Taking Chances (36 page)

‘Hey there,’ Michael whispered, ‘couldn’t you sleep?’

‘Can I come in with you, Dad?’ he asked.

‘Sure, come on.’

Michael flipped back the covers and gave him a hand up onto the bed. Spot waited for an invitation, but when none was forthcoming he hopped up anyway.

The three of them lay quietly for a while, Robbie’s head on his father’s shoulder, his hand idly toying with Spot’s ears.

‘Daddy?’ he said after a while.

‘Yes?’

‘Did Ellen go because of me?’

‘No,’ Michael answered, hugging him. ‘It had nothing to do with you, I promise.’

‘Then why did she go?’

Michael inhaled deeply. ‘It’s kind of hard to explain,’ he said.

‘Will she come back?’

Michael’s throat was suddenly tight. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

Robbie turned his head and gazed up into Michael’s shadowy face. ‘I want to stay here with you, Daddy,’ he said.

Michael’s eyes closed and he had to swallow hard before he could speak. Even then he found he couldn’t, so he just held his son close and thanked God that, for the moment at least, this was one loss he didn’t have to endure.

Chapter 16

THEY’D BEEN BACK
from honeymoon for just over a week and already pre-production for
Rachel’s Story
had gone into top gear, with casting, crewing, costume design and set-building all well under way, and provisional shoot dates being discussed for September. Nothing had yet been mentioned, or apparently changed, regarding Ellen’s role as executive producer, but she sensed it soon would be. She knew through Maggie that Michael had spoken to Tom a couple of days after they’d returned from Barbados, but she had yet to learn what decisions had been reached. If Michael was still expecting her to resign, he was giving no sign of it, nor was there anything to suggest that he was backing out either. But, just in case, she was starting to wind down her role, and was concentrating more now on World Wide’s other projects. Not that she was happy about that, in fact it was proving a terrible wrench letting go of the movie, but since Michael had so much more invested in it than she did, it only seemed right that she should be the one to give way.

She’d left the office early today, for a doctor’s appointment at the medical centre in Santa Monica. Just before leaving she’d run into Michael, which hadn’t been easy, but though she knew he was finding it every bit as difficult as she was, so far they seemed to be dealing with it surprisingly well. At least on the surface
they
were, but it was still early days so there was no knowing how long they could keep this up. Considering the news she’d received today, it was probably going to be a lot easier for her than it was for him.

‘Hey, what’s all this?’ Matty cried, coming in the door of the apartment and finding herself assailed by the delicious aroma of something cooking. ‘Candles, soft music, fancy napkins. Are you expecting someone?’

Ellen smiled, and ground more pepper into the pan. ‘Just you.’

‘Mmm, what’s cooking? It smells so good.’

‘Shrimp with garlic, ginger and soy sauce.’

‘My God, it’s my birthday and I forgot,’ Matty declared.

Ellen laughed and passed her a glass of wine.

‘What
is
all this?’ Matty said, confused. ‘I mean not that I don’t appreciate it, you can cook for me any time, but I am not looking at the same woman I left at the crack of dawn this morning.’

‘You are looking,’ Ellen declared, ‘at a woman who is pregnant by the man she is married to.’

Matty stared at her in blank amazement. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost me. Is there some new miracle predictor or something that I never heard of, because I could swear you were in a state of total ambiguity when I left here this morning.’

‘I was,’ Ellen confirmed, ‘but no longer am. And no, there’s no miracle diviner, just the tried and trusty old calendar.’

Matty blinked. ‘Humour me,’ she said.

Ellen turned back to the stove, whisked the pan from the heat and emptied the shrimp into a serving dish.

‘Just a minute,’ Matty said excitedly, ‘you were going to see the doctor today, right?’

Ellen grinned.

‘So?’

‘So, I am thirteen weeks pregnant.’

Matty’s face dropped in astonishment, then suddenly she too was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. ‘You’re kidding me,’ she said. ‘No you’re not, you wouldn’t over something like this. Oh my God, Ellen. Oh my God, this is so wonderful. Did you tell Michael yet? Oh God, I can’t believe … But hang on, how come you got it so wrong? I mean, you’re not even showing and thirteen weeks is a lot.’

‘I am showing – a bit,’ Ellen protested.

‘But did you miss a period? You must have known if you missed a period?’

‘Yeah, I think I did miss one, but there was so much going on, with the build-up to the wedding, things being as crazy as they always are at the office, and everything else, I just didn’t notice. Then, after what happened with Tom,’ she shrugged, ‘I jumped to conclusions and got it wonderfully, fantastically and mercifully wrong. This is Michael’s baby. Michael’s and mine.’

‘Oh Ellen,’ Matty murmured, embracing her. ‘This is just such wonderful news. I’m so happy for you I could cry. I guess you didn’t tell Michael yet, or you wouldn’t still be here.’

‘No, I didn’t tell him yet,’ Ellen confirmed, and, having strained the rice, she picked up the loaded tray and carried it out to the veranda. ‘I hope it’s OK with you that we eat right away,’ she said. ‘I’m famished and as I’ve hardly eaten this past month I just couldn’t wait.’

‘Fine by me,’ Matty said, sliding into a chair and putting her wine down. ‘It’ll be a relief to see you getting fatter, instead of thinner, given your condition.’

Ellen smiled. ‘So did you have a good day?’ she asked. ‘Did those script changes work out?’

Matty sighed. ‘Selling a script change to Dorothy the Dictator is like selling contraception to the Pope,’ she responded. ‘But we don’t want to talk about that, it’ll get sorted one way or another, and as it doesn’t rate too well alongside global warming, world famine, or holy wars, I
can’t
even claim it has any importance. Whereas your news does. OK, not in a Save the Planet sense, but definitely in a save the marriage sense. So when are you planning on telling Michael?’

Ellen was chewing a mouthful of food so it was a moment before she answered. ‘I’m not,’ she said when she was able.

Matty’s shrimp remained in mid-air. ‘Excuse me, did I just hear you say you’re not?’ she said.

Ellen nodded and carried on eating.

‘Well you can’t just leave it there,’ Matty protested.

Ellen looked over the railing as someone splashed into the pool below. ‘I’m not telling him,’ she said.

‘But you have to. I mean, surely you want to …’

She waited, but Ellen merely shook her head.

‘OK, there’s obviously something here that I’m not getting,’ Matty said. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t you want to tell him? You do want him back, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ Ellen replied. ‘I just don’t want him back this way.’

Matty shook her head, then rubbed her eyes as though she was having a hard time understanding. ‘You’re really making me work here,’ she said, ‘and it’s been a long day, so could you just give me this straight?’

Ellen ate some more shrimp, then putting down her fork she sat back in her chair and looked out at the softly darkening sky. ‘I don’t know if I can explain,’ she finally answered. ‘I guess it’s just instinct. It doesn’t feel right to tell him now, so I’m not going to.’ She turned back and looked at Matty. ‘I love him,’ she said, ‘and I want him more than anything, but I can’t forget the way he was prepared to let me go through this alone. OK, I know he was hurting too, that he was probably reacting to shock, and given time he might have come round. Well, I guess I’m going to give him that time, because if he really loves me and wants me too, then he’ll find a way of working things out for us. Besides, even if I were to tell him now,
I
don’t think he’s ready to forgive me yet.’

Matty was quiet as she sipped her wine. ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ she began, ‘but …’

‘My mind’s made up,’ Ellen interrupted, ‘so please, don’t try to plead his case.’

Matty looked at her in the candlelight and experienced a quiet admiration for her strength. ‘Did you find out anything yet about what happened when Michael and Tom met last week?’

Ellen shook her head. ‘I can hardly ask Michael and I haven’t spoken to Tom. The truth is, I’ve been avoiding Tom, but there’s no reason for me to now. Except in Michael’s eyes, of course.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re doing is right,’ Matty said after a pause. ‘He really loves you, Ellen, and this has got to be tearing him apart. Even if it takes him a while to get past it all, I think he deserves to know the truth.’

Ellen was shaking her head. ‘No, Matty. He’s got to learn that he can’t just walk away from the people he loves when things go wrong. He did it with Michelle when she went off to Sarajevo pregnant with Robbie, and now he’s done it to me. OK, I understand that he’s feeling betrayed, but he’s got to accept some responsibility for what happened, because no matter what he wants to tell himself, it’s not all mine.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ Matty said.

‘I am,’ Ellen replied firmly. ‘We just have to be grateful that no-one else ever got to find out, because that’s something I don’t think either of us could deal with.’

Michael looked up from his desk as the outer door to the executive suite opened and Ellen came in. She appeared slightly breathless and flushed, and he wanted to think that it was because her arms were full and her briefcase was heavy, rather than that it had anything to do with the baby.

‘Oh Maggie,’ she said to their assistant, ‘there’s a pile
of
videos for me downstairs, could you get someone to bring them up? Good morning, by the way. Did Oscar Weinberg call yet? I need to speak to him before ten.’

‘He called a few minutes ago,’ Maggie confirmed. ‘He’s in his office. I’ve got to take this down to the mail room, before the courier turns up. I’ll get someone on to the videos. Coffee’s made, the others are running errands, but should be back any second.’

As the door closed behind her Ellen dumped her stack of files and went to pour some coffee.

‘Hi,’ Michael said, coming to stand in the doorway of his office.

Ellen spun round. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, feeling her heart twist. ‘I didn’t realize you were here.’

He watched her pour. ‘How are you?’ he said.

‘Yeah, OK. I’m fine. How are you?’

She looked so alive, so vibrant and happy that he couldn’t help being surprised. It wasn’t that he wanted to see her fall apart, but he just hadn’t expected her to be dealing with their break-up quite as well as this. Maybe she and Tom were getting it on again, and now he was out of the way they could … No, he wasn’t going that route, self-pity was never an answer and despite the impressive show she’d been putting on the past couple of days, he was convinced she wasn’t finding this any easier than he was.

‘I need to know,’ he said, ‘if you’ve told Tom about the baby.’

Her surprise showed. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Why?’

‘Are you going to?’

‘No.’

He guessed it was the response he’d been hoping for, though exactly what it proved he wasn’t entirely sure. Right now, though, it was the fact that she seemed so unemotional that was throwing him.

‘We’ve been getting some pretty positive feedback on
the
twenty-six-part series,’ he said, making for safer ground. ‘The one Sandy was dealing with, just prior to the wed–’ He stopped abruptly, then continued. ‘I was hoping you’d take it over. Sam Field at Fox is interested to know more, so’s Elaine Wade at Prime Time.’

‘Great,’ Ellen responded enthusiastically. ‘Can I take a look at the figures?’

‘They’re on the computer. I’ll give you the code. Uh, I guess we need to schedule a meeting so we can catch up with what’s going on.’

‘I’ll talk to Maggie,’ she said. ‘It should probably be some time this week, before things start getting out of hand.’

He hated the idea of having to book some time with her, but she seemed to be accepting it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘Are you OK about taking on this project with Sandy?’ he said. ‘I mean, I could always pass it on to someone else …’

‘No, it’s great,’ Ellen assured him. ‘I’ve read the first three scripts, it’s something I’d like to be involved in.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Aren’t you seeing Ted this morning?’

He wondered how she knew that, if Forgon had told her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s coming here.’

Ellen’s eyebrows went up.

‘I think I should tell you,’ he said, ‘that Michelle’s decided not to play the part of Rachel. I know we were probably going to withdraw it anyway, but she doesn’t know that, so I think it would be kinder if we let her think she turned it down.’

Once again it was impossible to read her expression, so he had no idea how she felt about his consideration of Michelle’s feelings.

‘I’ve told Tom,’ he said. ‘We should be in a position to make Matty a definite offer by the end of the week.’

Her eyes went down and it was only then that he
realized
how much this was hurting, being so apart from her, so formal and removed.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she said with a smile.

He shook his head.

‘OK, well I guess I’d better be getting on.’

He watched her walk into her office, then turned back to his own.

The fact that she hadn’t commented on Michelle’s withdrawal, or Matty’s casting, suggested that she no longer considered herself involved in the movie. Further proof of that was in her failure to turn up for a producers’ meeting the day before, or even to ask how Vic and Tom’s recent five-day field trip to Mexico had gone. She’d covered it well, but he knew that she had to be hurting over this, and feeling horribly shut out. But it was how she would have to stay, because there was just no way he could tolerate the thought of her working with Chambers again.

Having spent the past couple of weeks going over ATI and World Wide’s figures and forecasts, Ted Forgon had filled the first hour of their meeting with questions, comments, the inevitable insults and typical brusque appreciation. He’d never doubted Michael knew what he was doing, and the facts were bearing him out, for the changes he and Ellen had made to ATI by introducing an official line of TV and movie packaging were already showing signs of paying off, and the number of agents as well as clients had increased more than Forgon had realized. Indeed, he could see from his past couple of weeks’ study that his finger had wandered much further from the pulse than it should have, which no son-of-a-bitch executive or competitor better interpret as a sign that the old dog was losing his teeth. It was simply that he trusted McCann and had seen no reason not to heed his physician’s advice to take things easy for a while. At least that was the official story.