Happily Ever After Read Free Page A

and let no
man sample her but you. Join me, jon, and you will hardly wonder why I must
convince sophia’s father to purchase me more time. Between the two of us we
could surely convince him of our potential here. He is eager for grandchildren
and alone I will not prevail.
    Come, my
good friend. Your presence is the one thing I find I sorely miss.
    Your loyal
friend and associate, Harlan Horatio Penn III
     
    Jon’s company was the one thing he sorely missed, was it? Not hers?
    How could she not have realized sooner how little
interest he held in her? Just the other night Sophie had viciously defended him
to her friend Maggie when Maggie dared imply his interest had waned. Why had it
taken a letter from him to Jonathon for her to realize what was apparently
quite obvious to everybody else?
    She slumped over the letter. She tried so hard to
be everything everyone wanted her to be—the best daughter, the best
girlfriend—she shouldn’t wear her décolletage too high, or too low. She
wasn’t supposed to weep, nor was she supposed to laugh too loudly.
    She set down her own letter from Harlan, with all
its sweet lies, on the desktop, and kept the other in hand, unwilling to
relinquish the damning evidence, forgetting just for an instant to keep her
shoulders even—a lady never slumped, you see, not even in the most
distressing of situations.
    “Is everything quite all right, Miss Sophia?”
    Sophie straightened and looked reassuringly at
their longtime butler, Harold, who stood in the doorway. In her parents’
eternal absence, Sophie was the lady of the manor. She had been groomed well by
her mother, and she managed the household meticulously, but it was only in that
very instant, as Harold looked in upon her, that she suddenly wondered who
exactly was looking after whom.
    “Everything is fine, Harold,” she assured. “I’m
fine,” she lied.
    He cocked his head at her as though he didn’t
quite believe her. “Are you quite certain, Miss Sophia?”
    Sophie waved him away, choking on a wave of grief.
“Quite. It’s nothing I can’t manage.”
    The older man smiled affectionately at her. “As
always, Miss Sophia.” He cast a suspicious glance at Jonathon and left,
assuring her, “I shall be right here in the hall should you require my
presence.”
    Sophie smiled to herself. Harold was, as ever, her
guardian angel. If she knew him well—and, indeed, she did—he would,
in fact, remain just outside the door, dusting the same picture frame over and
over until Jonathon Preston left the premises. In fact, were it up to Harold,
he would have never have allowed Jonathon entrance at all. Harold was far more
protective of her than even her own father. But then her father and mother
always expected her to do the right thing. They never doubted for an instant
that Sophie would always adhere to her good breeding.
    “Sophia,” Jonathon prompted.
    Sophie looked up at him. He seemed suddenly to
take up far too much of her breathing space.
    All at once everything seemed far too
confining—her father’s house, her predictable manners, even her dress.
    She had every right to be angry!
    Why couldn’t she ever allow herself a single
instant of real emotion? Why must she always be perfect? Always be strong?
Always do the right thing? She wanted to shout and cry and break things! She
eyed a photo of Harlan on her desk and didn’t dare touch it.
    She sucked in a breath and stood calmly, clutching
Jonathon’s letter to her breast. Her fingers unconsciously curled about the
parchment, crinkling the fine paper. Fury constricted her throat—not
sorrow, not fear, but unrelieved fury.
    How dare Harlan take advantage of her father!
    How dare he use and discard them both so easily!
    “Oh, dear! I see how much this has upset you,
Sophie. Perhaps I should not have come,” Jonathon proposed. He set a hand
gingerly upon her shoulder.
    Sophie shrugged out from under his touch and
brushed past him, swallowing her temper, trying to regain