The Carpetbaggers (94 page)

"Screw the job, I need you!"

The line was silent, and for a moment, I thought she'd hung up. "Monica, are you there?"

I heard her breathe in the receiver. "I’m still here, Jonas."

"I've been wrong all the time. I didn't know about Jo-Ann. Believe me." Again the silence.

"Please, Monica!"

Now she was crying. I could hear her whispered voice in my ear. "Oh, Jonas, I've never stopped loving you."

I looked up at Nevada. He smiled and went out, closing the door behind him.

I heard her sniffle, then her voice suddenly cleared and filled with the warm sound of love. "When Jo-Ann was a little girl she always wanted a baby brother."

"Hurry home," I said, "I’ll do my best."

She laughed and there was a click as the line went dead in my hands. I didn't put the phone down because I felt that as long as I held it, she was close to me. I looked down at the photograph of my father on the desk.

"Well, old man," I said, asking his approval for the first time in my life, "did I do right?"

About the author

HAROLD ROBBINS is the bestselling, most enduring popular novelist of all time. He lives in Palm Springs, California.