Danielle Steel - Zoya

“Face it, darling, you're a success! Business is never going to slack off. Once you've made it, as you have, that doesn't go away. You're backing up your name with quality and style. And as long as you have it to sell, your customers will be there.” She was afraid to admit he was right, and she worked harder than ever, so much so that they had to call her at the store, when Sasha got suspended from school again, just before the Christmas vacation. They had gotten her into the Lycoe Frangais, a tiny school run by a distinguished Frenchman, but he tolerated no nonsense there, and he called Zoya himself to complain about Mademoiselle. She took a taxi to Ninety-fifth Street to beg him not to expel the child. Apparently, she had been playing hooky, and she had smoked a cigarette in the town house's lovely ballroom.

“You must punish her, madame. And you must adhere to strict discipline, otherwise, madame, I fear we will all regret it some day.” But after a lengthy conversation with Zoya, he agreed not to expel her. Instead she would be put on probation after the Christmas holiday. And Simon promised to drive her to school himself to make sure that she got there.

“Do you think I should leave the store every day when she gets home from school?” Zoya asked Simon that night. She was feeling guiltier than ever about the long hours she worked at the store.

“I don't think you should have to,” Simon said honestly, angry at Sasha himself for the first time. “At almost fourteen, she should be able to behave herself until six o'clock when we both get home.” Although he knew that sometimes Zoya didn't get home until after seven. There was always so much to do at the store, so many alterations she wanted to oversee herself, and special orders she wrote up herself so there would be no mistakes. And part of the success was her availability for clients who demanded Countess Zoya. “You can't do it all yourself,” Simon had told her more than once, but she secretly thought she should, just as she thought she should also be at home with the children. But Nicholas was almost eighteen by then, and Sasha only four years younger, they were hardly children anymore. “She's just going to have to behave herself.” And when he told her as much that night, she flounced out of the library and slammed her bedroom door, as Zoya cried.

“Sometimes I think she's paying the price of the life I led before,” she blew her nose in Simon's handkerchief and looked up at him with unhappy eyes. Sasha was worrying Zoya terribly these days, and Simon was angry at her for it. “I was always at work when she was young, and now … it almost seems like it's too late to make it up to her.”

“You have nothing to make up to her, Zoya. She has everything she could possibly want, including a mother who adores her.” The trouble was that she was spoiled, and he didn't want to be the one to say it. Her father had indulged her as a small child, and Nicholas and Zoya had pampered her for all the years after that. Zoya had pampered Nicholas too, but he only seemed to grow kinder and more thoughtful as a result, appreciating everything Simon did for him, unlike Sasha, who only wanted more, and had tantrums almost every day. If she didn't want a new dress, it was a new pair of shoes, or a trip somewhere, or she lamented because they didn't go to St. Moritz, or didn't have a house in the country. But considering the fortune Simon had made, neither he nor Zoya had a taste for excessive luxuries. She had had all that before, and what she shared with Simon now was more important.

Zoya's concerns about Sasha almost spoiled their Christmas holidays, and after Russian Christmas, she actually looked ill. She was pale and she was working too hard at the store, almost as though she could drown her sorrows there. And to cheer her up, Simon announced that he was taking her to Sun Valley, without the children, to go skiing. That infuriated Sasha even more. She wanted to go with them, and Simon told her firmly that she couldn't. She had to stay in New York and go to school, and she did everything she could to spoil their trip. She called and told them the dog was sick, and Nicholas told them the following day that it was a lie, she spilled ink on the rug in her room, and she played hooky again, the school called to say. All Zoya wanted to do was go home, and get her back in control again. But she was so worried, she was sick all the way home on the train, and when they got to New York, Simon insisted she go to the doctor.

“Don't be stupid, Simon, I'm just tired,” she snapped at him, which was unlike her.

“I don't care. You look like hell. My mother even said she was worried about you when she saw you yesterday.” Zoya laughed at that, Sofia Hirsch usually lamented about her religion, not her health. But she finally agreed to go to the doctor the following week, feeling foolish. She knew she'd only been working too hard, and she was still worried about Sasha, although the child seemed more subdued now that they were back from Sun Valley.

But Zoya was in no way prepared for what the doctor told her after he had looked her over. “You're pregnant, Mrs. Hirsch,” he smiled benignly at her from across the desk, “or should I call you Countess Zoya?”

“I'm what?” She stared at him in disbelief. She was forty years old, and the last thing she wanted was a baby, even Simon's. They had agreed two and a half years before when they were married that that was out of the question. She knew Simon regretted it, but now with the store, it would have been ridiculous anyway. It was ridiculous, she thought as she stared at the doctor in disbelief. “But I can't be!”

“Well, you are.” He asked her some more questions, and calculated that the baby was due around the first of September. “Will your husband be pleased?”

“I … he …” Zoya could hardly speak, her eyes filled with tears, and promising to return in a month, she hurried out of the office.

She sat silently at dinner that night, looking as though someone had died, and Simon glanced at her worriedly several times. But he waited until they were alone in the library to ask what the doctor had said. “Was anything wrong?” He knew he couldn't live if anything happened to her, and he could see in her eyes that she was terribly upset about something.

“Simon …” She looked up at him with anguished eyes. I'm pregnant”

He stared at her, and then suddenly he rushed toward her and took her in his arms with a shout of joy. “Oh darling … oh darling! … oh God, I love you! …” When she looked at him again, she saw that he was laughing and crying at the same time, and she didn't have the heart to tell him that all afternoon she had even thought of having an abortion. She knew they were dangerous to be sure, but she knew that several of her clients had had them and survived, and she was much too old to be having a baby. No one had a baby at forty! No one she knew anyway, no one in their right mind, tears filled her eyes again and she looked at her husband in irritation.

“How can you be so happy? I'm forty years old, I'm too old to have any more children.”

He looked worried again as she cried, “Is that what the doctor said?”

“No,” she said furiously, and blew her nose, “he said ‘Congratulations!’” Simon could only laugh at her as she paced the room frantically. “What about the store? Simon, think of it. And what about the children?”

“It will be good for them,” he sat down peacefully in a chair, looking as though he had conquered the world, “Nicholas will be in college next year, and I think he'll be pleased for us anyway. And it might do Sasha good not to be the baby anymore. In any case, she'll have to adjust to it. And the store will be fine. You can go in for a few hours every day, and you'll have a nurse afterward …” He already had it all planned as Zoya turned on him. She had worked so hard, and Sasha's moods were always so precarious, this was the one thing she didn't need in her life, a baby to upset the balance.