the projects we’re currently undertaking at the Model Children Foundation. I’m told you choose a different charity to support each year and since Model Children was started by people in the field of fashion like yourselves, I hope to persuade you to choose M.C.F. this year. Are any of you familiar with my work?”
She saw Zeke’s hand shift as if he meant to raise it. “I mean, the work of the foundation?” she restated, and saw his arm relax. But his eyes continued to flash a challenge at her. “You can’t ignore me forever,” they seemed to say. As if she could ignore him for one single minute. But she didn’t have to let him know it.
Another man raised his hand. He seemed younger than most of the men in the room, probably his early twenties and less outwardly confident. A very junior executive, she couldn’t help thinking. “The foundation helped my wife and me when our first child was born. A fire in our house destroyed every stitch of clothing my wife had prepared for the baby as well as the beautiful new nursery we’d prepared.”
This time her smile was genuine as satisfaction surged through her. She was able to stop thinking about Zeke’s eyes on her for all of thirty seconds as she turned to the man. “You’re Todd Jessman, aren’t you?” He nodded. “I remember seeing the fire reported on the evening news.”
“I wondered how the foundation managed to step in so quickly. I doubt we’d have had the courage to ask for help but after the news story, your people appeared out of the blue with everything we needed. My wife was overwhelmed. We did write, but it’s great to have a chance to finally thank you in person.”
She shook her head. “I can’t take the credit. A large group of fashion designers and others in the industry are behind the foundation.”
“And they are getting excellent publicity in the bargain,” came a soft interjection.
At the sound of Zeke’s gravelly voice, an involuntary shiver shook her. It reminded her too vividly of compliments freely given and lapped up like mother’s milk, of whispered suggestions in the moonlight, and promises made over the phone.
Promises ultimately broken, she made herself remember. From what she knew of him, Zeke hadn’t changed. In his syndicated column, Difference of Opinion, he took potshots at everything that was good about people. She had once asked him why he preferred to write about the negative side of human nature. He had responded that good news didn’t sell papers.
It was where their outlooks reached a fork in the road. She believed that what goes around comes around. Zeke believed you had to fight for what you wanted. He hadn’t fought for her, she thought, wondering what else he could have done to make a difference. No, she wasn’t about to start making excuses for him now. With his cynical attitude, they couldn’t have lasted anyway, even without the baby.
She pulled her thoughts sharply back to the present. It wasn’t easy. She had never loved another man the way she had loved Zeke and she was staggered at how much it hurt to see him again, surveying her with hard-eyed intensity as if she were meat in a butcher shop window.
Not meat, candy, she remembered him saying once. He had told her how, as a boy, he had pressed his face against a candy store window, his eyes eating up all the goodies inside. With not a cent to his name, that was all he could do. With you, Tara, I feel as if I’ve finally been given the keys to the store, he had told her the first time they’d made love.
Too bad he had eaten her up then spat her out, she thought, feeling anger flash through her. She subdued it and made her fingers unclench, forcing herself to concentrate on her task. Normally she could assess her audience in a couple of glances, enough to decide exactly what tone to take in her presentation, but tonight her thoughts were in chaos. Although the audience was two-thirds male, Zeke could have been the only man in the room for all the attention she had paid the rest, she realized with a shock.
Zeke would turn up when the meeting was being covered by Australian Life magazine, she thought furiously. The journalist and photographer had already set their equipment up at the back of the room as they had done for a number of the foundation’s fund-raising activities. Accustomed to performing for the camera, she hadn’t let the visitors distract her unduly. The dress-for-success outfit was her only concession to the coverage. Zeke’s presence was another matter.
The visiting journalist was bound to recognize him and would no doubt want to interview him, as well. No matter. Maybe they could find out what his motives were and save Tara the trouble. She only hoped he would behave himself well enough not to spoil the story for her. No matter what he thought, the publicity was intended to help the foundation far more than any individual.
“It’s true the fashion designers benefit from the publicity,” she carried on, amazed that she could sound so unruffled given the turmoil inside her. “But children in need are the real beneficiaries and tonight I’d like to show you how you can join us and help make a difference in their lives.”
She had their attention, she saw with satisfaction as she warmed to her subject. Business people responded to factual information, she knew from previous experience. Appealing to their emotions was the fastest way to scare them off, so she deliberately made the presentation very practical, with lots of case histories like Todd’s so they could visualize their efforts playing a real part in improving the lives of the children the foundation was intended to help.
She couldn’t imagine having the same impact on Zeke, she thought. His own experience had made him cynical about charity. Her breath caught as she remembered the night she’d learned about his background. She had wanted him to accompany her to a fund-raiser for a foster family program. He’d objected but wouldn’t go into details.
She’d pressed. He had always been reluctant to discuss his family and now she wondered if she’d hit on the reason when she’d asked that night, “Zeke, do you have some experience of foster care?”
“Bitter experience,” he’d snapped, his eyes becoming shadowed. “My mother was only seventeen when somebody spiked her drink at a party and she woke up in bed with an older boy whose name she never knew. When she found herself pregnant, her family disowned her. She couldn’t cope alone.”
Tara’s heart had leaped into her throat. “She gave you up for adoption?”
“It would have been better if she had. She left me with a foster family long enough to settle in, then she took me back to live with her.”
“At least she loved you enough to come back.”
“I might have believed it once, but three times is a little hard to swallow.”
“Oh, Zeke.” Her heart went out to the small boy whose trust had been so badly betrayed. No wonder he was reluctant to show affection after learning that it could be snatched away at a moment’s notice. “What about your mother’s family?” she’d asked.
He’d looked away. “Her father was a religious type who didn’t want to know her or me. I only tried to see him once, to tell him his daughter had died in a car accident. It was made clear that I needn’t have bothered.”
“It’s his loss,” she’d said firmly, wrapping her hand around his. His fingers had felt cold. “I’m sure he regrets it now that you’re so successful.”
“Too late. So now you know why I object to supporting something that did me more harm than good. If a parent puts a child up for adoption, at least everybody knows where they stand.”
To Tara, things weren’t always so simple, but she had known it was futile to argue with Zeke
