Read Online Sand Castles by Antoinette Stockenberg - Free Book Online Page B

and forth, would be just the lift he needed right now. He was feeling tense and down in the dumps.
    Hurry Curry was no more than twelve feet wide, with a take-out counter in the back and three fake-marble-topped bistro tables by the windows, in addition to the two outside. A handful of people were waiting to have their orders filled, and Zack resigned himself to eating his curried chicken sitting on the front seat of his truck back at the house.
    But the customers were all on the run, and Zack was rewarded for his pessimism with one of the two coveted outdoor tables. He sat down with his Sprite and his curry and dug in, savoring the dish, wishing there were more of it. He'd come back the next day and get two.
    He was watching a bouncy young thing—several of them, in fact; probably Brown coeds—when he was addressed from behind.
    "Hi, Zack!"
    Feeling somehow caught in the act, he turned away quickly to face Wendy Hodene. She looked friendly and approachable and—was he mistaken?—maybe contrite for having been curt earlier.
    "I see you've found one of my favorite places," she said with a winning smile.
    He accepted her unspoken apology, if that's what it was, with a pleasantry of his own. "The curry's great. I was surprised. It's such a little place."
    "You should try their tandoori combo next time," she said, still smiling. "You'd love it, even though it's not curried."
    Immediately he began to back away from any chitchat situation. His answering smile was reserved. "I like curry."
    "Oh." Looking abashed, she held on to her own smile long enough to say, "Well, I'm off to work. See you!" And then the smile went away, followed by her.
    He watched her go and was struck again by the natural way in which she carried herself. Her walk—he didn't know how to describe her walk. It was without artifice, not even remotely for show. She didn't carry herself in any provocative way or anything; she walked, basically, to get there from here. For whatever reason, he liked her walk. He smiled to himself as he bussed his own table; he could tell that he'd been alone in his workshop for maybe just a little too long.
    When he got back to the house he saw her Taurus still parked on the street, which made him do a double take until he figured out that she must have been walking to her job. On Wickenden Street , presumably? There were more than enough shops there. What had she been wearing?
    Instantly a picture of her in a clingy, swingy floral-print dress popped up in his mind, a look that seemed downright retro after the a l l-American jeans and T-shirt outfit of the morning. Where would she be working that required such a dress? Clothing shop? Antique shop? Herbal shop? Pottery? Futon? Ceramics? Doctor's office? Lawyer's?
    Now that he thought about it, why the hell was she going to work, anyway? Even though after penalties and taxes they were worth only a small fraction of the mind-boggling ten or so million that they seemed to have won at first blush, it was still plenty to live on without having to trek to a job in a shop on Wickenden Street. Unless, of course, she owned the shop and loved the work.
    Would he abandon furniture making if he were a multimillionaire? Zack found himself going back and forth on that. His first impulse was to assume that he'd never give up something that brought him such profound pleasure. But money changed things. Money changed people. So he couldn't quite say that he'd keep on creating heirloom pieces that he hoped people and museums would bid on frantically in the centuries to come—but he liked to think that he would.
    And in the meantime, here he was, slaving for a few bucks an hour at work that bored him just so that he could shimmy up to a man he despised and squeeze him until he howled. Pisser! The afternoon wore on, and Zack's mood turned more foul. What had he been thinking? His plan was beyond cockamamie; it was insane. If Zina knew ... God. If she knew. By late afternoon, Zack had resolved to bail