Read Now and Forever for Free Online Page B

intensity of it. He climbed into the jeep.
    â€œWill you come?” Nan persisted.
    â€œMaybe.” He turned the jeep and drove away without a backward glance.
    â€œMaybe!” Nan groaned, standing with her hands on her small hips as she watched him roar away in a cloud of dust. “That,” she said, “is the most exasperating man God ever made! Just when you think you’ve got him in the palm of your little hand, he flies away, right through your fingers.”
    â€œYou knew better,” Eileen teased. “Russell belongs to Lisa, and no woman stands a chance against her.”
    Tish started to ask about Lisa—there was something familiar about the name, as if she’d heard it before at Currie Hall—but Nan was already talking again.
    â€œâ€¦never seen him so restless,” she was saying as they went inside.
    â€œI don’t know what’s wrong,” Eileen sighed. “He’s been like a caged tiger for the past couple of weeks. It’s the crops, I guess. This had been a rotten year for farming.”
    â€œTell me about it,” Nan laughed. “You ought to hear Dad when he gets the market reports. But let’s not talk about crops. I want to hear all about Tish’s trip.”
    â€œI want to hear all about Frank Tyler,” Eileen said, dropping down beside Tish on the Early American sofa in the parlor while Nan went for iced tea. “What does he do?”
    â€œHe’s an electronics engineer. His family owns an electronics company, and he’s a vice-president,” she said.
    â€œOh,” Eileen said.
    â€œBut he’s wonderful,” Tish protested, crestfallen at her adopted sister’s reaction. “Good looking, talented; he doesn’t even have to work, he just enjoys doing it.”
    â€œSo does Russell,” Eileen said. “Fourteen and sixteen hours a day sometimes.”
    â€œEileen, I’m not comparing them,” Tish said pointedly. “We both know Russell’s a breed apart from any other man. But I likeFrank very much. I think you’ll like him, too.”
    â€œCan he ride?” Eileen asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œDoes he hunt or fish?”
    Tish cleared her throat. “What are you going to wear to Nan’s party, Lena?” she asked, hoping to divert the younger girl.
    â€œA gag, if she doesn’t shut up,” Nan laughed, bringing in a tray with three frosty glasses of iced tea on it.
    â€œAmen,” Tish said with a smile. She took a glass and drank thirstily. “Just what have you got against Frank, seeing you don’t even know him?” Tish asked Eileen.
    The teenager’s full lips pouted. “He’s an outsider.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake, you sound just like Russell,” Nan said, shaking her head. “Even though he was championing civil rights before it was even popular, he has that one abiding prejudice.”
    â€œMe, too,” Eileen said ungrammatically. “They don’t belong. They come in and buy up land as if they’re buying up a heritage with it, and they think owning one acre givesthem the right to rebuild their neighbors in their own images.”
    â€œHark, hear the voice of wisdom calling yonder,” Tish said, cupping her hand over her ear. She ducked as Eileen, laughing, drew back her glass as if to throw it. “Lena, you’re impossible,” Tish smiled.
    â€œRuss says it’s my middle name,” Eileen agreed. “Oh, Tish, make him let me go to the party with Gus. He’ll do it if you ask him.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œGus. Gus Hamack. You remember him, he had red hair and two teeth missing and I used to take him apples to school,” Eileen prodded her memory. She smiled. “Of course, he has all his teeth now, and he’s over six feet and just gorgeous! He’s at Jeremiah Blakeley college studying to be a soil conservationist, and Russ lets him work