Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(146)

He frowned. “Assuming the network goes along with this, which I seriously doubt, you'll lose a lot of money.”

“Right,” Francesca scoffed. “I'll have to cut my yearly clothing budget down from twenty thousand dollars to ten thousand. I can just see a million burned-out working mothers losing sleep over that while they try to figure out how to buy their kids new shoes for school.” How much money did a woman need? she wondered. How much power? Was she the only woman in the world who was tired of buying into all those male yardsticks of success?

“What do you really want, Francesca?” Nathan asked, switching his tactics from confrontation to pacification. “Maybe we can work out some sort of compromise.”

“I want time,” Francesca replied wearily. “I want to be able to read a book just because I want to read it, not because the author is going to be on my show the next day. I want to be able to go through an entire week without anyone sticking a single hot roller in my hair. I want to chaperon one of Teddy's class trips, for God's sake.” And then she gave voice to an idea that had been gradually growing inside her. “I want to take some of the energy that's gone into my job and give serious thought to doing something significant for all those fourteen-year-old girls who are selling their bodies on the streets of this country because they don't have anyplace to go.”

“We'll do more shows on runaways,” he said quickly. “I'll work something out so you can take a little more vacation time. I know we've been working you hard, but—”

“No sale, Nathan,” she said, getting up from the couch. “This merry-go-round is slowing down for a while.”

“But, Francesca—”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then left his office before he could say any more. She knew her popularity wasn't any guarantee that the network wouldn't fire her if they felt she was being unreasonable, but she had to take that chance. The events of the past six weeks had shown her where her priorities lay, and they had also taught her something important about herself—she no longer had anything to prove.

Once she arrived at her own office, Francesca found a pile of telephone messages waiting for her. She picked up the first one, then set it aside without looking at it. Her gaze drifted to the file on her desk, which held a detailed summary of the professional golfing career of Dallas Beaudine. At the same time she had been trying to put Dallie out of her mind, she had been gathering the material. Although she toyed thoughtfully with the pages, she didn't bother to reread what she'd already studied so thoroughly. Every article, every phone call she'd made, every piece of information she had been able to gather pointed in the same direction. Dallas Beaudine had all the talent it took to be a champion; he just didn't seem to want it badly enough. She thought about what Skeet had said and wondered what all this had to do with Teddy, but the answer continued to elude her.

Stefan was in town and she had promised to go with him to a private party at La C?te Basque that night. For the rest of the afternoon, she considered canceling, but she knew that would be the coward's way out. Stefan wanted something from her that she now understood she couldn't give, and it wasn't fair to postpone talking to him about it any longer.

Stefan had been in New York twice since she'd gotten back from Wynette, and she had seen him both times. He had known about Teddy's kidnapping, of course, so she had been forced to tell him something about what had happened in Wynette, although she had omitted giving him any details about Dallie.

She studied the photograph of Teddy on her desk. It showed him floating in a Flintstones inner tube, his small, skinny legs glistening with water. If Dallie hadn't wanted to contact her again, he should at least have made some attempt to get in touch with Teddy. She felt sad and disillusioned. She had thought that Dallie was a better person than he had turned out to be. As she headed home that evening, she told herself she had to accept the fact that she had made a gigantic mistake and then forget about it.

Before she got dressed for her date with Stefan, she sat with Teddy while he ate his dinner and thought about how carefree she had been only two months before. Now she felt as if she were carrying the troubles of the world on her shoulders. She should never have had that ridiculous one-night stand with Dallie, she was getting ready to hurt Stefan, and the network might very well fire her. She was too miserable to cheer up Holly Grace, and she was terribly worried about Teddy. He was so withdrawn and so obviously unhappy. He wouldn't talk about what had happened in Wynette, and he resisted all of her efforts to draw him out about the trouble he was having in school.

“How did things go with you and Miss Pearson today?” she asked casually, as she watched him sneak a forkful of peas underneath his baked potato.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Just okay?”

He pushed his chair back from the table and cleared his plate. “I've got some homework to do. I'm not too hungry.”

She frowned as he left the kitchen. She wished Teddy's teacher weren't so rigid and punitive. Unlike Teddy's former teachers, Miss Pearson seemed more concerned with grades than with learning, a quality that Francesca believed was disastrous when working with gifted children. Teddy had never worried about his marks until this year, but now that seemed to be all he thought about. As Francesca slipped into a beaded Armani gown for her evening with Stefan, she decided to schedule another appointment with the school administrator.