The Winter Man by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

boy in foster care got her pregnant and tried to force her to have an abortion. She wouldn’t. She was deeply religious and she saw it as a sin if she went for a termination. She told the boy. So he made threats and she felt that she had nowhere to turn.” He sighed, his eyes sad. “She would never have done that if she hadn’t been half out of her mind. She thought of suicide as a sin, too. But in the end, she took the only way out she could find.”
    â€œI hope he ended up in prison,” she muttered. “That boy, I mean.”
    He made a deep sound. “He did. And shortly afterward, he died mysteriously. Strange things happen to bad people.”
    She wondered if Tony had any hand in the boy’s demise, but she didn’t want to ask.
    There was a knock at the door. Tony sprang to his feet, grinning. “Food,” he guessed.
    He peered out the keyhole and saw the trolley, and the waiter. He opened the door and let him in.
    * * *
    Lunch was delicious. Millie had never had food served on a white linen cloth, with heavy utensils and dishesunder metal covers. It was a revelation. She munched her salad with obvious enjoyment and went into ecstasies about the tenderness of the steak and the delicious baked potato. Even the coffee was wonderful.
    Tony found her obvious delight in the meal humbling. He took fancy food and fancy hotels for granted. He’d long since become blasé about such things. But Millie came from a poor background, and lived on a meager budget. He imagined she’d never stepped into the lobby of a luxury hotel, much less been a guest in one. He pictured taking her out for a spin in his convertible, or taking her sailing on his yacht down in the Bahamas and lying with her in the sun. She had a delightful body. He wondered how it would feel to make love to her on a sandy tropical beach. Then he wondered what the hell he was thinking of. She wasn’t his sort of woman. Millie would never go to bed with a man she hadn’t married, no matter what her feelings for him were.
    That brought back a comment of Frank’s, that Millie had once been in love with Tony. He recalled her shy presence at his foster mother’s house from time to time as an invited guest, her radiance when he dropped in at the library to see his parent and Millie happened to be around. He must have been blind, he decided, not to have noticed how his presence illuminated the quiet, introverted woman across from him at the table.
    Millie stopped eating and stared at him, disconcerted byhis unsmiling, level stare. “Am I…doing something wrong?” she asked at once, her attention diverted to the silverware. “I don’t know about fancy place settings—”
    â€œIt’s just lunch, Millie,” he interrupted. “I wasn’t studying your eating habits. I was thinking about something, in the past.”
    â€œOh.” She was watchful, unconvinced.
    He sipped coffee. “Why didn’t you tell me what John was doing to you when I came home two years ago?” he asked.
    She felt the question keenly. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You’ve never liked me.”
    He frowned. “I didn’t know you.”
    â€œAnd didn’t want to, either.” She laughed hollowly. “I was the invisible woman whenever you came home to visit your foster mother. She’d invite me over sometimes, because she knew I had no life to speak of. You never even noticed that I was around. You only stayed long enough to say a few words and then you were off on some hot date that Frank had fixed up for you, from the bar where he was a bouncer.”
    That made him feel worse. “I didn’t want to get serious about anyone,” he said after a minute. “Those glittery women are fine for a good time. You don’t plan a future around them.”
    He was insinuating that they were fine for a one-night stand. The thought embarrassed her, made