a-soft-place-to-fall by Rakhibul hasan (free e books to read .TXT) 📖

her heart.

He still didn't know if she had kids. He hadn't asked and she hadn't volunteered the information. It was hard to imagine being married almost twenty years and not having children. He had always wanted kids of his own. He found himself hoping she had a daughter away at college somewhere, a young woman with her smile. Or maybe a strapping son with a football scholarship, a lovable kid who wanted the best for her.

The thought that she might be alone struck him as too unfair to even consider. Some women were meant to be surrounded by kids and cats and dogs and lots of loving commotion and Annie Galloway was one of them.

Get real, Butler. You don't know a damn thing about her. You're making this up as you go along.

He couldn't argue that but a man had to start somewhere. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her, the good and the bad and the painful. He wanted to see the empty places in her life where she could make room for him.

Forty-eight hours ago he hadn't known Annie Galloway existed. Now he couldn't imagine his world without her in it.

She thought he was a hero. All he did was put out that fire before it had a chance to do any real damage and now he could do no wrong. He had seen it in her eyes when she looked at him, something he had never seen before in a woman's eyes, and he didn't deserve it. Max was more of a hero than he was. Ask any of the clients he'd left behind, the ones whose futures were no longer quite so secure. They could tell her a thing or two about the heroic Sam Butler.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that she'd put some space between them.

He was reaching for a box of corn flakes when the phone rang somewhere in the house. Damn cell phones. He finally found it wedged between the sofa cushions.

"Took you long enough," Warren Bancroft said. "Seven rings. I was about to hang

up."

"Are you back in town or still down in Boston?"

"I got back last night. I have to go back to Boston tomorrow afternoon but it's good to be home."

"Tell Nancy the pie was first rate."

"Tell her yourself," Warren said. "She's making her famous blueberry waffles and there's enough to feed an army."

Fifteen minutes later Sam and Max entered the kitchen where Nancy was ladling thick batter onto the waffle iron.

"Just in time," she said, acknowledging Sam's kiss on her cheek. "Himself is digging in right now."

Max stayed behind, just in case Nancy needed help with the bacon or a runaway waffle.

Warren was in the sunroom that overlooked the harbor. The water was a little choppy and the frothy whitecaps made a wonderful contrast with the deep steel blue of the ocean. He leaped to his feet the second he saw Sam and clasped his hand warmly.

"You're too skinny," he said by way of hello. "Nancy!" he bellowed. "Double up on the order. We need to put some meat on his bones."

"I'm one step ahead of you!" Nancy bellowed back.

"What is it with you people?" Sam asked as he took the seat opposite Warren. "You're always trying to fatten me up."

"Wait until you've been through a Maine winter," Warren said, reaching for the heated pitcher of real maple syrup. "Then you'll know."

They ate in companionable silence for a while, making short work of two batches of blueberry waffles.

Finally Warren pushed his chair back from the table and loosened his belt. "So how did Annie like the furniture?"

"She loved it," Sam said, as he bit into a piece of perfectly fried bacon. "Once she heard it was Ellie's, she seemed pretty happy with it."

Warren lit up a cigarette, took one drag, then stubbed it out in a small ashtray next to his plate. "Bet she made you sign a receipt of some kind."

"Right down to the embroidered pillow on the sofa. What's with that anyway?" "That's our Annie. Scrupulously honest, right down to the penny." He watched Sam

with open interest. "Anything else to tell me?"

Sam directed his attention to his cup of coffee. "Nope." "Good," said Warren. "None of my business anyway."

#

Annie delivered the bridal flowers to a calm Karen Sorenson at nine a.m. and the boutonnieres to a slightly frantic Frankie Machado at nine-thirty. The day promised to be a long one and in a way she was glad. She needed some distance from the surprising events of the night before and maybe a little distance from Sam as well.

Last night she'd met a woman she'd never known existed. A passionate woman ready to throw caution to the four winds, a woman half-crazed with desire.

The insides of her thighs were still faintly red from the stubble on his cheeks and chin and the memory of how the marks had come to be there was almost enough to send her flying back into his arms.

Not that she imagined he would have her. Last night he had been everything a lover should be. He had protected her when she needed protection. He had made love to her with his hands and mouth in ways that shattered her very core, made her climax again and again until she thought she had fallen off the edge of the earth, and she had responded by sneaking out of his house while he was on the telephone and running back home like the coward she was.

She was half-surprised he hadn't egged her house and let the air out of her tires. She had wanted to make love to him. She had burned to memorize every muscle of

his lean, hard body with her tongue. Her sexual experiences might be limited to one man but she wasn't an innocent. She knew how to give pleasure as well as how to take.

If only she hadn't noticed the way her hand looked as it rested against his tanned chest.

If only she hadn't noticed her wedding band.

Memory after memory of Kevin pushed in on her: their first kiss behind the marina, the senior prom when he gave her the failing gardenia, the day he proposed to her on the steps of the library at Bowdoin, their wedding day when it rained so hard they gave up on the umbrellas and just let it fall on them because how could a little rain hurt you when you held a world of happiness in your arms? And then there were the memories of sleepless nights waiting for him to come home, the strangers knocking on the door, the phone calls from men with deep voices who left messages she didn't want to understand, the night when it all ended in the middle of their brass bed as Annie kept whispering no no no no . . . .

For two years she had struggled to make peace with his death but it wasn't until last night in the arms of another man that she finally realized that she was alive, fully and completely alive, and that she was free to build a new life on the foundation of the old. She had been marking time for too long, measuring her days by bills paid and disasters averted.

She liked the Annie Galloway she had discovered last night: the passionate woman who wasn't looking over her shoulder all the time, wondering when life would deliver the next right hook. Sam Butler seemed to like her too; or at least he had before she gathered up her clothes and slipped out the door on him without so much as a thank you it's been swell. Of course, maybe she was making too much of the whole interlude. What had been a turning point of Olympic proportions to Annie might have been an hour's pleasurable pursuit to Sam and nothing more. Her face reddened as she remembered her deep satisfaction and what she assumed was his own deep discomfort at being left unfulfilled. Just how pleasurable the pursuit had been for him might be open for debate.

Assuming she ever saw him again.

Oh yes, she was definitely glad she had a wedding to work today, a big demanding job with lots of details guaranteed to trip her up when she least expected it. She thrived on the pressure of time schedules and the never-ending surprises most weddings provided.

Today she was the Annie everyone knew and depended upon. The one with the lists and the schedules and the stop watch embedded in her brain. That was how you built a business: by delivering everything you promised when you promised it . . . and just a little bit more. It made for some long days but the fact that she would soon be able to go to her mailbox without being afraid of the bills she might find lurking inside was worth a little sleep deprivation.

She left Frankie's house then rushed back to the shop and began loading the church flowers into the back of her truck, taking care to keep the delicate blooms cool and their stems in water. She threw wire cutters, three heavy spools of satin ribbon, and a huge box of ferns, misty, and babies' breath in with it, then raced for the church. The last mass of the day ended at eleven and by eleven-ten, Annie and Claudia were hard at work turning the somber old church into a wedding bower of blooms.

"I'm not sure Frankie's going to make it through the ceremony," she told Claudia as they placed the lush and fragrant arrangements of plumeria and ginger blossoms and hibiscus on the altar. "He looked scared out of his own skin."

"They always look that way," Claudia said with a fond laugh. "God knows my three boys did."

Annie turned to her ex mother-in-law in surprise. "Not Kevin!"

"Oh yes Kevin," the woman said as she straightened the heavy satin ribbons draped over the altar cloth. "He was so nervous John finally had to sit him down and make him drink a shot of whiskey."

"I don't believe it."

"I'm not saying he didn't love you more than life itself because he did, but when it comes to taking that walk down the aisle, I think most of them feel it's the last mile."

Annie thought back over the hundreds of weddings she had been to, either as a guest or as the florist, and a pattern began to emerge through the haze of orange blossoms. The brides had invariably been regal and steadfast in their resolve as they glided down the aisle while the grooms wiped beads of sweat from their temples and tugged at shirt collars grown suddenly too tight.

"You're right," she said as she layered baby's breath and lacy ferns around the bigger arrangements.. "Why didn't I ever notice that before?"

"We're the practical ones," Claudia said, gently shaping a flurry of plumeria with the pads of her fingers. "Once we make up our mind about a man, it's all over."

"Is that how it was for you and John?" They had been one of the happiest couples Annie had ever seen, as perfectly matched in every way as a husband and wife could wish for.

"Eventually," Claudia said.

They chatted quietly about the upcoming nuptials as they decorated the front pews. Claudia took the bride's side, Annie the groom's, and they were finished in short order.

As they were sweeping up fallen blossoms and scattered greenery, Claudia peered at Annie then stepped closer.

"What's this?" She placed a gentle finger against Annie's left cheek. "Did one of those cats scratch you again?"

"No," Annie said, busy picking up tiny bits of feathery green leaves from the pristine white bridal carpet. "Why do you ask?"

"Your cheek is all red, honey. A little network of scratches."

"I can't imagine how I –" She stopped mid-sentence and willed herself not to dissolve in a crimson blush.