Read Online Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) by Marie Ferrarella - Free Book Online Page A

punctual. Women of her acquaintance were notorious about disregarding time. To be late was to be fashionable. Arlene was always afraid she’d miss something crucial if she wasn’t there on time.
    Arlene breezed into the hotel suite, dressed in pearls, a fur stole haphazardly thrown about her shoulders and a designer dress at least one size too small for her ample frame. Arlene was always just about to go a diet. Tomorrow. Today there was always too much good food to be sampled.
    The petite woman made Johanna turn around as she studied her critically.
    “Well, you look none the worse for this beastly weather.” She stopped to consider her words. “’Beastly.’ My God, I’m beginning to talk like them. Any day now, I’ll be asking for tea instead of a coffee and tonic.” She leaned over and pressed her hand to Johanna’s arm, as if imparting an important confidence. “When that happens, I want your word that you’ll shoot me.”
    Johanna couldn’t help smiling. “If it’ll make you happy.”
    “What’ll make me happy,” Arlene answered, easily linking her arm with Johanna’s—it didn’t seem to trouble her that Johanna, slender, with a model’s bone structure, made her look like a comic foil—“is if that leading man they’ve picked for this little so-called ‘epic’ of Harry’s would give me a tumble and take me off for a weekend in the Cotwolds.”
    “Where?”
    “Ready?”
    Without waiting for an answer, Arlene pressed Johanna’s purse into her hands. Johanna tucked it under her arm and nodded.
    “The Cotwolds, sweetie. The country made by God when He was practicing for the rolling hills of Ireland.” She grinned wickedly, nudging Johanna out the door and to the elevator.
    Johanna knew that the only time Arlene let her native chauvinism come to the fore was when she felt she was confronted with British snobbery. Arlene Baker had been born Annie Mahoney of some county in Ireland that Johanna never could remember. Her flaming red hair had been real once. Now it needed a helping hand from a well-known bottle of hair rinse. But nothing could dilute the fire in the woman’s eye or in her soul.
    “You find Dale Kincaid attractive?” Johanna asked as they walked into the elevator. She thought that he was far too pretty to be labeled as masculine.
    “Attractive?” Arlene rolled her eyes and heaved a big sigh, her hand to her ample bosom. “He makes me forget to breathe. Where are your eyes, girl?” She jabbed at the first floor button.
    Johanna shrugged, her shoulders moving restlessly. “I guess I don’t notice things like that.”
    Arlene pressed her fingers to Johanna’s wrist. “There’s a pulse there, so you must be alive.”
    “Am I?” Johanna couldn’t resist asking, a smile playing on her lips.
    The doors yawned open, exposing the plush furnishings of the opulent lobby. Arlene, as always, led the way out. “Oh, now we come to the heart of it. Tell Aunt Arlene all about it, sweetie,” she coaxed.
    “Just baiting you,” Johanna dismissed her momentary slip coolly.
    Arlene was far from convinced, but she let the matter drop.
    Until cocktails.
    Seated at a prominent table in the Cafe Royal, breathing in the ambience where once Oscar Wilde had roamed freely, Arlene subtly urged a cocktail on Johanna. And then another. She had herself a well-earned reputation for being able to hold her liquor with the best of them, but Arlene knew that Johanna needed little more than white wine before her edge slipped away. She wanted the younger woman to relax. She looked far too tense for her own good, although considering what Johanna had to put up with, Arlene could hardly blame her for being tense.
    “Now then,” Arlene began, leaning over the small, white linen-draped round table and covering Johanna’s small hand with her own, “spill it. What’s really been bothering you, Johanna?”
    She knew without hearing the words, but felt that Johanna needed to verbalize the matter. Getting