Read Online Romance Classics by Peggy Gaddis - Free Book Online Page B

hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that her knuckles were white with the strain.
    Mrs. Parker fluttered into the big, cool reception hall to greet her son, and was prettily distressed at sight of his untidiness, as she called it. Tip laughed and threatened her smooth, delicately powdered cheek with a grimy forefinger, as she cried out and drew back. And then over Tip’s shoulder she saw Phil and went stiff and white.
    Tip said gaily, “Miss Lucy, this is Mr. Donaldson — Phil Donaldson, from the mills. Or maybe you two have met?”
    Mrs. Parker nodded her smartly dressed head, her eyes glacial.
    “We’ve met,” she said and added stiffly, “How do you do, Mr. Donaldson?”
    “Good evening, Mrs. Parker,” said Phil politely.
    Tip grinned at his mother and made an impish pass at her with his grimy hand. “Don’t mind Miss Lucy, Phil. She’s shocked to the core that her son should yearn to get himself greasy and dirty learning things at the mills. She should have seen me in boot camp — on second thought, maybe it’s as well she didn’t. The shock might have proven disastrous.”
    He turned to Phil and said cordially, “Go in and make yourself at home, old man, while I get upstairs and into a hot tub. Be with you shortly.”
    He took the stairs two at a time, and Geraldine murmured an excuse and followed him. She felt she must have a few moments to pull herself together before she could face the evening.
    “My, my but you’re a pretty girl, Miss Gerry,” Tip greeted her later upstairs. “The prettiest girl I ever saw! I kind of like you!!”
    Geraldine managed a smile that he accepted as answer to his nonsense, and when they went into the living room, Tip’s arm lay carelessly about her slender waist.
    Mrs. Parker saw that and her eyes flashed triumphantly to Phil. But Phil was looking down at the cigarette he was just lighting and had apparently seen nothing.
    If there was an inescapable tension about the evening, Tip was unaware of it He was in gay spirits and he and Phil talked man talk, occasionally turning to Geraldine for a comment out of her own knowledge of affairs and machinery at the mills. After dinner, the two men disappeared into the library where they were to discuss some suggestion Tip had made for speeding up a certain operation in his department that would mean a saving of money.
    It was late when they emerged and Mrs. Parker, tight-lipped and frankly worried, had gone to bed.
    “There’s no need for you to drive me back to town, Tip,” Phil was saying as they came out of the library. “The taxi will be here in a few minutes, and I’ll be home before you could get the car out again.”
    And so, within a few minutes he was gone, and Tip came back to the terrace where Geraldine waited.
    The terrace was her favorite part of the house in summer. Built up a little above the garden, paved with wide flagstones, set in a crazy-quilt pattern, with little close-clipped paths of grass holding them together, the terrace overlooked the rose garden, and, beyond, the sweep of meadow that was visible from Geraldine’s window.
    Tonight the moon was full and the night was warm and soft. There was a breeze from the river, and the shadows on the lawn, beneath the huge old white oaks and hickories, made a brilliant black and silver mosaic. Roses, hundreds of them, poured their perfume on the soft, dewy air.
    Tip seated himself beside Geraldine, leaning forward to offer her a cigarette and a light. He said, “Look, this fellow Donaldson — he’s a pretty keen character. I like him enormously. Do you?”
    Geraldine was momentarily tense. But this was the moment and it must be said. She dared no longer put it off, and so she said very quietly, very carefully. “Yes — as a matter of fact I was — engaged to him once.”
    She all but held her breath lest that be a blow from which Tip would stagger. But he had to know — he
had
to know! And it would be better for him to hear it from