The Dating Game by Sandra Field

Author:Sandra Field
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1994-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

A week passed, during which Teal did not get in touch with Julie. She told herself she was glad he’d taken the hint, and jumped every time the telephone rang.

It wasn’t ringing as much as it had. Apparently the symphony benefit had accomplished something.

She worked four day shifts, slept badly most nights and devoted her free time to the garden and her son. The trouble was that Scott came along with Danny. And Scott, with his dark hair and gray eyes, reminded her acutely of his father.

On a Tuesday evening, as restless as Einstein watching a flock of birds, she decided to take Danny to the Dairy Queen for an ice-cream. He’d enjoy the outing and it would get her out of range of the telephone.

Danny was playing with Scott in the tree house in Teal’s back garden. So she had two choices. She could phone Teal and ask him to send Danny home. Or she could walk over there and get Danny herself. The latter seemed a much preferable course of action because she wouldn’t have to speak to Teal at all.

She put on a long skirt made of turquoise crinkled cotton and a matching top with a round neckline and cap sleeves, so that she looked very different from the dancer in the spangled dress, and set off down the street.

It was a beautiful summer evening. Lawn sprinklers hissed in the front gardens, the drops of water catching the sun’s rays; the bright colors of the flowers lightened her step. She needed to cultivate a sense of perspective, she told herself, admiring a particularly elegant Turkish lily in the garden next to Teal’s. The agreement, brief though it had been, had done its work and she could live very well without a man. Particularly one as complicated and inaccessible as Teal.

Jauntily she walked up his driveway. The black BMW was parked under the shade of a giant old oak tree. She passed it, pushed her way through a tangle of shrubbery into the back garden and called Danny’s name.

The garden was deserted except for a flock of sparrows scratching in the undergrowth. The boys must be inside.

She almost turned around to go home. But Teal had given her orchids because of her courage, and she couldn’t avoid him forever. Why not see him now and get it over with?

Feeling as though she was on her way to the dentist with a mouth full of cavities, she marched up the steps and knocked on the back door, which was ajar. From inside she heard Teal yell, ‘Would you get that, Scott?’ and her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. Please answer the door, Scott, she thought, rubbing her palms down the sides of her skirt.

However, neither Scott nor Danny came running through the kitchen to find out who was there. Chewing on her lip, Julie knocked again, and was rewarded by the slap of bare feet taking the stairs two at a time. They were a man’s footsteps, not a boy’s.

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