Loving by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

looked at him honestly and nodded. "Sometimes."
    His heart ached again as he looked at her. "Will you make me a promise? If you ever, ever have a problem, you'll call. And I mean immediately. I'd come right over."
    "I know you would. It's a nice feeling." She yawned again, sat down on a Louis XV chair in the hall, and kicked off her elegant navy-blue satin shoes. He sat down on a chair facing her, and they both smiled.
    "You look beautiful tonight, Bettina. And terribly, terribly grown up."
    She shrugged, looking much like the young girl she was. "I suppose I am grown-up now." And then with a chortle she tossed one of the navy satin shoes in the air. She caught it again, barely missing a priceless vase that sat on a little marble ledge. "You know the weirdest thing of all, Ivo?"
    "What?"
    "I mean aside from the loneliness, it's being responsible for me. There is no one, absolutely no one, to tell me what to do, to give me hell, to give me praise, to figure things out for me ... none of it. ... If I had just broken that vase, it would have been my problem, no one else's. That's a lonely feeling sometimes too. Like no one gives a damn." She looked pensively at her shoe, and then dropped it to the floor again, but Ivo was watching her intently.
    "I give a damn."
    "I know you do. And I care about you too."
    He said nothing in answer for a moment. He just watched her. "I'm glad." Then he stood up and wandered slowly over to where she sat. "And now, contrary to your theory, I'm going to tell you to go to bed, like a good girl. Shall I walk you upstairs to your room?" She hesitated for a long moment, and then she smiled.
    "You wouldn't mind?"
    He looked oddly serious when he shook his head. She walked toward the stairs in bare feet, her shoes lying forgotten on the foyer floor, and threw her blue velvet coat over her arm, as Ivo followed the naked oval of her back up to her bedroom. But he was in control now. In the course of the evening he had decided what he was going to do. She turned to look over her shoulder at him when they reached the top of the stairs.
    "Are you going to tuck me into bed?" She was half teasing and half serious, and he wasn't quite sure what else he saw in her big green eyes. But he wasn't going to ask questions.
    She ran a hand tiredly over her eyes, and she suddenly seemed very old. "There's so much I have to do, Ivo. Sometimes I'm not sure how I'm going to do it all." But as she said it he patted her shoulder, and she looked up at him, smiling.
    "You will, darling. You will. But what you need first, mademoiselle, is a good night's sleep. So good night, little one. I'll let myself out." She heard him walk softly down the carpeted hall, and then there was silence as she knew he had reached the stairs, and at last she heard his heels click on the marble floor below, and he called out "Good night for the last time before he closed the front door.

Chapter 8

    Bettina followed the woman upstairs and down, smiling pleasantly, opening closet doors, and standing by as the real estate agent extolled the apartment's virtues and then unabashedly indicated its flaws. Bettina didn't have to be there for the performance, but she wanted to be. She wanted to know what they were saving about her home.
    At last it was over, after almost an hour, and Naomi Liebson, who had been there three times that month, prepared to leave. There had been other visitors as well, with other realtors, but so far this was the most definite bite.
    "Aahh just don't know, honey. Aahhm not really, really sure." Bettina tried to smile again as she watched her, but the charm of showing the apartment was beginning to wear thin. It was exhausting escorting this army of would-be buyers through the place every day. And there was no one to relieve the tension for her. Ivo had been in Europe on business for three weeks. There had been an international conference in China, and as it had been the first of its kind, he had to go. After which he had business