A Wedding Worth Waiting For

‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she commented lightly, but saw that Jan didn’t look anywhere near convinced.

‘Now that you’ve made the break with Dalton Manufacturing, have you thought any more about leaving home?’ Jan asked.

Because her cousin was family, and had first-hand experience from childhood overnight stays of the strife that went on in the Dalton household, Karrie had been able to confide at one particularly bad time that she wouldn’t mind leaving home.

‘I can’t,’ she answered simply, forbearing to mention that her parents still weren’t speaking. ‘It seems—sort of disloyal to my mother, somehow.’

‘Aunt Margery’s too sensitive. You’d have thought she’d have toughened up by now,’ Jan mused, but kindly offered, ‘You know you’re always welcome to come and stay with me if things get too unbearable.’

Karrie thanked her, and later went home. But on Friday she felt sorely inclined to take her cousin up on her offer. The cold war was over. Her parents were speaking again. That was to say they were yelling at each other, rowing. Karrie did not stay downstairs to find out what the problem was this time—experience had shown hostilities could erupt over the merest trifle. She went upstairs to her room and stayed there.

Oh, how she wished it could be different—her parents could still be at it—neither of them prepared to yield an inch—a week from now. Where had it all gone wrong? Well, she knew the answer to that one: at the very beginning.

After one gigantic explosion, when her father had slammed out of the house, her mother, near to hysteria, had instructed a sixteen-year-old Karrie to ‘Never give yourself to any man until you’ve got that wedding ring on your finger!’ Her mother had then calmed down a little to go on and tearfully confide how all her rosy dreams had turned to ashes. She and Bernard Dalton had married after a very brief courtship, when Margery Dickson, as she was then, had discovered she was pregnant. They had been taking precautions, apparently, but she had conceived just the same.

A week after their wedding, however, she had suffered a miscarriage. Bernard Dalton had accused his wife of tricking him into marrying her, and the marriage that had never had time to get on any steady footing had gone steadily downhill from then on.

But Margery Dalton had adored her husband, and had hoped that, when she again found herself pregnant, matters between them would improve. But things had gone from bad to worse when, instead of presenting him with the son he had taken for granted he was entitled to, she had given birth to a daughter. She’d had an extremely difficult time having Karrie—and was unable to have another child.

And Karrie had known from a very early age that she would rather not get married at all than have the kind of relationship her parents had. And from the age of sixteen, when her mother had taken her into her confidence about her father believing he’d been tricked into marriage, she had known that she was never going to give herself to any man before their wedding—regardless of what sort of contraception might be around. No man was going to have the chance of accusing her of trapping him into marriage.

Not that she found any problem with either of her deep-dyed decisions. For one thing, while she was not lacking for men who wanted to take her out, she had never met one she would dream of getting engaged to, much less marrying. And as for sharing her body with any of them—while it was true she had enjoyed skirting on the perimeters of the kissing pitch, she had not felt the least inclination to go to bed with any of them.

Karrie was brought rudely out of her thoughts by the sound of doors slamming downstairs. It sounded as though it was going to be one of those weekends. She wondered, not for the first time, why her parents didn’t just simply divorce and go their separate ways. But again came to the same conclusion she had come to before: the love they had once had for each other must still be a strand more strong than the hate that had grown up between them and weaved its way in between that love.

The phone rang—her parents, deep in battle, probably wouldn’t hear it. Karrie took the call on the phone in her room and discovered some relief from the prospect of a bleak weekend in her friend Travis. Travis was a couple of years older than her, uncomplicated and nice, and was ringing to see if she wanted to meet up.

‘I’m free tomorrow, actually,’ she told him, adding quickly, ‘Providing you aren’t thinking of proposing again.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he lied, and they both laughed, because they both knew that he was lying.

‘Quail and Pheasant?’ she suggested as a meeting place, knowing Travis seized up in fright in her father’s company. Her home was the smart, detached residence of a successful businessman—that it was more often than not an unhappy home was something Karrie could do little about.

‘I’ll call for you,’ Travis answered bravely, and seemed inclined to stay on the line chatting.

When later Karrie ended the call, however, and went and got ready for bed, it was not Travis Watson who was in her head, but the man she had bumped into last Tuesday, the man who had asked her out and, unoffended at her ‘hair-washing’ put-off, had laughed and shaken her by the hand.

Farne Maitland could afford to laugh, of course. No doubt he had women queuing up to go out with him. Without question, he already had his Saturday evening planned.

Somehow, that notion did not sit well with her. For goodness’ sake, she scoffed. As if she cared in the slightest that sophisticated Farne Maitland had a date tomorrow with some equally sophisticated female. Perish the thought!

It took her a long while to get off to sleep that night But when previously she had known full well that the strife between her parents was the reason for her wake-fulness—nightmares in childhood—she could not in all truthfulness say now that the hostility between her parents was the cause for her sleeplessness that night. Somehow, having conjured up a picture of Farne Maitland out wining and dining some ravishing sophisticate tomorrow, she did not seem able to budge the scene from her head!

Karrie was able to scorn such imaginings when she got up the next morning. Good gracious, as if she gave a button whom he dated that night. So why did she think of him so often? She pushed him out of her head, and continued to do so until just after ten that morning, when the phone rang. Expecting that the call might be for her father, who was out, as was her mother—though not together—she went to answer it—and got the shock of her life. The caller, staggeringly, was none other than the man who had occupied more than enough time in her head!

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Farne Maitland,’ he announced himself, and, while her heart seemed to jerk straight out of her body, Karrie began to doubt her hearing—had he said ‘Farne Maitland’? How on earth had he got her number? He was going on, confident apparently, from that one word ‘hello’ that he was speaking to the right person, ‘I expect you’ve got a date tonight?’

Her mouth went dry. Was he asking her out? She swallowed. ‘Been stood up?’ she queried lightly.

She just knew he was smiling, fancied she could hear laughter in his voice, when he countered, ‘Would I make you second best, Karrie?’

So, as well as finding out her phone number, he—having supposed she would instantly know who he was—had bothered to find out her first name as well! There was laughter in her voice too—she just could not suppress it. ‘So you want me to break my date for tonight?’ she asked.

‘I’ll call for you at seven,’ he stated. And Karrie was left staring at the telephone in her hand

For ageless seconds she stood staring at the telephone. She couldn’t believe it! She had a date with Farne Maitland that night! Would you believe it? Would you believe not only did he know her first name and her telephone number, but, since he intended to call for her at seven, he had obviously found out where she lived too!

Suddenly a smile, a joyous smile, beamed across her face—hadn’t she feared he would never again ask her out?

CHAPTER TWO

FEARED? Feared that Farne Maitland would never again ask her out? Karrie could not believe she had actually thought ‘feared’! What rot! What utter rot!

Still, all the same, she owned she was quite looking forward to going out with him that night. Oh! What was she going to do about Travis? Normally she would never have broken a date with one man to go out with another. Oh, heavens, was her thinking going haywire or what?

Half an hour later she felt on a more even keel and did what she had to do rather than what she should have done. What she should have done was to somehow make contact with Farne Maitland and tell him she was not going out with him—though how she didn’t know, when she had no idea of where he lived, much less his phone number. What she did do was go over to the phone and dial Travis Watson’s number.

‘Are you going to be very put out if I tell you I can’t make tonight?’ she asked.

‘Karrie!’ he wailed, and followed on swiftly. ‘You’re going out with somebody else?’

‘Oh, Travis, don’t make me feel guilty.’

‘You should!’

‘You’re my friend, my very good friend, but not my boyfriend.’

‘You’re saying a good friend wouldn’t mind being passed over for something better?’

‘Travis!’

‘Oh, all right. Come to tea tomorrow.’

‘Without fail,’ she promised.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you too—as a brother.’

Karrie came away from the phone wishing Travis would meet someone really special and that they would fall mutually in love. He was nice, really nice. He deserved someone special. And with that thought—‘someone special’—Farne Maitland was in her head again.

Her mother came home at lunchtime, but not her father. Karrie dared to ask where he was. ‘He didn’t say—but he’ll be cooking up some business deal somewhere. I wonder why he doesn’t take his bed to his office; he’s always there!’ Margery Dalton complained bitterly. ‘Are you out tonight?’

‘To dinner, I think.’

‘You don’t know?’