Five Brides by Eva Marie Everson Read Free Book Online Page A

giver and as much of a friend as Joan could have asked for in such a short time in the States.
    Joan stood with her, picking up her own cup and saucer. “I’ll join you.” After they’d poured another cup for themselves, Joan turned to Betty. “You know? I only hope I can do something special for you one day, Betts.”
    Betty pretended to pick at the pink cashmere sweater hugging her frame. When she looked up again, she smiled in the easy way she had. “Who knows, Joan,” she said, her words not really forming a question. “Maybe one day you will.”

Betty’s mother’s idea of the perfect ending to Sunday Mass was going home to a brunch of eggs Benedict, served with fresh fruit and mimosas.
    Somehow, Betty found it rather odd, although she wasn’t sure if the problem fell on her mother’s need to have someone serve her an uptown drink or that she appeared completely incapable of a Sunday without the Volbrechts. She recognized, of course, that the Volbrechts were her parents’ oldest and dearest friends. But she also knew their desperation for marrying the two families. Literally.
    “Make an effort,” Mother hissed as they came through the front door. She pulled off her gloves and shirked out of the full-length mink Betty’s father had recently given her for absolutely no reason at all, he said, except that he loved his wife and the coat made her happy.
    “What does that mean?” Betty reached for the mink before slipping out of her cashmere coat. “Give me your gloves. I’ll put everything away,” she added, not waiting for an answer.
    “Where’s Adela?” her father barked, coming in behind them and closing the door. “Adela!”
    Betty took her mother’s gloves and clutch as she somehowmanaged to drape the fur and cashmere over her arm. “I’ve got it, Father,” she said.
    “Adela!” her father barked anyway.
    Betty was halfway up the stairs when the front door opened again. She turned to look over her shoulder, all the while keeping one hand on the banister. Gracefully, just as she’d been taught.
    “A vision of loveliness gliding up the staircase,” George Volbrecht called up to her. He smiled, his perfect white teeth made all the whiter against his suntanned skin. She returned the gesture, then turned to face forward and suppressed a snarl. By the time she returned downstairs, the family had gathered in the Florida room, which—like the rest of the house—was entirely too froufrou for Betty’s taste. George, who lounged like a cat in sunshine on an occasional chair, stood immediately.
    “A drink, Betty?”
    “Orange juice is fine,” she said, walking toward the wet bar. She waved a hand at him. “I can get it myself.”
    But George joined her anyway, standing so close that she could smell his aftershave.
    Betty poured the juice into a Tom Collins glass—one that came from her mother’s extraordinary collection of crystal. She held it up to the light coming through the window and studied it, weighed the heaviness of it.
    “What are you thinking?” George whispered.
    She peered up at him. Undeniably, he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever met, which was a big part of the problem she had with him. “Too handsome,” Adela had said to her once. “I don’t trust a man prettier than me.”
    Betty grinned at the memory.
    “What?” George said. “What’s so funny?”
    Betty shook her head. “Nothing. As for what I was thinking . . .”She took a sip of juice. “I was thinking that I’m as much at home holding a glass that cost a month of my salary as I am holding a tumbler I bought at the A&P.” She watched the features of his chiseled face grow rigid, then soften.
    “You like being the rebel, don’t you?” He chuckled.
    She took another sip. “I like being myself.”
    He turned and leaned his elbows against the edge of the bar, then crossed his legs at the ankles. “I’ve got a secret,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that their parents—all of whom