WHEN HAD SHE FALLEN in love with Bruce Fenton? Six years
ago, here in San Francisco, when she'd been a spin-dly
thirteen-year-old he took pity on for a day? Or had it
happened more slowly, while she'd made phone call after
phone call from her home in Vancouver, British Columbia?
There had been so many of those calls, perhaps more than
she should have made, but at first she'd needed a friend,
and laterβ¦later she'd simply needed him.
Donna rested her elbows on the desk and blew into her
steepled fingers. How could she not have fallen in love
with Bruce? Twelve years her senior, already very much a
man when they met, he must have laughed at the adolescent
dramas she'd shared with him, yet he'd always been too kind
to let her know.
Joy, pure clear happiness, made her smile while at the same
time she blinked away tears. She was back in San Francisco,
this time to stay, if she had her way. Her dream would come
true, and soon. Bruce was the lonely one now. He needed
her; he just hadn't admitted it yet.
She wondered what the rest of the office force in this
wonderful, discreetly sumptuous suite would do if she
suddenly started singing. Something loud and suited to this
bursting sense of high excitement, or anticipation, this
sense of shivery expectation.
Everything was turning out right for Donna McGrath β
everything. She was doing this summer job very well with,
say, a quarter of her mind. Working at Fenton and Hunt,
Attorneys-at-Law, in a gofer capacity would do nothing to
further her actual career plans, but right now the work was
perfect. Her parents were happy that she was staying with
their old friends, the Hunts. She was happy as well. Mark
and Laura Hunt and their six-year-old son, E.J., were a lot
easier to live with than she'd imagined they would be. And
she'd already seen Bruce three times this first week!
Her cup wasn't just running over: it was bubbling wildly.
And she had the whole summer ahead of her β the whole
summer!
Donna glanced at the clock and shuffled a stack of memos
into a tidy pile beneath a brass paperweight. In a few
minutes, at noon, she was to meet Laura Hunt for lunch.
Laura had promised they'd go to some posh place to
celebrate Donna's first successful week in what everyone in
San Francisco called "the City" β as if all the other
cities in the world, including her own hometown in Canada,
were inconsequential hamlets.
Today bustling Vancouver seemed very far away and small,
even to Donna. Sara and Evan McGrath, her adoptive parents,
and her little brother, Jim, were there, and she loved
them, but today this was Donna's City, too. She grabbed her
purse. Laura would be waiting on the ground floor of the
building. She made a breathless dash for the bank of
elevators and was lucky to get one right away.
"Well, that was prompt," Laura said as Donna left the
elevator. "I thought you'd have to take time to make up or
something."
"No, I don't use much," Donna said. "And my hair is so
heavy it usually stays put most of the day after I comb it.
But I did wash my hands."
Laura grinned. She was a beautiful woman, with soft dark
hair, startlingly blue eyes and cameo features. And she
always seemed so young that Donna had stopped calling
her "Aunt" years ago.
"It's really beautiful hair, so thick and shiny." Laura
touched Donna's black curtain of hair.
"And straight," said Donna with a laugh. "I'm afraid the
Asian genes determined the hair. But once I get it bent at
the bottom, it stays. Like florists' wire."
"Oh, come on!" Laura laughed, too. "It's soft and gorgeous,
and you know it." She tucked her arm through Donna's and
headed across the busy lobby. "One thing about Eurasians,
they usually seem to get the best of both races. I'm glad
your natural mother chose a Chinese man as your father."
Donna nodded at the green-liveried doorman, and led the way
outside. "With all due respect to Prairie, wherever she may
be today, I don't think she chose, Laura. I think I was
just an accident. Poor little Prairie's life is a
continuous series of happenstances." Prairie Crawford's
image, her long, tow-colored hair, and her flapping
clothes, came and went quickly. "I hope she's doing okay,"
Donna murmured, almost to herself.
"Have you seen her recently?" Laura asked.
"Two, maybe three years ago, she turned up in Vancouver for
a couple of days. Mom and Dad are certainly great with her,
I must say. If I had an adopted child, I don't know how
laid-back I'd be if the birth mother came strolling in
every once in a while."
"Evan and Sara are special people," Laura said
thoughtfully, shading her eyes against the sun to look at
Donna. "Prairie Crawford should see you now. You've become
absolutely exotic."
"So Dad always says. To hear him, you'd think I was a
raving beauty. Let's hurry. I'm starved."
"Yes, me, too, and I promised Bruce I'd get us a good
table. He called this morning, and I invited him to join
us. I like to keep tabs on that cousin of mine. He doesn't
always take very good care of himself these days. I hope
you don't mind if he comes," Laura said, quickening her
pace.
"No, Bruce is fun," Donna replied, without missing a beat.
She had already realized she'd better tell Laura how she
felt about Bruce, but not yet, not this instant. She'd know
the time when it came.
"He'll meet us at the restaurant. He even told me what to
order for him. He was gearing up for some report he wanted
to go over with Mark, and he expected to be a bit late."
Laura paused, then added, "I wish those two got along
better. Come on, we've got the green light."
They went with the rest of the surging tide of people going
to lunch in the financial district. A blast of cool wind
plastered their clothing against their bodies. Buildings of
dark shining marble and sparkling glass soared around them,
creating man-made canyons beneath the clear blue of San
Francisco's summer skies.
Donna's mind held on to Laura's last comment about Bruce,
as it always held on to any idea about Bruce, until they
were seated in the restaurant. Bruce was the Fenton part of
the firm, the only remaining member of his family β at the
moment. Bruce's father, George Fenton, and Mark's father,
William, had been the founding partners of Fenton and Hunt.
With both older men dead, their sons, Mark being the senior
partner, held the reins, administrating what had become a
huge and celebrated corporate law practice.
"I didn't know they didn't get along," Donna said
tentatively, holding the menu open before her.
"Who?" Laura asked. "Oh, Bruce and Mark? They never have,
really. I think they like each other a lot, but their
differences over the business get in the way. They try to
keep the peace for my sake, because Bruce is my cousin, and
we'veβ¦well, we've become very close. And I must say Mark
has always bent over backward to be nice to Bruce β and
about him.
© 2003-2026