Every Breath You Take (36 page)

“I know,” Holly said, smiling a little and patting Kate’s back. “Now, let’s go in the living room. You can call the restaurant, and I’ll pick out a movie and we’ll have a sleepover.”

Holly decided on
Pretty Woman
, because it was lighthearted and frivolous. “I cannot have this baby!” Kate whispered from the sofa behind her. She was asleep by the time Holly started the movie and looked around.

“Come on, Max,” Holly whispered. “I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use something stronger than coffee. Let’s raid the wine rack.”

With that in mind, Holly started back toward the kitchen; then she jumped in nervous shock when someone knocked at the front door just as she walked past it. Hoping it would be Evan, preferably on his knees, Holly opened the door; then she stepped back in nervous surprise. Standing on the porch was an unsmiling gray-haired man in his early sixties wearing full clerical
regalia of black suit and white collar. “My God!” she said to the priest, her shock turning to annoyance. “What is with you right-to-life people, anyway? Are you plugged into every OB in the city? Go away! She can make up her own mind.”

“You must be Holly,” the priest said, smiling slightly.

“Please don’t creep me out. Just leave your literature on the porch, and I’ll see that she gets it,” Holly said, starting to close the door.

He put his hand on the door to stop her. “I’m Father Donovan, Kate’s uncle. Kate came by the rectory late this afternoon when I was out. My housekeeper said she seemed upset. She hasn’t answered my phone calls. Now, may I come in?”

Embarrassed but resolute, Holly stepped back, opened the door, and whispered, “She’s sleeping right now, and she’s upset. I don’t want her to wake up. You can come into the kitchen if you want to wait around for a while.”

Holly closed the kitchen’s swinging door behind them and kept her voice low. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I take it that Kate’s pregnant?”

Holly’s background had left her with little respect for organized religion and even less for clerics. “You’ll have to discuss that with her, Father Donovan,” she said, refusing to be intimidated by his collar. The wine rack was in the corner on the counter, and she pulled out a bottle of red wine and began uncorking it, trying to remember whether it was Baptists or Catholics who disapproved of drinking alcohol. “I’m going to drown my sorrows for Kate in a large glass of wine,” she warned him. “I hope you don’t object,” she added in a tone that conveyed that she didn’t care whether he objected or not.

“Are you planning to drink the whole bottle yourself?”

“I might. Why?”

When he didn’t answer, she turned around and found herself looking straight into eyes as green as Kate’s, eyes that were filled with amused curiosity. “If you aren’t planning to drink the whole bottle yourself,” he said, “I thought perhaps we could sit here and enjoy a glass together while we wait for Kate to wake up.”

“Yes, of course,” Holly said, feeling confused and rude. “But I’m not going to tell you about Kate’s—little problem. If she wants to confess it to a priest, that’s up to her.”

“I’m not here as her confessor,” he remarked. “I’m here as her uncle.”

“You’re a priest. You’re going to tell her she has to have that—that
bastard’s
baby.”

As she poured wine into two glasses, Holly waited for him to deny it. “That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?” she challenged bitterly as she handed him a glass of wine and sat down across the table from him.

“Assuming Kate came to see me today to tell me she’s pregnant, then the answer to your question is that Kate already knew what I was going to tell her. Which, in turn, makes me think that’s what she wanted to hear. What surprises me is that she’s been involved with a man you think is a bastard. She’s usually an excellent judge of people.”

Holly took a sip of her wine, considering that. “Not this time.”

Father Donovan took a sip of his wine. “He must have had some quality that appealed to her?”

“He’s a heartless pig,” Holly declared angrily, and took another sip of wine. “But a heartless pig with a lot of looks and charm.”

“I see. Poor Kate. She’s gone with the same young man for four years. I take it the heartless pig we’re talking about isn’t him?”

“No, that heartless pig broke their engagement today and dumped her. She met the heartless pig who got her pregnant in Anguilla a few weeks ago. Don’t ask me to tell you anything more.”

“I won’t.”

Holly drank more of her wine, her thoughts on Kate; then she lifted her gaze to the man with Kate’s eyes and said in a wretched voice, “I can’t believe the things he did to her, and all to get even with Evan …”

“Evan is the heartless pig who dumped her today?”

“Yes. Mitchell Wyatt is the one who used her and broke her heart. I’m the one who coached her about how to treat him when she saw him the last time, and he broke her heart all over again.”

“You meant well. It’s not your fault.”

Holly drank a little more wine and bit her lip. “It’s partly my fault that she had anything to do with him in the first place. Evan took her down to Anguilla and left her there alone, and I told her she should have a fling, and that’s what she did.”

Father Donovan took another sip of wine. “I’m sure Kate made that choice on her own.”

“Oh, no, she didn’t!” Holly said angrily. “She met Mitchell Wyatt in a restaurant one afternoon when she accidentally spilled a Bloody Mary on his shirt. He knew she was Evan’s girlfriend, but he pretended not to …”

“… What a heartbreaking story,” Father Donovan declared sincerely an hour later, after Holly finished apprising him of every minute detail, culminating in Kate’s confrontation with Wyatt at the Children’s Hospital benefit.

A second bottle of wine was on the table between them, along with a tissue box from which Holly had periodically removed a tissue to dab at her eyes. “I
could kill him with my bare hands,” she said ferociously.

“So could I,” Father Donovan declared.

Holly looked at him with new respect. “Really?”

“That was a figure of speech.”

“What are we going to do now?” she asked, spreading her hands on the table, palms up. “She has that huge restaurant to run, and she doesn’t have anyone who cares about her anymore.”

Father Donovan looked at her in surprise. “She has you, Holly,” he said with a smile, “and you’re loyal and brave and strong. And she has me. We’ll get her through this. And when it’s all said and done, she’ll have a baby to love and to love her back, and we’ll share him with her.”

In the doorway, Kate paused and looked from Holly to her uncle. “Hi, Uncle Jamie.”

Standing up, he opened his arms to her and said tenderly, “Hello, Mary Kate.”

Kate fled into his familiar embrace.

O
N A BALMY JUNE MORNING, WHEN SHE WAS ALMOST
four months pregnant, Kate hurried beneath the decorative burgundy awnings of the front windows of Donovan’s on her way into work, and she caught sight of her reflection in the glass. With a sense of grim fascination, she kept walking and studying her unfamiliar outline in the glass. Her head was bent; her shoulders were hunched forward as if she had to plow her way through the lunchtime crowd in order to keep moving; her hair was a mass of untamed curls pulled up into a ponytail because that was easiest; and her pregnancy was showing. Mitchell Wyatt’s son was making his presence known.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the window glass was noticeably grimy.

She pushed through the heavy brass-trimmed oak door, looked around for the maître d’, took in the general condition of things, and worriedly glanced at her watch. It was 11:15; fifteen minutes before Donovan’s opened for lunch. By now, all the tables should have been covered with snowy-white linen tablecloths and decked out with sparkling crystal, gleaming china chargers with a gold
D
in the center, and ornamental brass lanterns. As she walked toward the lounge, Kate counted ten tables that weren’t set, and she noticed that the patterned burgundy carpet didn’t look freshly vacuumed.

The lounge was separated from the dining rooms by a richly carved mahogany wall with stained-glass panels. The room occupied the entire right-hand corner of the building, its shuttered windows looking out onto the street at the front and along the side. During the day, the shutters were left open so people who were eating and drinking at the tables could enjoy the street scene. At dark, the shutters were closed, and the atmosphere inside became a candlelit, upscale “hideaway” with a jazz quartet providing music next to a small dance floor.

The remaining two walls were taken up by the bar itself, an L-shaped mahogany replica of an old-world bar, with dark green marble counters, brass foot rails, and a carved wood canopy above burgundy leather barstools. The beveled mirror on the two back walls was all but obscured by tiers of crystal glasses and Donovan’s famous selection of spirits from all over the world.

The entire original Irish pub of Kate’s youth had occupied about half the area of the current lounge. Normally, being in the lounge evoked nostalgia in Kate. Today, however, she felt a rush of frustrated annoyance when she took a look inside and saw Frank O’Halloran rushing back and forth from one end of the bar to the other, setting out bowls of imported nuts and pulling out trays of fruit from the refrigerators under the bar.

Two bartenders normally manned the bar for weekday lunches, with the number increasing to three on Monday through Wednesday nights, and then to four for the Thursday-, Friday-, and Saturday-night crowds.

“Hi, Frank,” Kate said to the balding bartender, who’d worked for Donovan’s for twenty years. “Who’s supposed to be on duty with you today?”

“Jimmy,” he replied, flicking her a noncommittal look.

“I thought Jimmy was working the evening shift.”

“He switched with Pete Fellows.”

“Where’s Jimmy, then?”

“Dunno, Mary Kate.”

Scheduling the staff was Louis Kellard’s job as the restaurant manager. “I guess Louis is taking care of getting you some help,” Kate said, turning to leave.

“Mary Kate, I need to tell you somethin’.”

She turned back, suddenly uneasy about his tone. “Yes?” she said, walking over to him. He had a sheen of perspiration on his forehead, presumably from trying to rush.

“I’m gonna have to quit.”

Kate’s eyes widened in alarm at the thought of another familiar face disappearing from her life. “Are you sick, Frank?”

Lifting his head, he looked her straight in the eye. “Yeah, I am. I’m sick of watchin’ this place slide downhill. I’ve always been real proud of workin’ at Donovan’s. There’s not a customer who comes in here more than a few times that I don’t make it a point to remember his name and what he likes. Your dad, God rest his soul, was the same way about the dining room customers.”

“I know that—” Kate said, cringing inwardly from the indirect criticism of her stewardship.

“Donovan’s has always been special. Even when your dad decided to make this place real classy, he kept it real personal, too. He gave it his special touch, and that’s what’s made Donovan’s the popular place that it is. I’m gonna be honest with you, Mary Kate, and tell you what all of us think who’ve worked here for a few years: You don’t have your dad’s touch. We thought you might, but you don’t.”

Kate put up a valiant struggle against a sudden rush of tears. “I spend as much time here as my father did,” she argued.

“Your heart isn’t in it,” he countered. “Your father wouldn’t have seen me alone in here and shrugged and said, ‘I guess Louis is taking care of getting you some help.’ He’d have made damned sure I had help, and then he’d have made damned sure he knew why Louis hadn’t
already
taken care of it.”

Heated tears were burning the backs of Kate’s eyes now, threatening to spill over, and she turned, starting toward the doorway into the dining room. “Tell Marjorie to give you an extra two months’ pay in your final check,” she said, referring to the trusted bookkeeper who’d worked for her father for more than a decade.

To her shock, the Irishman called angrily after her, “
You
tell Marjorie to do it, Mary Kate Donovan! That’s your job—you’re the boss, not me, and not Marjorie.”

Kate nodded, trying to breathe steadily and slowly so she wouldn’t have to run for the bathroom to either throw up or cry.

“And another thing—” Frank shouted after her. “Why are you lettin’ me get away with talkin’ to you like that? I wouldn’t have gotten away with talkin’ to your dad that way!”

“Go to hell,” Kate whispered.

“And one more thing besides,” he called.

Fists clenched, Kate turned and saw him leaning over the bar, his face red with anger. “What’s wrong with your eyes that you didn’t notice that the lemons and limes I’m puttin’ out are old? Why aren’t you storming outta here on your way to the kitchen to see who the hell is letting that produce company get away with giving us this crap?”

Kate refused to reply, but she did notice that the maître d’, Kevin Sandovski, still wasn’t at his post at 11:25, when she walked by his desk at the entrance. In the kitchen, she found him, Louis Kellard, and several waiters who should have been busy with last-minute details in the
dining room, standing around joking with the kitchen staff. “What’s going on in here?” she asked in what she hoped was an authoritative, disapproving voice.

Sandovski levered himself up from a stool, but she thought he rolled his eyes at the waiters. Louis Kellard looked at the bulge in her abdomen, smiled sympathetically, and said, “Kate, I’ve been through two pregnancies with my wife, and I know how hard it is on a woman emotionally and physically to deal with that, along with the stress of holding down a job. Try not to upset yourself.”

“I’m not upsetting myself,” Kate said, unsure whether he was genuinely trying to help her or patronizing her. “Frank O’Halloran said we’re getting inferior produce. Is that true?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Louis said, shaking his head in affront. “We’re just not using as many lemons and limes as we used to in the lounge, so they stand around a little longer.”