LITMIR.BIZ

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he walked away, leaving her with the bill.

      * * *

      “Leaving me to pay the bill,” she grumbled when Jan returned to the Victorian house she shared with Margie. “Calling me names, threatening to break up you and Andy…what kind of man is he?”

      “A law unto himself.” Jan sighed, dropping down on the couch. “Oh, Margie, I had such high hopes that if I didn’t show up with Andy, you and Cannon might hit it off….”

      “Cannon?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

      “That’s his name, although most people call him `Cal,’” Jan said miserably. “I’m sorry, really I am. You see, Andy wants to invite me down to the family’s beach house in Panama City, Florida for a couple of weeks. I want to go, so that I can get to know Andy’s mother, but Cannon won’t hear of it. He’s been so dead set against our getting married, and I thought—” she glanced at Margie and grimaced “—well, I thought meeting you might change his mind. You can charm anyone when you set your mind to it. I didn’t realize you were going dressed like a hooker,” she added regretfully.

      Margie struck a pose. “I must be getting better as an actress.” She grinned. “I sure convinced your future brother-in-law that my reputation was in shreds.”

      “Margie!” came the groaned reply.

      “Are you sure you want to marry Andy?” Margie asked with genuine concern. “Just think, you’d have to go through life having that human bulldozer order you around.”

      “We wouldn’t have to see Cannon all that often,” Jan assured her. “He lives in Chicago, you know.”

      She turned away, toying with a statuette on the mantle. “Is he married?” she asked carelessly.

      “Not anymore. His wife was making time with just about everything in pants. He divorced her, and Andy says the only use he has for women now isn’t printable.”

      “I can’t imagine any woman desperate enough to get in his bed,” Margie retorted, her eyes glittering.

      “They say he’s much sought-after in Chicago,” Jan mused, watching her sister’s reaction with great interest.

      “Well, he wouldn’t be in Atlanta,” Margie grumbled. “And never by me!”

      Jan shook her head and frowned. Margie was a lot like Cannon Van Dyne, her sister thought, although she probably didn’t realize it. Margie hid her inner feelings under all that clowning, but she wasn’t as carefree as she pretended. Jan had been there the day Lawrence Silver died in that plane crash, and only she knew the truth about Margie’s unhappy marriage. Margie had avoided men ever since, except on a friendly basis. She wanted no one near enough to hurt her again.

      But she seemed to be reacting to Cannon in a totally alien way. Margie wasn’t usually antagonistic, but her eyes glittered when she mentioned Andy’s brother. It was the most violent emotion she’d shown in five years.

      “Cannon’s an attractive man,” Jan murmured.

      “That big stone wall?” Margie turned away. “I don’t even want to talk about him. Imagine, leaving me the bill for his scotch and water, and ordering me a drink I didn’t even touch! I ought to have the bill embedded in a block of concrete and mailed to him special delivery, collect.” Her green eyes brightened. “I wonder how I could do it….”

      Jan couldn’t repress a grin. Margie was incorrigible.

      The jangling of the phone cut into the conversation. Jan ran for it, her eyes lighting up at once when she held the receiver to her ear.

      “It’s Andy,” she whispered to Margie, who nodded and left the room, knowing her sister would appreciate some privacy,

      She wandered out into the long hall. On the way to her bedroom, her eyes fell on the wood umbrella stand she and Larry had bought soon after their wedding. They’d been browsing in an antique store—Margie’s passion for the past irritated him, and he’d only gone under protest—when her eyes had fallen on the handcarved wooden relic. She’d bought it against his wishes, because it had been expensive. She’d argued that she had money of her own, a little that her grandmother McPherson had left her, and he’d stormed out of the shop in a huff, leaving her to handle the transaction.

      They’d had a violent argument about it that night, and he’d forced her in bed—not for the first time—leaving her hurt and bruised and frightened. The next morning he’d dressed to go on his fatal trip while she studied him with tormented eyes. She’d watched him leave the room with the most incredible kind of pain in her heart, wondering what had happened to their marriage, longing to be free of him.

      She shuddered at the memory, glaring down at the umbrella stand. Why had she left it here, in a house that now held no memento of him, not even a picture? Perhaps it was some subconscious thing, she told herself, to keep alive the guilt that had never gone away. She’d wished herself free, and he’d died. Somehow, she felt responsible for the plane crash—despite the fact that she had had nothing to do with it.

      She stared down at the antique. Perhaps she’d give it to Mrs. James next door. She smiled as she went into her blue and white bedroom. Mrs. James was really a doll, despite her strict puritanical streak and her fervent disapproval of her notorious neighbor. Margie actually encouraged that disapproval, for reasons she’d never worked out. She wasn’t really the uninhibited creature her readers believed her to be. The woman inside the flamboyant shell was actually very vulnerable, and achingly lonely. But her marriage had taught her one thing—that appearances were not to be trusted. She never wanted to take the chance of being trapped again. She never wanted another domineering man in her life, and even as the thought registered, she saw a mental picture of Cannon Van Dyne. She shivered involuntarily. He was like Larry, she thought. All arrogant command, the kind of man who’d want a clinging, obedient woman with no independence and no spirit. He’d smother her….

      The bedroom door burst open as Margie was drawing her mint green nightgown over her head, and she turned, smiling at Jan’s excited face. Her younger sister so rarely glowed like that. Jan was such a shy, gentle creature.

      “Oh, Margie, we’ve got another chance!” she said, eyeing her older sister warily.

      “We?” Margie asked with raised eyebrows. She smoothed the gown over her hips and rested her hands on them. “Okay, shrimp, what have you got me into this time?”

      Jan sat down on the bed, running a nervous hand through her short hair. “Margie, you love me, don’t you?”

      Margie melted at the nervous young voice. “Oh, darling, you know I do,” she said, sitting down to hug her sister affectionately. “You’re all I’ve got in the world. Don’t you know what you mean to me?”

      Jan bit her lip, returning the hug. “I hope you know that I feel the same,” she murmured. “Without you to hold on to, I don’t know how I would have survived. Mother dead, Dad drinking himself to death while he made a public spectacle of all of us, Granny McPherson fighting to keep us….” She looked up. “Granny was good to us, but she wasn’t a warm person. The only affection I ever remember came from you.”

      Margie sighed. “Same here.”

      “I’ll never forget the way you took me in after Granny died—despite Larry’s objections.” Jan had never liked Larry; he’d always made her feel like an outsider. She’d had no place to go except to Margie. There were no other relatives who could have taken her. Boarding school was out because of the expense, so Margie had pleaded and begged until Larry gave in and let Jan live with them. But he’d never liked the arrangement, and he’d been cruelly vocal about it.

      Jan had never pried into Margie’s marriage. And her sister had put on a very convincing face for the world, but Jan saw through it. It was impossible to live in the same house with two people and not sense the undercurrents.

      “I never should have married him,” Margie admitted, remembering.

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