Danielle Steel - The Klone and I - A High-Tech Love Story

“I'll lend you this one, if your mother lets me,” he said magnanimously, as the children commented on how good the soup was. He had put too much spice in it, but they seemed to love it. And I was always so careful not to. Sam hated spicy things, and Charlotte always complained about my cooking. But they ate everything he'd made, and even had seconds. I was drunk halfway through dinner.

“What's wrong, Mom? You look sick,” Sam commented, between bantering with the madman who had cooked our dinner. The clean, cool, conservative man I had once known as Peter. I was beginning to think he was gone forever. Or I was.

“I'm just tired …” I explained vaguely.

“What are you drinking?” Sam asked with interest.

“Tea,” I said, sounding like an alcoholic.

“It smells like whiskey,” Charlotte commented as she helped clear the dishes. She never helped me clear unless I threatened her life. All it took was a see-through shirt and a pair of fluorescent green pants to enlist her assistance.

“Your mother's had a hard day,” Peter, alias Paul, explained gently. “She's tired. I'm going to put her to bed early,” he said, and they offered not a murmur. Charlotte had acted like Lizzie Borden every time he tried to take me to the movies or dinner, and now she was totally unruffled by his saying he was going to put me to bed early. My entire family had been possessed by aliens, and Peter with them. But even my sanity was no longer certain.

They helped him rinse the plates and load the dishwasher, and then went back to their homework, after telling me they hoped I felt better. Neither of them seemed the least bit concerned that Peter appeared to have gone berserk. Worse yet, they seemed to like it.

“What did you put in their food? LSD? They're acting as crazy as you are.”

“I told you they'd love me. More than they love him. Children sense it when someone genuinely cares about them. They respond to reality,” he explained gently as he reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of champagne I'd been saving for a special occasion. And this wasn't the one I'd envisioned.

“What are you doing?” He had opened it before I could stop him.

“Pouring us a little bubbly before we go to bed.” He smiled wickedly.

“Here? Now?” I was shrieking again, but I wasn't about to go to bed with him in the same house as my children. I had made that clear earlier and I thought Peter understood it. “You can't go to bed with me here, Peter. You know that. Even in that outfit. I won't do it.”

“Relax. I'm going to stay in the guest room. We'll just sit and talk for a while, that's all. You need to unwind, Steph. You're all tensed up. It's not good for you to get so stressed out. Peter wouldn't like it. He sent me here to make you happy, not make you nervous.” But he had anyway. I had never been as nervous in my life or felt as disoriented. Paul had turned me topsy-turvy.

“Well, you're both crazy … you and Peter.” I wasn't sure if it was the bourbon or the fact that he was so convincing, but I was actually beginning to think of him as another person. “How can you do this to me?” He had turned my life upside down in a single evening. And what's more, my children didn't even seem to mind it. But what were they going to tell Roger when they saw him? That Mom had a boyfriend who acted like a madman, and drank gallons of bourbon? I'd lose custody over this nonsense. But as I thought of it, and began to feel hysterical again, he handed me a glass of champagne, and was shepherding me toward my bedroom before I could stop him.

“Do you have any oil?”

“Why? Are you planning to drink that too?” I was drinking the champagne by then. I wasn't about to waste good champagne, and it was the only way to cope with what had happened.

“I'm going to give you a massage,” he said firmly as he closed the door to my bedroom, and locked it.

“You're going to take those clothes off and turn into who you really are again, that's what you're going to do, Peter Baker.”

“Paul, darling. Paul Klone. And yes, I'll take my clothes off. But not till later. We don't want to upset the children.”

I finished the glass of champagne then, and before I knew it, he had unwound me like a cocoon, and I was lying naked on my bed, watching him, as he dug around in my bathroom cabinet and found some body lotion I had bought in Paris.

“This is perfect,” he said happily, as he returned, and took a long swig of champagne from the bottle. “Do you have any candles?”

“Why?” I asked, in total panic. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Light them. Candlelight will relax you. You'll see.”

“Nothing is going to relax me, ever again, if you don't stop this.” The time I was going to spend in Bellevue would be relaxing.

“Shh … quiet …” He dimmed the lights, and before I knew it, was massaging me with the French body lotion. I had no intention of succumbing to it, or to him, but it felt so good and I was so wound up, and had such a dreadful headache, that somehow I let him. And half an hour later, when the children came in, I was feeling dazed and wearing my dressing gown, sitting in front of the television, just the way I had before I met him.

“Feeling better, Mom?” Charlotte asked as she walked in, and then sheepishly asked Peter, or Paul as it were, to help her with her homework. They disappeared for over an hour, and by then I had put Sam to bed, and was beginning to think that things were returning to normal. Peter sounded like his old self as he went over algebra with Charlotte. And she was actually civil to him when she thanked him, and went back to her bedroom.

By ten-thirty, both children were in bed and sound asleep, and Peter was sitting in my bedroom, looking at me with a tender smile, as he took his shirt off.

“You can't do that. What if the kids wake up? Peter, you really can't sleep here.” I was near tears as I implored him.

“I told the kids that I was having construction done on my apartment, and you were kind enough to let me stay in the guest room for a couple of weeks. Neither of them seemed to have a problem with it, and Sam even asked me to sleep in his room.”

“What is happening to us? To you?” But whatever it was, it was working. It was the first time I'd ever had the feeling that Charlotte liked him. Maybe it was the outfit, or the dinner he cooked, or the way he was behaving, but he had won them over by wearing the worst clothes I'd ever seen, and behaving like a wild man. He was even moving into my guest room, and no one seemed to mind it. In fact, they were pleased about it.

He locked the door quietly, and as he slipped off the ghastly green pants, I almost felt as though I recognized him again, until I saw the gold lame jockeys he was wearing, if you could call them jockeys. It looked more like a Speedo, and the gold was more than a little amazing.

“What is that?” I asked, laughing finally. He had taken the whole charade to the nth degree, and in a way, I almost had to admire him for it. It was crazy certainly, but maybe it was funny after all. You had to hand it to him for being creative.

“It's a G-string,” he explained, as I suddenly roared with laughter. I'm not sure if it was the G-string, or the champagne, but the whole thing suddenly seemed hysterically funny.

“I didn't think you had it in you to do this,” I said, as tears rolled down my cheeks while I laughed. “You have a wicked sense of humor. I always thought you were so conservative.” In a funny way, I liked it. It had been an insane evening, but as he slipped out of the G-string, and tossed it in the air, I grinned at him, and found him more irresistible than ever. “You are amazing”

He took my dressing gown off then, lit the candles again, poured me a last glass of champagne, and proved to me that he was the man I knew and loved, and then some. He was more romantic, more loving, more sensual than I had ever known him, and did things to me I had only read about, or dreamed. It was as though the crazy game he had played with me all night had unleashed something wild in him that he couldn't have allowed himself otherwise. But as we lay in each other's arms afterward, I had no objections. It had been better than ever before, and I felt very free now.