The Klone and I: A High-Tech Love Story - By Danielle Steel Page 0,60
It wasn't as difficult as going to a place like ‘21’ with him.
But I had just taken the first sip of my wine, when I turned and suddenly found myself staring at Helena in a red velvet cocktail dress trimmed in white rabbit or some kind of fur that was shedding in white clouds all over everyone standing at the bar near her. But far more impressive than the fur she was shedding was the amount of cleavage the dress left exposed. All I could do was stare at her enormous white bosom, it was so impressive it distracted one completely from noticing her ever so slightly protruding belly. And as I looked up I saw Roger, watching me watch her, and looking desperately uncomfortable, and then he glanced at Paul. The balls on his Christmas jacket suddenly looked larger than ever, and even in the crowd at the bar, the lights on his pants seemed to surround him in a kind of glow.
“What is that?” Roger said without preamble, staring at him in amazement. He knew about Peter from the kids, but nothing they had said had prepared him for what he saw.
“That's Paul … I mean Peter,” I said calmly, brushing some of the fur Helena's dress had lost off my nose.
“That's quite an outfit,” Roger said expressively, which Paul took as a compliment, but I knew Roger better, and saw with ease that he was appalled. “Thank you. It's Moschino,” he explained pleasantly, with no idea who Roger was, much less Helena. “I usually wear Versace, but I couldn't resist this for the holidays. What kind of fur is that?” he asked, staring at Helena's cleavage, and then turned to me with a smile. “Friends of yours?”
“My ex-husband, and his wife,” I said tersely, and then turned to my successor. I had to be polite for the children's sake, or maybe for Roger's. “Hello, Helena.” She gave me a nervous smile, and then told Roger she was going to powder her nose. She disappeared into the crowd in a cloud of white fur, as Roger grinned at the man he thought was Peter. He would have really had a rough time with it if he knew Paul was a Klone.
“The children have told me about you,” Roger said vaguely, as Paul nodded, and then told me he was going to see about getting us a table, and the next thing I knew Roger and I were alone, for the first time in ages. “I can't believe you'd go out with a guy who looks like that,” he said bluntly.
“At least I didn't marry little Miss Santa. I thought you were allergic to fur.” Or maybe he was just allergic to my flannel nightgowns and the fur on my legs.
“That's uncalled for,” he said bluntly. “She's the mother of your children's half-brother or sister,” he said coldly, looking just like the man I had come to hate in the end.
“Being married to you and getting pregnant doesn't make her respectable, Roger. It just makes her as dumb as I was. For now at least. What do you two talk about anyway, or do you bother to talk to her at all?”
“What do you do with him in that suit? Sing ‘Deck the Halls’?”
“He's nice to our kids. That counts for a lot,” and it was more than I could say for Helena, but I didn't say it to him. There was no point, but the children still reported every time they saw them that she never even talked to them, and she could hardly wait for them to leave on Sunday afternoon. I knew Roger had to know it too, and I wondered how he felt about it, and how much worse it would get after their own baby was born. But that was another matter, and not something that could be resolved at Elaine's. I was sorry we had come there, and had seen them. Roger didn't look any better than he had when he left me two years before. In fact, he looked a lot more tired, and a little older, and extremely bored. Helena was no brain-trust, but I had to admit she was striking and sexy, and her cleavage was pretty impressive, whether or not it was draped in rabbit fur. It wasn't too obvious yet that she was pregnant, but I suspected her boobs had grown even larger than the last time I'd seen them.