CHAPTER 2
Geet Handa, twenty-nine years old and counting, paced her office one more time. The idiot who had designed the pyramid had long since been fired. Having your office at the top of such a structure gave you four windows, four slanting walls, and not much room for pacing.
Geet was a woman who needed pacing room. The elderly man sitting on the stiff-backed chair followed her with his eyes.
'Look, Roy. I said dig up a little scandal, but I didn't mean in Libertyville, for heaven's sake. Who in the world gives a damn that someone on the town council is selling favors?Kill the damn thing. I want something juicy!'
Roy had been with Geet's father, and her father's father, and was not about to run for cover.'There doesn't seem to be anything to meet the requirement,' he said quietly.'We might do something with this thing over in Topeka in the city solicitor's office, but it's a little staid. Just an ordinary embezzlement.'
'So jazz it up,' she told him.'Add a couple of babes. Get a couple of leg pictures. You know the routine—"CITY OFFICIAL STEALS TO SUPPORT SEX HABITS"—or something like that. Come on,Roy, I've got an important appointment in fifteen minutes.'
'Just make up a blatant lie?'
'Not a lie, Roy. That's what we call creative journalism. You know what to do. We print the real news on page two, and save page one to make money enough to keep this old scow afloat. Now come on. Put the issue to bed!'
'I don't know how you do it,' he said as he got up and gathered his papers together. 'What ever happened to that sweet little girl I used to dandle on my knee?'
The sweet little girl smiled at him. 'Geet Handa?' she asked.
'She grew up, Roy, and found out that the world isn't round, it's crooked.'
'What you need is a good man,'the editor told her as he walked out of the room.
'Sure I do,' she called after him. 'But God isn't making any more of that model.' The door swung shut,locking her in. A shiver ran up and down her spine. Of course it wasn't locked, only closed. Am I coming down with claustrophobia? Or chicken-pox? She changed her route, and opened the door of the tiny lavatory adjacent to her office. The mirror lied to her.
She felt fifty years old; the mirror said twenty-nine. Her hand brushed through her mop of curls; blonde beautiful curls, the mirror said. And brown eyes, with rose- red cheeks to go with her pearly complexion. Fine white teeth, a sharp little nose, a determined chin, medium height, and a figure that would have make any sane man to lose his sanity!
And soon I'll be thirty, she told herself ruefully. The woman who had appeared on the late-night talks how two months ago had hit it just right.
Geet Handa could hear her biological clock ticking! It was the sort of problem a woman might possibly discuss with her friends—if she had any. Or with her pastor—if she didn't think he was such a wimp. And that was the trouble. She wasn't interested in finding a 'good man', someone who could dictate to her as her father had. What she wanted was a baby.Somebody you can dictate to? her conscience asked. 'No, not that,'Geet muttered to the empty office.
'Someone I could love and cherish. Someone who might love me back!' Which immediately ruled out any adult she could think of. She hadn't been a success at loving during her own childhood. Her mother gave up the cocktail circuit just long enough to bear her, and then had died. Her father, once he discovered she was not a boy, had treated her like a misdirected parcel, come in the mail with no return address.
But not all of Geet's education had been wasted. No matter how she squirmed around it, to have a baby you had to have a man. And that was the idea around which she had built her campaign. She trusted her doctor. A woman, of course.They had put their minds together, and finally had come up with a newspaper advertisement.
Wanted: strong, healthy male,willing to accept high-paying, short-term job. 'And that,' Geet had said, 'will bring in a flood of strong, healthy, lazy males, willing to take my money for almost anything.' 'So we'll say "willing to participate in hazardous short- term experiment at high pay."'
'That sounds more like it,' Geet had agreed. 'And you'll screen them out?'
'Dr Shah laugh first. She's a psychiatrist. When she finds the ten best she'll send them over to me for a physical.'
'A damn thorough physical,' Geet had added. 'I don't want to get ton the end of the search and find the guy can't—well, you know.'
'I know,' Dr Saunders had agreed with a chuckle. 'But give it more thought, Geet. There's a lot to be said about home and hearth and husband and baby. And the child really ought to have a father when he's grown a little.'
'Great,' Geet had returned. 'When the time comes, I'll buy him one.' Another shudder raced up her spine. I'm doing what you told me to, Dad, she whispered. Only her lips moved. I'm going to continue the Handa line. Isn't that what you wanted? I'll select a man all carefully designed, and if the baby looks like a Handa it'll be a surprise. This child will be perfect. Isn't that what you wanted from your worthless daughter?
'Crying?' her doctor had asked.
Handas didn't cry. But all the rest of them had been hard-driven men.
'Me? Crying? Handas don't cry.' Geet had brushed at her eyelid.
There was a tear there.'All the rest of that talk is sheer garbage, Sue. Listen, when you get it down to one, send him over to me for an
interview.
But make damn sure he hasn't a clue about what I really want!' And that, Geet told herself now as she splashed a little cold water on her nervous wrists, had all been accomplished, and today was the day the winner came!
She went back to her desk, sat,stood up again, paced the room, craned her neck trying to see something— anything—from the window, and then jumped when the buzzer rang. Oh, God, what am I doing? she almost screamed at herself. Am I doing what my father wanted so badly?
He wanted a son. And since I obviously didn't qualify, it's up to me to make up the shortage. She covered her ears, trembling. She could still hear her father's hoarse voice plaguing her. 'I need a boy, Geet. And quickly! A girl isn't good enough!' She moved over to the desk and sat down. Her father's chair, that. A comfortable, over-stuffed swivel chair mounted on a six- inch-high platform, so that all of her visitors would have to look up at her. Lesson sixteen in her father's lexicon. 'Catch them at the door and make them sweat!' To complete the scene she swiveled around so that her back was to the door.
here is next chappy for you...
happy reading guys...
