Four Seasons of Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

Prix, huh? If it weren’t for me, you would’ve failed French!”
    “If it weren’t for you, I’d have gone for a swim by now,” He
said with a sly grin, moving toward the side of the bridge as if he were about
to leap.
    “Don’t!” she cried, jumping to her feet and grabbing his
arm. “Please don’t.”
    He looked at her long white fingers on his arm: his arms
were growing into the tan and lithe arms of a young man who spent his time
working outdoors; her hands were growing into the hands of a proper young woman
who spent her time studying and attending social galas. In that simple gesture,
Catherine had unknowingly magnified the difference between them, but he’d never
loved her more.
    “Catherine…” he began.
    “ Shhh ,” she said, holding her
finger to his lips. Her green eyes shone brightly, and he lost himself in their
spell. Leo leaned down, cupped her chin in his hand, and kissed her lightly on
the lips, the shiver coursing across their skin was like a current, starting
somewhere deep inside and bounding them like an electric charge.
    Catherine pulled away first as they stared at each other for
a moment, speechless. She touched her lips as if there might be traces of magic
there.
    “What was that?” she whispered, a little breathless.
    “That,” he said, “was our first kiss.”
     
    *
     
    Later that year, Catherine almost lost him forever. It was
February of 1941, mere weeks before Leo’s sixteenth birthday. He came home from
school one day to find his mother packing a suitcase. By now, Leo was used to
her mood swings but hadn’t seen his mother this giddy in a long time.
    “ Caro mio ,” she told him,
“my dear” in Italian. She held his face tightly between her hands. “Anton has
proposed to me.” Anton, a salesman from Boston, was one of Deborah’s many
suitors since her marriage had crumbled.
    “You’re getting married?” Leo asked.
    She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, he has invited us both to
live with him in Boston. He has a beautiful brownstone on the harbor. Won’t
that be lovely?”
    Leo didn’t know what to say; Deborah sensed his hesitance.
    “Unless you want to stay here with your
father. But surely, you don’t want anything to do with that man.”
    “I don’t know what I want,” Leo stammered, as he backed out
the door.
    He ran without looking back, all the way to Catherine’s
house, his mind and heart in a tangled frenzy. He threw a flurry of pebbles at
her window until she ran outside, alarmed.
    “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
    “My mother’s moving to Boston,” he blurted. “She wants me to
come.”
    Staggering forward a few steps, Catherine felt stricken. “I
need to sit down,” she said, and Leo guided her toward an old stump.
    They talked well into the evening, Leo admitting that,
although he and his father were alike, they did not get along. But Leo did not
intend to leave Woodsville; as long as Catherine was there, that was his home.
    As she watched Leo trudge back through the woods in the
waning light, Catherine could not account for the wild beating of her heart.
She had been afraid, afraid that he would choose to move to Boston with his
mother, and although Catherine feared the drunken, uncouth ways of Ellis
Taylor, she was deliriously happy Leo had chosen to stay. Only then did she
realize the intensity of her feelings for Leo as she put a hand on her heart
and promised herself that she would not deny her affections again, no matter
what the cost. Sadly, it was a promise she would break. Many,
many times.
    Josiah Woods was sitting at the kitchen table when his
daughter crept back inside the house.
    “Who were you with?” he asked.
    “No one, Papa.”
    “Don’t lie to me.”
    She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and
pulled her in close.
    “Were you with that Taylor boy again?”
    Catherine chose her words carefully. “He’s not a bad boy. I
know you think so, because of his parentage and his background, but