One Touch of Moondust Read Online Free

Charleston’s more elite social circles, from which she’d once been excluded. Gabrielle had learned long ago to tolerate the excesses, since her father actually enjoyed them. It gave him frequent opportunities to indulge his still-beautiful and adoring wife. He’d learned to his chagrin that similar gifts were wasted on his daughter. She preferred lessons in financial management and subscriptions to business magazines.
    â€œThe new apartment is larger,” Gabrielle said cautiously, hoping that would be enough information to appease her mother’s curiosity. If her mother even suspected the existence of a man like Paul Reed, she’d be on the next flight to New York, clucking over her endangered chick.
    â€œTwo bedrooms in fact,” Gabrielle added.
    â€œHow wonderful! Your father and I will come for a visit soon, now that you have room for us. Tell me all about it. Where is it? Is it a new building, one of those skyscrapers? I’m sure the view must be quite spectacular.”
    â€œWe’ll talk about it later,” Gabriellehedged, already regretting the impulsive disclosure. She couldn’t very well explain that the second bedroom was going to be very much occupied or that the building predated her birth and quite possibly her mother’s. Mentioning that it was in Brooklyn would definitely arouse more discussion than she could possibly cope with.
    â€œIt will take me a while to get settled and do some decorating.” Talk about understatements. “I have to go now, Mother. Give my love to Dad. I’ll call you soon.”
    â€œBut, dear, you haven’t given me the new address or phone number.”
    â€œI’ll call you with it later. The phone’s not even installed yet. Bye, Mother. I love you.”
    She hung up quickly, before her mother could force her to divulge any more details. Her mother could have been used by the military. She had ways of extracting the most personal disclosures when you least expected it. Once, right in the middle of a conversation about Gabrielle’s high school geometry homework, she’d gotten her to confess that there had been boys at Melinda Sue Wainwright’s slumber party. She still didn’t know how hermother had done it. She’d learned, though, that it was best not to prolong a conversation with her mother when she was trying to protect any intimate secret.
    She wondered if she could avoid talking to her at all until after this sojourn in Brooklyn ended.
    * * *
    On Friday morning Gabrielle took a last look around her elegantly furnished studio apartment on Park Avenue. She was going to miss the thick gray carpeting, the glass-topped dining-room table, the outrageously expensive leather convertible sofa, the mahogany wall unit that hid stereo, television, VCR and compact disc player. She was even going to miss the dreadful modern print that hung in the tiny foyer.
    She had rented the apartment at the height of her all-too-brief success on Wall Street, at a time when she’d been thumbing her nose at her protective family. After seeing her very first Manhattan apartment, another studio with a less pricey address, they’d begged her to come back to Charleston. They’d reminded her that she could live there in style as a memberof high society. She would not have to eat her dinner perched on a sofa, her plate on a coffee table that barely came up to her kneecaps. She definitely would not have to sleep on that very same sofa. There were nights when she couldn’t find one single comfortable spot on that two-inch mattress that she was tempted to do as they asked.
    However, had she returned they also would have expected her to marry stuffy, rigid Townsend Lane, who was destined for greatness, according to her father. Her refusal to set a wedding date had disappointed them. She doubted if it had had any effect on Townsend at all. He’d barely noticed her when she was there. He’d taken her