Danielle Steel - Zoya

“A few hours? Do you think I can run that place in a few hours? Simon, you're crazy!”

“No, I'm not,” he said with a quiet smile, “I'm crazy about my wife though …” He beamed up at her, looking like a boy again. At forty-three, he was going to be a father. “I'm going to be a daddy!” He looked so pleased that it took the wind obt of her sails, as she sat down miserably on the couch and cried harder.

“Oh Simon … how could this happen?”

“Come here,” he moved closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders, “I'll explain it …”

“Simon, stop that!”

“Why? You can't get pregnant now anyway.” It amused him all the more because she was always so careful, but destiny dealt the cards differently sometimes, and he would not let her change that. She had already hinted darkly that things could be “changed,” and he knew what she meant, but there was no question of it. He was not going to let her risk her life aborting the baby he had always wanted. “Zoya … sweetheart … calm down for a minute and think it out. You can work for as long as you can. You can probably sit in your office at the store every day until the baby comes, as long as you don't run around too much. And afterward, you can go back to work, and nothing will be changed, except that we'll have a beautiful little baby of our own to love for the rest of our lives. Is that so terrible, sweetheart?” It didn't seem it when he explained it that way, and he had been so good to her children that she knew she couldn't deny him his own. She sighed and blew her nose again.

“He'll laugh at me when he grows up, he'll think I'm his grandmother instead of his mother!”

“Not if you look anything like you do now, and why should that change?” She was still beautiful, and looked almost girlish at forty. Only the fact that she had a seventeen-year-old son ever gave her age away at all, and she was so proud of him that she talked about him all the time. But otherwise, no one would have guessed her to be more than in her late twenties, or at the very most thirty. “I love you so much,” Simon reassured her again, and then Zoya's face paled as she thought of Sasha.

“What'll we tell her?”

“The good news,” he smiled gently at his wife, “that we're having a baby.”

“I think she'll be very upset.” But that proved to be the understatement of the century. Neither of them was prepared for the hurricane that hit Park Avenue when Zoya told her about the baby.

“You're what? That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard! What am I going to tell my friends for God's sake? They'll laugh me right out of school, and it'll be all yourfaultl” She raged as Zoya looked on unhappily.

“Darling, it doesn't change how much I love you. Don't you know that?” she said helplessly.

“I don't care! And I don't want to live here with you, if you have a baby!” She had slammed her door and disappeared later that afternoon, after school. It had taken two full days to discover that she was staying with a friend. Zoya and Simon had called the police by then, and she met them in the friend's living room with a look of defiance that met their grief-stricken faces. Zoya asked her quietly to come home with them, and she refused and suddenly, for the first time, Simon was overcome with absolute fury.

“Get your things, right now Do you understand?” He grabbed her arm and shook her hard as she stared at him, he had never done anything like it before, and she had thought him possessed of unlimited patience. But even Simon had his limits. “Now go get your hat and coat and whatever else you brought here, you're coming home with us whether you like it or not, and if you don't behave yourself, Sasha, I'm going to have you locked in a convent.” And for a moment she believed him. But he didn't want his wife having a miscarriage, thanks to her spoiled brat of a daughter. Sasha came back into the room a moment later, with her things, looking somewhat subdued, and somewhat frightened of Simon. Zoya apologized profusely to the mother of Sasha's friend and they took her downstairs and drove her home, where Simon read her the riot act the moment they set foot in the apartment. “If you ever, ever dare, to give your mother any trouble again, Sasha Andrews, I'm going to beat you within an inch of your life, do you understand?” He roared, but Zoya smiled within herself. She knew he would never have laid a hand on the child, or anyone, but he was so angry his face was pale. And suddenly, she began worrying that he might have a heart attack like Clayton.

“Go to your room, Sasha,” she said coldly, and the girl silently obeyed, for once amazed at their reactions, as Nicholas quietly walked in and looked at them.

“You should have done that a long time ago. I think that's what she needs. A good, swift kick in the behind.” And then he laughed mischievously, as Simon relaxed again, “I'd be happy to deliver it for you, anytime you like.” And then he turned to his mother with the smile that so often reminded her of her own brother's. “I just want you to know that I think it's wonderful, about the baby.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she went to him and put an arm around her tall, handsome son, looking up at him sheepishly.

“You're not going to be too embarrassed that your old mother is having a baby?”

“If I had an old mother, maybe I might be.” He smiled at her and a moment later his eyes met Simon's, and he saw the man's love for him there. He went to him and hugged him too.

“Congratulations, Dad,” Nicholas said quietly, embracing him as tears leapt unrestrained to Simon's eyes. It was the first time the boy had called him that. A new life had begun, for all of them, not just for Simon and Zoya.

CHAPTER

43

In April of 1939, the World's Fair opened at Flushing Meadows, and Zoya was anxious to go, but Simon didn't think she should. It was terribly crowded, and she was four months pregnant. She was still working full-time at the store, though she was being a little more careful than before. And Simon took the children to the World's Fair instead, and they were both thrilled when they saw it. Even Sasha behaved, as she had much of the time since Simon's now famous explosion. But she was difficult with Zoya as often as she could get away with it, which was still far too often.

In June, the first transatlantic passenger flights were begun by Pan Am, and Nicholas was dying to go to Europe on the Dixie Clipper , but Simon wouldn't let him. He thought it was too dangerous, and more important than that, he was even more worried than before by what was going on in Europe. He and Zoya had gone over on the Normandie again in the spring, to buy for the store and fabric for his line of coats. But he had felt the tension everywhere, and he was far more aware of anti-Semitism than he had been before when he was there. He felt certain now that there was going to be a war, and he offered Nicholas a graduation trip to California instead, which delighted Nicholas. He flew to San Francisco and back, in love with everything he'd seen there, and amused by the size of his mother when he returned. In August, she finally stopped going to the store, and called them every half hour instead. She didn't know what to do with herself when she wasn't working. Simon brought her candies and books and the magazines she liked best, but all she could think of by the end of August was the nursery she'd made of the guest room next to the library, and he found her there every day folding tiny baby things. It was a side of her he had never seen before. She even reorganized his closets and changed the furniture around in their bedroom.

“Take it easy, Zoya,” he teased, “I'm afraid to come home at night. I might sit down in a chair that isn't there anymore.”