Touch the Wind Read Free Page A

facts of life. It can’t be avoided simply because it’s unpleasant.”
    “I don’t care.” Sheila slipped her fingers from hishand and softly brushed the hair from his forehead. “Tell me you love me, Brad.”
    “I love you.” He kissed her long and hard to reinforce his words. “A year,” Brad groaned when he lifted his head. “I can’t wait a year.”
    Sheila rubbed her forehead against his jaw in a feline gesture and sighed. “I know.” Reluctantly, she strained against his embrace. “And you can’t stay out here any longer or you will lose your job.”
    He withdrew his arms from around her, briefly kissing her once. “If it’s not busy at the desk, I’ll call you tonight.”
    “I’ll be home,” Sheila promised.
    “And you’d better be there alone.” Brad growled the mock threat.
    “I’ll think about it.” She laughed and moved away without kissing him again. It would only have prolonged a moment that had already stretched too far.
    As Sheila slid behind the wheel of her Thunderbird and started the motor, Brad was still standing where she had left him. He raised his hand in a good-bye when she reversed out of the stall. Sheila waved back, feeling very contented.
    Driving onto the street, she was surprised to discover she was humming the tune of a sad love song. The melancholy lyrics were about a love that had gone wrong. Sheila gripped the steering wheel in irritation, blaming the song for reminding her of the argument instead of its satisfactory conclusion.
    Money. What a stupid thing to argue about, she thought. Sheila wondered if poor people were naturally prouder, or if Brad was simply obsessed by it. For a few minutes during the quarrel, she had thought he was paranoid and had felt a twinge of uncertainty.
    The car windows were rolled down and Sheila shook her head, leting the wind play over her face. Everything was going to be all right. She was positive of it. Brad was a rough diamond in need of some polishing to fit into her world. That was all. Once she accomplishedthat, they would make such a stunning couple. With her money and her parents’ connections, the sky would be the only limit to their future. Bright, shining, and cloudless.

Chapter 2
    Stepping through the front door, the heels of her sandals sank into the thick pile of the cream-colored carpet. By most standards, her parents’ ranch-style house was a near mansion, but to Sheila, it was simply her home.
    A maid quietly appeared in the foyer. Sheila handed the woman her purse and the expensive leather case containing her college books and papers.
    “Would you put them in my room, Rose?” she requested, expecting the affirmative nod before it was made. “Is my mother home?”
    “Mrs. Rogers is in her sitting room.”
    “Thank you.”
    The thick carpet silenced Sheila’s footsteps as she walked to the wide hallway leading to her parents’ bedroom and its adjoining sitting room. Outside the door, she knocked once, then walked in.
    “Is that you, darling?” came her mother’s questioning voice from the bedroom beyond.
    “It depends which darling you mean—me or Dad?” Sheila laughed.
    “I was referring to your father.” Constance Rogers appeared in the connecting doorway, belting the long, desert-sand robe she wore. “We are hosting that political dinner this evening and I asked him to be home early. But you are equally welcome, Sheila, although I did expect you home sooner.”
    Constance Rogers was an older, more elegant version of her daughter. Her blonde hair was styled in a shorter, more sophisticated cut, its shade lightened by the invasion of strands of white. Her figure, too, was slender and firm, but it lacked the ripeness of Sheila’s curves.
    “I stayed for a while after my last class,” Sheila explained.
    Shrewd, almond-brown eyes swept over her, missing nothing. “Your lipstick needs freshening. You also saw Brad before you came home,” her mother concluded with a hint of displeasure in her