Read Online The Glory Game by Janet Dailey - Free Book Online

Lauderdale on the Atlantic, such spacious and luxurious estates were standard for the international set.
    As Drew turned the car onto the cobblestoned lane, the Mercedes’s headlamps swept the long circular drive, illuminating the lush tropical plantings around it. The foliage of palms, tamarind, and flowering shrubs partially concealed the white-stuccoed walls and red-tiled roofs of the two-story Spanish-style home. Beyond were the stables, pasture, and a stick-and-ball practice field on the fifteen-acre tract. Drew stopped the car in front of the two long steps that led to the impressively carved entrance door.
    â€œI’ll put the car in the garage and join you inside,” he said to Luz. When she stepped out of the brown car he drove away.
    The outside light for the recessed entry came on as Luz approached the door, passing the tall clay urns that flanked the low steps. Emma Sanderson opened the door to admit her. The plump fifty-year-old woman managed the Thomas home, supervising the household help and the groundskeepers, and serving as a social secretary for Luz as well. With her ready smile and pleasant ways, she was hardly a martinet, but neither did she tolerate any nonsense. Widowed, she lived in the house, occupying the maid’s quarters at the end of the broad galleria on the main floor.
    â€œGood evening, Emma.” Luz paused inside the entrance hall, which was dominated by the heavy oak stairs leading to the second floor. The upstairs was devoted entirely to the master suite. The other three family bedrooms were located at either end of the first-floor galleria. “Have Rob and Trisha come home yet?” She glanced in the direction of their rooms.
    â€œRob is here, but Trisha isn’t in yet.”
    Her watch showed her daughter still had an hour before her appointed curfew. “Thanks, Emma.” She moved toward the stairs. “Good night.”
    â€œGood night.”
    The master suite included two bedrooms, connected by a common sitting room with French doors that opened onto a private deck. Luz went directly to her capacious room, done in cream and muted greens and furnished in French Provincial. An artfully designed window of antique stained glass adorned the wall above the large bed, but the black night outside obscured its brilliant color. As she entered the dressing room to change into a lounging robe, Luz heard Drew coming up the stairs. Absently, she listened to his footsteps while she waited for the sound of Trisha’s car pulling into the driveway. She was conscious that Drew entered his own room.
    They had slept separately for years now, their sleeping habits incompatible. Drew was a light sleeper and Luz was a restless, fitful one, often up at the crack of dawn. During the early years of their marriage, they had put up with the disharmony, but gradually the need for rest took precedence over sex, or more precisely, the quick availability of it. After more than twenty years, it was to be expected that urgent passion would fade, but that didn’t signal the end of love, as far as Luz was concerned. So now, they each had their own bedroom with separate bath and dressing room tailored to their own individual wants; Drew’s contained exercise equipment and sauna, while her delicate ivory-and-amber bath had Sherle Wagner fixtures and a spa tub.
    Luz tied the belt on her red satin Givenchy kimono trimmed in black piping and a zigzag pattern of black lace insets around the full sleeves. Then she sat down at the vanity in the dressing room, its mirror outlined with bare light bulbs. After she had pulled her hair back, she secured it with a clip and began creaming the makeup from her face.
    From the sitting room, Drew’s voice called, “What about a drink?”
    â€œPlease,” she answered somewhat absently, not bothering to request a brandy, since that was what she usually had if she drank this late in the evening. The methodical action of wiping the