The Backup Plan. Sherryl Woods

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      “Then you think I should quit?” she asked, hating the fact that her respect for him ran so deep that she was actually considering doing as he asked.

      “Yes,” he said firmly. “Get a real life, Dinah.”

      She tried to picture the peaceful, ordinary life he was describing. The image eluded her. “You actually think I’m destined to be somebody’s wife and mother?” she asked.

      “Why the hell not?”

      “And if I decide that what I am is a foreign correspondent, that it’s all I was ever meant to be?”

      He gave her a sad look. “Then I pity you.”

      “It’s what you’ve done all your life,” she reminded him.

      “And look at me. No wife. No family. No one who gives a damn whether I come home or not. That’s not a fate I’d wish on you. Isn’t there someone back home you think about from time to time, some man who got away?”

      Dinah started to shake her head, but then an image of Bobby Beaufort appeared in her mind. She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. It had been ages since she’d thought about Bobby. He’d been in her life almost as far back as she could remember. He’d wanted to marry her, but she’d turned him down to chase after her dream.

      “There,” Ray said triumphantly. “I knew it!” “He was no one special,” Dinah insisted. “Just a friend.”

      A good friend who’d promised to be around if she ever got tired of roaming the globe. If she was ready for love, she was supposed to turn to Bobby. She would always own a piece of his heart, at least that’s what he’d claimed. All she had to do was come home, say the word and they’d be married before she could say Las Vegas. That was what they’d agreed when she left town. He was her safety net, her backup plan. She’d never expected to need him.

      She didn’t need him now, she asserted silently. All this stuff Ray was saying meant nothing. She’d straighten herself out and come back here … eventually.

      In the meantime, though, she met Ray’s worried gaze. “Okay, then,” she said at last. “I quit. I suppose there’s no point in doing this by half measures.”

      She said it halfheartedly, but Ray gave her an encouraging smile.

      “Good for you, Dinah! It’s the right thing to do.”

      Maybe so, she thought despondently, but just in case she’d made a huge mistake, maybe the first thing she ought to do when she got back to South Carolina was look up Bobby Beaufort. Maybe he was meant to save her from the kind of lonely life Ray was describing. She’d know when she saw him.

      Bobby had never made her palms sweat or her pulse race, but he was a good guy. Soothing and dependable, he’d never, ever let her down. In fact, his sweet attentiveness had nearly suffocated her, but maybe she’d changed. Maybe she was ready for someone to lavish her with love and attention.

      She thought of that and her lips curved once more. Yes, indeed, a woman who’d just impulsively quit her dream job needed to keep her options open.

      2

      After four dinner parties in a row to welcome her home, Dinah called a halt.

      “Mother, that’s enough! I’m pretty sure there’s not a soul in Charleston, at least in certain social circles, who doesn’t know I’m back in town.”

      Dorothy Davis regarded her with dismay. “Just one more,” she coaxed. “A few people from the committee to save Covington Plantation.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “In fact, Dinah, if you’d give a little talk, we could turn it into an impromptu fund-raiser. I’m sure people would be fascinated with all your adventures. And these renovations are going to cost a fortune. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work together to raise some additional funds?”

      Dinah glanced at her mother. Her adventures were precisely what she was trying to forget. If Dinah tried to explain that to Dorothy it would heighten her mother’s overprotectiveness. It had taken her several unnerving calls months ago to convince her mother that she was fine and that there was nothing for her to worry about. Apparently she’d been successful in downplaying what had happened because her mother hadn’t mentioned a word about it. Dinah didn’t want anything to kick those maternal antennae back onto alert now. She tried another tactic.

      “Haven’t your friends pumped me for every bit of information they’d care to hear, Mother? No one wants to know what it’s really like over there.” Dinah was a hundred percent certain of that. “It’s not great dinner table conversation,” she added. “They’re content knowing it’s happening on the other side of the world.”

      “Not everyone here is shallow, darling,” her mother scolded. “You’ve always sold us short.”

      Dinah sighed. It was true. She had. But she’d heard nothing since coming back to change her impression of her parents’ friends. They lived in their monied, insulated world and were happy enough if it didn’t rain on their golf games.

      “Forget the fund-raiser, Mother. I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing. And please don’t plan another dinner party. I came home for some peace and quiet. As it is, I’ve barely had a minute alone with you or Dad or Tommy Lee and his family.” Not that she was all that unhappy about missing out on the questionable joy of being around her brother’s children. From what little bit she had seen, they were holy terrors.

      Still, there had been precious little of the quiet she’d anticipated. Aside from the dinner parties her mother had held at their house, she’d been trotted out to lunch with her father’s business cronies half a dozen times. She had yet to see a single one of her own friends, not that she’d kept in touch with that many of them since she’d left for college.

      She wasn’t exactly excited about seeing anyone at all. Every chance she got, she stole off to the solitude of her room or sat in the back garden with an unopened book in her hands. She’d told herself the inertia was only temporary, that she’d snap out of it in a few days, but she was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier just to give in to it.

      Judging from the worried frown that creased her mother’s otherwise unlined face, Dorothy had taken note of Dinah’s reluctance to leave the house.

      “Is something going on that you haven’t told me?” her mother asked. “Sitting around in this house all day is not like you.”

      “I don’t just sit in the house. Sometimes I sit in the garden.”

      Her comment drew another chiding look. Dorothy Rawlings Davis had never known what to make of her only daughter. Dinah had scoffed at tradition. Though she’d reluctantly agreed to go through with it for her mother’s sake, Dinah had made a mockery of her debutante ball. She’d attended private school under protest and, worse, had chosen to go to college out of state, to New York, no less. It had grated on her father, who’d attended the Citadel and then Clemson, and her mother who’d graduated from the University of Charleston without ever leaving home.

      Her brother had thankfully followed tradition or her parents would most likely have died of shame. Dinah’s celebrity had allowed them to hold their heads up just СКАЧАТЬ