Strange Bedfellow Read Online Free

pressure the news had evoked eased as well.  
    Yet on Saturday morning Dina wakened with the sun, unable to go back to sleep. Finally she stopped trying, arose and dressed in slacks and white blouse with a pullover sweater. The other members of the household, Blake's mother and their housekeeper, Deirdre, were still asleep.  
    Dina hurriedly tidied the room, unfolding the blue satin coverlet from the foot of the four-poster bed and smoothing it over the mattress. Deirdre was such a perfectionist that she would probably do it over again. Fluffing the satin pillow shams, Dina placed them at the head of the bed.  
    The clothes she had worn last night were lying on the blue and gold brocade cushion of the love seat. Dina hung them up in the large closet. The neck-scarf she folded and carried to its drawer.  
    Inside, the gilt edge of a picture frame gleamed amidst the lingerie and fashion accessories. It lay face down, concealing the photograph of Blake. Until Chet had given her an engagement ring, the picture had been on the bedside table, Now it was relegated to a dresser drawer, a photograph of the past that had nothing to do with the present. Dina closed the drawer and glanced around the room. Everything seemed to be in order.  
    After Blake's disappearance two and a half years ago, it had seemed senseless for both Dina and his mother to keep separate households, especially when the days began to stretch into weeks and months. In the end Dina had sublet the apartment she and Blake had in town to move to the suburbs with his mother.  
    She had thought it would ease her loneliness and provide an outlet for her inner fears, but it hadn't proved to be so. Dina had spent the bulk of her private time consoling Mother Chandler, as she called her mother-in-law, and had received little if any consolation in return.  
    Still, it was a suitable arrangement, a place to sleep and eat, with all the housekeeping and meals done by others. With most of her time and energy spent in keeping the company going, the arrangement had become a definite asset.  
    Now, as she tiptoed out of the house into the dawn, Dina wished for the privacy of her own home, where she could steal into the kitchen and fix an early morning breakfast without feeling she was invading someone else's turf. And Deirdre was jealously possessive about her kitchen.  
    Closing the door, she listened for the click of the lock. When she heard it, she turned to the steps leading to the driveway and the white Porsche parked there. Inside the house the telephone rang, loud in the silence of the pink morning.  
    Dina stopped and began rummaging through her oversize purse for the house key. It was seldom used since there was always someone to let her in. Before she found it, the phone had stopped ringing. She waited several seconds to see if it would start ringing again. Someone in the house must have answered it, Dina decided, or else the party must have decided to call later in the morning.  
    Skimming down the steps, she hurried to the Porsche, folding the top down before climbing in and starting the engine. With doughnuts and coffee in a Styrofoam container from a pastry shop, she drove through the quiet business streets.  
    There was a salty tang to the breeze ruffling her hair. Dina shook her head to let its cool fingers rake through the silken gold strands. Her blue eyes narrowed in decision as she turned the sports car away from the street that would take her to the office building and headed toward the solitude of an early morning ocean beach.  
    Sitting on a piece of driftwood, Dina watched the sun finish rising on Rhode Island Sound, the water shimmering and sparkling as the waves lapped the long strand of ocean beach. The city of Newport was located on the island of Rhode Island, from which the state derived its name.  
    The doughnut crumbs had been tossed to the seagulls, still swooping and soaring nearby in case she had missed one. It was peaceful and quiet.