Read Online Dreams Are Not Enough by Jacqueline Briskin - Free Book Online

found herself in a kind of sitting room approximately twice as large as their cottage and furnished with wicker and bright plaids. A row of swimsuits hung from wooden pegs. Three cotton-ruffled numbers for little girls. Two out sizes with skirts to cover dimpled, matronly thighs. She tried on the remaining four. The red and the pink bikini were both far too loose. The black one-piece knit was too tight on top. The white Lastex, also one-piece, fitted to perfection. It dipped to a deep V between her breasts, while cutouts revealed the curves where her waist met her hips. Turning this way and that on her bare feet to view her image in the mirror, she had to admit that the suit was a knockout on her. Then she frowned uncertainly. Would Barry get that embarrassed little smile when she emerged?
    A rap sounded on the door.
    “It’s me, Hap. I was getting worried. You decent?”
    “I’m not quite sure.”
    He came in, staring at her.
    “Hey,” he whispered.
    “Hey.”
    “It’s okay on me?” She could feel herself coloring. The intensity of his gaze embarrassed her, yet at the same time she felt a delightful melting in the pit of her stomach.
    “Spectacular.” His voice was husky, and he seemed incapable of looking away from her.
    “Yes, but am I … you know … cheap?”
    “You’re incredible is all. Liz Taylor, only younger and more gorgeous.
    Take it from me, Dad’d sign you right away. “
    “Sometimes Barry” -She stopped abruptly, before she could say anything that would imply disloyalty.
    “I really don’t know anything about style.”
    Hap’s head tilted, and his gray eyes were no longer crinkled into a smile. He had very dark lashes for somebody with such light hair.
    Alone in the room with him, she was acutely conscious of how his suit bared him, the odor of salt and tanning lotion on him, and how large and muscular he was. Barry’s narrow height did not make her feel diminutive like this, or fragile and weak.
    “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.
    “Me? Why should I be shook? Because I’ve never been in a house like this? Or because PD’s father is a famous director? Or because your father owns Magnum”
    “He works for Magnum,” Hap interrupted.
    “He’s vice president in charge of production. It’s a job like anyone else’s.”
    “Yes. Except he runs a big studio.”
    Hap sat in one of the chairs, apparently unconcerned about the effects of suntan oil on the plaid fabric.
    “He didn’t always.”
    “No, he was a boy. A rich boy.”
    “Is that what Barry told you?”
    “We don’t talk much about families.” The way Barry kept silent about his made it clear that questions on the subject were off limits:
    the sum total of her knowledge about her husband’s background was that his Jewish grandparents had disowned his mother for marrying Tim Cordiner.
    Hap’s thoughtful gaze seemed to go with his size, and maybe for that reason the way his gray eyes remained on her, rather than draining her limited supply of self-confidence infused her with more of the commodity. She sat on a wicker ottoman.
    “But I’m interested in knowing.”
    “My grandparents left Hungary when Dad was a few months old,” Hap said.
    “The name, incidentally, wasn’t Cordiner, but some unpronounceable mouthful that the immigration official wrote down as Cordiner. They were starving—the local baron had sold the two fields where they grew rye out from under them. Grandpa became a contract laborer at a Pennsylvania steel mill” — “Contract laborer?”
    “In those days the mills paid the passage for cheap foreign labor. In return grandfather agreed to work seven years for a pittance. The only hitch was that the mill owned the town. Rents and prices were exorbitant and Grandpa never did work his way out of debt. There was no money for luxuries like medicine or doctors. Grandma had nine children. Only Dad, Aunt Lily and Uncle Tim survived.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “It gets