it's off when his daughter is a flower girl. It's gypsy fate, Mom, and the butterflies are better already.”
A faint blush of color reentered her mother's face. “Bart is sweet,” she said hesitantly.
“And handsome,” Molly added with a smile. “What should I wear to the Coopers' tonight?”
Her mother let out a breath. “Are you sure, dear?” she ventured.
But Molly had seen the expression of relief. “I'm sure, Mom,” she lied with a pleasant smile, while a poignant sadness inundated her soul.
The feeling of sadness and things left unsaid had stayed with her over the years. Not that it mattered. She'd married Bart two weeks later, and Carey had gone out to school at USC the next month. Except for occasional newspaper and magazine articles with photos depicting America's finest young director, Carey Fersten had disappeared from Molly's life.
The snippets of information available from newsprint revealed very little of the man, although the bare bones of his life in the ensuing years were known to her and millions of other people. He won the Cannes Film Festival Prize at age twenty-five with his first major work. She read of his sudden defection from Hollywood a year later to make more esoteric films; his numerous liaisons with well-known beauties all over the world, his marriage to a young German countess-cum-actress, his divorce two years later. And now. Here on the Range. Here in this town, making the immigrant movie he'd talked about years ago.
How could his name still stun her after all this time? So many years had passed, so much had happened: her marriage; the birth of her daughter; the business; the divorce; so many edges had blurred, memories tarnished.
But not his.
That image in the moonlight was as fresh and pure as a rose under lucite. And as disturbing as it had been that night in August.
With heroic effort, Molly shook away the shattering remembrance, forcing her face into a polite social smile. Share as she had with these friends of her youth, she had never completely shared Carey with them. He'd been too special, too different, and perhaps she'd known her feelings were too intense to share. “So the world-renowned director is back in this little burgh,” she said in a neutral tone. “He's going to find it dull as dishwater after his travels.”
“Want to see him again, Molly? Hmmm?” Marge teased. “There was something between you two that spring and summer, even though you wouldn't admit it. Now that you're divorced, why not look him up?”
“No thanks,” she said in a deliberately cool voice. “Too much competition from all those glamorous beauties.” She shrugged, but was annoyed to feel her face flushing. “Every paparazzo photo shows at least one groupy clinging to his arm, and usually there's more. He's probably never heard a woman say ‘no'.” Every one of those pictures she'd seen over the years was cinema veritй, sharp in her mind: the one taken when he and some duke's wife were slipping out of the back door of an exclusive hotel in London early one morning; the full array of shots taken with telephoto lenses on the Greek island where everyone was bathing au naturel; those in St. Moritz with a deposed monarch's youngest daughter smiling up at him; and the nightclub scenes with starlets entertaining one of the handsomest men in the world. “At my age, with an eight-year-old daughter in tow,” Molly reminded them, her face set now to disclose no emotion, “I don't stand a chance against all that fair pulchritude surrounding him. I'll settle for the memories and leave the flash-and-dazzle Carey Fersten for the jet set.”
“His films aren't like that at all,” Nancy, who'd flown in from California, interposed. “Quiet, intimate mood pieces. No flash and dazzle anywhere.”
“His life apparently doesn't follow his art, then, because lean, suntanned, sexy Carey Fersten is almost always ‘where the action is',” Molly rebutted.
“How do you know?” Linda remarked, and for a moment Molly had the distinct impression her friends were defending him.
“Because I read-”
“Those articles aren't always true,” Georgia cut in, her voice moderate, her eyes on the slight flush reappearing on Molly's cheeks.
“None of the publications have been sued for libel,” Molly replied.
“Well, those kind of pictures and headlines sell; they could be innocent friends,” Linda acknowledged.
“Like hell,” Molly said. “And don't forget Sylvie von-what's-her-name, the young wife and actress of slightly blue reputation. That was real.”
“But not long-lasting,” Georgia reminded her.
“Do me a favor, will you?” Molly retorted in a small huff of exasperation. “Stop gushing over him. He could be a saint in monk's clothing, misunderstood by the world at large, but I'm not interested. It all happened ten years ago, for God's sake.”
“So you don't want to see him,” Marge declared.
“No. You can't dredge up the past. People change, times change, circumstances change. It's impossible.” But even as she emphatically pronounced the trite maxims, a tiny voice deep in a forgotten, locked-away corner of her mind cajoled,
CHAPTER 16
A fter the banquet and the speeches, the dancing and drinking, after the Moose finally closed down, the party moved to the motel where most everyone was staying. Situated on the freeway south of town, the Holiday Inn was the largest, the best the small town of Amberg had to offer.
Hours later, temporarily escaping the smoke and noise of the transferred party, Molly was leaning on the balcony railing overlooking the indoor pool. She was in the midst of a struggle, trying to subdue a curious sense of longing and indelible images of Carey when the subject of her musing strode into the atrium.
Her mouth went dry.
A stunning redhead was hanging onto Carey's arm, and they were laughing. My Lord-her pulse leaped treacherously-his smile hadn't changed. Warm, open, intensely vital. And nothing else had changed, either-except the burnished tan. He hadn't had a tan like that then, the permanent kind, testifying to life in southern latitudes. His tall, rangy body, the body of Creswell's leading basketball scorer that year, was still lean and elegant. And those powerful muscles, shoulders, arms, and thighs, clearly visible under the white knit shirt he wore tucked into tight- fitting jeans, were taut and youthful. He was wearing sandals-almost barefoot, as he preferred. He'd had a phobia against shoes, not a sensible eccentricity when living in Minnesota's climate, so he'd always compromised with the lightest possible footwear the weather allowed.
His light hair was rough-cut, perhaps a shade longer than before. She remembered he had a habit of raking it back with his fingers when it got in the way. And even from this distance, across the illuminated pool, his dark eyes and heavy brows, the sensual, predatory eyes that had earned him her intimate name “Tiger” were potent as fevered memory. The opulent redhead was gazing adoringly into those eyes at the moment, and that heated adoration drove Molly away from the balcony railing, just as those intense, dark eyes looked up as if answering a sixth sense.
Molly was gone by that time-only a flash of honey-colored hair and a gleam of azure silk registered in the dusky eyes.
Raucous good cheer greeted Molly when she returned to the large motel room crowded with ex-classmates seated on chairs, on the floor, on the beds, and dressers.
“What you need, Molly baby, is another drink. You're falling behind. Don't want to let down the reputation of our entire class, do you?”
She smiled at Pucky Kochevar and blew him a kiss. “Have I ever let you down, Pucky?” And before the sentence was finished a drink had materialized in her hand.
Needless to say, no one rose early the next day. In fact, it was close to two when Molly opened her eyes and gingerly flexed each muscle and appendage, all of which responded normally if somewhat slowly. She'd survived her
