chapter ONE
THE BAND IN THE dinner lounge was really very good. They were versatile and had done everything from Sinatra to Blondie and managed to complacently oblige almost any request for a song from the thirties to the eighties—spacing them to please the young hard rockers and the mature dinner clientele.
Sloan Tallett had been on the dance floor, twirling beneath the lights, for the majority of the evening. She was a beautiful woman, never more regal than when on a dance floor, and with her escort being the head of the dance department from the college where she taught, she had provided the patrons of the lounge with visual entertainment as well as acoustical. Eyes riveted and stayed upon the handsome couple, which was what Jim Baskins intended. They were the best advertising he could manage for the College of Fine Arts.
The number, a breath-stealing piece from the late sixties, came to a halt. Sloan laughed gaily to Jim as they wove their way to their table, hand in hand. She was flushed as she sat, her blue eyes as radiant as sapphires. Someone stopped by to issue a compliment, and she smiled with lazy thanks, the full-lipped, seductive smile of a temptress.
She had been born to dance—her friend and escort was thinking—but she had also been born to captivate. Only someone close could ever see the hard line of reserve and pain that lurked beneath the stars in her eyes and the radiance of her smile.
“Another scotch and soda?” Jim asked.
“No!” She chuckled, but her answer was firm. She glanced at her black-banded wristwatch with a frown. “It’s too close to pumpkin time, I’m afraid. I’d love a plain soda, though, with a twist of lime.”
“I’d probably better order the same,” Jim said with a grimace, motioning to their waitress. “You’re good for me, Sloan, do you know that?” he said after putting their order in. “You keep me on the straight and narrow.”
Sloan smiled at her companion. Jim Baskins was twenty years her senior, and she was sure he had traveled the straight and narrow all his life. He was her immediate supervisor, and a more gentle, understanding man couldn’t be found. A confirmed bachelor, Jim had dedicated his life to two demanding mistresses—dance and teaching. Approaching fifty, he had the look of a much younger man. An inch or so over Sloan’s five feet seven inches, he was thin and wiry, the touches of silver in his thick blond hair adding an air of distinguished maturity. Most people who saw them together decided there was a romantic interest between the two—which wasn’t true. They were co-workers and friends who enjoyed one another’s company.
“I think it’s the other way around,” Sloan told him. “You keep me on the straight and narrow.”
“Two damn straight and narrow, if you ask me,” Jim replied. “You should be dating, Sloan. You’re a young woman, and it’s been two years...” His voice trailed away; he hadn’t meant to remind her of the husband he had never met.
Clouds passed over the sapphire of her eyes, but Sloan kept smiling. “It’s all right, Jim. It has been two years since Terry died. And I do date occasionally. When I’m interested. But society has picked up a little too much for me. Every time I date someone a second time, they seem to think I’ve said yes to hop into bed.”
“It wouldn’t kill you to have an affair,” Jim advised, surveying her over his soda. “And you should consider a second marriage—”
“I don’t want to marry again,” Sloan interrupted softly. She had had a good marriage, and anything shallow to follow would be sacrilege. She looked at Jim to see him, miserable, before her and realized she was extending her own unhappiness to him. And she wasn’t really unhappy. She had her job, she had the children. “Why would I want to marry?” she queried cheerfully. “I have enough of my own problems! I don’t need someone else’s!”
Jim didn’t look quite so miserable. “Bad attitude, Sloan. You share the good along with the bad.”
Sloan laughed easily. “Jim—it’s not something I have to decide immediately. I don’t exactly have a score of suitors pounding down my door. You’d have to be a rich man to contemplate marriage to a struggling thirtyish widow with three children age six and under. Come to think of it, you’d have to be a lunatic as well.”
“I’d marry you, Sloan,” Jim said softly.
Sloan chuckled softly and stretched slender fingers across the table to envelop his hand. “You are a lunatic,” she told him with warm affection. “And I do believe you mean it.” Jim was aware that her life was rough—finances were low, and her job schedule, while trying to be a good mother to three young children, was grueling. “But I love you as a very dear friend, as you love me—and like I said, I don’t want to get married. I’m a very independent lady—I run my own life.”
Jim shook his head sadly. “You’re a beautiful woman, Sloan. Someday some man is going to come along and crumble that shell of yours—and I hope I’m around to see the day.”
“Only if he has a fortune!” Sloan teased. “Come on, boss,” she added, rising. “Walk me to my car. I don’t like to keep Cassie waiting. She expects me home no later than ten.”
Sloan’s sister kept her children on Friday nights so that Sloan could have an evening out. Usually, it was dinner and dancing with Jim or the occasional date that intrigued her. Friday nights were her only fling. She needed them to remind herself that she was still shy of thirty, still young. She enjoyed her evenings with Jim and the few “real” dates she accepted, but that was as far as she would venture from the wall she had carefully built around herself after Terry’s death. Life was too serious a thing for her to take the time to really unscramble her feelings on love, sex, and affairs. It was—at this point—a fight for survival.
“Okay, gorgeous,” Jim said amicably, signaling for the check. “We’ll get you in for curfew. It’s supposed to be twelve, though—not ten,” he teased, dropping a few bills on the table and rising to assist her from her chair. “But I guess it’s about the same. ‘Beautiful, sexy, seductive dancer goes home and turns back into household drudge!’”
“Thanks,” Sloan said dryly, grinning as she accepted his arm. “Just what every woman needs. A boss with a sense of humor.”
Jim guided her from the still-thriving lounge to the parking lot. Since they could shower and change in the dance department, they went out straight from work, and both had their own cars. Courteous as always, Jim saw her into her Cutlass and closed and locked the door for her.
“Beautiful night,” he mused, sticking his well-kept frame, nicely suited in a double-breasted jacket, through her window. “You should be enjoying it with some nice knight in white armor.”
“I had my knight!” Sloan said with a wistful smile. “They don’t come charging through a life twice—there is a shortage of white horses!”
“You’re a cynic, Sloan,” Jim said with a shake of his head. “Grown hard as nails.”
“Oh, Jim!” Sloan protested, smiling. “I’m not a complete cynic! I know the games people play, and I merely prefer to play them by my own rules. I set them down squarely first. And if I’m hard—” she shrugged, but straightened in her seat, her chin tilting a shade, her eyes glittering like blue crystals in the night—“it’s because I have to be.”
“Lost cause!” Jim muttered, pecking her forehead with a brotherly kiss before pulling his torso from the car. “Have a nice weekend. Give the kids a kiss for me, and I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Thanks, Jim,” Sloan replied, twisting her key in the ignition. “Have a nice weekend yourself!”
Waving, she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway, breathing deeply of the crisp air. It was a beautiful night—the type that made her happy she had left Boston after Terry’s death and returned home to Gettysburg. Stars dotted the sky like a spray of glittering rhinestones against a sea of black velvet. She passed the gently rolling landscape of the national park and smiled to herself wryly. It was the type of night when lovers should stroll together across fields of green in the tingling, crisp coolness.
But, she wondered briefly, would she ever really love again? Sloan hadn’t lied to Jim. She had dated. Nice men, good-looking men, men she had even found attractive, at first...she had kissed them, felt their arms around her.
But remained absolutely untouched inside. Jim was the only person she saw steadily, and that was because he was a friend. He never pressured her.
Sometimes she felt as if her heart had frozen solid. She was hard, she was cold, she was cynical. She had to be a dead set realist. There were times when she still hurt too much, but she had to shelve loneliness and pain. Terry was dead. Point-blank. Fact. She had managed a life for herself, a fairly good one. She liked people, she saw people, she looked forward to the future. To a time when she could leave the survival pay of the college and work for a professional dance troupe again. Hire some help...
“What am I worrying about?” she asked herself impatiently as she drove up to her own house. She glanced at the pretty white building with the green trim with pride. She had purchased it herself, a great deal that her brother-in-law had found for her. She had made a good down payment, and now she only had the mortgage and taxes...and damn! A payment was due.
Sighing, Sloan decided to deal with that problem later. She walked briskly to her door and started to use her key, then thought better of the idea. Cassie startled easily. Better to knock than to scare her sister half out of her wits.
“Hi, kid!” Cassie greeted her, opening the door. “How was your night?”
Sloan shrugged as she tossed her purse onto a chair and bent in the doorway to slip off the straps of her heeled sandals and nudge them beneath the same chair. “Nice. The usual. Jim is a dear.” She smiled at her older sister with resignation. “I do enjoy the evening out. Jim may not be exciting—but he is adult companionship!”
“I’ve got a pot of tea on,” Cassie said. “Want some?”
“Naturally.” Sloan laughed, following her pretty, slender sister into the kitchen. The women, only two years apart, were best friends. They shared the same tall, graceful build, but there the similarities of their appearances ended. Cassie had huge, saucer brown eyes and hair so light as to be platinum. At thirty-one, she was still looked at and asked for identification when she ordered a drink.
“Any problems?” Sloan asked as she accepted a mug of tea and curled her legs into a chair at the sunny yellow kitchen table.
“Not a one,” Cassie replied, leaning her elbows on the table. “Jamie and Laura crawled into bed right after their super-hero program. And the baby, well, he’s always an angel. He was sound asleep at seven.”
Sloan warmed her face comfortably with the steam from her cup. “They know better than to mess with their aunt!” She chuckled. “Anything else new?”
Cassie hesitated, and Sloan watched her sister’s beautiful brown eyes, puzzled. “What is it?”
“A man called for you, a Mr. Jordan.”
“And?” Sloan prompted her sister casually, then held her breath as she waited for her answer. Mr. Jordan was with a professional dance company in Philadelphia.
“He said the job was yours,” Cassie told her with troubled eyes. Then Sloan began to understand her hesitance.
“The salary?” she asked, holding her features in composure.
Cassie named a figure, and Sloan’s heart sank. She couldn’t accept the job. She sighed as she realized she would probably be with the college dance department for years to come—she couldn’t afford to quit. Not that she didn’t like her job; she did. It was just that she so dearly longed to dance professionally again!
“Well then,” Sloan said briskly with a forced smile. “That’s that, I guess.”
Cassie looked as if she were about to cry. “If only you hadn’t had so many children!” she exclaimed miserably. Then she hastily added, “Oh, Sloan! I didn’t mean that. I love the kids. But it’s so hard for you alone.”
“Well,” Sloan said wryly, curling her lips a shade so that Cassie would know her words had been understood. “When Terry and I planned the children, we didn’t intend that one of us would be raising them alone.”
Terry had been a dreamer, and she had dreamed right along with him. They seemed perfectly mated, a dancer and an artist. In their first years they had struggled. Then, while Terry had been making his name as a painter, Sloan had gotten a terrific job with an ensemble in Boston. Luck followed the dreamers. When Sloan became pregnant with Jamie, Terry’s oils caught on with the flurry of a storm. They lived happily. Terry was established; Sloan was able to combine her professional dancing with motherhood. They planned Laura and the baby, Terence, for his father.
But Terry didn’t live to see his namesake. He was killed when his flight home from Knoxville in a friend’s small Cessna failed to clear the Blue Ridge Mountains. It took searchers three weeks to find his body, and when they did, Sloan was in the hospital, in labor two months early due to shock.
Dreamers never think to buy life insurance, and artists have no benefits. Sloan was snapped out of her grief by desperation—she had to support herself and her family. The baby, so premature, ate up any savings as he clung to life in his incubator. Terry’s last pieces drew large sums as their value increased, ironically, with his death, but even that money did little but help Sloan return home to Gettysburg where her only comfort, Cassie, awaited.
Sloan buried the young dreamer she had been along with Terry’s mutilated remains. In the first year she had mourned her happy-go-lucky husband with a yearning sickness that left her awake long nights in her lonely bed. She had gone through all the normal courses of grief, including anger. How could he have died and left her like he did? Resignation and bitter sadness followed her anger, and now she lived day to day, finding happiness in simple things. But she had closed in. The vivacious and beautiful woman whom people met was a cloak that concealed her true personality. She had toughened, and reality and necessity were the codes she lived by. She was friendly, sometimes flirtatious, but when anyone looked beyond those bounds, he would find a door slammed immediately in his face.
“Lord, I almost forgot to tell you!” Cassie exclaimed suddenly, sensing her sister’s depression and trying to cheerfully dispel her gloom. “Guess who is in Gettysburg?”
Sloan chuckled. “You’ve got me. Who?”
“Wesley Adams.”
“Who?” Sloan frowned her puzzlement. The name was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t picture a face.
“Wesley Adams! The quiet quarterback, remember? He’s a couple of years older than I am, but the whole town knew him. He graduated from Penn State after high school, then went on to play professional ball. About four years ago he retired because of a knee injury and disappeared from public view.” Cassie gave Sloan a wistful smile as she curled a strand of blond hair around her fingers. “I was secretly in love with him for years! And he asked you out! I think it was the one time in my life I absolutely hated you!”
Sloan frowned again. “I went out with Wes Adams?”
Cassie groaned with exasperation and threw her hands in the air. “She doesn’t even remember! Yes, you went out with Wes Adams. He had just finished at Penn State, and you were eighteen, about to leave for Boston and your first year as a Fine Arts major. It was the summer before you met Terry. I set up the date—by accident, I assure you!”
Sloan laughed along with her sister. Cassie could easily talk about her memories; she was married to one of the most marvelous men in the world. George Harrington loved his wife and extended that love to encompass his sister-in-law. It was George who insisted he care for his own two boys on Friday nights so that Cassie could allow Sloan her evening out.
“I remember him now,” Sloan said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “He reminded me of Clark Kent. Beautiful body, face enough to kill. But quiet! And studious! Our date was a disaster.”
“Hmmph!” Cassie sniffed. “He was simply bright as all hell. And you, young lady, your head was permanently twisted in the clouds. You didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Fine Arts major!”
Sloan quirked her brows indifferently. “Maybe. I was eleven years younger then than I am now. We all change.” She rubbed sore feet. “Brother! I feel like my soles are toe-to-heel blisters. I must have been spinning half the day!”
“You’re losing your appreciation for your art,” Cassie warned with teasing consolation. “I seem to remember a comment you made once as a kid that you ‘could dance forever and forever, into eternity!’”
“There’s a slim chance that I did make such a comment,” Sloan admitted dryly. “But if so, I must have been a good twenty years younger than I am now—and twenty times as idealistic!”
The ringing of the doorbell interrupted their idle chatter. “Gee...George already,” Sloan mused.
“No...” Cassie was blushing and flustered. “I forgot to tell you...well, actually, you changed the subject before I got a chance.” She was talking hurriedly as the bell continued to chime. “It’s Wes Adams. I told you I saw him today and he asked me about you and I told him and...” She raised her hands helplessly. “I asked him over.”
Sloan’s mouth dropped with dismay. “To my house?”
“Don’t be angry!” Cassie begged in a whisper. “He and George are old friends too. I thought we could all chat awhile. In fact, I even broke down and asked my mother-in-law to break up her beauty sleep and go watch the boys so that George and I could both stay out. And you know how the old battle-axe needs that beauty rest!”
“Cassie!” Sloan wailed.
“Oh, Sloan! What do you want me to do? I know that that’s Wes at the door.” Cassie bit her lip as she watched her sister. “Damn it, Sloan! Give the man a chance. He’s a better prospect than anyone else around here. This is a small town. And”—she grinned mischievously as she rounded the kitchen corner to answer the clanging of the bell—“he’s absolutely loaded! He moved to Kentucky when he retired and bought a Thoroughbred farm. He breeds racehorses.”
“Terrific!” Sloan mumbled as she trailed after her sister. “He was dull to begin with, and now he’s a farmer in Kentucky.”
“He’s not a farmer, he—”
“I know, I know. He raises Thoroughbreds. It’s all the same to me.”
“Put your shoes back on!” Cassie hissed.
Sloan grimaced painfully and slipped back into her heels after diving beneath the chair to retrieve them. “Only for you, sister dearest!” she teased. “But give up on your matchmaking,” she added in a low and serious tone. “I’m a twenty-nine-year-old widow with three children. I am too far-gone for romance!”
“Hush!” Cassie narrowed her brows, ran a hand over her smooth blond hair, and threw open the front door. “Wes!” she exclaimed happily in greeting. “I’m so glad you could make it!”
Wesley Adams returned her greeting with a warm smile and a friendly kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for inviting me, Cassie.” He turned sea-green eyes to Sloan. “Sloan. How are you?”
“Good, thank you, Wesley.” She accepted the hand he offered her and shook it briefly. “Come in. Sit down. Cassie”—she smiled pointedly to her sister—“will be happy to get you a drink.”
Cassie shot Sloan a quick, murderous glare behind their visitor’s back. “What can I get you, Wes?” she inquired extra sweetly, attempting to atone for Sloan’s ill-concealed lack of hospitality. Her grin became impish. “You and Sloan can have a seat, and I’ll play cocktail waitress.”
“Terrific, thank you,” Wesley said smoothly. “I’d love a bourbon, if it’s in the house supply.”
“Certainly,” Cassie murmured. “Sloan—a scotch?”
“A double—please.” Sloan returned her sister’s grin through clenched teeth as she politely took a seat beside Wesley Adams. He was still, she noted apathetically, a strikingly handsome man, probably more so with age. His shock of wavy hair, so dark as to be almost jet black, created an air of intrigue as it dipped rakishly in a natural wave over a brow. Faint lines etched his probing, intuitive eyes, lines which increased when he smiled with full lips. His face was bronzed and rugged; despite his navy suit and crisply pressed powder-blue shirt, he carried the definite air of an outdoorsman, an air which fit in well with his broad, powerful-looking shoulders and imposing height.
“I was very sorry to hear about your husband, Sloan,” he said softly, sincere compassion in the sea-green eyes that met hers easily.
“Thank you.” His unpatronizing sympathy touched a chord in her heart she had thought long since dead.
“I’m sorry again. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, no, it’s all right.” She grudgingly gave him a faint smile. “Terry has been dead for two years. I assure you, I don’t become hysterical at the mention of his name.”
“You’ve changed,” he remarked oddly.
“Have I?” Her smile became ironic. “I didn’t realize you had known me well enough to judge such a thing.”
The friendly smile he had been wearing remained glued to his face, but Sloan saw his facial muscles tighten as the warm spark in his eyes went cold. She winced imperceptibly at her own behavior. There was no need for her to be so uncivil.
Wesley Adams shrugged as he withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket. He lit a cigarette, returned the pack to his pocket, and exhaled a long plume of smoke. His eyes were still on her, speculative and cold. Absurdly, she shuddered. Low-keyed and polite as he was, she had the strange feeling he could be dangerous if crossed.
“I didn’t know you very well,” he said casually, “but I do know that you never used to be out-and-out rude.”
Sloan straightened as if she had been slapped. Of all the nerve! What a comment to make in her house! She drew breath for a caustic reply but snapped her mouth shut as Cassie gracefully sailed in from the kitchen with a tray of drinks.
“Wes,” Cassie said as she placed the tray on the mahogany coffee table. “That’s your bourbon on the left. Sloan, scotch in the middle.”
Sloan fell silent as Wes and Cassie began to converse with a pleasant camaraderie. Moments later, George put in his appearance, and after kissing his wife and sister-in-law, he accepted the Wild Turkey and soda his wife had precipitously prepared and assured her the boys were safe in bed and his mother happily ensconced before the television set enjoying an oldie about a monster that was threatening to eat New York. He, too, readily joined in the light banter, and the talk turned to football. Sloan allowed her mind to wander.
She admitted to herself that she had been rude and wondered why. Wes Adams meant nothing to her, yet he disturbed her. She had the strange feeling that he saw more with those unusual oceanic eyes than most people. He watched her as if she were an open book and he could read her every weakness.
Ridiculous. There were no weaknesses. Not anymore. She had learned to rely on Sloan Tallett and on no one else. She didn’t know, not in her conscious mind, that the very goodness of her marriage now blocked an open heart. Terry had loved her; Terry had been wonderful. Terry had left her in the terrible mess she was in now. If someone had realized what lay in the uncharted recesses of her heart, they might have pointed out to her that she was blaming love for pain; blaming Terry for his own death as desertion. And if she could see, her eyes would widen and she would wince with horror at the reasoning that had left her as cold and as hard as steel. But she didn’t see, and so she stiffened and went on.
And Wes Adams, the all but forgotten intruder who sat in her living room as if he belonged, was ruining the well-structured format of her life with his simple presence and cool words. It didn’t matter, she told herself. He would be gone soon. And so would the inane feeling he gave her that she was losing control in some unclear way. She was always in control of any situation.
“And of course Sloan always joins in too,” George was saying, his kindly gray eyes on her. He winked. “She’s the high point of the summer!”
They were all looking at her now, and she flushed guiltily. “I’m sorry, George. I’m afraid I wandered. What do I join in to make this high point of the summer?”
“The school’s annual summer dance!” Cassie hopped in impatiently. “Wes said he’d love to see you in a performance, and we told him he came at just the right time!”
“Oh,” Sloan murmured, annoyed to feel herself blushing again as she met Wes’s unfathomable, soul-piercing stare. What was the matter with her, she wondered impatiently. For the sake of the dance department she should be pushing the performance—glad of anyone who purchased a ticket and helped fill the immense auditorium. And by her own volition or not, Wes was a guest in her own home. A little cordiality wouldn’t hurt. She slowly smiled and found it wasn’t difficult at all when Wes curved his lips in return. “Our summer dance is quite a show,” she told him, her enthusiasm growing. “We have some wonderful students.”
He laughed easily. “I’ll be looking at the teacher.”
Absurd, but she felt herself blushing again, only this time the feeling wasn’t uncomfortable. “What are you doing back in Gettysburg, Wes?” she asked, anxious to change the topic of conversation to anything other than herself.
“Business,” he replied with a grimace. “And, of course, a little pleasure. This will always be home in a way. Mainly, I’m here on a buying trip—there’s a man on the outskirts of the city who I do a lot of buying from. He has a knack with up-and-coming Thoroughbreds.” Once again, Sloan was treated to a slow, subtly alluring smile. “At the moment,” he continued, “I can honestly say I’ve never had a more pleasurable business trip.”
Sloan managed not to blush again. With the hint of an enticing smile on her own lips, she inclined her head ever so slightly. Touché. He had learned to be a charmer when he chose.
From that point the night passed with surprising swiftness. Wesley, whom she had once found so boringly dull, proved to be an interesting speaker. His voice was a low tenor which still penetrated the room when he spoke, his words so appealingly phrased that Sloan was later shocked to realize she had listened to information on horses and football without once wandering from the conversation. It was after midnight when George finally looked at his watch and groaned that they had to leave.
“I’m sure New York has either been long consumed or saved by now,” he said dryly, “and that my mother probably has her eyes propped open with toothpicks. How long will you be here, Wes?”
“A couple of weeks,” Wesley replied, rising to shake his old friend’s hand. “I’m sure we’ll be able to get together again.” He kissed Cassie lightly and took Sloan’s hand. “Thank you, Sloan, for a pleasant evening.”
“Thank you for coming,” she parroted politely.
“Perhaps, if we have dinner one night, you’ll join us.”
Sloan wasn’t sure if the invitation was sincere or not. She was being scrutinized by those uncanny eyes again, and the firm hand holding hers was mocking in its gentle but undeniable pressure. She smiled vaguely. “Yes, perhaps. But I have a problem with the children.”
“I’m her only nighttime sitter,” Cassie explained. “George’s mother is too nervous to handle all five.”
“That’s no problem!” Wesley laughed, and for a moment his eyes seemed very warm and tender. “My housekeeper is with me, since I’m staying at my folks’ home. They’ve been in Arizona for years now, so I assumed I’d need a bit of help with fixing up. Florence adores children. She’ll be thrilled to watch them for us.”
“I...” Sloan faltered helplessly. She didn’t want to tell him that she didn’t leave her children with just anyone—it would sound frightfully insulting.
But Wesley astutely sensed her dilemma. “I’ll bring Florence by at your convenience so that you can meet her and she can meet the children. Then, if all goes well, we’ll make a definite date for Saturday night, a week from tomorrow. Does that suit everyone?”
A little awed, Sloan nodded. It didn’t just suit her, it sounded lovely. One of the reasons that she so seldom went out was the lack of available, trustworthy baby-sitters and a determination not to take advantage of her sister. She would also have trouble affording a regular sitter. “Loaded” Wesley was solving all her problems.
Wesley released her hand. George and Cassie kissed her goodnight, and she was alone in her silent house with her sleeping children.
She was reflective that night as she showered and donned a light flannel gown, studying her face in the bathroom mirror. She winced at what she saw.
Although faint, tiny lines were forming around her eyes. Unlike Cassie, she certainly couldn’t pass for eighteen. At least, she thought, giggling at her mirrored image, if she were to go prematurely gray, no one would notice. Her hair was already composed of too many colors.
Anyway, the hell with vanity. She was the mother of three. Still...her hand slid over her flat stomach. She was lucky. She had borne three children, yet come out of it without a scratch. Her figure was tighter than that of a teenager, her skin as smooth. Dancing, she told herself wryly. Her passion had kept her in shape.
But what difference did it make. There was no longer a man in her bedroom to tell her she was beautiful, to tell her what he loved about her...No one to try to please...
Sloan snapped out the light and peeked in on six-year-old Jamie, four-year-old Laura, and two-year-old “baby” Terry. They all slept soundly, their even breathing peaceful. Unable to resist, she tenderly kissed each little forehead. They were beautiful children, plump and healthy. Again, she reminded herself that she was lucky, and that she should be grateful and fulfilled.
I am fulfilled! she told herself sternly. There is nothing more I need than their love.
But she didn’t sleep well that night. She was plagued by dreams of worry and emptiness.
Sloan pressed her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Jamie!” she wailed. “Quit torturing your sister! Give her back her doll! And hush up for five minutes!”
Jamie pursed his little lips, shot his mother a baleful glance, and returned his sister’s doll. With a sigh, Sloan returned to her conversation.
“I’m sorry about the payment, Mrs. White, it must have been an oversight. I’ll put it in the mail immediately. Please don’t turn off the electricity!”
The woman on the other end spat off a few epitaphs about people who didn’t pay bills on time and finally agreed to give her four days to have the payment in. Sloan hung up the receiver and rested her head tiredly on the phone.
“Mommy?” A tiny hand tugged on her sleeve, and she opened her eyes. Jamie—her devil, her love. “Mommy, I love you.”
She picked him up and hugged him. “I love you, too, sweetheart. Now run along and see what your brother is doing.”
She set him down and rubbed a hand across her forehead. No wonder she was getting wrinkles. She was always frowning.
“Mommy!” It was Jamie again. “Terry is putting the laundry in the toilet!”
“Eeeeeek!” Sloan screamed, racing into the bathroom. Lord, what next? She unstuffed the toilet and washed the baby, who gurgled happily with pleasure and lisped a few words. Then she returned to the kitchen to morosely sip her coffee, slumped into a chair.
“The morning,” she told herself aloud, “is not going well at all.”
Her mind, for no explicable reason, turned to Wesley Adams. He was a handsome man, polite and gracious. She unconsciously moved a hand over her face. He was attracted to her; she knew it intuitively. And he was rich. Wheels began to turn in her mind.
She sprang to her feet and raced back into the bathroom to anxiously study her reflection again. She smoothed the worried frown from her brow and smiled brightly. That was better. Much better. Maybe Jim’s ideas for her future weren’t quite so bad...
She continued to stare at herself unseeingly for several seconds, oblivious to the playful ramblings of the children.
“I don’t love him, I don’t really like him, I hardly even know him!” she told the face that was forming before her, the face that had a bewitching but frighteningly predatory cast.
The children...I have to think of the children...and I’m so dreadfully tired of dealing with it all!
The face wasn’t really predatory, she assured herself. Conniving, maybe, devious, yes perhaps...and hard. But not predatory! She swallowed, wincing, ashamed of her thoughts.
Sloan closed her eyes and turned away from the mirror, burying all sense of shame with purpose and determination as she did so. Like a marionette she jerked back to the phone and dialed her sister’s number.
She chatted idly for a few minutes, then casually brought up the subject on her mind.
“What do you really know about Wesley Adams?” she asked.
Cassie rushed on with enthusiasm. Wes was wonderful. He had led his team to victory in the Super Bowl. He donated to charities all over the country. He had a beautiful spread in Kentucky where he raised his horses and held a summer camp for deprived children every year...
“Does he really have that much money?” Sloan queried innocently, thankful that her sister couldn’t see her face over the phone.
“Tons of it!” Cassie laughed. “His salary was unbelievable, and he seems to have the Midas touch with investments. Everything he touches turns to gold, silver, and green. They had a big write-up on him in Fortune magazine when he left pro ball a few years ago...”
Cassie had more to say, but Sloan was no longer listening. A slow buzzing was seeping coldly through her. She couldn’t allow herself to think; she couldn’t afford to moralize.
“Sloan?”
“I’m here, Cass.”
“So—you’ve decided you like him after all! I knew you would. He’s such a super guy! And he’s interested in you. Half the women in this country would sell their souls to be in your place!”
“Yes, Cass.” Sloan held her breath for a minute. She wasn’t much of a liar, and she had never lied to Cassie in her life. Suddenly she felt hot, dizzy, and nervous—what she was planning was preposterous. She might have joked, but the idea of actually doing it had never occurred to her. Until now. And it had hit her with a jolt. It would be wrong; she couldn’t...
But the last two years of her life flashed through her mind in a split second—a tumult of events that was dark and sobering. Terry’s disappearance, the baby’s premature birth, her own long haul back to health, having to quit the Fife Dance Company, moving back to Gettysburg and teaching at a salary that was more than she had made with Fife but still barely allowed her to make ends meet. “Yes, Cassie,” Sloan repeated. “I think I like Wes very much now. I’m looking forward to our dinner.”
“Sloan! I’m so glad! It’s obvious that he still has some kind of a thing for you...”
Cassie went on talking, but Sloan heard little of what she had to say. Somehow, she made all the right responses.
“...fate and a little time...”
“Pardon?” Sloan inquired. Her mind had wandered a little too far.
Cassie sighed. “I said, ‘who knows? With fate and a little time...?’”
“Yeah,” Sloan murmured. “I’d better get going, Cass. I have to go see what the little darlings are up to.”
“Go!” Cassie chuckled. “I am so glad that you like him! Oh, well! Bye!”
“Bye...” Sloan murmured faintly. She pulled the receiver slowly from her ear and sank into a chair, feeling light-headed. She did not replace the phone correctly, and a dull hum sounded to her ears.
Fate and time. She intended to give both more than a little push.
“God, I hope that I do like him!” she whispered fervently to herself. She rose, a puppet again, and very meticulously adjusted the phone, cutting off the hum. Her plan took substance, and she spoke it aloud.
“I’m going to marry him.”
Her voice was light, toneless, but the grim edge of determination rang clearly through.