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She smiled, and Chase felt ridiculously happy that he had said something to please her. “Really?” she asked. “Saxophone?” She seemed to consider something for a moment, then nodded in what he could only liken to approval. “Saxophone’s cool.”
“Well, I haven’t played in years, of course—”
“But you were pretty good, right?”
He nodded, all modesty aside. “I was very good.”
Sylvie’s smile broadened as she placed his drink before him. “So tell me something else,” she said.
“Yes?”
“How have you been feeling lately?”
He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “I’ve been feeling fine lately,” he told her. “Why? Do I look bad? Do you know something I don’t?”
She shook her head. “Just wanted to make sure you’re in good health.”
“By my physician’s latest account, my health is excellent, thanks.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Why so many questions?”
She studied him intently for a long time before answering, and suddenly Chase wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her reply.
“Can I be honest with you?” she asked him.
“Of course.”
She glanced around at their surroundings, at the two other bartenders and six or seven customers seated at the bar, at the flurry of waiters and waitresses who hustled around the service bar. His own gaze followed hers, and he wondered again what she was up to.
“I don’t think we should talk about it here,” she said. “But I’ll be getting off at eleven if we don’t get slammed any harder than this before then. Could I...could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee after my shift?”
Chase didn’t know what to say. He’d never seen Sylvie in a social situation before. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure he’d ever seen what she looked like from the waist down. Her invitation had come out of nowhere, completely unexpected. It unnerved him for some reason. He glanced down at his watch to find that it was just past ten. He’d have to wait an hour for her to finish up. Not that he had anything better lined up for the evening, he thought, but he probably ought to decline her invitation.
“Sure,” he heard himself reply, wondering when he’d made the decision to accept her invitation instead.
She released a long breath and looked very relieved for some reason. “Great. I appreciate it. So, what do you think of the étouffée...?”
* * *
A little over an hour later Sylvie sat opposite Mr. Buchanan at a tiny cocktail table in the corner of Cosmo’s bar, clutching a cup of coffee as if it were a lifeline and feeling a little sick to her stomach. Was she crazy? she asked herself, studying the man opposite her as unobtrusively as possible from beneath her lashes. For the past hour she had completed her work behind the bar on automatic pilot, her thoughts instead whirling around one customer in particular.
What did she really know about Mr. Buchanan, anyway? she wondered. Not his first name, that was for sure. But he was handsome, intelligent and successful, had impeccable taste and knew how to play the saxophone. There didn’t appear to be any one particular romantic interest in his life to prevent him from fathering her child. Although he’d come into Cosmo’s a couple of times with a date, he’d never seemed to be with the same woman twice. As he himself had said, he was rabidly single.
He was older than her thirty years, she reminded herself further, by a full decade. And he was too much a workaholic to enjoy any kind of social or family life, something else that was a definite factor in Sylvie’s favor. At his age, and with his occupation, he had no desire to be saddled by the responsibilities of fatherhood. If she had a child by him, there was no doubt in her mind that the baby would be hers alone.
But could she really ask him to do what she was thinking of asking him to do? Would she be able to go through with it herself if he agreed? Her stomach knotted painfully again. She tried to find reassurance by reminding herself how often she had thought her plan through, and how well she had everything under control. Unfortunately, when she looked into the cool green eyes of the big man seated across from her, she suddenly wondered if she really understood at all exactly what she was getting herself into.
“So, Sylvie,” Chase began, uncomfortable in his realization that the two of them had been sitting at the table for more than five minutes without exchanging a single word. “What’s on your mind?”
She was staring down into her coffee cup as if it held the answers to the secrets of the universe, her long blond bangs falling in a silky sheath over her forehead. A stray tress she had tucked behind one ear fell forward, too, and Chase suddenly wanted nothing more than to reach across the tiny table and push it back into place. He’d never really noticed how soft her hair appeared to be. But in the dim glow of the candle flickering on the table between them, everything about Sylvie suddenly seemed soft.
“I, uh,” she began quietly. She inhaled deeply, and Chase waited to hear the rest. “I sort of have something I’d like to ask you.”
“Another question?” he said, smiling when she continued to avoid looking at him. “You’ve had quite a few of those tonight.”
She nodded. “I, uh...” She paused, inhaled deeply, released her breath slowly and tried again. “I, uh, I have an older sister,” she began, finally glancing up, her gaze settling on his.
Good God, her eyes were blue, he thought again before the significance of her words struck him. Then he began to understand where all this was going. Oh, no. He’d heard that “I-have-a-sister/niece/cousin/dog groomer/hairdresser/whatever” speech before. Too many times. If Sylvie thought she was going to fix him up with her sister, she had another think coming. He’d had his fill of blind dates. Not only did they always backfire, he didn’t have the time.
“A sister,” he repeated blandly.
She nodded again. “She had a baby last year—that would be my nephew whose picture I showed you earlier this evening, and—”
“A baby?” Chase asked incredulously. Sylvie wanted to saddle him with a wife and a kid? What was she trying to do, wreck his life completely? What had he ever done to her? Hadn’t he just told her a short time ago that a family was the last thing he needed messing up his happiness?
He held up a hand to halt any other big plans she might be hatching. “Hold it right there, kid,” he instructed her, ignoring her frown at his use of the word kid. She probably wasn’t that much younger than him, but Chase was suddenly feeling like an antique beside her. “I’m not interested in being fixed up with your sister. Or her baby.”
Sylvie looked confused for a moment, but quickly recovered. She began to giggle, then the giggle became a chuckle, and the chuckle became full-fledged laughter. Chase couldn’t help but smile, too. Clearly he had misunderstood what she was going to say. She had no intention of getting him involved with her sister. He felt much better knowing that.
“Livy’s already happily married—I’m not trying to fix you up with her and her baby,” she said, confirming his suspicions and allowing him to breathe much more easily and laugh a little himself. “I’m trying to fix you up with me and my baby.”
Chase stopped laughing immediately. “What?”
Sylvie suddenly stopped laughing, too. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. Somehow the words had just jumped from her mouth. But now that they’d been spoken, she had nowhere to go but forward.
“I didn’t know you had a baby,” Mr. Buchanan said.
“I don’t,” she told him. “But ever since Livy had Simon, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to have a baby, too.”
“Just like that?”
She shook her head. “Simon’s nine months old now. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought ever since he was born. And according to my doctor, despite the fact that I’m only thirty, I don’t have a lot of time left to have a baby. If I’m going to become a mother—and I do want very much to become a mother—I don’t have time to sit around waiting for some potential husband who might not ever show up.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
Sylvie looked up to find her companion staring at her with frank curiosity. He hadn’t figured it out yet, she realized. She supposed what she was planning was rather unusual—asking a man to make love to her specifically so that she could become pregnant, and then get out of her life for good. There were probably a number of men who would say yes in an instant. The irony was, men like that were generally jerks. She wouldn’t want a jerk for her baby’s father, would she? Of course not. In an ideal world, she wouldn’t have to worry about all this. But this wasn’t an ideal world, was it?
“Because,” she said, feeling the words getting stuck in her throat, “because you’re nice looking, intelligent and talented, and...” She stared down at her hands, spread open on the table, then licked her lips nervously before concluding, “And I’d like my baby’s father to pass all those qualities along to him or her.”
His expression never changed, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she’d made herself clear.
“Meaning?” he asked.
His eyes were speculative, and the corner of his mouth twitched only the slightest bit. Oh, he knew what she meant, Sylvie thought. He just wanted her to spell it out for him.
“Meaning,” she tried to explain again, “that I’d like for you to be the father of my baby. I mean...if you’d consider it.”
For a long time Chase said nothing, only continued to stare at Sylvie as if she were speaking a foreign language. Finally he began again, “Are you actually saying you want me to donate my...” He glanced quickly around, cleared his throat and tried once more, his voice noticeably lower when he continued. “You want me to donate my sperm so you can be artificially inseminated with it?”
“Oh, heavens, no,” she assured him.
The fire that had flared to life in his midsection subsided some. Obviously he was misunderstanding whatever it was Sylvie was trying to say. Clearly she meant something else entirely. He only wished he could figure out what it was.
“I want you to make love to me,” she said.
“You what?”
“In two weeks. That’s when I’ll be ovulating again.”
The words didn’t register immediately with Chase. He knew what he thought he’d heard her say, of course, but he couldn’t quite believe she was saying what he thought she was saying. This time he was the one to stare down into his coffee without speaking. But his silence only seemed to inspire Sylvie, because she continued to prattle on nervously.
“Um, look, I know what you’re probably thinking about me right now. I know you must be...you know, wondering what kind of woman would ask a virtual stranger to make love to her just to get her pregnant, but—”
“Oh, we’re not really strangers,” Chase interrupted her, looking up. He fixed his gaze with hers. “Are we, Sylvie?”
She lifted one shoulder in an odd kind of shrug, but said nothing. He had never noticed how small she was, he thought. How delicate looking. She’d always seemed so strong to him, so straightforward, so unwilling to back down. He wondered how long she’d been considering him for the task at hand. And he wondered why what she was suggesting, something that should be no more than an indecent proposal, was in fact so utterly appealing.
“After all the conversations we’ve had over the last two years,” he continued, “how can you think of us as strangers? You talked me through that hostile takeover bid last summer, remember? I would have gone nuts if I hadn’t had you to confide in. And I think your advice helped me ward the bastards off better than any other I received.”
She smiled nervously. “Really?”
He nodded. “You were there for me when my dad died, too.”
“And you helped get me through the loss of my mom,” she added. “But you know what’s weird? I don’t even know your first name.”
“And I don’t know your last.”
“Venner,” she said immediately. “Sylvie Venner.”
“Chase,” he replied, extending his hand toward her. “Chase Buchanan.”
Sylvie placed her hand gingerly in his and smiled. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the two of them might just be making a deal.
* * *
It was after 2:00 a.m. when the closing bartender finally routed them from Cosmo’s. Chase walked Sylvie to her car, both of them moving slowly in spite of the below-freezing temperature, as if they had nowhere in particular to go. Downtown Philly was deserted this time of night, its chrome-and-glass high rises dark and vacant. She inhaled deeply, the scent of winter mingling with a hint of lingering bus fumes. The city seemed quieter than she knew it really was.
They had settled nothing for certain, she thought as she strode alongside him. Although she had spent much of the evening arguing her case eloquently and with forthright honesty, Chase hadn’t agreed to her request. But he hadn’t turned her down, either, she reminded herself. And he had seemed to enjoy their time together as much as she had.
When they reached her car she unlocked it, then tossed her purse into the passenger seat. She was about to pitch the book she’d been reading in her spare time in behind it, but he stayed her hand by circling her wrist with warm fingers.
“The Portable Emerson?” he asked when he saw the title, seeming not at all surprised by her choice of reading material.
Sylvie nodded. “I think Nature is one of the most wonderful series of essays ever written. I like to go back and reread it every now and then.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I love it, too.”
She smiled. “I didn’t know you were familiar with Emerson.”
“He was part of my required reading in college. I was surprised by how much I liked him.”
He released her hand, but not before skimming his fingertips lightly over the ridges of her bare knuckles. Sylvie shivered, uncertain whether it was because of his touch or the cold breeze rushing by.
“How come you never put your humanities degree to use?” he asked out of the blue.
She tossed the book in beside her purse, settled her arms on the open car door and rested her head on her overlapped hands. “I don’t know. I always meant to go for my master’s and then my Ph.D., thinking I would teach at a college level, but I just never got around to it. By the time I got my B.A., I was so sick of school I never wanted to go back. Now I’d love to go back, but I just don’t have the time. Or the funds,” she added with a philosophical shrug. “Maybe someday.”
He nodded, but his mind seemed to be on something else.
“You know, you never really gave me a definite yes or no,” she pointed out.
“No, I didn’t.”
Her heart fell. He wasn’t going to do it, she thought, surprised at the depth of her disappointment. There were others on her list, she reminded herself. She still had a good chance of finding someone. But suddenly no one else seemed suitable. Chase Buchanan was it, she decided. The perfect candidate to father her child. If he said no, she didn’t know what she would do.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand about this,” he said further.
“What’s that?”
“Why does the father of your child have to be someone you know? If you’re so determined to have a baby, then why don’t you just go the artificial insemination route? It’s worked out fine for other women.”
She nodded. “I know. And I did think about that as an alternative. I’ve heard you can virtually fill out an order form of what you expect from a donor and everything, but...”
“But what?”
She shrugged and looked away. His intense scrutiny was making her feel a little anxious. “That’s not for me. I mean, I consider myself to be a thoroughly modern woman with thoroughly modern beliefs, and I certainly wouldn’t fault any woman who chose that option. But... It’s not for me,” she repeated simply.
“Why not?”
She paused before elaborating, trying to think of the best way to make him understand. “It’s just that... I guess I’m old-fashioned in a way, too. I don’t have it in me to become impregnated while I’m lying on a metal table with my feet in stirrups and no one to share the experience but a team of experts in white coats, you know?”
He grimaced at her graphic description but said nothing.
“A baby should be conceived in a moment of affection,” she went on softly. “Even if that moment only lasts...well, a moment. There should be some kind of positive emotion shared by the two parents, even if it’s only temporary. At least, that’s how I feel about it.”
“Most people would say that the emotion involved should be a deep and abiding love that would last forever and unite the family as one,” Chase said.
“I know that,” Sylvie agreed, glancing away once more. “But I’m not convinced such an emotion exists.”
When Chase said nothing, she looked at him again and could see that he was mulling over her statement. “Not that I disagree with you, but how come you feel that way?” he finally asked.
She shook her head resolutely. “I know there are those people who believe in love forever after,” she continued. “Heck, my sister is one of the leading proponents. In fact, Livy being such a profound believer in the powers of love is probably why I’m so anxious to avoid it.”
“Why’s that?”
Sylvie hesitated before replying. Although it was true that Livy had finally found happiness with Daniel McGuane, it was also true that there was no other man in the universe like Daniel. Sylvie was certain anyway that she’d never find someone so utterly compatible with her own needs.
