[Desert Roses 02] - Across the Years Read Free Page B

and hardly cares what you do. You’ll forget about him, and in the meantime, you’ll marry that nice Manchester boy your father and I have picked out for you. He’s willing to overlook your indiscretion in marrying that Reynolds man.”
    “Will he also overlook the fact I will never love him?” Ashley threw back, feeling a bit of her determination return.
    “Love has very little to do with a lucrative marriage. This is what your father and I want.”
    “I can’t marry Mr. Manchester. Neither can I annul my marriage.” Ashley had been about to tell her mother of her pregnancy when the woman began a tirade that didn’t end until half an hour later. Ashley had been unable to even offer a word of protest or explanation. When her mother had finished insulting and demeaning Ashley and her choice of husband, Leticia Murphy had picked up her things and headed for the door.
    “You are dead to me—just like my father,” she decreed like a queen calling down a traitor. She had stormed from the room, but the mention of her father, Ashley’s dear Grandpa Whitman, had given birth to an idea. Her mother had turned away from him, just as she had turned away from Ashley. And all because the man had become religious. He’d sold off a successful business to his partner and settled huge sumsof money on his two daughters. But that had only proven to Ashley’s mother that her father had lost all sense of reason. She refused to have anything more to do with the man because she believed he was a fool. Never mind that he was trying to put his life in order with his new spiritual beliefs. Never mind that the real estate ventures he’d made a fortune from were underhanded and oftentimes illegal. They’d made money for the family. Money which Grandpa Whitman quite generously lavished upon them all. Now that would stop, and Ashley’s mother had been beside herself with the thought of what this would mean.
    There had been a trip to Los Angeles for her mother and father. Ashley remembered it well because she’d not yet met Ethan and was still living at home. Her mother had said very little except that she and her sister Lavelle would straighten their father out or have him committed. When her parents had returned from Los Angeles, Ashley had been stunned to hear her mother say that they would no longer have any association with the crazed old man.
    Ashley had tried to at least get her father to relay what had happened, but something had changed in him. It was almost as if her father’s entire demeanor had taken on a different personality. He was no longer the man she could talk to.
    Feeling isolated from her family and tired of dealing with her mother’s misery, Ashley had been easily won over by Ethan Reynolds’s winning charm. Within weeks of meeting, Ashley had married Ethan, furthering the disorder of her mother’s once perfectly ordered world. Then Ethan died, and Ashley had wanted to die as well.
    Natalie and Grandpa had given her a will to live—they’d made her happy in spite of her loss. And until now, life had been as close to perfect as it could be.
    Ashley raised her head and drew a deep breath. She blew it out rather quickly and drew another. The action seemed to calm her a bit.
    “Why can’t things go on as they always have?” she asked in the silence of her room. “Why must I lose the people I love?”

CHAPTER TWO
    A week later Ashley sat across the table from her grandfather. She listened to him read from a list of wishes he had for his funeral. It wasn’t at all what she wanted to hear. In fact, Grandpa had been feeling better the last few days, and Ashley liked to believe the doctor was wrong and that he had nothing more terminally wrong than a bout of old age.
    “I don’t want a lot of fancy flowers,” Russell Whitman said firmly. “Never could abide that kind of nonsense. If you want to give me flowers, do it now. That’s my motto.” He looked up and grinned at Ashley, his gray mustache twitching in