Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,4

combine her professional dancing with motherhood. They planned Laura and the baby, Terence, for his father.

But Terry didn’t live to see his namesake. He was killed when his flight home from Knoxville in a friend’s small Cessna failed to clear the Blue Ridge Mountains. It took searchers three weeks to find his body, and when they did, Sloan was in the hospital, in labor two months early due to shock.

Dreamers never think to buy life insurance, and artists have no benefits. Sloan was snapped out of her grief by desperation—she had to support herself and her family. The baby, so premature, ate up any savings as he clung to life in his incubator. Terry’s last pieces drew large sums as their value increased, ironically, with his death, but even that money did little but help Sloan return home to Gettysburg where her only comfort, Cassie, awaited.

Sloan buried the young dreamer she had been along with Terry’s mutilated remains. In the first year she had mourned her happy-go-lucky husband with a yearning sickness that left her awake long nights in her lonely bed. She had gone through all the normal courses of grief, including anger. How could he have died and left her like he did? Resignation and bitter sadness followed her anger, and now she lived day to day, finding happiness in simple things. But she had closed in. The vivacious and beautiful woman whom people met was a cloak that concealed her true personality. She had toughened, and reality and necessity were the codes she lived by. She was friendly, sometimes flirtatious, but when anyone looked beyond those bounds, he would find a door slammed immediately in his face.

“Lord, I almost forgot to tell you!” Cassie exclaimed suddenly, sensing her sister’s depression and trying to cheerfully dispel her gloom. “Guess who is in Gettysburg?”

Sloan chuckled. “You’ve got me. Who?”

“Wesley Adams.”

“Who?” Sloan frowned her puzzlement. The name was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t picture a face.

“Wesley Adams! The quiet quarterback, remember? He’s a couple of years older than I am, but the whole town knew him. He graduated from Penn State after high school, then went on to play professional ball. About four years ago he retired because of a knee injury and disappeared from public view.” Cassie gave Sloan a wistful smile as she curled a strand of blond hair around her fingers. “I was secretly in love with him for years! And he asked you out! I think it was the one time in my life I absolutely hated you!”

Sloan frowned again. “I went out with Wes Adams?”

Cassie groaned with exasperation and threw her hands in the air. “She doesn’t even remember! Yes, you went out with Wes Adams. He had just finished at Penn State, and you were eighteen, about to leave for Boston and your first year as a Fine Arts major. It was the summer before you met Terry. I set up the date—by accident, I assure you!”

Sloan laughed along with her sister. Cassie could easily talk about her memories; she was married to one of the most marvelous men in the world. George Harrington loved his wife and extended that love to encompass his sister-in-law. It was George who insisted he care for his own two boys on Friday nights so that Cassie could allow Sloan her evening out.

“I remember him now,” Sloan said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “He reminded me of Clark Kent. Beautiful body, face enough to kill. But quiet! And studious! Our date was a disaster.”

“Hmmph!” Cassie sniffed. “He was simply bright as all hell. And you, young lady, your head was permanently twisted in the clouds. You didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Fine Arts major!”

Sloan quirked her brows indifferently. “Maybe. I was eleven years younger then than I am now. We all change.” She rubbed sore feet. “Brother! I feel like my soles are toe-to-heel blisters. I must have been spinning half the day!”

“You’re losing your appreciation for your art,” Cassie warned with teasing consolation. “I seem to remember a comment you made once as a kid that you ‘could dance forever and forever, into eternity!’”

“There’s a slim chance that I did make such a comment,” Sloan admitted dryly. “But if so, I must have been a good twenty years younger than I am now—and twenty times as idealistic!”

The ringing of the doorbell interrupted their idle chatter. “Gee...George already,” Sloan mused.

“No...” Cassie was blushing and flustered. “I forgot to tell you...well, actually, you changed the subject before I got