Summer Storm Read Online Free

refused to meet his eyes.
    She thought to herself as she undressed and got into bed that she had behaved like a child. He must think that no one had ever suggested going home with her before. She should have been funny and casual and made a clever remark. The problem was he unnerved her so much that she still couldn’t think of a clever remark. She thought of the feel of his body against hers and of her reaction. The problem was, she thought, he scared her to death.
    He called the next day and asked her out. She said she was busy.He named another time and she said she was busy then too.
    “Doing what?” he asked.
    She thought he was being rude and answered repressively, “I’m working on a paper.” She would have liked to tell him that what she did was none of his business. She didn’t, however, because she was almost constitutionally incapable of being rude herself. Her parents, she thought regretfully, had brought her up too well.
    “When is the paper due?” he asked relentlessly.
    “The day before Christmas recess. Then I go home.” That should give him enough of a hint, she thought.
    “I’ll call you after the vacation then,” said the beautiful voice in her ear and she stared at the phone in astonishment.
    “I’ll probably be busy preparing for finals,” she got out.
    “I’ll call you,” he said firmly and hung up.
    She went home for Christmas and tried not to think about Christopher Douglas. She went out with a boy she had known since high school who was also home on holiday and she found the dates strangely depressing.
    “You don’t look very happy, honey,” her father said to her as she came into the living room one night after saying good-bye to her escort in the car.
    “I don’t know. Daddy,” she replied with a sigh.“It’sjust that I’m so sick of mediocre boys.”
    “Mediocre?” he queried with a grin.
    “Well, they’re nice enough, I guess.It’s just that they don’t interest me much. And lately it seems everyone I go out with starts to talk about marriage. Why do men always want to get married?”
    He laughed. “Does Dan want to marry you?”
    “I think so,” she answered gloomily.
    “I always thought you liked Dan.”
    “Oh, I like him. But he’s so—so conventional. His talk, his ideas, his clothes, his car. I don’t think in all the years I’ve known him that he’s ever once surprised me.”
    “Well, then,” her father said gravely, “clearly you oughtn’t to marry him.”
    “No.” She sighed. “I don’t think I’ll ever marry. I think I’ll devote my life to scholarship. It’s much more satisfying than going out on all these boring dates.” She trailed gracefully upstairs, leaving her father with his head buried in the newspaper, his shoulders shaking.
    She got back to college on Monday and by Friday he still hadn’t called. She was unreasonably annoyed. If people said they were going to do a thing, then they ought to do it, she thought. She refused two dates for Saturday night and was sitting in her room reading Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe when she was called to the phone. He was down in the lobby. Would she care to go out with him for a bite to eat?
    “All right,” she heard herself saying. “I'll be down in five minutes.” She brushed her long hair, dusted some blusher on her cheeks and put on lipstick. She changed her jeans for a pair of corduroys, picked up her pea jacket and went downstairs to the lobby.
    They had a wonderful time. She had thought they could have nothing in common, but by the end of the evening she felt she had known him forever. She didn’t quite know what she had expected—a “film star” type personality, she supposed, to go with his looks. But he wasn’t like that at all. He was, in fact, the nicest boy she had ever met. The nicest man, she corrected herself, as she said good night to him sedately in the lobby of her dorm. He was twenty-five, four years older than she, and centuries older in