Honey and Smoke by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online

Society. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work for the society myself. When Faux Paw’s owner dumped her there, I was first in line to adopt her.”
    “Do I get the impression that you’re part of the Atlanta blue blood scene?”
    Betty stood, smiling sardonically. “I’m only blue-bloodedon Mother’s side of the family. I’m a Quint on the other side, you know. Pioneer stock. Nouveau riche. My father made his money selling real estate to Yankees.”
    “Damn! A scalawag who sold the home place to carpetbaggers!”
    She couldn’t help laughing. “Not quite. He’s a southern gentleman with a keen business mind, that’s all. I inherited it, if I do say so myself.”
    “So what was it like growing up half blue-blooded and half nouveau riche?”
    “Oh, just the usual. Vacations in Europe, season tickets to the symphony, weekends spent playing tennis at the club. I dated boys who had Roman numerals behind their last names.”
    “Boys with names like ‘Snedley Beausquart the Fourth,’ ” Max said slyly.
    “They weren’t
that
pompous.”
    He crossed one ankle over the other and regarded her with half-shut eyes, making her feel so awkward that she lowered her gaze and pretended to study her mug. He chuckled softly. “So why haven’t you done your duty and married a Snedley by now?”
    “Most of the Snedleys were boring and narrow-minded.” She took a swallow from her mug, raised carefully guarded eyes to his, and said flatly, “So I caught myself a free-spirited musician. Or he caught me. I’m not sure which.”
    “Hmmm. You married him?”
    “Oh, no. We were too cool to get married. At least he was. We had an … an understanding, you see. Unfortunately, I understood that one day we’d get married, and he understood that one day he’d get a recording contract and move to Los Angeles.”
    “Alone?”
    “Oh, he asked me to come along. But I was tired of being a ‘significant other.’ I had started to feel like an awfully
insignificant
other.” Betty kept her expression neutral, but feelings of resentment rose inside her again, directed at Max and his carefree attitude. “I spent a lotof years telling myself that marriage didn’t matter. Well, I was lying to myself. It does matter, at least to me.”
    Abruptly she shook her head and looked heavenward. “Aaagh! I’m spilling my guts to a man who thinks weddings are a joke!” She leveled a hard gaze at Max, daring him to deny it.
    He didn’t take the dare. “They are a joke.”
    “Why?”
    “Because about half of all marriages end in divorce. Because a lot of people only get married out of loneliness, or because it makes sex convenient, or because their parents brainwashed them into believing that there’s something wrong with them if they
don’t
want to get married.”
    “You can’t tell me that you’ve never loved a woman and thought that it would be nice to spend the rest of your life with her.”
    “You’re right. But I can tell you that I’ve never seriously considered getting married. I live in the present. Marriage is based on fantasizing about the future.”
    “I bet a lot of women have left you, hmmm?”
    He chuckled coldly. “In the marines I was transferred to a new base every two or three years. I did most of the leaving, whether I wanted to or not.”
    “You don’t sound heartbroken.”
    “Sorry.” He drained his hot chocolate and reached around her to set the mug on the counter. “How heartbroken are you over the musician? Deathless love should have made you follow him to L.A. Maybe you didn’t love him as much as you think you did.”
    Betty straightened with ominous dignity. He was wrong, of course. “Don’t foist your cynical attitudes on me.”
    “A little defensive, are you? A sign of inner turmoil. Uncertainty? A niggling intuition that I’m right?”
    “It doesn’t really matter what you think of my reasons. I moved here to start something new, something permanent. I’m not going to waste any more time