Summer Breeze Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Josh?”
    “I’m going to stay down here. I’ve got some work to catch up on.”
    Morgan bit back a bitter retort. He was always working, always in his study, even tonight. Since their move here, Josh had spent almost every night on the computer. Sometimes just an hour, often three or four. She didn’t nag him about it. She’d known when he accepted the position that he’d have enormous, time-consuming responsibilities. Still.
    Sometimes, when she’d had a bad day, missed her job and herfriends, and allowed herself to morph into her Mad Morgan self, she wondered if work was all he was doing on his computer. Perhaps he was emailing some gorgeous, sexy secretary from the office—but that was just ridiculous ! She’d never had anxieties about Josh’s fidelity before; she knew he loved her and adored Petey.
    She stomped back to bed, shoved her glasses on, grabbed up the Transfederal Task Force on Optimizing Biosafety and Biocontainment Oversight report, and settled in. She would read until Josh came up to bed, and then she’d surprise him with an attack of sweet sex like she used to before they were married.
    After an hour, she fell asleep, with the bedside lamp still on and her glasses sliding down her nose.

2

    S unday morning, Natalie woke late. Through the open window, a fresh breeze drifted in. She stretched and curled on her side, watching the sunlight flicker against the wall as the wind played with the curtain. An unfamiliar sensation possessed her. After a few moments she identified it, cautiously, as happiness.
    When had she had such fun with so many fascinating people? At first, Natalie admitted to herself, her inner snob had been unimpressed by petite Bella with her Alice in Wonderland blond hair and innocent blue eyes, but when they began to talk, Bella turned out to be clever and funny and not unworldly at all. Bella’s boyfriend, Aaron, was smart, charming, and incredibly interesting. He was an architect who knew a lot about art and the relationship between the two. Aaron had traveled to Milwaukee to see the Santiago Calatrava pavilion for its famous art museum, and his description made Natalie want to jump on the first plane to Wisconsin. The O’Keefes were cool, too, fascinating and humming with an enigmatic inner tension so palpable Natalie thought she could have painted an abstract inspired by the couple’s dynamics.
    Bella and Ben’s mother, Louise, was a gift, the perfect neighbor, kind and informative, generous and capable, with an interesting face. Natalie would love to paint her portrait someday.
    And there was Ben.
    Her heart did a drumroll.
    She tossed herself out of bed. It was summer, she’d met some brilliant people, and she was living in a spectacular house.
    She enjoyed sleeping naked on Aunt Eleanor’s million-count sheets, but now, as she roved through a house with so many windows, she needed to wear something, so she pulled on her ancient red dragon kimono and padded downstairs to make coffee. She stepped out onto the deck. Already the lake was alive: Nearby a couple stroked through the water in a canoe, and in the distance a Sunfish sail flashed.
    Only a month ago, she’d been sharing a one-room apartment with another waitress in TriBeCa, working at a Starbucks during the day and babysitting at night. For almost ten years, this had been her routine in New York or Boston: a year, or two of working as hard as she could to make enough money to take art classes and paint for as long as her savings held out.
    She’d known since junior high that she wanted to paint. She’d worked after high school at a drugstore lunch counter, taking her earnings immediately to the bank down the street to tuck away in her savings account. She’d denied herself cool clothes, bought no makeup or nail polish, and when friends took bus trips down to Boston, she went to the library and spent the weekend poring over art books. When she graduated from high school in Maine, she’d saved enough money