Shadows of Yesterday
Page 33

“Stick to the subject please,” she said with mock severity. Then she shook her head in bafflement and idly played with the remaining food on her plate with her fork. “You’re quite wealthy, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been very lucky in some investments,” he hedged.
“And you get paid a lot for the work you do.”
“Yes.”
“The airplane business…?”
“A buddy and I started a charter service a few years ago with two planes. Now we have four. It’s been a lucrative sideline.”
“Yes, I can see it has,” she commented, her eyes taking in the evidence of his success. “You must stay busy all the time.”
He reached across the table to take her hand. “We’ll work it out, Leigh. It’s worth it, don’t you think, to try to work it out?”
She wouldn’t commit herself to an answer just yet, so she avoided it by asking another question. “What other enterprises do you have going?”
She knew he didn’t want to talk about his businesses by the way he avoided her eyes. “I own some land here and there. I haven’t had much to spend my money on, so I’ve invested it.”
“Land? Grazing land, commercial property, what?”
He shrugged self-effacingly. “A little of both I guess.”
“And your father’s cattle ranch and the oil wells?”
“I’m his partner.”
Her fingers covered her mouth and she expelled her breath on a long, shuddering sigh. “Leigh.” He took the hand she held against her mouth and grasped it hard. “Does my bank account bother you? Would you rather I were a mechanic and nothing more?”
“No, Chad, no it’s not that, though I admit I’m a little intimidated by… by all this. Greg, as dangerous as his job was, was still a government employee. I just can’t get used to the idea of such affluence.”
“Don’t think about it. It means nothing. If I were a mechanic barely scraping out a living from odd jobs and had you and Sarah, I’d feel like the richest man alive. And if I didn’t have you, none of this,” his hand swept the room, “would be worth a damn to me. Today, for the first time, this house has been important. And only then as a home to bring you and Sarah to.”
The blue eyes that could glow with passion now shone with conviction. He meant what he said and she knew he meant it. Tears blurred his image as she reached out to touch his beautiful mouth. “Oh, Chad…”
* * *
At Leigh’s front door, he kissed her with a tenderness devoid of passion. “I hate to go. I want to spend the night, but I don’t want to gamble with your reputation. We’ve already given the gossip mongers material to last a month because of last night.”
“I’m willing to take a chance.”
He shook his head. “I’m not. Not with you. We won’t live together until you’re my wife. And you will be, Leigh. You will be.” He kissed her again before turning away.
 
 
Chapter Eight

He telephoned just as Leigh was snapping Sarah into her playsuit after her bath the next morning. “Hi. Are you up?”
“You should know better than to ask. Sarah is a live-in alarm clock.”
He laughed. “We’ve been invited to a party this weekend. Friday night to be exact. Will you come?”
“What kind of party?”
“A dinner party for three friends of mine who coincidentally share the same birthday.”
She pieced together a mental image of a dining room full of people like Bubba’s wife and her friends. Sophisticated. Wealthy. She would have nothing suitable to wear.
“It’s to be sort of an indoor cookout. Very casual.”
Instead of gold and diamonds, they’d be wearing their silver and turquoise. Leigh hadn’t lived under a rock, and her mother, with all her pretentiousness, had drilled flawless social graces into her. Yet she knew she wouldn’t belong in a room with rich oil and cattle people. She’d felt intimidated enough visiting Chad’s house and seeing his wealth.
“I don’t know, Chad,” she hedged, groping for a reasonable excuse to say no. “I don’t know what I’d do with Sarah. She”
“Can go along. This is a family fling. Kids are invited, too. There’ll be hordes of them and Sarah will be by far the best behaved.”
“Well”
“End of discussion. I just wanted to let you know about it so you could plan on going. Now, what are you doing for lunch today?”
They spent more time together that week than they spent apart. He came to eat lunch with her every day, taking her out of the mall to a nearby restaurant or sharing sandwiches on a bench near the fountain in the shopping center.
He insisted on taking her and Sarah out to dinner rather than having Leigh cook each night. She was nervous the first time they took Sarah to a restaurant, but the baby surprised her and behaved remarkably well. While she and Chad ate Mexican food, Sarah gurgled happily to a piñata dangling from the ceiling.
“I told you so,” Chad said, nodding toward the contented baby.
“She’s only behaving well to spite me.”
Chad laughed and wrinkled his brow in perplexity. “I’m sure there’s some logic there, but I fail to see it.”
Leigh laughed with him. “You’d have to be a mother to understand. Don’t let me forget to thank Amelia for showing us how to secure Sarah in a high chair.”
Their evenings were quiet and intimate, though Chad always left early. Leave-taking was an almost painful ordeal and they clung to each other desperately. But Chad didn’t make any sexual overtures beyond warm kisses and close embraces. It was as though he wanted to show her that their sexual compatibility wasn’t the only reason he wanted to marry her.
Curled up together on her sofa, they watched television, though rarely could she have later said what the programming was about. She was conscious only of his nearness, the security she felt being held in his arms. His presence added a new dimension to her life, heightened it, broadened it.
Perversely, while she came to depend on and enjoy the luxury of ease he added to her life, she resented it, too.
He accompanied her to the grocery store, carrying Sarah on his shoulder when she became fussy riding in the cart. Leigh hated to admit how much less complicated things were to handle with four hands instead of two. He hauled in the sacks of groceries from the car trunk and put them away in the cupboards while she tended to a querulous baby. Before Chad, Leigh would have had to postpone one of those unpleasant jobs while doing the other. In the long run, she would have had to do both.