Belonging Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the audience, and then a multitude of other resounding cries rang out.
    Bea Blake quickly regained her composure. “In that case,” she announced, “I will be delighted to present this award for best new CVN show to Joanna Jones for—”
    Carter leaned into the microphone. “—for Joanna Jones’ Fabulous Homes .”
    Joanna was amazed. She was accustomed to the steady eye of the television camera on her and the hot beat of lights, but the quick cold flick of flashbulbs against her vision was unsettling as she rose from the table where she sat with Gloria, her assistant, and Dhon, her makeup man, and Bill Shorter, the director, and their escorts. Jake and Emily were at the head table, and Carter and Blair were seated at a table at the front of the room, and as she dazedly approached the dais, she passed Blair, who was not smiling. Well, why should she; a network award was a major achievement, not to be easily passed up.
    “I just want to say,” Bea Blake was speaking, “that this is the first time a woman has won this award.” She kissed Joanna’s cheek.
    Later, Joanna was told how dignified she’d been as she accepted the award, how almost regal she had looked, and how elegant had been her very few words of acceptance. In fact, she had been nearly stupefied with surprise and nervousness.
    Later, too, she had tried to thank Carter for his generosity, but he had been impatient with her gratitude, each time changing the subject, turning their talk toward the next show.
    Few men had given Joanna her just due as Carter had, and no one else had done it quite so spectacularly. But during her career there had been other men, and women, too, who had given her a significant boost up the ladder of success. She had felt gratitude and affection for them, but what she felt now for Carter Amberson was galaxies more complex than that. What she felt for Carter Amberson overwhelmed her body as well as her mind and emotions.
    That would never do. Over the years she’d had a series of love affairs of varying intensity with more or less appropriate men—some too old, some far too young—but never had she slept with another woman’s husband, and she’d vowed she never would. She’d grown up hearing women crying over men: her mother over unfaithful lovers, and all the pretty women her father, a compulsive Don Juan, had romanced, and moved in with, and left … No, she would not be the cause of another woman’s tears.
    Cold rain, as bleak and pitiless as her memories, slashed at the plane’s windows. The plane landed. Joanna walked down the long ramp into the terminal, automatically calling out goodbyes and thanks to Hank and the other members of the crew, already mentally making a list of single men she should start seeing immediately, must start sleeping with, so she could exorcise herself of her desire for Carter Amberson.
    As she moved briskly along, she was unusually aware of the health of her body easily bearing the weight of her shoulder bag and briefcase, her skirt sliding sleekly over her long strong legs. This body that did her bidding so well—how long had it been since she’d pleasured it? Since she’d had a lover? She couldn’t remember. Automatically she received and ignored the stares of the people in the crowd who recognized her. She kept her face, partially hidden by sunglasses even on this rainy day, blank. How would it feel to lie next to Carter? She could not give in to such thoughts, not even in fantasies. She had to get control of herself.
    She was in such a state of miserably determined renunciation that when she turned out of the gate into the broad terminal, she nearly plowed past a man before realizing it was Carter. He reached out for her. Grabbing her shoulders, he stopped her in her tracks.
    She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
    Carter looked terrible and wonderful, simultaneously pale and shadowed, his usually immaculate clothes as rumpled as if he’d slept in them.
    “I need