The Perfect Father. Elizabeth Bevarly

he’d made love to a woman, anyway? he asked himself now. And who was the last woman he’d made love to? He thought back, trying to recall the details.... His eyes widened when he remembered. No, surely it couldn’t have been that long ago, he told himself. Could it? He shook his head in disbelief. Obviously he really didn’t have time for a relationship.

      If only he could find a nice woman with whom he could share a brief, one- or two-time interlude and call it quits. Unfortunately, most of the women who could provide such an encounter did it for a living, and that wasn’t exactly the kind of woman Chase had in mind. He couldn’t make love to a stranger, nor to someone who chose sex for her occupation. For his fantasy fling, he wanted a woman he cared for to at least some degree—and who cared for him in return—but who wouldn’t demand all of his attention after it was over.

      “Yeah, right,” he muttered to himself. And what self-respecting woman would concede to an arrangement like that? No one of his acquaintance, that was for sure.

      He looked up from his drink and saw Sylvie standing before him, holding a menu out for his inspection.

      “Sounds wonderful to me,” she said. “Want to give it a try?”

      For one wild moment Chase thought she was offering herself up for just the kind of hit-and-run encounter he had just been imagining. Then he realized she must have been talking to him for several moments without his listening, and that he’d only heard the conclusion of her speech.

      “What?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. Could you go over that again?”

      She gazed back at him with much interest, and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was evaluating him in some way. However, when she spoke, her voice held its usual careless timbre, and the choices she offered him were anything but erotic in nature.

      “I was telling you that Cosmo is really pushing the free-range chicken tonight, and having had it for dinner myself, I can tell you it’s delicious. But the shrimp étouffée also sounds wonderful to me. I know you love seafood. You want to give that a try instead?”

      Chase gazed at her for a moment before replying, noting for the first time that Sylvie really did have the most beautiful blue eyes he’d ever seen. Not a pale, glassy blue, but a deep, midnight blue that bordered on violet. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed before.

      “Uh, surprise me,” he finally said, not altogether certain he was talking exclusively about his dinner selection. “I’m not really sure what I want.”

      “Okay.”

      As she turned to ring up his order, he observed with much interest the efficiency of her actions. He liked to watch Sylvie. She moved freely and easily, completely unconscious of her own gestures, utterly comfortable in her surroundings and with herself. That was something Chase had never quite been able to master in himself. There was still a lingering essence of self-consciousness within him, a quiet little voice that would never quite let him forget the meagerness of his beginnings or the fear that he might end up a nobody.

      Yet he never tried to completely quell his fears. Because he knew they were what caused him to be so driven. Success and wealth had come to him earlier than he had anticipated, and now that he’d had a taste of how good life could be, he’d be damned if he’d ever do anything to jeopardize his position.

      Even if that meant spending the rest of his life alone, he thought. In the long run, he knew he’d be a happier man because of it.

      * * *

      After ringing in Mr. Buchanan’s order, Sylvie handed it off to one of the waiters headed back to the kitchen, almost hitting her co-worker in the face with it as he passed. She apologized sheepishly as she spun back around. Business at Cosmo’s that evening had been slow, even for a Tuesday night, but her timing had been off completely since coming in to work several hours ago. As she frequently did at times like this, she couldn’t help wondering yet again why she hadn’t put her degree in humanities to better use than tending bar.

      Maybe, she decided as she ran a blue grease pencil under the last of the drinks orders at the service bar, it was because no matter how hard she looked, there was never, ever a listing in the classified ads under the heading Humanities.

      “Order up, Sylvie.”

      She spun around to find one of the waiters scooting a plate of oysters Rockefeller precariously close to the edge of the bar, and she snatched it up just as it was about to go over the side.

      “Keith!” she called out to the swiftly departing server after she’d placed the appetizer in front of a well-dressed couple seated at the bar.

      Keith turned. “What is it? I’m in the weeds big time.”

      She threw him what she knew was her most beguiling smile. “Got a minute?”

      He smiled back as he returned to the bar. “Sure. But just one. And just because it’s you who’s asking.”

      She tried to feign a more intimate interest in him. “Mind a personal question?”

      His smile broadened. “How personal?”

      “You, uh, you graduated from Princeton, right?”

      He nodded.

      “And you’re going to Villanova now? Law school?”

      Another nod. “What’s this leading up to, Sylvie?”

      She extended her index finger onto the bar, coyly drawing a few idle circles in the remnants of a spilled beer. “What, um...what’s your G.P.A?”

      “Three point ninety-eight. Why?”

      Sylvie looked at him, taking in his blond hair, blue eyes and slender build. Nice genes, she thought. And his coloring was identical to hers, so if she asked him to father her child, the baby would resemble her no matter what. “Oh, I was just thinking,” she began again. “I need to ask you about some—”

      Her words ceased when Keith cried out, bent over suddenly and cupped a hand over his left eye.

      “What?” she asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing,” he muttered as he straightened. He manipulated his left eyelid gently over a red, watery eye. “I just got something in my contact. It’s okay now.”

      Sylvie studied him more closely. “You wear contact lenses?”

      “Yeah, I’m blind as a bat without them.”

      “Oh.”

      “Now, then,” Keith continued, wiping away the last of the tears. His eye was still quite red and puffy. “What was this personal question you wanted to ask?”

      “Your eyesight is really bad?” Sylvie asked.

      “The worst. Everyone in my family has lousy eyesight. I don’t think any of us made it out of childhood without getting a pair of glasses. Mine have lenses as thick as Coke bottles.”

      She nodded. “I see.”

      “And this personal question?” he asked again, clearly interested in getting as personal as possible with Sylvie.

      “Uh,” she hedged. “Never mind. I forgot what I was going to say.”

      His expression fell. “Oh. Well, if you remember...”

      “I’ll let you know.”

      When Keith was out of sight, Sylvie pulled a well-worn scrap of paper from inside her shirt pocket and unfolded it. Keith’s name was midway down the list, beneath a half dozen or so others that had been crossed out. Leonard had been her first choice as the ideal candidate to father her child, but she’d learned he had recently become engaged. William, the second of her male acquaintances on the list, had just returned from a skiing trip with both arms and one leg in a cast. Jack, whose wavy brown hair she had loved, also had a brother in prison, and Sylvie simply didn’t want to risk the felony gene