This Child Of Mine

“Later. And while I’m at it, remind me to chew you out for talking so pretty. But first, tell me what you found out.”

Jeff sighed. “It seems the younger Masters is Wilkens’s intern from the University of Oklahoma. Brilliant. Chose O.U. because of the Carl Albert Center.”

“The Carl Center?” Kitt muttered. “Where they do all that in-depth research into federal government operations? Is this guy some kind of policy wonk?”

“I guess. Of course, his father could send him anywhere, and tried to. But the kid, who’s no kid, by the way, dropped out of U.C.L.A. the first go-round. Got in some kind of woman trouble. The old man, the real Marcus Masters, the one who’s trying to control Wilkens, was only in D.C. for a day before he zipped out on his Lear.”

“Dang!” Kitt dragged her hand viciously through her kinky hair at that news. So, she’d missed her chance with Masters, and gotten the old man’s son underfoot in the process.

Jeff went on in a rush, “I’m guessing the son is the relative I heard about. Sorry for the bad poop, Kitt. Old man Masters was supposed to be at that reception, I guess because his son was one of the incoming interns. But he didn’t show. In fact, Trisha was really disappointed—”

“Trisha,” Kitt injected.

“What have you got against her, anyway? She’s really nice.”

Kitt kept her thoughts to herself, but said, “Go on.”

“Well, it turns out the old man wanted Mark to meet her. She works for an affiliate owned by Masters Multimedia.”

Keepin’ it all in the family, Kitt thought.

“Anyway, I promise, I knew none of this. I mean, I knew there were two interns who arrived late in the day that I didn’t meet—we let Eric handle them—but I sure as hell didn’t know one of them was Marcus Masters’s son. I can’t apologize enough for this mix-up. Kitt?…Kitt? Did you hear me? I’m really sorry.”

Kitt quit pacing and plopped down on the bed. Thinking. Scheming, actually. She didn’t really hold Jeff accountable for this fiasco. He certainly had nothing to do with the congressman’s bright idea to send Masters over to her turf. “Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “Send me some chocolates or a couple of tickets to Aruba or something.” She yawned loudly into the phone. “Listen, I’m beat. Thanks for checking the guy out. You and Lauren really should communicate more. Turns out she knew he was Marcus Masters’s son the whole time.”

“Maybe you should communicate with Lauren more often,” Jeff said. “She’s your roommate.” His voice dropped to a seductive level. “Hey. If I do send the tickets, will you take me to Aruba with you?”

Kitt raised the mouthpiece of the phone to her forehead, rolled her eyes to the ceiling, releasing a slow hiss of impatience.

“Kitt? You there?”

Kitt lowered the phone. “I’m just tired, Jeff. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve got to figure out what to do with Mark Masters in the morning. Oh, by the way. I won’t need a ride.”

“Why? You braving the traffic?”

“No. After we left the dinner, when I was slinking home, Mark Masters caught up with me and offered to pick me up tomorrow.”

“What on earth for?” Jeff sounded suddenly wary, maybe even a little peevish.

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe he was just being nice. But I don’t buy the I’m-Just-Here-To-Learn routine he handed the congressman.”

“If he’s Marcus Masters’s son, you can bet he’s after something.”

“I can handle him.” Kitt yawned again.

“Uh, yeah, if anybody can, you can. That’s cool.”

But Kitt got the feeling Jeff didn’t think it was cool at all, and the truth was, neither did she. In fact, the whole idea of doing anything with Mark Masters, anything at all, felt vaguely…dangerous.

And that night, for the first time in a very long time, Kitt dreamed the old dream. The nightmare about her baby.

This time it came to her like a dream within a dream. She was blinking at the golden shafts of evening sun that seeped through the bent miniblinds in her tiny student apartment at the University of Tulsa. It was late summer, when the university was as dead as a ghost town, and here she was, alone and heart-sore.

She was curled up in a ball on her side, and, despite the oppressive Oklahoma heat, she pulled the comforter tighter around herself, like a cocoon, sealing the pain out…or sealing it in, she wasn’t sure which.

All she wanted was sleep, but with sleep came the dream.

A dream that plagued her so much throughout her last year of law school that Kitt had worried that she might not have the strength to finish. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let Danny take that one hope away from her. Not after working so hard for so long. Not after only one mistake. All through that last year of school, the dream tormented her.

An infant—so small, so weak—clung to her, grasping with transparent fingers, floating from the filament of a tiny, reaching arm, surrounded by a soft white light.

But the baby always floated away. Each time Kitt reached out frantically to draw him back, he drifted farther. The child, she sensed, even as she dreamed, was forever lost to her.

Her baby.

Her endless nightmare.

Tonight she awoke in her Alexandria town house in a sweat, gasping. She sat up, switched on the lamp, stared down at the front of her T-shirt, half expecting to actually see something there. But the faded letters of a No Fear logo was all she saw. Shaking, she swung her slender legs over the side of the bed and scrubbed her hand over her face.

No fear indeed. Whenever the dream overtook her in the middle of the night, all Kitt Stevens felt was fear. Pounding fear. Fear that she had made the wrong decision. Fear that her baby was not all right.

During that time—four years ago now—that Kitt had decided she didn’t believe in love. No, she’d told herself, she couldn’t believe in love, never would again. She could believe in a lot of things—her faith, her friends, her ideals—but never love. That decision had been her only defense.

Love. Now she shivered at the idea.

Why had the dream returned now, when she’d thought it was all finally behind her?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE OFFICES OF the Coalition for Responsible Media consisted of four cramped rooms at the top of three flights of stairs in an ancient, crumbling nineteenth-century building on the fringes of Old Town.

Enthusiastic volunteers teemed in and out of cubicles crammed with file cabinets, beat-up desks, computers and a perpetually zipping photocopier.

“Where do all these people come from?” was Mark Masters’s first question as he observed the beehive of activity, already at a fever pitch at eight in the morning.

Before Kitt could answer, a young man hailed her. “Ms. Stevens, Senator Goins on line one.”

She pushed her back-to-normal bangs aside, and said, “Take a seat,” to Masters without introducing him to anybody. She had no intention of making this guy too comfortable.

Then she got so busy bending congressional ears that she didn’t see him for the next hour. Which was just as well. Their beginning this morning had been rocky.

The first thing out of his mouth when he picked her up in the disgusting foreign Lexus was, “What a relief! I was afraid you’d still have your hair up in that snaky braidy thing.”

Little snot.

Kitt had blushed at her own folly. The expense. The discomfort. For nothing. “Oh, you didn’t like my wig?” she cracked as she settled herself into the leather seat.

He grinned as the precision engine purred to life. “You borrowed it from the Star Trek props room, right?”

Kitt pursed her mouth sourly. Normally, she loved this kind of repartee. With four brothers, she’d grown up on a steady diet of it. But from this man, it rankled. Because he’d known who she was the whole time, stupid hairdo or no stupid hairdo. Had he even known at the ice-cream social? Had he been mocking her instead of flirting with her? Pride prevented her from asking.

She looked over at him. Again, he was immaculately groomed in a navy-blue worsted-wool suit—the same tailored suit he’d worn before, she was certain—and a starched white shirt. Only his tie was a contradiction to his classic apparel. Today it was panda bears tumbling over themselves, munching bamboo. The black-and-white pandas and kelly-green bamboo looked absolutely ghastly with the navy suit. But rich boys, she supposed, could wear any ugly tie they pleased.

She stared out the windshield at the hazy morning scene of Alexandria-near-the-Potomac and wondered why she had agreed to let this spoiled brat pick her up this morning.

“So,” she said as she adjusted her seat belt, “you’re Marcus Masters the Third. Marcus Masters’s kid.”

“No. I am Mark Masters. The adult son of a man whose name is Marcus Masters, whose father also happens to be named Marcus Masters.”

He was still smiling, but not quite so brightly now, and Kitt thought, Touchy, touchy. She wanted to say, No, you are the spoiled son of a man who doesn’t care how he pollutes the culture as long as it makes a profit. But she steered clear of that honey pot. This was the congressman’s new intern, and she couldn’t do anything to jeopardize the CRM’s position with Congressman Wilkens.

“Well, Mr. Masters—” she couldn’t help the sarcasm “—exactly how did you happen to obtain this plum of an internship with Congressman Wilkens?”

“Don’t call me Mr. Masters.” The smile was gone and his face looked suddenly older, hardened. “That’s my father. I’m Mark.”

So this is some kind of sore point, his father. “Not Marcus?”

“That’s my father as well. And Mac is my grandfather. I’m Mark.”

“Does everybody call you that?”

“Only since I’ve been born.” Now he smiled.

“Okay. Mark. How?”

“My father didn’t pull strings for me if that’s what you’re asking. I applied for the internship like everybody else, and I got it.”

“Yes,” Kitt said, eyeing the supple leather upholstery, the walnut trim, his handsome profile as he steered the car smoothly through the tangle of rush-hour traffic, “I imagine it was just that simple.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, a dark slash of disapproval. “Rich does not equal spoiled.”

She blushed at his perceptiveness, and he smiled, but not warmly. “I get this all the time, Ms. Stevens.”

Kitt turned her face to the window. All this Mr. and Ms. doo-doo was purely antagonistic posturing, but even so, she did not invite him to call her Kitt. A tense silence ensued as they waited at one of the interminable stoplights that control the infamous five-way intersections in northern Virginia.

“So you study at the Carl Albert Center?” she said after a moment, trying to be civil.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She ignored the ma’am. “Is that your major? Political Science?”

“I study writing.”

“Writing?” Kitt’s own undergraduate major had been journalism, in its own way as tough a nut to crack as law school. “I’d think writing would be somewhat quaint and antiquated for the LinkServe genius.”

“Do you actually know anything about my LinkServe experiment?”

“I know it’s a comprehensive communications technology that you’ve been working on ever since you graduated from creating video games in high school. I know it’s the technology that threatens to make other technologies obsolete. I know you—and your father—don’t want LinkServe—and others like it—regulated by the new bill designed to control the glut of filth and violence in the media.”

“I see I’m not the only one who does my homework.”

“Is that what you call it? Homework?”

“Yeah. What do you call it?” He watched the stoplights above them.

“Espionage. Skulduggery.”

He had glanced over then, blue eyes sparkling with challenge, and had given her a crooked little smile, which she had wanted to slap off his pretty-boy face. “You don’t like me much,” he said. “I can tell.”

“I wouldn’t say that I don’t like you personally, Mark,” she answered.

“Oh, what don’t you like impersonally, then?”

Your father, the way he’s polluting the mindscape of this country’s kids for the bottom line, she thought. The way he’s planning to use LinkServe to keep on doing it, no matter what kinds of legislation my people get passed. But, again, she avoided all that by squinting at his chest and saying, “It’s your tie I think.”

He laughed—a surprised, delighted laugh—and flapped the tie. “Hey. Don’t knock it. This tie is a gift from a girl with impeccable taste.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kitt imagined he probably had girls with impeccable taste buying him gifts every day of the week. And then, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she’d turned ten shades of red, and, trapped right there in his Lexus, all she could do was turn her face to the passenger window again.

Thank you, dear Congressman Wilkens, she’d seethed, for arranging this delightful week with this delightful young man.

WHEN KITT FINISHED her phone calls, she found him with his butt propped on a corner of one of the volunteer’s desks, his handsome head cocked to one side, listening intently while two women and one man blasted their faces off with flushing zeal about the future plans of the Coalition for Responsible Media.

And in his palm he held a microrecorder.

“What’s that for?” Kitt charged forward, pointing at the thing.

He stood. “I asked Mary and Shirley and Howard—” he smiled at the three “—if I could tape their comments. My memory is sort of feeble,” he explained, then smiled again at the trio, who beamed back.

“But you didn’t ask me,” Kitt said. “Turn it off.”

Mary’s and Shirley’s and Howard’s smiles shriveled and they looked stunned, offended. At Kitt.

She ignored them. “If you want information, we’ll get you some literature. Follow me.” She whirled away.

Behind her, she heard him making his apologies to the group, saying maybe they could visit more later.

When she got him alone in her tiny office, she closed the door. “Don’t do that again.”

“Do what?” His face was guileless.

“Record the staff’s comments. This is a coalition, and a very loose, diverse one at that. Made up of child advocacy groups, church groups, parents, cops, educators. Most of these folks are not political players. They’re volunteers. They believe in what they are doing, but they are very naive. Did you even tell them you are an intern from Wilkens’s office? That you’re gathering data to report to the congressman?”

“Nobody asked.”

Just as she’d thought. “Listen, Mr. Masters—”

“Mark,” he corrected.

But at that she only squinted and repeated: “Mr. Masters, those folks wouldn’t, of course, ask. They wouldn’t know to ask. And while I appreciate your efforts to be accurate—”

“That’s right. I’m only striving to be accurate.” He raised his palms in a helpless gesture. “I have a very poor memory. In fact—” he pumped his eyebrows Groucho style “—I have absolutely no memory of the first three years of my life.” He dropped his hands and grinned.

But his silly joke and his goofy grin did not amuse Kitt. “While I do want your report to the congressman to be as accurate as possible, you surely realize there are people who are anxious to undermine what we’re doing here, to make us look like zealots, like twenty-first century thought police.”

“How can I undermine you if I simply give the congressman the facts? You don’t have anything to hide here, do you?” He smiled that smile. That smile that, Kitt was convinced by now, he surely must know was completely disarming and endearing. Completely sexy.

“From now on just stick with me,” she said.

“Like ugly wallpaper.” He pumped those eyebrows again, smiled that smile.

Kitt looked pointedly at his tie. He should know from ugly.

And the remainder of the day went like that: Kitt feeling threatened, edgy, thinking mean little thoughts; Masters being sunny, straightforward, thinking only heaven-knew-what. Smiling, smiling, smiling that damn winning smile. All the while Kitt felt certain he was gathering data that would somehow be used against her cause, given who he really was. Intern, schmintern.

He had to be doing everything he could to protect his LinkServe—how had he phrased it to Wilkens?—his interests? Interests indeed.

She felt despair when she realized that by some grotesque twist of fate, Marcus Masters’s own son had become their unsympathetic pipeline to Congressman Wilkens. And The Pipeline seemed to be everywhere, getting into everything, persisting in being so nice that the staff was blinded to the dangers of opening up to him. Their underfunded little organization would be laid before the Masters Multimedia giant like a deer caught in the headlights of a semitruck.

By late afternoon Kitt was exhausted from the mental gymnastics, and the very sight of Mark Masters was giving her a torpid headache. She couldn’t wait to get him out of their offices, to get away from the man.

But Jeff Smith neatly destroyed all hope of that when he arrived shortly after five to offer Kitt a ride home.

She went to gather her paraphernalia: jacket, clutch, pager, cell phone. While she crammed it all into her tote, Jeff reviewed their plans to go to Murphy’s, her favorite Irish pub in Old Town. A little too loudly, Kitt realized, when she saw Mark Masters’s head pop up from a stack of deadly-dull media-content analysis statistics.

“Hey! I’ve heard of that place!” Masters said from across the room.

Jeff turned. “Oh?”

“Yeah. One of the other interns mentioned it. Authentic Irish music, live.” Masters smiled that choir-boy smile. “Sounds neat.”

Kitt wished to heaven the man would stop saying neat.

Mark’s reminder that he was the congressman’s intern was not lost on Jeff. “Would you care to join us?” said Jeff, the charming congressional aide, being hospitable to the lonesome little intern. “Whatdaya say, Kitt? Don’t you think Mark should get a taste of authentic Alexandria nightlife?”

“Well…” Kitt knew she looked caught, trapped again, and she tried to compose her expression into one of nonchalance as Mark stood and crossed the room.

She shrugged. “Well, Murphy’s isn’t really a good example of Old Town nightlife. It’s pretty dull, actually. The place would bore Mark, I’m afraid.”

Mark gave her a small frown, cocked his head, regarded her with glittering eyes that seemed to see right through her. “I’m not nearly so prone to boredom as you seem to imagine,” he said. “And how could anything be dull—” he paused, narrowing those already-narrow eyes at her “—as long as you’re there.”

Kitt’s face flamed, and she opened her mouth to speak, but Jeff wedged his lanky frame between Kitt and Mark. “Does that mean you’ll be joining us?” he asked.

Mark quirked a dark eyebrow at Jeff. “Absolutely. How do I get there?”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PLANK DOORWAY to Murphy’s Irish Tavern was so narrow that Mark actually had to tilt his shoulders sideways as he squeezed in. He stood inside a cramped little vestibule, allowing himself a moment to adjust to the dim lighting, the noise and the pressing crowd.

Mark hated crowds, and he was already thoroughly sick of the trendy Washington bar scene—self-important men in overpriced suits, narcissistic women in clever little day-to-evening getups. Tonight the regulars were doing their best to outshout each other over loud music in this dark forty-by-sixty room saturated with smoke, strong cooking odors and humidity that floated up from the Potomac like clingy polyester netting. Grateful that he’d left his jacket and tie in the Lexus, Mark rolled up his shirtsleeves and stepped into the melee.

A svelte woman said, “Excuse me,” while brushing up against him as she passed. She made an elaborate business of raising two full glasses to shoulder level, to emphasize, he supposed, her trim shape, sheathed in a brown dress that poured over her curves like melted chocolate. The dense perfume she left in her wake clogged his sinuses.

Three girls, ponytails pulled through baseball caps and cleavage spilling out of athletic spandex, smiled from a nearby table and one raised a glass of ale at him. A woman at the bar turned her head, arched her back and lowered her eyelashes as he passed.

Mark spotted Kitt near the back of the narrow room. Squeezed into one of the old high-backed booths, with Jeff and that blond girl Mark had seen at the ice-cream social.

As he made his way to the booth, a trio onstage struck up a rowdy rendition of “Gary Owen,” making normal conversation strenuous and even shouted greetings difficult to hear.

“Mark!” Jeff jumped up. “You found us!”

Mark tried to discreetly wipe the sweat from his temple. “This place is certainly tucked in here, like you said,” he shouted at Jeff. “Had to circle the block twice before I found it, and a couple more times looking for a parking space.” He glanced at Kitt. Although she smiled up at him, she looked as if she couldn’t make out his words.

“Yeah, well,” Jeff hollered in Mark’s ear, “I guess Alexandria’s a far cry from Oklahoma, where everything is surrounded by miles and miles of absolutely totally nothing.” Jeff backed up a fraction, gave him a bland smile.

Even though Mark was not a native Oklahoman, he was irked by this condescending attitude. “Not absolutely totally nothing.” He smiled back, parroting Jeff’s redundancy. “There is the occasional Injun teepee.”

Jeff’s smile frosted a bit.

Kitt still seemed unable to hear the men above the music, but her eyes narrowed as if she had become aware that something was subtly amiss. “Mark—” she leaned forward “—this is Lauren Holmes, one of my roommates. Perhaps you two met at Congressman Wilkens’s ice-cream social.”

Mark extended his hand to the blonde, and she offered hers with that fingertips-only handshake some women employ.

“Sit down!” Jeff yelled and slapped Mark’s back, pointing to the seat next to Lauren. Then he squeezed into the booth beside Kitt.

Were Kitt Stevens and Jeff Smith a couple? Mark studied Kitt. The moment he’d seen her at that ice-cream social, he’d thought, Now there’s an interesting woman. Okay. More than interesting. Attractive. He’d found her even more intriguing at Gadsby’s, and downright fascinating as he observed her in her offices today.

She glanced at him, brushed her bangs out of her eyes self-consciously, and he realized he was staring. He turned his face toward the singers. Steady, boy, he told himself. Think of Tanni. Always of Tanni. Don’t let yourself get all hot about a woman you don’t even know.

“How about a beer?” Jeff, the grand host, offered.

“Have a Harp,” Kitt shouted, “the best of Ireland.” She raised her glass. The orange glow from the green-shaded lamp hanging over the table enriched the color of her hair to a honey gold.

Jeff jerked his thumb at Kitt’s glass of Harp. “The only alcoholic thing she’ll drink, but she claims Harp is some kind of patriotic ritual. Murphy’s and church are about the extent of her social life, you know.” Jeff winked at Mark and then grinned at Kitt indulgently.

Kitt smiled at Mark. An impudent little smile. “Irish music and a glass of Harp are good for the soul,” she said, then closed her eyes and broke into a mellow, perfect-pitch harmony with the singers onstage. Some song about a minstrel boy.

Above her singing, Jeff teased, “Maybe good for the soul, but not the ears.”

Without opening her eyes, Kitt jabbed Jeff in the ribs, and sang louder. Jeff clutched his side, feigning injury, then covered his ears.

Ignoring this silliness, Mark fixed his gaze on Kitt, but spoke to Jeff. “Actually, she has a beautiful voice.”

Abruptly, she opened her eyes and stopped singing. She blushed, he noted with satisfaction, most attractively.

“Please. Don’t stop.” He smiled.

She gave him a quick wide-eyed stare, then dragged her gaze to the singers onstage, and picked up the melody. But her singing was softer, more subdued now.

As the last strains of the music died away, Kitt looked into Mark’s eyes. While they studied each other, a crease formed between her eyebrows, and her lips parted. Mark’s gut tightened and a quickening shot to his groin as he watched her mouth.