Long-Awaited Wedding. Doris Fell Elaine
was some looker. Dad had a picture of her in the file.”
Allen nearly toppled out of the chaise lounge, but caught his balance, his feet straddling the chair. “What was Dad doing with a file on her?”
“You told him you were going to marry her.”
I was, he thought.
“That marriage bit was a shocker, I’m here to tell you. You take off for a ten-day surfing trip to California, and the next thing Dad knows, you’re not coming home. You’re getting married.”
“She was a sweet kid. What did Dad have against her?”
“He said she was a nobody, Allen. Poor family. No social standing. No money. No future. You know Dad. Only the best for his boys.”
Allen hadn’t seen it that way. They had met at a small café down by the beachfront. He was standing barefoot in the sand, his surfboard propped against the wall. He had just ordered a peach milk shake when he saw Maureen pushing her tawny hair back from her face and looking up at him with those magnificent eyes. He grabbed two straws and offered to share the shake with her.
She surprised him and accepted. They sat on the beach, side by side, as they drank the shake. Eighteen, not quite nineteen, he had toppled head-over-heels in love with her, his passions awakened in a way he had not understood. First love. And it had been real enough. She was working part time as a file clerk in a bank and going into her senior year of high school. Allen was bigtime. High school behind him, the job at his father’s aircraft industry hooked.
“We’ll get married,” he had told her on their third date, “and move back to Seattle.”
“Mother won’t let me. I have to finish high school first.”
Allen never hit it off with her mother. Mrs. Birkland had disliked him from the beginning. She knew his family was rich and didn’t believe his intentions toward Maureen were honorable. She told Maureen he was using her—”a summer fling,” she’d called it. But the more she opposed Allen, the more Maureen was drawn to him.
Nick’s words thundered again. A poor family. No social standing or money. No future.
It hadn’t mattered back then. He would stay in California and marry her. And his father had blown his lid. That’s one reason I joined the navy, he thought. To break Dad’s shackles, to guarantee my freedom. To find a way to support a wife.
“After you sailed to Cyprus, Dad flew to California to meet her. He figured anyone could be bought off. Must have worked.”
Stunned, Allen sat there. Maureen Birkland had been his first girl that summer so long ago, his reason for not going back to work for his dad. And his dad had bought her off. No wonder she wasn’t there when he went back to find her. After all these years, the realization still hurt.
Keep cool, he told himself. Don’t let Nick goad you. If Maureen hadn’t been bought off, Adrian would never have come into your life. With Maureen you had nothing but a few weeks. But at least with Adrian you had twelve happy years.
“Where is Dad’s file on Maureen Birkland?” he asked.
“In storage. Can hardly think of Dad tossing anything away.”
“I want it. Find it for me.”
“Forget that old file. We have more important things to worry about Your whole executive board thinks you’ll blow this merger unless you snap out of this grieving process.”
“Did you put that idea into their heads, Nick? You know I’ve been better lately. I’ll take care of my private life. Leave the Larhaven-Fabian merger to me,” he said acidly.
Nick had never learned when to back off. He sat there sullenly, twiddling his thumbs. “You’ve run the show for ten years ever since Dad’s death, even though you never wanted the job. Let me have a crack at it now.”
“Dad left the job to me because he knew I could handle it. You and Chris weren’t ready for it.”
“Chris doesn’t want it. I do.”
Nick was their father all over again. Greedy for power. Ready to cut down those who stood in his way. “Nick, I’m only going to say this once. I’m going to see this merger under way and running smoothly. Work with me or get out.”
The wind had picked up. He felt as empty as the whirlpool spinning on the lake, as though his life were swirling out of control. It was tough having your family oppose you. Perhaps Nick was right. Maybe it was time to resign and let his brothers take over.
How he longed to escape to a cabin on the river, do nothing. How he longed for inner peace. Peace like Adrian had found. But he didn’t know where to find it. And God, if He existed, seemed distant
An hour down the Pacific Coast Highway from Maureen Davenport’s apartment, a young woman with Allen’s dark eyes and Maureen’s smile and long thick lashes stood by the window of her parents’ home, a bride’s magazine clutched in her hand.
Outside, a violent windstorm was piping through the canyon, howling through the tree tops, and rattling the windowpanes where Heather Reynard stood. The gusting wind swept everything in its path, bending sign posts, crumpling tree limbs like tissue paper. A few logs slid down the hillside and were swallowed up in the yawning mouth of a ten-foot wave that surged along the rocky shoreline.
Still Heather and her family were lucky. Last week it had been the fires raging out of control in the Silverado Canyon, flames leaping and bounding and turning the sky from a brilliant red glow to a smoky-gray. It had destroyed homes in its path and turned them to ashes, leaving hillsides charred with an ominous black canopy that had made both people and animals homeless. A hundred acres had already burned. With the winds tonight, the hot spots of the recent fires in the Silverado Canyon and the San Bernardino foothills could flare up and fan into raging infernos.
Heather shivered, the chill of the windowpane cold against her arms. Not one twinkling star could be seen. The only movement was the light of a jumbo jet. A smoky haze lined the horizon, and rain clouds hid the Big Dipper. But as she crouched lower and stared out the window, she saw a full hazy moon lying low in the sky, peeking out from the clouds, round as a yellow pumpkin.
“Oh, Brett,” she exclaimed, “come look at the full moon.” Her fiance crossed the room and slipped his arm around her slender shoulders.
“Beautiful,” he said, but when she turned to face him, he was looking at her.
“Oh, Brett!”
“You said that already.”
Brett. Martin, at twenty-six, was a foot taller than Heather, and seven years older, his height and broad shoulders rendering him a fortress of strength that pleased her. He was as fair-skinned and blond as she was dark. His eyes were wide-set, his brows thick, his smile full. Brett was not handsome, but she thought of him that way. Her own good-looking knight, so wholesome with his brown maple-sugar eyes, eyes that made her melt when he looked at her, the way he was looking at her now.
“Brett, the storm is worse. I don’t want you out in it.”
“Honey, I have to drive back to Los Angeles this evening.”
“Not in this wind. Mother’s making up a room for you.”
He sighed resignedly. “I have class at eight”
“And I want you alive so you can attend it. You can get up early. I’ll even set my alarm and make you breakfast.”
He looked doubtful. “Okay,” she told him, “Mother can cook it for you. But. I’m learning, Brett. By the time we marry, I’ll be a pretty good cook. Mother is determined.”
“With your unpredictable