The Bride of Willow Creek
Page 31
“About the divorce,” he said against her lips. “I think we should put it off until my business is well established.” As if he would ever let her go again.
Angie nibbled his lip, driving him half insane, her face wet with happy tears. “Actually, I was thinking we should delay the divorce until the girls are out of school and can manage on their own.”
Laughing, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her again and again, unable to get enough of her, and wishing the cab had wings.
Somewhere deep inside a knot he had carried for ten years slowly unraveled and fell away. He was going to lay the world at her feet. With Angie at his side, he didn’t doubt for an instant that he could be more successful than either of them had ever dreamed.
But he knew that he would never be richer than he was at this minute.
Chapter 22
“Mrs. Holland, dinner is ready.”
Smiling, Angie swept a glance across her guests talking and laughing on the terrace, then looked out at the young people chasing croquet balls around a broad sweep of lawn.
“We’ll wait another thirty minutes, Parker.”
Winnie wouldn’t approve of extending the cocktail hour, but Winnie also knew that Angie had never been a stickler for strict etiquette. Angie’s dimples deepened when Winnie caught her eye and pointedly glanced at her watch.
They had brought Winnie to Denver two years ago and settled her a block away. But the starch had gone out of Winnie after Herb’s death. Today she looked frail and round-shouldered, and Angie had noticed she sought the sunny spots on the terrace even though Denver was enjoying an exceptionally warm spring.
Molly ambled toward her, holding a plate heaped with hors d’oeuvres. “You know what I like best about being rich? Not having to cook. What are you thinking? You look pensive.”
“I was trying to remember if Winnie will be seventy-five or seventy-six on her next birthday.”
Molly placed a hand on the sleeve of Angie’s new chiffon gown. “Winnie will outlive us all.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Angie said, smiling. “Have you seen our husbands?” She would have liked a glass of champagne since cocktails didn’t appeal to her. But champagne wouldn’t be served until after dinner, when the toasts began.
“I think they’re in the library, talking business. You know how it is when Marcus Applebee comes to town.”
Sam, Can, and Marcus would be talking about the mines and percentages that had made them all rich, and the myriad other business interests that had elevated riches to wealth.
Angie and Molly moved to the stone railing to watch the croquet game. The smell of spring flowers drifted from large marble urns that Angie and Sam had bought in Greece last year.
“Twenty years ago, did you ever imagine that one day we’d be living in huge houses with a staff of servants?” She smiled at Molly, who wore a short skirt and had taken to smoking pink cigarettes clasped in the end of a long cigarette holder. Molly’s short silver bob was, amazingly, coming into fashion. Angie hadn’t cut her own hair yet, but she was considering it. “Do you ever think about the Willow Creek days?”
“More often than I like to admit. Those were hard times and good times.”
Speaking with quiet fondness, they reminded each other of the sounds and smells of those long-ago summer evenings on Carr Street. They remembered an oilcloth spread with diamonds, little girls running through sheets drying on the line, and the distant boom of dynamite in the hills. Remembered pennies counted into jars above a stove, and sharing chipped mugs of coffee sugared with hope. Remembered flames leaping in the night.
“Gramma, I’m hungry.”
Angie smiled down at a toddler with gray eyes and wheat-colored hair. Lucy’s youngest. Kneeling she straightened a tiny silk tie. “We’ll eat soon. In the meantime, maybe Gramma Molly will give you a cheese puff.”
“I hate to part with a cheese puff,” Molly said, as if she resisted the idea. “But since it’s you . . .”
Angie always knew when Sam entered a room. Her heart lifted as if a missing piece had found its way back to her. Turning, she gazed down the terrace, and saw him in the archway, smiling at her.
Gray streaked his temples now, but she thought the gray hair made him look distinguished and suited him. The tailored three-piece suit didn’t. At least not in her opinion. She liked best those rare days when he donned his denims and flannel and a tool belt and joined one of the Holland Construction, Inc. crews that had helped to build Denver wider and higher. Keeping his hand in, he called it.
When he came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, she leaned back against his chest, loving the solid feel of his body. “Which anniversary are we celebrating tonight? The twentieth or the thirtieth?” he asked, nuzzling her ear.
“The twentieth. You know I don’t count the first ten years.”
They stood together, swaying slightly, looking down the terrace to where Daisy sat with a group of young mothers. As if she felt them watching, she turned her golden head, shifted the baby in her arms, and blew them a kiss. Later, when the dancing began, Angie would watch Daisy and Richard twirl across the ballroom and tears would gather at the back of her eyes. For an instant ghostly voices would singsong in her ear. “Gimp along, gimp along, here comes Miss Limp-Along.”
“Mother, are we ever going to eat? Miles is getting whiny, and Gramma Molly is stuffing hors d’oeuvres into Charles. He won’t eat a bite of dinner.” Flushed from playing croquet, Lucy threw herself into a chair and pressed a handkerchief to her forehead. She’d been the first among her friends to crop her hair, and every year her hemline climbed with the fashion. If it hadn’t been so, Angie would have been secretly disappointed.
Suddenly Lucy grinned up at them. “You two are a disgrace, hugging and touching every time you pass each other, gazing at each other with moony eyes.”
Angie laughed. “Moony eyes?”
“Of course you’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember.” She jumped to her feet and kissed them both. “If you’re sure we’re about to eat, Mother, I’ll round up my boys and see to some hand-washing.”
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Angie murmured, watching Lucy stop to say something to Daisy. “Our daughters.”
Sam turned her in his arms. “Not as beautiful as their mother.” For twenty years she’d had an errant strand of hair that would not stay put. And for twenty years, Sam had been tucking it behind her ear. “You know,” Sam said, giving her a certain well-loved look. “I was thinking.”
Lifting on tiptoe, she kissed the corner of his lips. It was her anniversary, so she was entitled to make a bit of a spectacle. And he was so handsome. Blue-eyed, tanned, and as lean and muscular as he’d been when she married him. “I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no. At least, not yet.”
Smiling, he edged her into an alcove and molded her hips close to his. “Tell Parker to delay dinner another thirty minutes. Or tell these people to go home and let’s you and me go to bed and celebrate our anniversary properly.”
Laughing she placed a finger over his lips. “We’ll celebrate properly, we always do. But later, Mr. Holland.” Giving in to temptation, she kissed him soundly, pressing hard against him. “Now . . . about our divorce.”
Every year on their anniversary, he wanted to replace her plain gold band with diamonds and every year she said no. And every year on their anniversary, they talked about the divorce.
A twinkle danced in his eyes. “All right, here’s my final offer. I’ll agree to give you a million dollars, the house, the servants, the new automobile, and Winnie.”
“Winnie?” She drew back in mock horror. “I have to take Winnie? I thought you were going to keep Winnie.”
“No, she’s all yours. I insist.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, but this will require some lengthy negotiation. I’m afraid we’ll have to delay the divorce until next year.” The way he moved against her, his hands warm on her hips, made her
wonder if another thirty minutes before dinner would really matter.
“Next year on our anniversary, we should talk about delaying the divorce until our grandchildren are grown. A divorce in the family would be too upsetting for young children.”
“That’s what you said when our girls were little. But . . . I believe you have a point. Perhaps we have a duty to set a good example for our grandchildren. But only until they’re grown, of course. Then we’ll definitely get around to our divorce.”
Laughing, they held each other so close that Angie felt the steady exciting beat of his heart against her breast.
“I love you, Sam.”
He framed her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I love everything about you, my beautiful Angelina Bertoli Holland.” A smile curved his lips. “Except that Italian temper and the way you eat your eggs.”
Linking arms, laughing into each other’s eyes, they led their guests inside. Together, as they always would be.
Also by Maggie Osborne
I DO, I DO, I DO
SILVER LINING
THE BRIDE OF WILLOW CREEK
“No woman should have to wash a man’s underwear unless he’s a real husband! Underwear and hankies are not things a woman should have to scrub unless she’s utterly destitute, insane, or crazy in love!”
He watched her with wary eyes, the way a man would watch a burning fuse.
“Here I am taking care of some other woman’s children!” Heat pulsed in her face, choked her. “Another woman that you loved and held and . . . and while you were doing all that I was embroidering hundreds of stupid pillow cases, remembering three kisses and wondering if I’d go to my grave without ever . . . without ever . . . You know what I mean. Of course you know. Being married to me didn’t stop you from—”
His hands caught her waist and pulled her hard against his body.
A gasp broke from her lips. “What are you—”
Then his mouth came down hard on hers, hot, demanding, almost angry. This wasn’t the kiss of an inexperienced youth. This was a man’s kiss and a man’s need that explored her mouth and pressed her hard against an iron body that set her mind and flesh on fire. . . .
An Ivy Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2001 by Maggie Osborne
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ivy books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
First edition: October 2001
eISBN: 978-0-345-44953-5
v3.0