A Kiss Remembered Read Online Free PDF Page A

the man’s hips rotated slowly and the woman’s hand slipped lower from his waist to apply encouraging pressure. All the blood in her body rushed to Shelley’s face and bathed it with a bright stain. She risked looking at Grant out of the corner of her eye and was further embarrassed to see that he was studying her reaction closely. He smiled crookedly and picked up their pace until the oblivious lovers were left far behind.
    “Are you working now?” Grant asked, to relieve the tension between them.
    “No. I’m a professional student. I decided to devote all my time and effort to my education. I managed to finance it so I wouldn’t have to work.”
    “Cash settlement?”
    She never discussed her divorce, but strangely she wasn’t offended by Grant’s question. The bitterness that had stayed with her for months after the final papers had been signed had gradually abated. Regrets remained, but then she had expected that. “Yes. I didn’t want to rely on Daryl for my livelihood, but I felt he owed me an education. We finally came to an agreement that satisfied both of us.”
    “Would you mind if I asked what happened?”
    “We got married mistakenly and got divorced five years later.”
    They crossed another deserted street before he said, “No details?”
    She looked up at him. “Please.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that I think the man’s a damned fool, and if I ever meet him face-to-face, I’m likely to tell him so.”
    “It doesn’t matter. He has what he wants. He’s a doctor in Oklahoma City, outstanding in his field. When last I heard, he was squiring the chief of staff’s daughter. Daryl would consider that a real feather in his cap.”
    Grant breathed an expletive through firmly set lips. “I guess you sacrificed your education to work and put him through medical school.”
    “Something like that, yes.” She was alarmed at the fierceness of his expression. “Here’s my house,” she said nervously.
    He followed her up the narrow, somewhat uneven sidewalk to the alcove that sheltered the arched front door. The house was made of dark reddish-brown brick and trimmed with white woodwork. The grass and shrub-bery were well clipped, but the yard was littered with fallen leaves from the twin pecan trees on either side of the center sidewalk.
    “I love it, Shelley,” Grant said enthusiastically.
    “Do you? I did, too, from the moment I saw it. I’ll hate to part with it when I graduate and leave.”
    “And where will you go? Do you have any prospects for a job?”
    “Not just now, but this spring I’ll start sending out letters of inquiry. I suppose I’ll have to gravitate toward the metropolitan areas in order to find a bank large enough to support a separate women’s department.”
    By the end of her speech, her voice was no more than a slender thread of sound. It unnerved her for him to be watching her mouth with that devouring look.
    “Thank you for—” she began.
    “Shelley, aren’t you the least bit curious? You haven’t asked why a beautiful, rich senator’s daughter would kill herself over me.”
    She was dumbfounded. Never had she expected him to bring up the subject of his expulsion from Washington so openly. Of course she had been curious. The entire country had been. When the headlines came off the press proclaiming the suicide of one of Washington’s darlings, the public had been outraged.
    For months prior to her death Missy Lancaster had been keeping close company with Grant Chapman. Senator Lancaster of Oklahoma had seemed to endorse what everyone believed to be a budding romance. When the young woman was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in her Georgetown apartment, the bubble of enchantment surrounding them had burst. Grant Chapman was circumstantially implicated; it was believed that he had broken her heart and he was fired from the senator’s staff.
    Chapman had then had the bad grace to file a breach-of-contract suit against