Sidney Sheldon 3-Book Collection: If Tomorrow Comes, Nothing Lasts Forever, The Best Laid Plans. Sidney Sheldon

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      The senior bookkeeper was always the first of the employees to be admitted. He would take his place next to the emergency alarm until the other employees were inside, then lock the door behind them.

      Promptly at 8:30, Tracy Whitney entered the ornate lobby with her fellow workers, took off her raincoat, hat and boots, and listened with secret amusement to the others complaining about the rainy weather.

      ‘The damned wind carried away my umbrella,’ a teller complained. ‘I’m soaked.’

      ‘I passed two ducks swimming down Market Street,’ the head cashier joked.

      ‘The weatherman says we can expect another week of this. I wish I was in Florida.’

      Tracy smiled and went to work. She was in charge of the cable-transfer department. Until recently, the transfer of money from one bank to another and from one country to another had been a slow, laborious process, requiring multiple forms to be filled out and dependent on national and international postal services. With the advent of computers, the situation had changed dramatically, and enormous amounts of money could be transferred instantaneously. It was Tracy’s job to extract overnight transfers from the computer and to make computer transfers to other banks. All transactions were in code, changed regularly to prevent unauthorized access. Each day, millions of electronic dollars passed through Tracy’s hands. It was fascinating work, the life-blood that fed the arteries of business all over the globe, and until Charles Stanhope III had come into Tracy’s life, banking had been the most exciting thing in the world for her. The Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank had a large international division, and at lunch Tracy and her fellow workers would discuss each morning’s activities. It was heady conversation.

      Deborah, the head bookkeeper, announced, ‘We just closed the hundred-million-dollar syndicated loan to Turkey …’

      Mae Trenton, secretary to the vice-president of the bank, said in a confidential tone, ‘At the board meeting this morning they decided to join the new money facility to Peru. The up-front fee is over five million dollars …’

      Jon Creighton, the bank bigot, added, ‘I understand we’re going in on the Mexican rescue package for fifty million. Those wetbacks don’t deserve a damned cent …’

      ‘It’s interesting,’ Tracy said thoughtfully, ‘that the countries that attack America for being too money-oriented are always the first to beg us for loans.’

      It was the subject on which she and Charles had had their first argument.

      Tracy had met Charles Stanhope III at a financial symposium where Charles was the guest speaker. He ran the investment house founded by his greatgrandfather, and his company did a good deal of business with the bank Tracy worked for. After Charles’s lecture, Tracy had gone up to disagree with his analysis of the ability of third-world nations to repay the staggering sums of money they had borrowed from commercial banks worldwide and western governments. Charles at first had been amused, then intrigued by the impassioned arguments of the beautiful young woman before him. Their discussion had continued through dinner at the old Bookbinder’s restaurant.

      In the beginning, Tracy had not been impressed with Charles Stanhope III, even though she was aware that he was considered Philadelphia’s prize catch. Charles was thirty-five and a rich and successful member of one of the oldest families in Philadelphia. Five feet ten inches, with thinning sandy hair, brown eyes, and an earnest, pedantic manner, he was, Tracy thought, one of the boring rich.

      As though reading her mind, Charles had leaned across the table and said, ‘My father is convinced they gave him the wrong baby at the hospital.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I’m a throwback. I don’t happen to think money is the end-all and be-all of life. But please don’t ever tell my father I said so.’

      There was such a charming unpretentiousness about him that Tracy found herself warming to him. I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone like him – one of the establishment.

      It had taken Tracy’s father most of his life to build up a business that the Stanhopes would have sneered at as insignificant. The Stanhopes and the Whitneys would never mix, Tracy thought. Oil and water. And the Stanhopes are the oil. And what am I going on about like an idiot? Talk about ego. A man asks me out to dinner and I’m deciding whether I want to marry him. We’ll probably never even see each other again.

      Charles was saying, ‘I hope you’re free for dinner tomorrow … ?’

      Philadelphia was a dazzling cornucopia of things to see and do. On Saturday nights Tracy and Charles went to the ballet or watched Riccardo Muti conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra. During the week they explored New Market and the unique collection of shops in Society Hill. They ate cheese steaks at a pavement table at Geno’s and dined at the Café Royal, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Philadelphia. They shopped at Head House Square and wandered through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum.

      Tracy paused in front of the statue of The Thinker. She glanced at Charles and grinned. ‘It’s you!’

      Charles was not interested in exercise, but Tracy enjoyed it, so on Sunday mornings she jogged along the West River Drive or on the promenade skirting the Schuylkill River. She joined a Saturday afternoon t’ai chi ch’uan class, and after an hour’s workout, exhausted but exhilarated, she would meet Charles at his apartment. He was a gourmet cook, and he liked preparing esoteric dishes such as Moroccan bistilla and guo bu li, the dumplings of northern China, and tahine de poulet au citron for Tracy and himself.

      Charles was the most punctilious person Tracy had ever known. She had once been fifteen minutes late for a dinner appointment with him, and his displeasure had spoiled the evening for her. After that, she had vowed to be on time for him.

      Tracy had had little sexual experience, but it seemed to her that Charles made love the same way he lived his life: meticulously and very properly. Once, Tracy had decided to be daring and unconventional in bed, and had so shocked Charles that she began secretly to wonder if she were some kind of sex maniac.

      The pregnancy had been unexpected, and when it happened, Tracy was filled with uncertainty. Charles had not brought up the subject of marriage, and she did not want him to feel he had to marry her because of the baby. She was not certain whether she could go through with an abortion, but the alternative was an equally painful choice. Could she raise a child without the help of its father, and would it be fair to the baby?

      She decided to break the news to Charles after dinner one evening. She had prepared a cassoulet for him in her apartment, and in her nervousness she had burned it. As she set the scorched meat and beans in front of him, she forgot her carefully rehearsed speech and wildly blurted out, ‘I’m so sorry, Charles. I’m – pregnant.’

      There was an unbearably long silence, and as Tracy was about to break it, Charles said, ‘We’ll get married, of course.’

      Tracy was filled with a sense of enormous relief. ‘I don’t want you to think I – You don’t have to marry me, you know.’

      He raised a hand to stop her. ‘I want to marry you, Tracy. You’ll make a wonderful wife.’ He added, slowly, ‘Of course, my mother and father will be a bit surprised.’ And he smiled and kissed her.

      Tracy quietly asked, ‘Why will they be surprised?’

      Charles СКАЧАТЬ