Why,
he’d disappear into himself like an oyster, leaving nothing but the
hard shell for her to deal with.

She stopped beside the gardenia bush, put her
hands behind her back and tried to look proper. Thank goodness he
couldn’t know that her skin was all a-tingle and her heart was
pumping and her body felt warm and glowy, like she had been sitting
in front of a good hot fire.

“Hello, Belinda,” he said the minute he was
out of the car. That was all he said, just hello, then stood there
looking at her.

Belinda Stubaker,
she warned
herself,
just you remember he’s your boss.

“Reeve, it’s good to have you home.” She was
proud of herself for sounding so calm and ladylike.

“It’s good to be home.”

He walked toward her and caught her elbow,
and she shivered inside like dynamite had been set off next to her
heart. He had been gone so long she had forgotten what being next
to a powerful man felt like.

She managed to contain herself till they got
inside the house, and then she was rescued by Mark and Betsy. While
they hugged and kissed their daddy, Belinda sidled off and sank
into a chair where she pressed her knees together and folded her
hands tightly over her stomach. She thought she was going to be
sick. Now, wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

Any other person would be jumping for joy at
the return of a boss who was fixing to pay you a lot of money. And
she had at first. Jumped for joy, that is. But not necessarily
because of her salary. Now all she could think about was that in
the next twenty minutes or so, Reeve would pay her off and load her
bag into his fancy car and drop her off somewhere on Main Street.
She hoped she could act happy about the whole thing.

Mark and Betsy were both talking at once, and
every now and then she could tell Reeve was adding his two cents’
worth just by the rumble of that rich voice, but she didn’t have
any idea what they were saying. She was too busy trying to figure
out how to act grateful when her heart was fixing to break in
two.

“Belinda.” She jumped at the sound of her
name. Lordy, she was getting fidgety. Reeve walked to her chair and
stood over her like some great Greek god. She could hardly get her
breath. “Will you come with me to my office, please?”

She opened her eyes wide and noticed that
Quincy was disappearing down the long marble hallway with Betsy and
Mark. She wanted to call after them to stop, come back. As long as
they were in the hall, she would be spared going into that office
for her walking papers.

“Certainly,” she said, sounding far more
sophisticated than she had any right to sound. Maybe being in such
a fancy house was rubbing off on her. Her daddy had always said she
was a quick study and a great mimic.

In his office, Reeve motioned her to the same
chair she had sat in the last time. Then he got behind his
important-looking desk and sat in his chair, big enough for two.
There was no mistaking his intent. Clearly he was the boss and she
was the hired help.

Belinda waited. She knew about being patient.
Hadn’t she spent many hours of her childhood waiting in her daddy’s
car in one strange town or another while he walked the streets
looking for a job?

“Quincy and the children have made quite a
case for you,” Reeve said finally.

“I didn’t know I was on trial.”

Reeve laughed. Belinda thought that was a
good sign.

“You know this job was only temporary.”

“I know. My suitcase is all packed and
ready.”

Reeve spent another long while in the study
of his steepled hands. Thin lines etched themselves around his
mouth.

“You are anxious to go, I suppose, anxious to
get on with your life.”

“Oh, no.” She almost came out of her chair.
He looked startled, and she sat back down and crossed her legs at
the ankles like a lady. She had her pride. “Of course, I have my
own life to live and all, but one of the best times I’ve ever had
has been staying in this house these past few days, taking care of
your children. They’re wonderful. And so is Quincy. We’ve had us a
ball while you’ve been gone.”

“So I gathered.”

They held each other in silent regard for a
long time. A soft twilight began to gather outside the windows, and
summer breezes sprang to life in the trees.

Reeve’s checkbook was only four inches from
his hand, but he felt a strange reluctance to reach for it.