she going to do about the fact she liked him, too? They were wrong for each other. Not that she believed he was thinking about marriage. He was unattached at the moment and they had been thrown together by circumstances. It wasn't surprising they would be interested in each other as long as they had a common interest. That sort of thing happened all the time.
But that wasn't really the way things worked for her. She'd never been interested in a man just because of proximity. In fact, being thrown together by random circumstances such as being in the same college classes or working together on a committee normally made her withdraw. She hated the phony kind of intimacy such situations created. It was like being away from reality for a few hours or days, and doing, saying or feeling things you knew you'd never do, say or feel once you went back to your real life.
That meant she would never see Ron again. A feeling akin to panic came over her. She tried to deny the feeling. She tried to blame it on being tired, to having eaten a piece of coconut cake at eleven-thirty, but she knew she was fooling herself. She wanted him to be interested in her, and she didn't want him to disappear when Cynthia moved back home. She didn't know what she wanted the relationship to mean, but she did know she didn't want to give it up just yet.
She told herself she was being as foolish as her girls had been about the boys that had gotten them in trouble, but that didn't change anything. She knew she would be downstairs long before eight-thirty. And whether she found a substitute teacher or not, she'd be listening for the sound of the doorbell.
The doorbell rang at precisely 8:30 a.m. Kathryn decided Ron must have waited on the porch for the second hand to reach twelve. She told herself she couldn't run to the door. She'd already changed her routine so she could be in the living room. Anything more would be too obvious. She opened the door to find Kerry O'Grady on her porch. He looked as if he were frightened out of his mind.
"I've got to see Lisette," he said.
Kathryn blocked Kerry's path. He knew she didn't allow visits until the girls finished their lessons.
"My dad's back," Kerry said. "He says I can quit school and go to work. He says I can go live with my mother's relatives. He says I can do any damned thing I want, but he's not going to support me and my gold-digging little whore. I've got to see Lisette."
Kathryn struggled to mask her disappointment. "Why aren't you in school?"
"This is more important than school," Kerry nearly shouted.
"I agree, but you can't see Lisette. She would get so upset it would take me a week to calm her down."
"What are we going to do?"
Before Kathryn could answer, a black Bentley pulled into her driveway. Ron Egan got out and waved to her. Instead of coming toward her, he opened the trunk, and began to take out one package after another.
"I think Mr. Egan would appreciate some help with those packages," she said to Kerry.
"I don't want to help anybody with packages," Kerry practically wailed. "I want to see Lisette."
"Help Mr. Egan with the packages, and I'll think about it."
Kerry turned to help Ron. Kathryn thought it might be a good idea if he did have to work for a while. His mother had done her best to keep him her little boy. If he and Lisette did marry, at least one of them should be capable of acting and thinking like an adult.
Kathryn was glad Ron had thought to buy Cynthia something in Geneva. Still, even if he was worth a hundred million dollars, a dozen packages were too many. She couldn't stop him from giving them all to Cynthia, but she would explain that neither his guilt nor Cynthia's anger was likely to be assuaged by such extravagance.
"I brought something for all the girls," Ron said when he reached the porch. "Tell me where I can put them."
It never occurred to Kathryn he would have bought presents for the other girls, too. "You can put them in the back parlor," she said, opening the door for the men to pass inside. "I'll have Ruby take them up later."
"Nothing doing," Ron said. "Presents are no fun unless you get to open them together."
"The girls are studying."
"I can