Excerpt of Yes is Forever by Stella Cameron

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 later…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 — 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 — 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" — 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 — 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've…well, we've become very close. And I must say Mark has always bent over backward to be nice to Bruce — and about him.