"Three-way weekend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Kitty)

CHAPTER THREE

For the first time in months, Elaine Craig felt relaxed. She sat, becalmed, in the sunshine-bathed plaza; it was almost as if disaster had never touched her. On the table in front of her stood a cool gin-and-tonic. Between sips, the attractive young blonde scribbled brief messages on the postcards she had bought.

"Now I know why San Francisco is called 'Baia de Magnificencia Tremenda'," she wrote to her parents. "This is the most peaceful spot on earth. I love it."

That would please her mother and father, she thought. They were so desperately anxious for her to be happy again – and their anxiety both irritated and oppressed their only daughter.

"I've lost my heart – to San Francisco!" Elaine scrawled largely across the back of another card. That card she addressed to Edward L. Towers, Jr. And let's hope that this time, she told herself, dear Edward L., Junior takes the hint. Unless of course, he was really determined to make a lifetime career out of being the man she was least likely to marry. Stifling a giggle, the girl reached for another card.

She addressed the last of her cards, idly speculating on how long it would be before she saw any of those people again. She suspected that it might be quite a while but the thought did not bother her.

She had arrived in San Francisco the week before and had done little except bask in the sunshine and the easy-paced atmosphere. She was booked in at a small hotel that overlooked Union Square and had drooping fuchsias growing out of its window boxes. Sometimes Elaine wondered when she would have to wake up again.

A fluttering of wings made her look up. Two tourists, a man and a girl, were feeding a flock of pigeons. She turned her head. To her right sat a group of teenage girls, laughing, whispering and eating ice cream. She looked around to her left; a middle-aged couple were sipping experimentally at cups of espresso. Elaine couldn't help noticing that both of them were very good looking.

The realization suddenly came that she was the only person sitting alone; that didn't bother her a bit! A pretty girl on her own attracts attention, and Elaine Craig both expected and enjoyed it.

She leaned back in her chair, letting the warmth of the spring sun suffuse her body closing her eyes against the glare. Behind the thickly lashed lids, Elaine's eyes were clear blue, set deep in a distinctively boned face. Her heavy blonde hair, streaked by nature and the swimming pool, swung down straight almost to her shoulders. Although she was not conventionally pretty, she possessed an off-beat, sensual kind of beauty that captivated men and mystified other women.

Voices, right beside her, jerked Elaine out of her reverie. She opened her eyes and looked around but for a moment she could see nothing in the dazzling light. Then she realized that the voices were not addressing her, but belonged to a group of sight-seers settling down noisily at the next table. If the group had been aware of Elaine, they would have noticed that her smile, as she turned away, was one of relief.

Leaning forward in her chair, the young blonde reached for the tall glass on the table in front of her. Her gaze wandered to the far end of the patio.

It was then that she saw him, coming through the colonnades.

Elaine froze! Her outstretched hand turned into a furiously clenched fist. It's Warren! was her sole, panic-filled thought. The shock of his sudden appearance held the startled girl rigid in her chair. Immobilized, she sat and watched the approaching figure of her ex-husband, dully aware of the pounding in her head and throat.

It was soon over! "Warren" came to within a few feet of where Elaine sat – and kept right on walking. And he had not been Warren, after all. The man was just another camera-slung tourist crossing the patio at a leisurely pace.

But the stranger was tall and loose-limbed, as Warren had been. He had crew-cut hair and he looked to be about the same age – twenty-eight – that Warren would be. He even had the same jawline and the stand-out ears. But he wasn't Warren. He wasn't her husband – her ex-husband, Elaine reminded herself. She must remember that. The man she had once been married to was thousands of miles from San Francisco.

Elaine's hands were damp. She was exhausted, almost shaking, the turmoil inside her a mixture of rage and fear. She wanted a cigarette badly, but she was not able to open her handbag and take one out of the pack. The tense rigidity of the moment had gone; the immobility remained.

How long had it been since the last time she had suffered the illusion of seeing him? A week at least – perhaps longer.

Warren's "appearance" had been one of the most distressing symptoms to follow the divorce. Wherever she went, Elaine kept seeing her ex-husband. The "divorce syndrome", she had called it in a painful attempt to laugh it off.

She felt the color returning to her face. Her flushed cheeks and over-brilliant eyes were the only outward signs of the reaction setting in. The same reaction that always followed, as night follows day. Every time Elaine "saw" him, she drowned in angry humiliation all over again.

She remembered that afternoon, not so very many months ago, when she had picked up the telephone in her brand-new home in Connecticut. Looking back, Elaine could recognize that time as having been her last moment of innocence.

She also remembered her surprise at finding it was the police who were telephoning her.

"Mrs. Craig? This is Sergeant Reiley. We have your husband here at the station. We'd like to talk to you…"

The memory blur had started there – the blur created in self-defense against too many unpalatable facts, too many truths stripped of their covering, too much reality rushing in until it seemed she would choke…