Sweet Memories Read Online Free

redecorated two years ago. It wasn’t her own house, but it gave Theresa a taste of home planning, making her eager for the day when she could exercise her own tastes throughout an entire house.
    Brian noted her tightly crossed arms beneath the baby blue sweater and the nervousness that was absent only while her sister and brother were close by.
    “I’m sorry it has no closet, but you can hang your things up here.” She opened a door leading to an unfinished portion of the basement where the laundry facilities were housed.
    He crossed toward her, and she stepped well back as he popped his head around the laundry-room doorway, one foot off the floor behind him. There was a rolling laundry rack with empty hangers tinging in the air currents from the opening of the door. “There’s no bath down here, but feel free to use the upstairs tub or shower any time you want.”
    When he turned to her, his eyes again rested directly on hers as he noted, “It sures beats the BOQ on base, especially at Christmas time.” She was conscious of how crisp and correctly knotted his formal navy blue tie was, how smoothly the dark blue military “blouse” contoured his chest and shoulders over the paler blue of his shirt, of how flattering the square-set cap was to the equally square-cut lines of his jaw.
    “BOQ?” she questioned.
    “Bachelor’s Officers’ Quarters.”
    “Oh.” She waited for his eyes to rove downward, but they didn’t. Instead, he began freeing the four silver buttons bearing the eagle-and-shield U.S. Air Force insignia, turning his back on her and taking a stroll around the room while freeing the “blouse” and shrugging out of it. He slipped his hat off the back of his head with a slow, relaxed movement, and she saw his hair for the first time. It was a rich chestnut color, trimmed—according to military regulations—far too short for her taste, and bearing a ridge across the back from the band of his cap. He turned toward Theresa again, and she noted that around his face the chestnut hair held the suggestion of waves, but was cut too short to allow them free rein. It would be much more attractive an inch and a half longer, she decided.
    “It feels good to get out of these things.’’
    “Oh, here! Let me hang them up.”
    “Just the blouse—I mean the jacket. We get in trouble if we hang up our caps.”
    As she came forward to take his jacket, he extended his cap, too, and its inner band was still warm from his head. As she scuttled away around the laundry-room doorway again, that warmth seemed to singe her palm. When she tipped the cap upside down to lay it on the rack above the clothes bar, a spicy scent of some hair preparation found its way to her nostrils. It seemed to cling to the jacket, too, as she threaded its shoulders over a hanger and hooked it on the rack.
    When she returned to the family room, Brian was standing in front of the sliding glass doors with his hands in his trousers pockets, feet widespread, gazing out at the snowy yard where twilight was falling. For a long moment Theresa studied the back of his sky blue shirt where three crisp laundry creases gave him that clean-cut appearance of a model on a recruiting poster. The creases rose up out of the belted waistline of his trousers but disappeared across his shoulders where the blue fabric stretched taut as the head of a drum.
    She crossed the room silently and flipped on an outside spotlight that flooded her father’s bird feeder. Brian started at the snap of the light, glancing aside at her as she crossed her arms beneath the sweater and joined him at the wide window, studying the scene beyond.
    “Every winter dad tries to entice cardinals, but so far this year we haven’t had any. This is his favorite spot in the house. He brings his coffee down here in the mornings and sits at the table with his binoculars close at hand. He spends hours here.”
    “I can see why.” Scanlon’s eyes moved once more to the view outside where