Read Online Too Much Too Soon by Jacqueline Briskin - Free Book Online Page B

his head back to look at her. In the dim light that seeped into the entry tunnel, she could see that his eyes had a puffiness under them, as if he’d just awoken, and his mouth, dark with her lipstick, was soft, sensual, vulnerable.
    “You shouldn’t say that.”
    Her metabolism altered and she felt heavy, despairing, gauche. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she mumbled.
    “Look, Honora, by now you’ve realized I’m an ambitious bastard, driven to succeed and red-hot for the big money, haven’t you?”
    “There’s a lot more to you than that.”
    “Yes, I’m a helluva fine engineer. That’s where the ambition fits. I have it in me to plan and build miracles never before seen on this earth.” His voice rumbled with seriousness.
    “Is that the attraction to Imogene?”
    “You’re asking if I use her? So I come across as that much of an SOB, do I?”
    “No, but . . .”
    “Honora, I like her. She’s a good time, a kick.”
    “And Mr. Burdetts could help you.”
    “Sure. I’d get my pick of projects if I married her.”
    Married her.
The words reverberated inside Honora’s head, and she tried to pull away.
    His palms remained stationed firmly above and below the small of her back. “I told you I haven’t been in charge of projects at Talbott’s. And I won’t be until I’m forty. Honora, even though it hurts you, I am not Sir Galahad.”
    “Why did you pick me up at Stroud’s?”
    “Seeing you there threw me for a loop,” he said. “You were so out of place with those other tough-looking broads. There’s a fairy-tale quality about you, and I had this overwhelming urge to
be
Sir Galahad, to gallop up on my white horse to rescue you.”
    “You truly felt like that?”
    “Why not? A guy could drown in your eyes.” He kissed her eyelids, then her lips.

8
    When the phone rang at ten in the morning, Honora was dreamily rinsing breakfast dishes: she straightened with an instantaneous flash of hope that it was Curt. Last night when he had climbed the stairs with her, he had made no mention of another date. Twisting off the faucet, she reached for the dishcloth to dry her hands.
    Crystal had already darted from the bathroom, blond ringlets streaming on her luminous, bare shoulders, the towel she was wrapping sarong style around her shapely torso transforming her into the ultimate movie-style seductive South Sea Islander. “I’ll get it!” she cried. Lowering her voice, which she knew tended toward the higher soprano register, she cooed, “Hello?”
    “Crystal? Gideon here,” said the familiar gravelly notes. “I’d like you and your family to come for dinner tonight.”
    Crystal’s eyes were a vivid, shining blue. This was Gideon’s first important overture since the engraved Open House invitation. How she had chafed through those Saturday afternoons with the old fogies, waiting, hoping against hope that some young man other than Curt would show up! Crystal’s strong sense of family loyalty precluded making a play for a man her sister liked, and besides she didn’t go for Curt’s caustic sense of humor—however, had hebeen the sole property of Imogene she wouldn’t have let that stop her. The phone call, a move toward a Sylvander-Talbott entente, would substantially advance her toward the kind of life she had in mind.
    Already dreaming up an excuse for Bobby Dupre, who thought he was taking her to see
The Bells of St. Mary’s
with Bing Crosby tonight, she said, “How nice of you, Gideon. It sounds lovely.” Der Bingle wasn’t one of her favorites anyway.
    “I’m expecting your father, too, Crystal.”
    “Of course, Gideon. Daddy’ll be delighted.”
    “My car’ll be there at seven.” He hung up.
    Crystal stared down at the buzzing instrument in her hand. “You’ll never guess who that was.”
    “Wouldn’t I just!” Joscelyn, at the kitchen table, raised her head from a special geometry project for summer school. “Gideon has a loud voice.”
    “Gideon?” A