A Father for Philip Read Online Free Page B

must, but just don’t you ever try to
take her away. Do that and I’ll fight. I’ll win, too,” he had added. His tone
made his words a warning.
    With his arm firm around Eleanor’s
waist, David had replied, “She may be your girl, George, but she’s my woman.
Where I go, she goes, and not you or anyone else will stop her. So don’t go
laying down any laws you won’t be able to enforce.”
    But someone else had stopped her,
Eleanor reflected as she sat there in the rose arbor on that cool April evening
nearly eight years later. Her son... Her son and David’s, had stopped her—and
then it was too late.
    She could still bring back the wonder of
that late August afternoon when David had come upon her grubbing in the roots
of the scraggly little rosebushes at the foot of the arbor. They had been
married a four months and already she thought she knew every nuance of his
voice, every expression of his face; but today there was something different, a
special tenderness, a deeper timber in his tone and the suppressed excitement
as he laughed at her labors, saying, “Never in a million years, sweetheart,
will those roses cover that wood. You planted them at the wrong time of year.”
The slats of the arbor were raw and unplaned, stark in their newness, glaring
yellow again as the backdrop of leafy poplars.
    Eleanor smiled up at him. “You’ll see,
my love. They’ll grow.”
    He had drawn her to her feet and kissed
her then, and hand-in-hand they had ambled over the little brook, past the back
of the farmhouse and into the dark forest to the little glade where they’d
first met. And that day, in that glade, with all the wildly sweet passionate
love between them, they had created life...
    And David Philip Jefferson had never
laid eyes upon Philip David Jefferson, for that afternoon as they lay in each
other’s arms on the thick, soft moss of their forest bed, David explained the
excitement she’d seen in his face.
    He had been offered a year’s
student-exchange position by the government of Ecuador. This would count as
credits toward his doctorate in silviculture, and he wanted to accept. How did
she feel about it?
    Eleanor’s excitement flared up, equal to
his. Far-away places! This could just be the beginning. Of course he should
take it. When did they leave?
    Though she felt grief at the thought of
having to leave her father, it was only for a year, and the wonder of a life
that would allow her to walk hand-in-hand with her husband through the forests
of the world far outweighed that.
    “Sweetheart,” David said, there in the
shade of their dogwood tree, “I leave tomorrow. All I need to do is call the
program manager and let him know.”
    She hadn’t been able to hide her dismay.
“Tomorrow?”
    “I know I should have told you sooner
the possibility existed, but I was so afraid if there was time for discussion,
your father would try to hold us back. You’ll have to stay until I can find
place for us to live, but then I’ll send for you. It won’t be long,” he
promised, his eyes filling with undisguised lust. “I can’t live long without
you.”
    So Eleanor waved goodbye to her love the
next morning, smiling for him, saving her tears for later. He had written long
letters, for once there he had found that he must go far into the jungle for
more training. He would send for her in three months when that phase of his
training was completed. Just as his letters to her were full of love, so were
hers to him and it was with joy that she wrote of her pregnancy even though it
meant she was unable to travel just yet. She would be with him long before the
baby was due, but if he could just be patient until the morning sickness was
over...
    And there was a great deal of morning
sickness, so much in fact that on the orders of Dr. Grimes, who’d delivered her
and been her physician all her life, George had no difficulty moving Eleanor
out of her small house and back to the farmhouse with him for the winter.