Pearls of Wisdom (Passion For Pearls Book 2), page 1
PEARLS OF WISDOM
Passion For Pearls ~ Story 2
Chantilly White
A SnapDragon Press Novella
Published April 2012 by SnapDragon Press
Copyright © 2012 Chantilly White, Edited by MLL
Excerpt Pearls of Passion Copyright © 2012 Chantilly White
Cover Design Copyright © 2012 by Chantilly White
Cover Image Copyright © Byelikova Oksana, via fotolia. Used with licensed permission.
Digital Edition 1.0/April 2012
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is purely coincidental.
PEARLS OF WISDOM
Chantilly White
“Chantilly White needs to be on your auto-buy list; I know she’s on mine.”
–Lucy Monroe, USA Today bestselling author
A long-simmering love. A proper proposal. One incredible night.
Billy Wingate has never been with a woman. He’s never held a gun. In fact, he’s never been outside his home state of Indiana. But it’s 1942. The world is at war, and Billy’s life is about to change forever.
On the eve of departing for the war, Billy finally gathers the courage to ask his dream girl, sexy town librarian April Collins, to be his bride. But when his proposal turns into a steamy night of passion, Billy is determined to make every moment count. They both know his first time could be his last…
DEDICATION
This love story is dedicated to the servicemen and women of the United States of America, throughout history—past, present, future, whether in peacetime or in war—in honor of their dedication and sacrifice. And to their loved ones, who serve alongside them every moment, in spirit if not in deed, sacrificing a part of their own hearts and the presence of their loved ones in the service and protection of this great land. Thank you for all you are and all that you do.
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
~John Keats, Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art
TABLE of CONTENTS
Story Summary
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Epilogue
Thank You!
Excerpt: Pearls of Passion
Book List
Acknowledgements
About Chantilly
PEARLS OF WISDOM
Chantilly White
CHAPTER ONE
Waterside, Indiana ~ May, 1942
The pearl-and-diamond engagement ring weighed like a thousand-pound, shining beacon in Billy Wingate’s breast pocket.
Billy tried and failed to regulate his breathing as he adjusted his straight black tie, stalling on the walk outside the tiny town library. A riot of flowers bloomed along the edge of the lawn, throwing scent into the air like confetti at a Fourth of July parade, and the glass library doors sparkled in the late-afternoon sun. The glimmering light made him squint.
His new khakis, as close to the uniform he’d soon receive as he could find, were heavily starched and sharply creased. They fit snugly over the toned body of a man full-grown, but the doors reflected the same boyish face he’d stared at in the mirror all his life. The one that had earned him his most-hated nickname—Pretty Boy Billy—a taunt he’d tolerated with good-natured grins and silent groans for years.
Billy frowned. After all this time, did Miss April still see him as a boy?
Show her you’re a man. Don’t be a coward.
Signing his life over to Uncle Sam had been a snap compared to asking Miss April one simple question.
Faking confidence, Billy strode through the doors and swept his gaze across the familiar front counter, the stacks of books and small row of tables.
There.
Leaning over Mrs. Dennis’s shoulder to point out some bit of information, Miss April had her back to him. She wore a summer dress as red as Pop’s Chevy Cabriolet, with tiny white polka dots all over it. It skimmed her back and narrow waist and flared over her hips to swirl to her knees. Leaning over as she was, the skirt drifted up a bit in back. Billy swallowed hard as his eyes traced the smooth, shapely muscles along the backs of her thighs where the skirt’s hem flirted with lightly tanned skin.
His heart thudded, heavy as cannon fire, and the rolling waves of Lake Michigan, washing the shore across the street, seemed to rush into his ears. Sound ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of his nerves. He followed his line of sight down curvy calves to delicate ankles and all the way to her feet.
She wasn’t wearing any stockings.
The tie at his neck suddenly felt tighter. It was choking off his breath, but his gaze stayed glued to April. Red high heels gleamed in the library’s ceiling lights, one heel kicked over the other, her free foot swinging lightly to some inner rhythm.
What does her skin feel like right there, in that little hollow below her ankle?
He wanted to run his fingers over that spot, trace a circle around her ankle and stroke up the side of her calf to the back of her knee. He broke out in goose bumps just imagining the feel of her skin beneath his questing fingers.
April was speaking to Mrs. Dennis, but Billy couldn’t hear her words over the thumping of his heart. He shifted a bit, aware of the growing bulge in the front of his trousers and wishing he’d thought to grab the folder off the backseat of the car to cover himself. A book, his jacket, anything.
Every damn time! He saw her nearly every day. He should have developed some immunity. And at twenty, he should have better control.
April’s velvety laugh stroked the air and all the nerve endings in his body lit up. He wiped an unsteady hand across his brow. It came away glistening.
“Good afternoon, Billy.”
“Huh-wha?” Billy stuttered, his attention snapping to the little white-haired lady in front of him. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Richardson. How are you?” He wondered if she could see the hard-on tenting his trousers.
“Just on my way home, dear. Don’t you look handsome! Practically in uniform already. Betsy heard from your sister just this morning that you were heading out. Your parents must be so proud.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” Billy straightened his spine, hoping April would look at him with the same respect and admiration as Mrs. Richardson. “How’s Walt?”
“His father and I had a letter just yesterday. He expects to ship home in another week or two.” Mrs. Richardson’s eyes were proud and fierce. “He’ll go back once he’s cleared for active duty. You keep a sharp eye out for him when you get there, hear? And be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will. Give my best to the family, and to Walt. And...”
“What is it, dear?”
“It’s only—could I ask you to check on my mother from time to time? Pop’s okay, but she—”
“Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll make sure your mama’s looked after.”
Relieved, Billy smiled at her. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Richardson patted him on the shoulder and made her way out of the library, her books clutched tightly in her hands and muttering about vile Germans under her breath. Billy stared after her gratefully. Talking with her had tamed his ferocious erection.
“Why, William! When did you sneak in?” April had straightened away from Mrs. Dennis. Her voice, throaty and sensual, wrapped around Billy’s body, rooting him to the spot. His ears seemed to fill with cotton and his tongue felt thick and unwieldy in his mouth.
Yeah. Every damn time. Seeing her still blasted the wits clean out of his head. She moved toward him in what seemed like slow motion, her red and white skirt swaying with the movement of her hips.
Billy licked his lips. “I, um, j-just now, Miss April.” Don’t stutter, damn it.
He tried hard not to let his gaze fall into the deep V over her breasts, settling instead on the pearl necklace around her slender throat. Matching pearls glowed on her delicate earlobes. Billy took the pearls as a good sign, matching the ring the way they did, even as their reminder had his stomach muscles jumping like a landed trout.
He made himself skip over her full, lush red lips to look into her eyes like Pop had always taught him. Show respect, meet people’s eyes. She had the most beautiful eyes. Big and blue, surrounded by long dark lashes. Sometimes, looking into their starlit depths, Billy forgot to breathe and would have to cover the subsequent gasp for air with a fake cough.
Those big, tilted eyes traveled over him now, taking in his mocked-up service uniform. A look he couldn’t understand passed through the blue.
“What’s this, William?”
“I, uh,” stop stuttering! He cleared his throat, resisting the urge to tug at his necktie. “I’m-I’m enlisted.”
“Enlisted,” she repeated, her body going still, guarded. Her breasts rose and fell on a shallow, hitching breath. “I see.”
Did he imagine the quiver of her chin? No. It trembled again, and her lips wobbled when she smiled. Billy stared, paralyzed by the threat of imminent tears, but before he could think what to do, April straightened her shoulders. Her usual composure dropped back into place, though her expressive eyes were shuttered.
“I thought—” Billy began, then stopped. He needed to regroup, get back to his plan, his speech. His question.
She canted her head at him, her satiny, chocolate-brown hair glistening. She had it pulled back and rolled in one of those complicated styles his younger sister was always trying to copy. The style made April look even older, elegant and mature. Out of his league.
“All this time,” she said, “all the discussions we’ve had about the war, and you never told me.”
“I should’ve gone in December,” Billy said. “I wanted to, but I promised Pop an extra six months on the farm, if I wasn’t drafted first. So I waited.” Watching his friends leave, staying behind, had been hell. Talking about it, especially to her, had been too hard. “I didn’t want to tell anyone until it was official.”
He’d made promises to himself, too, including getting up the courage to ask Miss April for a date before he left. A real one, something outside the time they spent together talking in the library, shelving books. He hadn’t managed that, yet now he planned to ask her something much more important. And difficult. He swallowed hard.
“You cut your hair,” she said, and he knew he blushed. It had been a relief to watch his blond curls fall to the floor beneath the barber’s razor. He should have done it years ago. It might have helped him outgrow the ‘Pretty Boy Billy’ moniker sooner.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, then mentally kicked himself. If he wanted her to look on him as a man, an equal, he had to stop referring to her like a damn teacher.
April’s fingertip stroked the rope of pearls circling her slender throat while her other hand wrapped around her waist. It was a protective gesture, one he’d seen her make before when she was upset and trying to stay in control. Her midnight eyes dampened in the corners. She looked so damn vulnerable, yet Billy felt pinned by her gaze, like the butterflies he’d tacked to a science project board in middle school.
When she spoke again, her voice seemed huskier. “Then this is goodbye? No more helping me in the stacks?”
Billy nodded, his throat clicking closed. She seemed so small next to him, delicate, barely reaching his chin, even in her heels. The speech he’d rehearsed to lead up to his all-important question—on serving his country, his gratitude for their time together and how saying goodbye to her would be the hardest part of leaving—drifted out of his head like a fine mist, evaporating in the heat of her scrutiny.
“I—yes,” he managed. “I leave tomorrow.”
“So soon. Then you’ve known for a while.”
He nodded again, unhappy to be the cause of the pain in her eyes, but also hopeful. If she cared so much that he was leaving, then she must care about him, at least a little.
Nearly three years of volunteering at the library, working beside her, talking with her—loving her—had not made it any easier for him to say the words he wanted to say.
She had to know how he felt about her. The curse of his boyish face extended to an inability to disguise his thoughts. Billy had been accused of making calf’s eyes at her by more than one casual observer, as well as several very annoyed young ladies who’d wanted him to ask them out instead. His feelings weren’t exactly a secret.
“I should have told you, but...”
“Yes.” Her simple statement, the look in her eyes—this was harder than he’d imagined.
Love at first sight at seventeen... Powerful feelings he’d never guessed existed had consumed him from the first moment he saw her. Helping re-shelve books after school and on weekends, then more often after graduation and the years since, had given him a handy excuse to spend time with her. He’d passed through the end of childhood, with its hormones and teenage crushes, into adulthood and the stronger, deeper emotions of a man during those hours at April’s side.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said. This was not going at all as he’d planned.
Her eyes blurred, like crushed sapphires at the bottom of a deep pool. Her control seemed to slip a notch. “I’m just... surprised, that’s all,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I shouldn’t be. I suppose I knew you wouldn’t be content to stay home while your friends went off to fight. You’re far too brave for that.”
Billy’s heart tripped in his chest. He’d thought, hoped, once or twice, that she might have feelings for him, too. A certain look in her eyes when they were talking, the way she said his name. The way she leaned across him to pick up a book, or stroked her hand down his arm when he walked her to her door at the end of the day. And she thought he was brave. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Hopes he’d tried to keep in check began to grow stronger.
He’d held off far too long. He knew it. He’d been a coward. Then the night before, he’d overheard Chad Adams talking about her and realized that not only was he out of time, shipping out in two days, but he’d erred in a critical way if he’d thought she’d still be waiting, available, by the time he returned.
That she would wait, not knowing how he felt.
He’d had nothing to offer her before, nothing to prove he was marriage material. But he was a soldier now. Things had changed.
“Is there, uh, somewhere we can talk?”
Something must have shown in his eyes, because April’s expression sharpened. She licked her lips, the gesture striking him as slightly nervous. Even needy. Her slender fingers continued to worry the pearls as she studied him. When her eyes dropped to his mouth, he felt her glance like a physical caress.
Mrs. Dennis called a farewell and waved to them on her way out the door, jolting Billy back to awareness of their surroundings. He’d forgotten anyone else was there. The doors whispered closed behind Mrs. Dennis, leaving just the two of them in the now-empty library.
Still, April stood staring at him with that strange look in her eyes, sadness and something else, something that made his nervous pulse tick a little faster. Billy shifted, acutely aware that they were alone. Acutely aware of the ring in his pocket.
If he asked his question, declared his love, would she laugh? He could take anything but her pity.
She’d never laughed at him before, though. Even when he was still a teenager acting like a love-sick puppy, she’d never once looked down on him or asked him to stop coming round. And she always called him William, never Billy. He loved hearing his name on her lips. She made him feel older, grown up, important. Like a contemporary. Not like the weird kid, the one with the body made for contact sports who would rather read than chase a ball with the other guys.
“Of course,” April said, just when the moment had drawn out unbearably and he was about to babble like a fool to fill the silence. “This calls for a proper send off, don’t you think?” She smiled at him more fully now, though it was still tinged with grief. “It’s closing time. Come with me. I have just the thing at home.”
