Silver Falls - Softcover

Stuart, Anne

 
9780778325970: Silver Falls
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0778325970 ISBN 13: 9780778325970
Verlag: MIRA, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Rachel is finally getting it right. After years of wandering, she's married the perfect man and settled into the ideal life. But as her sleepy little town turns into a killing ground, she realizes that this new life might come at too high a price.

Caleb Middleton says he's returned home to set things right. But as her husband's dangerous brother circles like a hungry wolf, poking holes in her perfect world, Rachel draws her young daughter in close. The rain and violence keep coming, and Rachel must decide whether to trust her dream life or her instincts…before the town of Silver Falls becomes her grave.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anne Stuart loves Japanese rock and roll, wearable art, Spike, her two kids, Clairefontaine paper, quilting, her delicious husband of thirty-four years, fellow writers, her three cats, telling stories and living in Vermont. She’s not too crazy about politics and diets and a winter that never ends, but then, life’s always a trade-off. Visit her at www.Anne-Stuart.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

It was raining again. Of course it was, Rachel thought, peering up through the window at the gray, listless sky as her husband's black BMW pulled into their driveway. In Silver Falls, Washington, it was either raining, about to rain or just had finished raining. Even on an otherwise still night you could hear the rush of the thundering falls up on Silver Mountain, the roar of the water leaching into your brain until you felt as if you were drowning.

It was little wonder she had this sense of impending doom. There were any number of scientific studies proving the depressing effect of sunless days on human nature. She was used to the hot, sunny climates where she and her daughter had lived during the past ten years. She was simply having a hard time with rain, and gloom and shadows. She'd adapt. Everyone was moving to the Pacific Northwest?she'd grow to love it sooner or later.

She smoothed the discreet black shift down over her full hips, her hands restless. David wasn't going to be happy with her?she'd missed another appointment with the lawyer, she'd failed to meet him at his office and she'd let Sophie spend the night with friends on a school night rather than attend Stephen Henry's reading. David wouldn't argue with her, of course. Not David. He would look terribly disappointed, and that was far more effective than any number of screaming tantrums.

The thought of mild-mannered David throwing a tantrum was enough to make her grin. He pulled the BMW to a stop exactly two and a half feet from the garage, opened the door and stuck out his black umbrella, unfurling it before he stepped out of the car into the light mist. He caught Rachel's smile, and he smiled back, though his expression was tinged with that damnable, omnipresent disappointment.

"You missed our three-o'clock meeting at the lawyer's," he greeted her, clinking cheekbones with her in a ritual sign of affection. "I thought you were going to make sure you got there."

Guilt annoyed her, but she felt it anyway. "I'm so sorry, David," she said, trying to sound penitent. "I just got caught up in work." Which was a lie. She'd looked up at the faint glow of her watch in the darkroom, saw that she had plenty of time to get to their appointment and then promptly ignored it.

"This is the third time, Rachel," he said with utmost patience. "Are you having second thoughts about letting me adopt Sophie? It was your idea in the first place."

That wasn't exactly how Rachel remembered it, but she didn't bother correcting him. Being married meant making compromises, being tactful, something she could always work on.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "There's nothing I want more than for us to be a family. I just get?distracted."

He reached out and brushed an affectionate hand through her tangled red hair. "Always a dreamer, aren't you, Rachel?" he said, some of the disapproval vanishing. "Your daughter's more responsible than you are."

She took an instinctive step backward, trying to push her wild hair back into a semblance of order. David was a lovely man, but he had an unfortunate tendency to be ever so slightly patronizing. "I'm perfectly responsible when it's important," she said, keeping the edge out of her voice.

"And my adopting Sophie isn't important?" The disappointment was back in full, and Rachel bit back an instinctive retort. He hated it when she was bitchy, and she hated it as well. For Sophie's sake, most of all.

But then, Sophie wasn't there at the moment.

"You know it is, David. But there isn't any hurry, is there? We've only been married four months, and I don't know about you but I'm planning to stay married for the next fifty years. There's no need to rush into anything." She tried her most winning smile, the smile that had first caught his eyes six months ago in San Francisco, even if it was a little tight around the edges.

"Of course not," David said easily. That was what she'd first loved about him. His ability to take things in stride, including her temper. "Are you ready to go? We're running late as it is. You know how my father likes to have his audience gathered before he launches into a reading."

"I know," she said, glumly, unable to summon up much more enthusiasm. David's father, Stephen Henry Middleton, professor emeritus of Silver Falls College, self-styled poet laureate of the Pacific Northwest, should have been a welcome part of the package. She hadn't known any kind of father for the past thirteen years, not since she'd been kicked out of the house for being seventeen and pregnant, and Stephen Henry was born to be a patriarch. He doted on an unappreciative Sophie and managed just the right amount of decorous flirting with his daughter-in-law. Maybe it was Sophie's hidden dislike that tipped her off. Her daughter always had had far better instincts than she had.

"I'm ready," she said, plastering on her best smile.

David took a spotless white linen handkerchief from his elegant suit, reached up and wiped her lipstick off her mouth. "There," he said with a sigh of satisfaction. "That's much better. Aren't you going to change your shoes?"

She'd loved that bright slash of color on her mouth, but marriage was give and take, and she knew David didn't like makeup. She must have done it subconsciously, just to annoy him. She really had to stop doing things like that or she'd never settle in.

She looked down at her shoes. She was still wearing the two-inch heels that put her a good three inches taller than David's blond head. They were the brightly colored espadrilles she'd picked up in Mexico, with straps around the ankles that made her strong legs look sexy. She sighed. "Sorry, I forget," she said, kicking them off and going in search of the ballet slippers he preferred. He followed her, shoes in his hand. "Sorry," she said again, grabbing the plain black flats. She had a weakness for shoes, and she always left them all over the place, and David was always picking them up. He moved past her, placing them in the labeled cubby hole of the custom closet that both delighted and intimidated her with its strict organization, then held out his arm.

"Where's Sophie?"

"I told her she could spend the night at Kristen Bannister's. You know what a math wonk she is? she promised to help Kristen understand the bizarre properties of God knows what, and I knew we wouldn't want to be late."

Just the faintest flash of impatience on David's handsome face, gone almost as it appeared. "There are times I think you married me for the math program here in town."

"Of course not. Just because her gift for math makes me feel like the village idiot doesn't mean I'd run off with the first man who had access to an accelerated math program. I had no idea the local high school was so good."

"I told you," he pointed out. "When you were having trouble helping her. Homeschooling can only take you so far."

"I married you for you, David," she said firmly. "How can you doubt it?"

"I don't," he said, looking happier. "It's just that my father adores Sophie and he doesn't see her often enough."

But Sophie didn't adore his father. "Schoolwork comes first, don't you agree?"

"Of course." As a college professor he couldn't very well say anything else. "We'll have to bring her over for dinner some time this week to make up for it."

"Of course," Rachel said. Sophie would go if she asked her to. But Rachel hadn't lived thirty years, half of them on her own, without learning how to get what she wanted. After all, she was doing this for Sophie, giving her a sane life away from the nomadic travels that had suddenly turned tragic, giving her access to the kind of school that would nurture her extraordinary gift. Sophie had better things to do than cater to the overweening vanity of an aging academic.

Then again,...

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Verlag
MIRA
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0778325970
ISBN 13 
9780778325970
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
HarperCollins Publishers Ireland
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

Mayor Street Upper 39/40
Dublin
D01 C9W8
Irland

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