San Antonio Rose

San Antonio Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: San Antonio Rose Read Online Free PDF
Author: Fran Baker
screen, feeling herself cross the invisible line from girl to woman when the signal came and she snuck down the stairs, out the front door, and into Rafe’s loving arms.
    The room had been redecorated since then, the teenager’s clutter having given way to artfully arranged family treasures, and the canopy bed having been replaced by an antiquecherry four-poster. But those memories and others swirled around her now, dancing like dust motes in the shafts of sunshine streaming through the lace-clad windows.
    As she put her hat back in its flowered box on the closet shelf, Jeannie couldn’t help but recall how carefully she’d chosen the white sundress she’d worn for their first night together, how nervously she’d done up the dainty buttons that covered her breasts and how deftly Rafe had undone them, how tenderly he’d lowered her to the moonlit grass and made her his.
    Determined not to dwell on the past, Jeannie stepped to her dresser and repinned her hair before wandering restlessly to the window that overlooked the ranch yard and parting the curtains. But as the breeze picked up and she watched the dust rise off the gravel drive, the past came back to her in a rush of images.…
    She could see Rafe behind the wheel of the Studebaker he’d repainted a dark blue and commuted to and from college in. She could hear him gunning the motor once—his secret “I’m home” to her—before he killed it. She could smell his powerful masculine scent and feel his strong arms holding her as they’d lain in the backseat, planning for that distant day when they could bring their love out in the open and face the world as one.
    His sexuality—sharp as musk—had filled her senses, blinding her to their differentcultural backgrounds and religious beliefs, deafening her to Big Tom’s warnings to steer clear of “that damn greaser” and his dire threats of what would happen if she didn’t. She’d muted her own desire to shout back “I love him!” and had worried constantly that she would be caught sneaking out to keep their secret assignations. She would have risked anything, even her father’s wrath, to be with Rafe.
    But one night she had waited for his signal in vain. The luminous hands on her bedside clock had crawled toward dawn as she’d kept her lonely vigil. Eventually she’d given up on seeing him and cried herself to sleep.
    The next morning, when she awoke to find him gone, something inside her had died. And something else had lived.
    “Jeannie?”
    At the sound of Webb’s muted voice and sharp knock she snapped back to the present, surprised to find that only minutes had passed instead of years. She spun away from the window just as he opened the door.
    In the few seconds it took to reorient herself, Webb’s eyes circled the room that he, like Rafe, had never set foot in. He took in everything, from the fringed Turkish carpet that covered the parquet floor, to the Victorian dollhouse she’d found in the attic and refurbished, to the Bakelite accessories that served as her vanity set. For some reason it rankledto think he should be the first to see the heirlooms she held so dear.
    Nodding as if to say he approved of her eclectic taste, his gaze moved back to her, standing beside the window. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
    “I’m sorry.” A guilty flush crept up her face, as if she’d been caught doing something indecent. “I just needed to get away from the noise and the crowd.”
    “I understand,” he said soothingly.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked, thinking of Tony now.
    “No.” He smiled his steady smile, putting her fears on that front to rest. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”
    “Good-bye?” She looked at him with a blank expression.
    Webb patted the beeper that he wore on his belt and that connected him to the hospital. “Duty pages.”
    Jeannie dared not think how relieved she was that she wouldn’t be torn between him and Rafe the rest of the day. Her nerves
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