Read Online Wait for Me by Mary Kay McComas - Free Book Online Page B

reaffirming her belief that he wanted more from her than what he could get from at least two hundred other women in the Bay Area.
    Her phone rang ten minutes later.
    “It’s three A.M.... that makes it the next morning, and I don’t feel the least bit awkward about spending the night with you,” he said, the line crackling a bit.
    “Good,” she said, laughing, checking the window to see if he was still parked in front of her building. “Where are you?”
    “Halfway across the bridge. But I can turn around and come back if you want me to.”
    “Don’t tempt me, Oliver. It’s not nice to tempt a lady.”
    “Who says I’m nice?”
    “I do. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon.”
    There was a brief silence. “Good night, Holly. I had a good time.”
    “Me too. Good night, Oliver.”
    He was nice. And gentle and sweet and tolerant—tolerant as hell, if the tension he felt was anywhere near what she was feeling.

Five
    T ENSION WASN’T EXACTLY WHAT Oliver was feeling. Tension was what you felt during a business merger. Tension came when the shares were down before a stockholders’ meeting. Tension didn’t keep him awake all night or make his food taste like a mouthful of dust. Tension didn’t keep him reaching for the phone or blur the words in his magazines. It didn’t make him restless and it didn’t cause him to stare off into space like a zombie.
    Holly wasn’t making him tense, she was making him crazy.
    “Have you ever heard of a place called St. Augustine’s?” he asked his aunt the next day over a light lunch. “It’s a convalescent home. In Oakland?”
    They shared the Carey House estate as a matter of convenience. To try to dislodge his aunt would have been very inconvenient for Oliver—strenuous, aggravating, and more trouble than he cared to undertake. Besides, he knew little or nothing about the running of a large household, though he often suspected that it could pretty much run itself. The place was too big to live in alone anyway. And to hide away or avoid a bash for the cause of the week, he could always use the apartment downtown.
    It was a greater convenience to Elizabeth Carey George, however, to live in her childhood home and not have to explain to anyone why her husband’s lack of good investments and surplus of expensive mistresses had left her with little more than another fine old San Francisco name to attach to her own, and a heart full of bitterness.
    All in all, it was a fairly amicable arrangement.
    “It doesn’t ring a bell, dear,” she said, looking up from the promotional material she was reviewing for her newest crusade—to save the South American limpkin that would soon see extinction with the destruction of the rain forest. “Why do you ask?”
    “Just curious. What about the Joey Paulson Clinic?”
    “Paulson. Paulson. There’s something familiar about the name, but I might be thinking of the Palm Beach Paulsons. I heard last night that Barry’s been cheating on her with some showgirl he met in Vegas. Can you imagine it? And Tiffany is a Brooks, and you know how they stick together. He’ll be lucky to get out of that marriage with a spare shirt.”
    “He should be grateful for that,” he said, a woman-lover himself but not without a certain amount of restraint and decorum. He liked to think of himself as a man of principle and self-control. Women were a matter of self-discipline, and he had little respect for a man who had none.
    “What is this sudden interest in Oakland, dear? I understand the land values aren’t worth investing in, and they say...”
    “No, it’s not about business. I... I was talking to Phil Rosenthal last night, and he thought there might be a couple of places over there that could use some help from the foundation.”
    “The Carey Foundation, as you well know, is overextended as it is. I’m firmly committed to asking the trustees to reevaluate several of our grants at the next meeting. We can’t possibly take on anyone new at this