Free One Night With You by Candace Schuler

Jake, and knows you . And that silly performance at the Tadish Grill didn't help matters either. It was stupid of her to have run like a rabbit at the mention of Jake's name, stupid to have refused to work on Devil's Lady without giving him a reason, stupid to get all snappy and defensive when he mentioned Stephanie's eyes. It was all those things together that had led him to guess correctly. And that's all it was, a guess. He couldn't have known just by looking at Stephanie.
    If she had handled it better, given him a reason for not wanting to work on Devil's Lady , said she didn't like Dorothea Heller; anything except what she had—or hadn't—said.
    "Jake's middle name is Stephen," Eldin commented when she came back into the room with the tea tray.
    "Yes," was all she said. It would be pointless to deny it now.
    She added a squeeze of lemon to his tea and passed the fragile china cup across to him, then busied herself for a few minutes with her own. She took both milk and sugar, "nursery tea," Eldin had told her once, fit only for the underdeveloped palate.
    "Cookie?" she offered.
    Eldin waved the plate away. "Does he suspect?"
    "I doubt he even recalls the incident," she said, a wry smile curving her full lips. "Oh, don't look like that, Eldin. There's no need to pity me." She paused, biting into a cookie. "I don't pity myself. I knew exactly what I was doing." She chuckled and glanced over at Stephanie, asleep now on her blanket. " Almost exactly what I was doing," she amended.
    "He should have been more responsible," Eldin burst out, "than to run around, willy-nilly, seducing innocent young girls."
    "Oh, Eldin, please," she said, laughing. "Don't play the outraged father figure. It doesn't suit you... and it doesn't suit me either. I'm hardly an innocent young girl."
    "Well, I am outraged! Leaving you with an unwanted child to support. Getting off scot-free—"
    "Now wait a minute, Eldin," she flared, instantly on the offensive against anyone who might cast a slur upon her child. "Stephanie is not an unwanted child. She was unplanned, yes, but not unwanted. I wanted her from the very first minute I knew I was pregnant. If anything," she continued on a calmer note, "it's Jake who's the loser in all this."
    "I don't see how." Eldin's voice was still huffy.
    "He'll never know he has a daughter," she explained. "He'll never get to see what a beautiful baby we made together. In a way, I almost feel guilty for keeping her from him."
    "Why not tell him then?"
    "No, Eldin, I've already made my mind up about that," she said, her lips set in a firm, determined line. "It's better this way, believe me."
    "But—"
    "Do you think I haven't thought about telling him? I have. A million times. But the answer is always the same. No. Jake Lancing doesn't even like kids. I've heard him say so at least a dozen times and so have you. Every time he's on a talk show somebody brings up those two paternity suits and—"
    "I happen to know that he was in Tangiers filming Fly by Night when that Phillips woman claims the deed was done. And he's been supporting Lisa Kendall's child."
    "He is?" Desi was flabbergasted. "But I thought... she couldn't prove it was his, could she? She lost the case."
    "It didn't get to court. She knew she didn't stand a chance of proving that the child was Jake's. It could have been the offspring of any number of men from what I've heard of the lady. And I use that term loosely," he said, grimacing mildly as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. "A no-talent ambitious schemer is what she was, trying to get herself a free—"
    "Then why is Jake supporting her child, if he isn't the father?" Desi wanted to know.
    " Was supporting. He isn't any longer. She's since married—to another man who could also have possibly been the father."
    "Yes, but why—"
    "Oh, well, as to that." Eldin seemed a bit embarrassed. "It was possible that Jake could have been the father. He'd been intimate with her at the appropriate