He smiled in the face of her anger. "Don't be ridiculous. This is my baby, too. I have a right to know these things."
She stopped and stared at him, feeling exhausted, wrung out. "Why are you doing this?" she asked plaintively.
"To prove something to you," he said quietly, his eyes deep and frosty as ice caverns.
She waited, but he didn't say any more. She went back to work but kept turning to look at him from every corner of the restaurant.
Between questions the calls began to come in-calls from Los Angeles, Destiny Bay, Santa Barbara and even Aus tralia. "I'll turn off the ring," he said non chalantly when she complained about the constant noise. "You won't know I'm here."
Finally Charity could stand it no longer.
"This is not your office," she reminded him.
"No, this is nicer than my office. That's why I stay." He smiled at her significantly. "The view, in particular, is much, much better."
She flushed and hurried away. Could you love and hate someone at the same time? She could hardly wait for clos ing time when she could finally throw him out.
The next morning he was back. This time he brought along a book of baby names.
"We'll work on boys' names today," he told her when she stopped by with coffee. "And tomorrow we'll do the girls' names. Okay?"
"I'm ignoring you," she claimed.
"No, you're not," he responded cheerfully. "How about Adrian? Adrian Edward Carrington."
She paused, intrigued in spite of herself. "What's the Edward for?" she asked.
"Isn't that your father's name?" he said softly.
She stared at him. "How did you know that?"
He merely smiled. "Or how about Matthew?" he went on. "I've always liked that name. My first polo instructor was named Matthew."
"Polo." She rolled her eyes. "Right."
But she was smiling as she walked away. Why was it he could always do that to her?
"What do you think of Ishmael?" he asked a little later as she passed his table, guiding a party of twelve to their seats. "Too literary?"
She threw him a dirty look and went on, but one of her party paused to make a comment, and before long every one in the restaurant was discussing what she should name her baby.
"Taffy is an adorable name for a baby," one elderly lady lectured her. "The only trouble is, what do you do with it once the boy's hit puberty?"
"Change it to Clint," someone called over from another table, "and buy him a horse."
"Name a child Albert and he's guaranteed to make good grades," a motherly creature told her.