Novel.16.Tempest.In.Eden.1983 by Brown Sandra

Author:Brown, Sandra [Brown, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: EaeXGwAACAAJ
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

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Somehow she did survive, though during the following days she was absentminded at work, going through the motions but lacking any interest in her customers. Every time the bell on the door jingled, her eyes flew toward it in the hope that he had come to see her. If he were finding it as difficult to keep his mind on his work as she was, his arrival wouldn't be too farfetched a possibility.

Vandiveer noticed her lackadaisical attitude. "That woman would have bought that vase if you'd cared enough to talk her into it," he chastised when an indecisive customer left the shop. "Snap out of it, Shay, or go home and sleep it off. You're useless to me here walking around like a zombie."

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "I … I haven't been feeling well the last few days."

Vandiveer coughed behind his hand. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were in love." Her head snapped to attention. "Well, well, well." He laughed.

"Have I struck a nerve? New beau, Shay?" His tone was silky and taunting. He'd asked her this question many times over the years she'd worked for him, with the salacious curiosity of an old maid. Her answer had always been an unqualified no.

"Possibly," she said blithely, taking up a newly framed lithograph and trying it in several display positions on the wall. "He's a minister." The days since Ian's departure from her door had been dreary enough. She might as well have some fun at old Vandiveer's expense.

She got the astonished reaction from him she had anticipated. "A minister!"

"Yes, a minister. Like in church. Have you ever been to a church, Mr. Vandiveer?"

"Once. When my mother had me christened. And then I didn't have anything to say about it." Shay chuckled. "I must admit my image of clergymen run along the lines of Bing Crosby in Going My Way. Where in the world did you ever meet a minister? In church?" he asked cattily.

"No," Shay replied vaguely. "No … uh … somewhere else." This was only for fun, after all. She wasn't going to divulge the ins and outs of her private life to Vandiveer. Tiring of the game and more than a little piqued by her employer's lewdly cunning expression, she added, "I know that last customer's house. I helped her with a wall arrangement. If I choose some silk flowers to match her living room and call her, she may come buy the vase."

Vandiveer seemed mollified, but at the moment Shay couldn't have cared less. Her thoughts had already gravitated back to where they had been all week—on Ian.

If her days seemed long, her nights seemed endless. As she had feared, once Ian had been in her tiny apartment, it had undergone a metamorphosis. It now seemed mammoth and hollow. She roamed the rooms, searching out projects, anything to occupy her mind with something else besides Ian.

She was obsessed with him. She saw him standing in the window, his face serious and grave.

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