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Untreed Reads - Joan Wolf

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137 pages

English

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Chris was a struggling actor and Mary a struggling scholar, but their marriage was a perfect, passionate union-until the glitter of Hollywood and a dazzling starlet stole Chris away. At the time when she needed him most, he betrayed and failed her, and she swore never to see him again. Chris became a world-famous actor, and Mary a respected professor, and only in the darkness of the movie theater did she allow herself to think of him. Then, in the flash and glare of reporters' cameras, they met again, and the smoldering love reignited. They had never officially divorced. Had he come back to reestablish their marriage...or end it irrevocably?

Informations

Publié par	Untreed Reads
Date de parution	06 avril 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781949135862
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0215€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
Also by Joan Wolf and Untreed Reads Publishing
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
Summer Storm
By Joan Wolf
Copyright 2021 by Joan Wolf
Cover Copyright 2021 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in 1983.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Joan Wolf and Untreed Reads Publishing
A Difficult Truce
A Double Deception
A Fashionable Affair
A Kind of Honor
A London Season
Beloved Stranger
Born of the Sun
Change of Heart
Daughter of the Red Deer
Fool's Masquerade
Golden Girl
Highland Sunset
His Lordship's Mistress
Lord Richard's Daughter
Margarita and the Earl
Portrait of a Love
Someday Soon
The American Duchess
The American Earl
The Arrangement
The Counterfeit Marriage
The Deception
The Edge of Light
The English Bride
The Gamble
The Guardian
The Heiress
The Horsemasters
The Master of Grex
The Portrait
The Pretenders
The Rebel and the Rose
The Rebellious Ward
The Reindeer Hunters
The Reluctant Earl
The Road to Avalon
The Scottish Lord
Wild Irish Rose
www.untreedreads.com
Chapter One
It was a beautiful day in early May when Mary O’Connor came out of the heavy oak door of the university’s Freemont Hall. She paused for a minute on the top of the steps and surveyed the scene below her. The green lawns of the New England campus were heavily speckled with students in various states of undress, reclining under the dogwood trees and cramming for final exams. Mary turned her own face briefly upward to feel the warmth of the sun and someone behind her said, “Dr. O’Connor?”
Mary turned, recognized the student, and repressed a sigh. He was a very large, very amiable, not very clever young man who had, for reasons she could not fathom, decided to fall crashingly in love with her. Considering the fact that the highest mark she had given him all semester was a C, his devotion was a mystery to her.
It was not a mystery, however, to Bob Fowler (the large student) or, indeed, to at least a dozen other men, both young and old, who had come in contact with Mary Catherine O’Connor during the year she had been teaching at this university. It was not, regrettably, her Ph.D. in literature or the impressive scholarly reputation she had acquired upon the publication of her book last year that was the cause of all this male admiration. Rather it was the fact that she was twenty-six years old and beautiful.
As she stood now, poised on the top of Freemont Hall’s steps, male heads in the area swung around instinctively. It was an attention Mary scarcely noticed, she was so accustomed to it. She stood listening to Bob Fowler for a few minutes with exemplary patience, shook her head in refusal of his offer to carry her briefcase to her car for her, turned resolutely away from him and started down the steps.
There was a blinding flash of light and instinctively she stopped and looked toward its source. There was a photographer standing at the bottom of the steps and as she looked at him the camera flashed again, twice. “Who are you?” Mary demanded.
“Mary O’Connor? Doctor Mary O’Connor?” the photographer answered crisply with a question of his own.
“Yes, but…”
“Thank you, doctor.” The man sent her a smile and turned to climb back into his car. She hesitated, then shrugged her slim shoulders and watched him drive off. It was probably someone from the campus newspaper, she decided.
Ten days later Mary was once again coming out of Freemont Hall where she had her office. It was an extremely warm day and she was wearing the jacket of her beige poplin suit slung casually over one shoulder in order to get the cooling benefit of her short-sleeved navy polka-dot blouse. There were several students clustered on the stone landing outside the building and they were all talking in excited whispers.
“I’m dying to go talk to him,” Mary heard one girl saying. “I wish I had the nerve.”
“But what can he be doing here ?” said a male voice. “Have you heard anything about a movie being shot on campus?”
Slowly Mary looked down the stairs to the man who was the cause of all this excitement. He was leaning against the hood of a smart red sports car and looking around him casually, as if he owned the place. He seemed entirely unaware of all the watching eyes, entirely at his ease. Mary supposed that when you possessed one of the most famous faces in the world, you got used to being watched. “Damn,” she said under her breath.
Bob Fowler looked around and saw her. “Dr. O’Connor,” he said enthusiastically, “take a look at who’s standing there at the bottom of the stairs. It’s Christopher Douglas!”
“So I see,” she replied coolly, and once again surveyed the tall slim man leaning against the red car. He was looking off down the campus toward where an impromptu soccer game was going on on one of the lawns and his splendid, arrogant profile was clear as a cameo. As she watched he seemed to lose interest in the game and turned back to the building in front of him, looked up, and saw her. Instantly he pushed himself off the car and stood upright, moving unself-consciously and with all the lithe grace she remembered so well. He kept his dark eyes on her the whole time she was descending the stairs, unaware, as was she, of the breathlessly watching students.
She stopped in front of him and looked up. She had forgotten how tall he was, but then she had not seen him in almost four years. “Hello, Kit,” she said to her husband. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer for a minute but stood looking gravely down at her. “You’re wearing your hair differently,” he finally answered, “but otherwise you haven’t changed.”
“Nor have you,” she replied, returning his regard. One forgot, she thought to herself, inwardly not half so calm as she hoped she appeared on the surface, one forgot he really looked like this. Extreme, completely male beauty is a very rare phenomenon, and Christopher Douglas had been blessed with it in abundance. “What are you doing here?” she repeated, clutching more tightly at her briefcase.
“I. came to see you.” The movies, she thought, had never done justice to his voice. It took the theater to ‘ allow him its proper range.’ I had no idea of your home address,” he was going on, “so I tracked you down here. I have to talk to you, Mary. Something has come up.”
She knew, instantly, why he had come. There was a very strange feeling in the pit of her stomach as she said, “I don’t live very far from here. Do you want to follow me home? My car is parked in the faculty lot-over there.” She gestured to an eight-year-old Buick and he nodded.
“All right. That’s your father’s old car, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Daddy passed it on to me a few years ago.” He waited for her to move away before he opened the door of his red car and got in. She backed slowly out of her space, moved into the narrow road that crossed the campus, and drove toward the main gate. The small red sports car followed.
“This is very nice,” Kit said as he followed her in the front door of the small white clapboard house.
“I’m only renting it,” she answered, putting her briefcase down in the hall and leading him into the living room.
He looked around him slowly, taking in the furnishings. “You’ve still got the rocker,” he said. “And the drop-leaf table.” His long fingers caressed the wood of the table lovingly; he had stripped and refinished that table himself.
“Yes.” She bent her head, not looking at him. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’ll take a beer, if you’ve got one.” He sat down on the sofa, which was new and held no memories, and stretched his long legs in front of him.
“Yes, I have beer. I keep some in for Daddy when he comes to visit.” She walked into the kitchen, hung her jacket over one of the kitchen chairs, and opened the refrigerator. She was annoyed to find her hands were shaking. She opened the beer, got out two glasses and then poured herself a stiff Scotch. She brought his beer into the living room, got her own drink and went to sit in the rocker.
“How is your father?” He sipped his beer and regarded her inscrutably over the rim of the glass.
“Fine. He hasn’t retired, but at least he isn’t accepting new patients anymore. He and mother actually went to Europe for a month earlier this spring.” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “I think they finally feel they’ve got me off their hands.”
“You landed yourself a very good job,” he said, “in a very prestigious university.”
She shrugged. “It was about time.” She changed the subject. “You’re looking very fit. California life must agree with you-you’re dark as a gypsy.”
“The weather is good,” he agreed. He took another sip of beer. “Even