This Love Will Go On Read online

  “Congratulations. When do rehearsals start?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” She sat down in the chair next to the sofa and let her eyes wander over Raine. “How did it go this afternoon?”

  “Tate did beautifully.”

  “Not Tate,” she said, waving her hand impatiently in a stagey gesture that dismissed her own son. “What did Jade say?”

  Disappointment in Michele made Raine's voice sharp. She met Michele's blue eyes with a spark in. her own gray ones. “He knew where you were. And he knew you had told me.”

  “Absolutely clairvoyant, isn't he?”

  “He knows you,” Raine said shortly.

  Michele's eyes narrowed on Raine. Raine had showered when she came home, then she had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and pulled her hair back with a leather and wooden barrette. Her face was bare of makeup. She knew exactly what she looked like. At twenty-seven, she'd long ago given up competing with her beautiful sister.

  “He doesn't know me at all,” Michele said slowly.

  Raine stared at her. She had the distinct feeling it was a stage line, delivered for effect. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “It's cryptic,” Michele said, smiling at her suddenly. “Isn't that one of the things that's so deadly boring about this prairie town? Everybody knows everything about everybody else. No one has any secrets.”

  “If you knew about them, they wouldn't be secrets,” Raine said dryly

  Michele ignored her. “That's what we learned from Tony, our director, tonight. He told us that every character has a secret.”

  “What's Tiffany's secret?” Raine mocked. “She really doesn't use brown ink, she uses green?”

  Michele gave her a scornful look. “Tiffany's secret is that she needs a man who sees beyond her beautiful body and loves her for herself.”

  “There’s an original idea.”

  “Go ahead. Make fun of something you don't understand. That's typical small-town thinking.” She stared at Raine. “I won't be like that, I just won't.”

  Raine rubbed a hand over her jeans. “Jade's probably worried about you.”

  Michele's lips moved in a mocking smile. “Is that a polite hint for me to go home?”

  “No,” Raine said softly. “You know as well as I do that Jade worries.”

  “Ah yes,” Michele said, watching her with eyes like a tigress, “we both know Jade worries. The difference is,” her voice went very soft, “I don’t care what he thinks…and you do.”

  Raine averted her eyes, fastening them on Michele and Jade's wedding picture. “You cared once. What happened?”

  “I got bored. Married life is boring. I'm going out of my mind. If I had known what it was really like…”

  Raine looked at her. “You knew what life was like on a ranch.”

  “Did I?” Michele shrugged her shoulders. “I'd always lived in town with you and Julia.” She studied Raine, a peculiar look in her eye. “You're the lucky one. You're free. You could walk away from this town tomorrow. I can't understand why you stay here.”

  Raine shrugged. “Where would I go?”

  “Anywhere where people are,” Michele said passionately, “a city where there are nightclubs and you can walk into a restaurant and order coq au vin or duck a l'orange.”

  “Have Jade take you on a trip. He can afford it. Have him take you to San Francisco or New York City.”

  Michele flared angrily. “I don’t want a trip. I don’t want to go and see what I’m missing and then come home to this…provincial backwater.” In her excitement, she pushed herself up out of the chair, twisted, and walked toward the door. “If I ever get a chance to get out of here, I…”

  Raine, alarmed, made a sound of distress and jumped up. To her sister’s back, she cried, “Michele, listen to me. You can’t…leave. You have too much to throw it all away.”

  Michele turned suddenly and faced Raine. A mere nose length away, Raine could see in Michele’s eyes a dark, primitive emotion. “But suppose I throw it in your direction? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Shock immobilized her. “I wouldn’t…”

  “Oh, yes, you would, sister mine.” Michele’s eyes glittered. “Why do you think I’ve stayed on this godforsaken prairie for six years? Because I knew, I knew, if I left, you’d fall into Jade’s arms like a plump peach, all ripe and ready to squeeze.”

  The shock dissolved into anger. “That’s not true! You have no right to say that to me.”

  “I have every right. I’m his beloved wife.” Michele laughed and whirled around. She exited on that line, perfectly timing her escape while Raine grappled with the nausea that threatened to climb her throat and the cold, self-hatred that gripped her.

  Grimly, Raine went up the stairs to her room, thinking that the talent for acting must have been given to only one member in the Taylor family. How long had Michele known? Right from the beginning? She had spent hours with Michele, but they had never been close, not really. They disagreed about so many things. They had only one thing in common. Jade.

  She saw Michele only once during the next few weeks. Her sister came into the print shop with a promotional article about the play and chatted with Julia as if nothing had happened. She was civil to Raine, and Raine tried to match her sophistication, but her stomach churned. She was relieved when Michele, with an airy goodbye, walked out of the shop.

  Two weeks later, during the last week of July, when everyone was suffering from a heat wave that seemed to have no end, Raine lay in her bed in her short nightie and, for the first time in her life, thought seriously about leaving Verylon. Was she a fool to stay? What future was there in loving her sister's husband? Perhaps if she got out, got away, she would forget him. The perspiration collected on her back. Her room, on the west side of the house, had been like an oven since Monday. If it weren't so hot, maybe she could think. A cold shower might help. Would it disturb Julia? She threw back the light sheet and was out of bed when she heard the soft ring of the kitchen phone. She padded down the stairs in her bare feet, hoping to stop the ringing before it woke Julia.

  “Tate's sick,” Jade said in her ear, and even hearing his voice on the phone made her blood race in her veins. “I don't know what to do. I've called the doctor, but all I get is that confounded answering service and he hasn't called back.”

  “Does he have a temperature?”

  “I don't know.”

  Raine made an exasperated sound. She'd seen Jade sit up all night with a newborn foal or a weak calf and stay as calm as a glassy sea, but whenever anything happened to Tate, he went into a tailspin. “There's an oral thermometer in the upstairs medicine cabinet. Have you been giving him aspirin?”

  “No. I'll start giving him some right away…”

  “No, don't. Just give him a cool sponge bath.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Worry about Tate and her own leaping nerves made her say sharply, “For heaven's sake, Jade. Just pretend he's a sick calf.”

  “If he was a sick calf, I'd douse him with disinfectant and put him in with his mother.”

  Raine recoiled from the cynical words. It wasn't the first time she had felt the backlash of Jade's anger toward Michele. And even though she wasn't her sister's keeper, she felt inexplicably guilty.

  “Take his temperature and call me back,” she told him coolly, fighting to keep her conflicting emotions under control.

  He hung up, and she walked to the stove to fill the kettle. As she put it on the burner, the phone rang again.

  “This thermometer doesn't work. It says his temperature is below normal.”

  She sighed. “You didn't leave it in his mouth long enough. It's hard to get the correct temperature of a young child with an oral thermometer. Get him to hold it under his tongue for at least three minutes and preferably five.”

  There was a silence. Then, through gritted teeth, “There's no answer at the number Michele gave me. When she stayed with you last weekend, did she say anything about
her rehearsal schedule?”

  Shocked dumb, she tried frantically to make sense out of Jade's words. When she did understand them, a hard knot formed in the base of her throat and she couldn't force a word past it. The silence hummed over the telephone lines. “No, no, she didn’t,” she said at last, the words too quick and anxious. “She didn’t mention a thing to me.” Truth surrounded by the biggest lie of all.

  The answering silence made her wonder if she had fooled him. “I’d better go and see if I can get a correct reading on this damn thing.”

  “If he only has a temp of a hundred, or a hundred and two, give him a cool sponge bath. If it's above that…” her voice faltered, “you'd better take him to the hospital. He could go into convulsions.”

  He thanked her and the click in her ear told her he had hung up the phone before she could take the receiver away.

  The tea kettle began to bubble and she snatched it off the stove before its strident whistle woke Julia. She sat drinking her cup of tea, wishing she had told Jade to call her back. When another hour went by, she could stand it no longer.

  The phone rang several times before Jade answered and when he did, his voice was even huskier than usual.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “I was just dozing.”

  “How is he?”

  “Good. The sponge bath took his temperature down and he's sleeping here in the bed with me.”

  She closed her eyes to shut out the mental picture. “I'm glad. I was imagining him in the hospital.”

  Jade said nothing for a moment. When she opened her mouth to tell him goodnight and hang up, he said in a soft voice, “I should have called you back. I forgot that you would worry. I owe you an apology.”

  The deep, quiet warmth in his sleep-thickened voice warmed her from the ear next to the receiver down to the toes that were trying to curl into the kitchen floor. “That’s all right. I know you were too worried about him to think of anything else.” Quickly, before he could reply, she hung up the phone.

  When she called the next day, Tate’s fever had broken…and Michele had come home.

  A week later, on Friday, the bell on the door of the print shop tinkled and banged. “Hello, Benjamin Franklin. How’s the almanac business?”

  Jade's brother stood just inside the door. He was a tanned, slim young man with a shock of wheat-colored hair and a wide grin on his face. “Hello, Marc. Just getting by from day to day.”

  He groaned, twisted a chair around in front of her desk and straddled it backwards. “How are you and the monster getting along?” he asked, nodding his head toward the Linotype machine.

  “Okay. A few of the mats stick, but other than that…’’

  “Mats?”

  “Matrices. The brass molds that make the lead slugs of letters.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the hot lead that still lingered in the air. “When are you going to convert to phototype and offset press like the rest of the world?”

  “When my rich uncle bequeaths me eighteen thousand dollars to buy a phototypesetter and another eight thousand for a camera, not to mention an equally generous amount for a new press…”

  Marc held up his hand. “I get the picture.”

  She plucked at the collar of her smock. After the discovery that Michele had lied to Jade about her whereabouts, Raine had avoided Jade. Now she was even self-conscious with Marc. Marc smiled at her and appeared not to notice.

  “Big brother has offered to take us to see his wife, the star, in the play tomorrow night and then out for a drink afterwards just like they do in the big city. Sounds like fun, huh?”

  The last thing in the world she wanted was to spend an evening with the two Kincaid men. “I…” She couldn't say she was planning on going with Julia. Julia had gone the night before and said that Michele was very good.

  Across from her, his fingers wrapped around the top of the chair, Marc went very still. “You've been putting me off for two weeks, Raine. If you don't want to see me,” that Kincaid pride flying, “just say so, okay?”

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to see you, Marc. It’s just that…well, things haven’t been very good between Jade and Michelle since she started this play and…”

  “I know that. But tomorrow night’s the last performance and after that, they’ll be kissing and making up before you know it.

  Would they? “Shouldn’t they be left alone then?”

  He squinted at her and grinned. “For Pete’s sake. They’re married. They can do that when they get home.” He rose and angled the chair back toward the wall. “Speaking of which, when are we going to get married?”

  She met his comic leer with cool silver-gray eyes. “Well, not this afternoon. I have to proof three galleys.” She bent her head and began to read, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

  The soft voice that reached her hardly sounded like him. “One of these days I’m going to propose and ask you for an honest answer, Raine.”

  She looked up at him, her gray eyes faintly mocking, “If I said yes, you’d be scared to death.”

  “Try me,” he shot back.

  In this mood, he was infinitely appealing. “Not today,” she said lightly. “I just told you, I’ve got too much to do.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “For dinner, or marriage?” she teased.

  “Take your pick,” Marc said lightly.

  She made a wry face. “If I have to choose, I’ll certainly choose to eat.”

  Marc shook his head in mock sadness. “No romance in your soul at all, is there?”

  “Actually,” her tone dryly amused, “eating is sensual.”

  “Explain,” Marc said focusing his light green eyes on her.

  “Having to do with the senses.” She kept her voice carefully light. “Three of them, actually: taste, smell and touch.”

  “I can think of something that involves those three senses,” Marc said, slowly unfolding his body from the chair.

  She’d started this, she wasn’t quite sure why. Now, with Marc taking the two steps toward her, she wished she hadn’t. She regretted the impulse that made her goad him. But she couldn’t back out now. “What were you thinking of?”

  She turned her chair slightly, facing him. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. “Making love,” he whispered into her ear. Unresistingly, praying she would feel something, anything, she stood in his arms. He brushed his mouth over her cheek and then kissed her, his lips warm and practiced. He held her gently, supporting her. He did everything right…and it was all wrong. He had kissed her before many times, but this time he demanded more from her, probing with his tongue. His lips seemed foreign, like something outside her existence. Marc was kissing her, and she had never felt so alone and lonely. In an effort to stave off the emptiness, she lifted her arms and circled his neck, drawing him closer.

  The bell on the print shop door jangled its warning and the sound echoed in her ears. She pulled away from Marc’s embrace and looked across the desk…directly into Jade’s hard face.

  There was a sudden silence, as if a movie reel had stopped. Then Jade turned to Marc. “I saw your car outside.” His voice was cool and matter-of-fact. “I just thought I’d stop in and see if you had decided to go with me tomorrow night.”

  Marc slid his arm around Raine’s waist and pulled her around to stand next to him, facing Jade. “We were just talking about it.”

  “So I…saw,” Jade murmured dryly.

  Raine fought to keep her body from tensing. He smiled an indulgent smile that lifted the corners of that attractive, cynical mouth. “What did the lady decide?”

  “She didn’t really give me an answer.” Marc turned to her. “How about it, Raine? Want to go? Big brother’s footing the bill, remember.”

  She met Jade’s eyes and saw a flare of emotion, but what it was, she wasn’t sure. It was a betrayal of his feelings, though. As if Jade were aware that something had gotten past his carefully composed face, he shutt
ered his eyes with amber gold lashes.

  Did he want her along, or did he hate the idea of her going with them? She couldn’t begin to guess. She only knew she wanted to be with him. “I…yes, thank you, I’d like to go.”

  This time, there was no mistaking the mockery in Jade’s smile.

  Chapter 2

  In the darkened auditorium, Raine sat between Jade and Marc. They were hardly into the first act when Marc grasped her hand and pulled it over into his lap. She felt the warm strength of his thigh, and wished desperately that it was touching him that made her heart beat faster. But it wasn’t. It was sitting next to Jade, being so aware of him that she could almost feel the movement of his breathing under the soft caramel-colored suede jacket and the white silk shirt he wore. Against Jade’s trousered leg, the ruffles of her peach-colored sundress lay like bright swatches of light. It was incredibly intimate to sit next to him and listen to the soft sound of his breathing, to hear him chuckle as the inept hero sank deeper and deeper into trouble.

  Then Michele made her entrance, and his breathing pattern altered. Raine could feel his nerves tighten as if they were an extension of her own. She hardly recognized Michele, and it wasn’t just because her sister was made up for the stage. Michele was Tiffany, she moved and talked like a woman accustomed to a wealthy, luxurious life. Even Raine was aware that the audience loved her, and that Michele almost stole the show. She had…what did they call it? Presence.

  When the play was over and the lights in the auditorium came on, Jade said, “The cast is driving over to Okoboji in Iowa. We’re meeting Michele at the Outrigger. It’s a restaurant and bar on the lake.

  Marc’s protest was immediate. “Holy cow. That’s eighty miles away.”

  “To theatrical people the night is young,” Jade said dryly.

  “I’ll bet most of them have to get up and go to work at their day jobs just like we do.”

  “Some of the cast are amateur volunteers like Michele, but the leads and the director are professionals from New York City,” Raine said.