Promises to Keep by Rose Marie Ferris Read Free Book Online Page A

said she'd always been closemouthed about your father," Garth replied, "and evidently, as her illness progressed, her personality changed, and she became even more secretive and suspicious. She had a number of strokes, and I got the impression that in addition to that, she may have been senile. She was well into her seventies."
    Introspectively she murmured, "Altogether I must have lived with her about seventeen years."
    "Yes, about that long."
    "That explains it then."
    "Explains what?" Garth quickly probed. "Does the countryside seem familiar to you?"
    "In a way," she answered vaguely, searching for words that would express her reaction to the region. "It's not that I recognize anything. It's more a feeling I have of—well, of coming home, I guess."
    Both of them were lost in their own thoughts after that and they exchanged no further conversation until Garth had signaled for the check. While they stood at the cash register waiting for the hostess to bring Garth's change, he handed her their motel key.
    "You could stand to have an early night," he said. "Why don't you go on ahead and turn in."
    She looked up at him, puzzled. "Aren't you coming?"
    "I want to make a few telephone calls first," he explained. "I'll be along soon."
    Partly because she was so sleepy and partly because she recognized that this turn of events would help allay her discomfort over sharing the room with Garth, Julie didn't ask him why he'd elected to use the pay phone in the lobby when it would have been more convenient for him to make his calls from the telephone in their room.

    After nearly a month of rushed morning showers, the leisureliness of a bath before retiring was heavenly and Julie stayed in the tub until she was yawning and more than ready for bed.
    Unfortunately, while she was brushing her hair dry, she looked at herself in the mirror, and what she saw shocked her awake. There were still hollows beneath her cheekbones and mauve shadows under her eyes, but there was more spirit—more sparkle— in her face than she could recall having seen there before.
    Was this rebirth solely a result of being away from the hospital, or was it due to Garth's company? Though she pretended to contemplate this, she realized she was kidding herself. She knew the answer very well, and she found it unnerving that in one short day Garth should have had such an impact on her.
    She'd never looked at herself in a full-length mirror before and she felt uncomfortable as she did so now. Perhaps if she started from the floor and worked her way up, it would seem less vain. She tried to judge her figure objectively and concluded it wasn't half bad. A little on the thin side maybe, but one might even say it was quite nice.
    She saw that she had small, high-arched feet, finely turned ankles, and long shapely legs that flared softly at the hips. From what she could make out through the folds of the towel, her waist appeared to be hand-span-narrow. And her breasts seemed to be nicely rounded—again based on what the thickness of the towel permitted her to see.
    In fact, she amended, as she dared to view herself all at once from the neck down, her figure could be considered damned good!
    She badly wanted to know if the reality of her body without the towel lived up to the promise she thought she detected with it. After squaring her shoulders and tilting up her chin, she prepared to peel the towel away and was struck by the combativeness of her posture.
    Why should she feel this reluctance to let the towel drop? Even the notion that she might do so caused her face to flame with color.
    "Heavens!" she murmured. She wasn't all that prudish, was she? She was behaving like some Victorian maiden—which she damned well couldn't be. Not Victorian in these modern times and certainly, having been married to Garth, no maiden!
    With all the strength at her disposal, she willed herself to lower the towel. She was dismayed to find she still couldn't do it. Something inside wouldn't