April North Read Online Free PDF Page B

contemporary lines. But April would not have believed that such an angular sort of house could seem so warm within. The floors were of highly polished wood, with high-piled rugs placed here and there across the huge living room. The furniture was wood and steel, the wood deeply-grained and the steel black and shiny. In the huge flagstone fireplace at one end of the living room logs were piled, ready for the iron lighter at one side.
    “It’s very nice,” she said lamely.
    “I’ll get you a drink. Scotch all right?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Have a seat, April.”
    She sat on a couch that turned out to be far more comfortable than it looked, while he went to the bar and poured drinks. He came back, stopping on his way to flick a switch on the wall. Music filtered into the room, coming, it seemed, from all sides. It was modern jazz, penetrating and insistent. He handed her a drink and sat beside her on the couch.
    “I suppose you wonder who I am,” he said.
    “That’s putting it mildly.”
    He laughed again. “My name is Craig,” he said. “Craig Jeffers. I’m very rich, as you’ve probably guessed, and I’m very wild, as you’ve probably guessed, also. I live alone here. My parents lived in Dayton, where my father made an enormous amount of money. I’m not sure just how he made the money, although I suppose he made it by giving some poor slobs the wrong end of the stick. He was that sort of a bastard.”
    April said nothing.
    “He’s dead now,” Craig went on dispassionately. “I’m not unhappy about it. He killed mother two years ago, then put a bullet through his own brain. You probably read about it. It even made the wire services and of course the local press had an absolute blast with it.”
    She remembered, dimly. Headlines had screamed, local industrialist kills self, wife. She nodded dutifully and took a sip of her drink. She was not used to straight liquor, but this was very smooth and she did not choke on it.
    “That’s the story of my life,” he said. “What little there has been of it so far, at any rate. I’m twenty-six. I live here because I want to. I’ve been all over the United States and through most of Europe. I’ve watched bullfights in Spain and I’ve slept with Paris whores. I’ve raced cars in California and I’ve gambled in Miami. I live here, in this horrible section of the horrible state of Ohio.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I want to, April. Because this is my home, perhaps. I have my house and I have my car. Do you like the car, by the way?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s a Mercedes-Benz 300-SL. It handles like a dream and goes like hell. I like it too.”
    He tossed off the rest of his drink and set the empty glass on the coffee table. He took out a pack of cigarettes and gave one to her, keeping another for himself. He lighted both of them and they sat side by side smoking. She drank more of her drink. The liquor was making her feel pleasantly lightheaded. She sipped and smoked.
    “That’s my story,” Craig said suddenly. “Now it’s time for you to tell me yours.”
    “There’s nothing to tell.”
    “Nothing?”
    “I live with my parents and go to high school in Antrim. That’s all there is to it.”
    He arched his eyebrows. “You were on your way to Xenia,” he said. “From there you were going to take a train to New York, and you weren’t coming back. Now don’t try to tell me there’s nothing more besides the fact that you live at home and go to high school in Antrim. You have to do better than that, April.”
    She stared into her glass of scotch, avoiding his eyes. Her story was not the kind you went around telling to people, she thought. But by the same token he was not the sort of person you usually ran across. And there was something about him that made her want to open up, something that somehow inspired her confidence.
    “It’s not a pretty story,” she said.
    “Few stories are. Not the interesting ones, at any rate.”
    “And I’m not as sweet