Read Online Like Dandelion Dust by Karen Kingsbury - Free Book Online Page A

“What did they name you, little boy?” Softly, with great care, she brought the photo to her lips and kissed it. “Have they told you about me?”
    At times like this, the ache was so great she could hardly stand it. She eased the picture back beneath the clip and forced herself to look at the first pages in the file, the couple’s bios. Back then he was thirty and she was twenty-eight. The woman was a dark-haired version of Kate Hudson, with laughing eyes and a carefree face. The man looked a little like Rip. Same rounded shoulders and dark blond hair.
    They were successful, no question. He was an international businessman making more money a year than Wendy would ever see in ten. His smile had Rip’s charm, but this man had obviously found a way to turn the charm into more than cheap one-night stands. Their house was a three-story on the edge of a lake in southwest Florida. They had a boat and nice cars and all the stuff rich people like to own. But it wasn’t their looks or their success or even their stuff that sold Wendy on them. It was what they’d written about themselves. She moved her eyes halfway down the page and began to read.
    Hi. This is Jack. I work for Reylco, Inc., as manager of international corporate accounts, overseeing sales of pharmaceuticals. Reylco is the world’s largest supplier of cancer drugs. Okay, that’s the boring stuff. Here’s the rest. My work schedule’s flexible. Sure, I travel a lot, but I take my wife with me half the time, and when we have children I’ll take them, too.
    Travel’s great, but home’s better. I love Saturday bike rides and Sunday afternoon football games and the smell of my wife’s spaghetti sometime mid-week. Yes, she makes a lot of spaghetti and sometimes she burns the French bread, but I love her anyway. If I wanted gourmet dinners I wouldn’t have married her.
    Everyone thinks I’m safe and conservative, and I guess I am. I’m a stickler for seatbelts and helmets and life jackets. But here’s a secret. Sometimes at night Molly and I take our speedboat out and open up the engine. Just open it up all the way, blazing through the darkness, wind in our hair, stars in our eyes. I know, I know. It’s a little dangerous. But out there the corporate world falls away and it’s just us, loving life, loving each other, living in the moment.
    The guys at work know the other me. The boating thing would surprise them.
    Anyway, I guess I should tell you I’m a romantic. I write music and play the guitar, and if I’m sure no one else is in the house, I sing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I dream about walking away from the whole corporate game, the long hours and heavy demands, and taking my family far, far away. We’d set up on some deserted beach on an island out in the middle of the ocean and I’d drink raspberry iced tea and write songs all day.
    But I’ll probably save that for our vacations.
    See? That’s the romantic in me. One time I tricked my wife into coming out onto the porch when she thought I was in Berlin on business. I had a CD player ready, and when she walked out the door I held up a sign that read, “Wanna dance?” We laughed and looked into each other’s eyes and waltzed on the porch that night. Fifteen minutes later I handed her the CD, gave her a kiss, and caught a late flight out to Germany.
    That’s how I like to live.
    We stay fit, because it feels better to be healthy. But I have a confession. I hate exercise. I used the stair-step machine at the gym for a while, but now my wife and I wake up early and jog together, six days out of seven. I still hate it, but with her there, I laugh a lot. They say laughing burns calories and it’s good for your liver. So I guess we’ll keep jogging.
    I almost forgot. We have a yellow Labrador retriever named Gus. He’s part of the family, but he’s willing to give up the crib when the baby comes.
    That’s about it. Oh, one more thing. I want children more than I want my next breath.