Brightest and Best Read Online Free PDF

and smoothed her skirt, trying to will her heart rate to slow. “I’ll only be a minute.”
    By the time she returned with a tray of pie and coffee to set on the low table beside the swing, he sat on what Margaret had come to think of as Gray’s side. He slowed the sway to take a plate from her and wait for her to sit next to him with her own pie. Margaret played with her fork for a moment while Gray filled his mouth with steaming fruit and crust.
    “Mmm. You make a fine pie, Miss Margaret Simpson.”
    “Why, thank you.”
    Gray started the swing again, a gentle, fluid wobble in rhythm with the motion of his fork rising and falling. They sat in shadows now.
    “I trust you know that I come around for more than your cooking,” Gray said, his eyes looking straight down the length of the porch.
    “I rather hoped that was the case.” Beside him, Margaret pushed a clump of blackberries first one direction and then the other. “Would you like some coffee?”
    “In a minute,” he said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you first.”
    “Yes?” She felt his eyes on her and turned her head to meet his gaze.
    “I wonder if I might express my growing affection for you.”
    Margaret’s breathing stilled.
Affection.
    Gray set his pie plate on the tray and took Margaret’s. Had he seen her tremble? She hoped not.
    “If I have your kind permission,” he said, “I would very much like to kiss you.”
    “You do,” she whispered.
    Gray laid three long fingers at the side of her chin and leaned toward her. Margaret hadn’t been kissed in years, and no other beau’s kiss had been as delicious as this one. Gray lingered long enough to be convincing, but not so long as to raise alarms as to his intentions.
    “I’ll go to bed a happy man tonight.”

    Whether or not Gray slept, Margaret did not know. As many times as she closed her eyes determined to sleep, each time she shut out the shadows of her bedroom, she remembered his kiss.
    It was good to know she had not turned into a dried-up spinster who could not make a man feel something.
    Growing affection.
That was the way he put it. Not pity for her age. Not convenience because he didn’t know another suitable woman. Affection.
    Still glowing from her dreams, Margaret rose early on Friday morning, dressed carefully, gave thanks for her breakfast, made notes about what she must accomplish—no matter how distracted she was—and walked six blocks to Seabury Consolidated Grade School. The principal offered two hours this morning for teachers who wanted to enter the building.
    Margaret carried her leather satchel, which contained the composition book she used for her lesson plans, a set of colorful alphabet cards to attach to the classroom walls, and a rag and tin of vegetable soap with which she would polish the desks in the room. Every six-year-old deserved to find school a cheery, welcoming place on the first day of a robust educational career.
    She had reached the desks in the third row when footsteps sounded in the hall.
    Good.
It was time other teachers joined her determination to have classrooms ready when school resumed. The building’s custodian had mopped and scrubbed the rooms thoroughly in June after school let out and undertaken a list of minor repairs, but it was up to the trained teaching staff to be ready at the first bell.
    The footfalls ceased right outside her classroom door, and Margaret looked up from her task. Immediately, she abandoned her vegetable soap and stood erect.
    “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said.
    Principal Tarkington stepped into the room with the school district superintendent, whom Margaret had met only once or twice in a room full of other teachers.
    “Mr. Brownley asked me for a recommendation,” the principal said, “and I have suggested he speak with you.”
    “Of course,” Margaret said, though she could not imagine what the superintendent would need her help with.
    “I have some telephone calls to return,” Mr.