Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [3]
“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, Rachel had better things to do herself, and yet she was going off, the perfect faculty wife in