Once More With Feeling Read Online Free Page B

long braid
that was so perfect a choice, strangers stopped her on the street
and warned her not to cut it.
    Owen took her hands in his. There was a
pause before they greeted each other, as if they were assessing
changes, accumulating memories--despite the fact that they had seen
each other only hours ago at the office. Owen bent his head and
brushed his lips against her cheeks. Her eyelids lowered in
something longer than a blink. She seemed to hold her breath, to
savor . . .
    "Elisabeth . . ."
    Elisabeth realized that Anna was coming
toward her now. Owen's greeting, which had probably taken only
seconds, had ended. But Elisabeth still felt it like a tangled knot
inside her. Anna extended her hands to Elisabeth as she had to
Owen, but the expression in her eyes wasn't nearly as warm. "The
house looks lovely. And the flowers in the entrance are inspired.
Is that your handiwork?"
    "It's most decidedly not." Elisabeth
squeezed Anna's hands, then dropped them quickly. "Thank you for
coming on such short notice. We're always glad to have you
here."
    The last was a lie. Once upon a time
Elisabeth had been happy to have Anna here. Hiring Anna Jacquard
had been a coup for Owen. She was a supremely talented architect
who had begun the career climb in a prestigious Dallas firm. But
Owen had seen one of Anna's designs at a convention, and he had
been completely enchanted. There was a similarity in the way that
they thought about space, about light and angles and working in
harmony with nature. He had made a point of seeking her out, and,
just a month later, of making her an offer that was too good to
pass up.
    And one month ago Elisabeth had begun to
wonder what other offers Owen had made her.
    "I love coming here." Anna had a subtle
smile, one that didn't light up her face so much as highlight its
finer points. "You are the perfect hostess."
    Elisabeth had a vision of those words as her
epitaph, chiseled on a white granite crypt that looked
astonishingly like this house. She murmured some properly insincere
words of gratitude.
    The doorbell rang again, and the remainder
of the guests arrived in closely spaced groups of two. Anna and
Grant wandered toward the library, where drinks were going to be
served. Elisabeth and Owen went to the entrance hall, where Rick
had filled a corner with calla lilies and oddly sculpted coral
under tulle that billowed convincingly each time the door
opened.
    She tried to put the intimacy of Owen and
Anna's greeting out of her mind as she greeted Marguerite and
Seamus O'Keefe.
    "We are obviously having something that
swims for dinner," Marguerite said, pointing to the
arrangement.
    Elisabeth kissed Marguerite's cheek. "I'd
hate to think what he might have done if I'd been serving venison.
I'm afraid he would have given us his personal rendition of the
death scene from Bambi."
    "I gave a dinner party the week that Berlin
was reunited. The florist built a wall of flowers across the dining
room table and it collapsed spectacularly when the first course was
set on the table. I have grown fond of rose petals in my
consomme."
    "Tell me his name wasn't Rick."
    Marguerite gave a sly wink. "However did you
know?"
    Marguerite, tall, blond, and horsey, had
been Elisabeth's friend since infancy. She could ride to hounds in
the morning and picket Madison Avenue furriers the same afternoon
without a thought for the irony. She had blood ties to the
Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, and other historic three-syllable
names too numerous to mention, but she had married apple-cheeked
Seamus O'Keefe, who called himself a landscape architect and was
really just a gardener. Seamus had made it his life's work to dig
up every inch of Birch Haven, their Litchfield County estate, and
replant it with tropical plant life that required constant
vigilance. In private Owen called him Exotic Compost O'Keefe in
honor of Seamus's never-ending supply of Zone 10 plants that hadn't
made the adjustment to Connecticut's Zone 5 winters.
    The Adamsons