Interior Designs Read Online Free PDF Page A

from this reunion. Tria wasn't supposed to dye her hair red. Elbert wasn't supposed to transform himself into Bert and end up being the best-looking guy in the class. Chuck wasn't supposed to go prematurely bald. You weren't supposed to become a dedicated career woman who won't even accept a date, and I wasn't supposed to—" But here, after inciting her interest, he stopped in mid-sentence and gazed out the window. A freighter slipped across the invisible horizon, a line of lights suspended in black space.
    "You weren't supposed to what?" she asked in spite of herself. Their reflections stared back at them from the window, and his revealed the brooding lines in his face.
    "Do you want to know my story?" he asked softly.
    When she nodded mutely, pulling her eyes away from their reflections in the dark window, Drew said carefully, "I was married and had a child, and I worked very hard to build a secure future for the three of us. That's how I thought of all the time I put in, all the hours away from home. I was working for our future. Then my wife left and took my daughter, and my future went with them."
    Something tightened in her chest, and inadvertently her eyes flashed to his hand curved around his glass. The ring finger, with its revealing white line, brought back memories she'd prefer to forget.
    Terry Ballard's ring finger had sported such a line. Terry had surfaced in her life at a time when she was vulnerable. Her parents were gone, her secure job in California left behind for the uncertainties of starting a business. Terry was a landscape architect with a prominent firm, and Cathryn had hired him to work out a landscaping concept for a house with an atrium. She'd been lonely, unsure of herself, and open to new relationships. Terry was not only handsome but affable and interested in her work.
    His wife, he'd confided, didn't understand him. Why did she fall for that old line? Because he hadn't said it quite that way, not at first anyhow. He was lonely, he'd told her, and his wife was busy with civic responsibilities. A month or so after he met Cathryn, he filed for divorce. She had scrupulously remained uninvolved until the divorce was final a couple of months later.
    They began meeting for lunch, for dinner, for late-night drinks. He rushed her with a passion that could only mean he loved her. He told her that often enough, and she was flattered.
    And the boys, his darling little boys. Cathryn liked them a lot. They had been three and five years old—round, chubby kids with pink cheeks and pudgy limbs. She'd fallen for them the way she'd fallen for Terry: hard.
    She'd swallowed Terry Ballard's hook and gobbled up his fish story. She'd listened, sympathized, and shored up Terry's precious ego. She'd loved him.
    And then Terry called her three days after their last date to tell her he'd just married a woman he'd met at the dog track two weeks before. He'd acted hurt when Cathryn was too speechless to offer congratulations.
    Cathryn had a hard time getting over Terry, but it had been just as hard to get over the boys. She still remembered the way Dante's quick smile had captured her heart and how Jayden's sticky fingers felt so trusting when they were clasped around her thumb.
    Well, she'd been stupid, and she'd been stung. But she would never be that dumb again. In the process of the break-up, she'd also gotten smart. She stayed away from men who were trying to get over past relationships.
    Yet, she realized with misgivings, here she was, doing what she had promised herself she would never do again. She was listening to the anguished words of yet another man whose marriage had failed. And his story made her sad, which was not a good sign.
    But as her spirits were doing a nosedive, Drew's were lifting. He'd managed to tell her the worst thing that had happened in his life, and it hadn't been so bad. Always before, he had felt guilty whenever he told someone, as though it were his never being home that made his wife