Free Molly by Peggy Webb Page A

Everybody knew the
boss was all business. He cheerfully pulled out his chair and
opened a folder on his desk.
    “Right, boss. Business first, women
later.”
    Samuel didn’t even smile.
    o0o
    Samuel avoided Carmondy’s office for the rest
of the week, sending his secretary back and forth between them if
he needed anything from his chief operations officer.
    Over the weekend he moved temporarily into
his mother’s house to help her with party preparations. By the time
the day of the party arrived, his nerves were ragged and his temper
was even worse.
    He purposely stayed at the office late so
he’d miss the arrival of Jedidiah and Molly. He thought if he could
just get through the party and the wedding, he could get on with
business. Though how he would explain a stepsister who posed naked
was beyond him.
    The house was quiet when he slipped inside.
He could smell the roses his mother had arranged all over the
house. It was like some damned funeral parlor. Crystal and silver
glowed in the light of the chandelier, and hors d’oeuvres and petit
fours and every frivolous food ever invented were laid out on the
dining-room table—enough to feed five hundred, he’d guess. His
mother never did anything in a small way.
    Nobody was in sight. He supposed they were
all getting dressed for the party, or, knowing his mother, out
trying to buy a whole hog, complete with an apple in its mouth, to
put in the center of the table.
    He went grimly up the staircase and started
down the hall to the room that had been his since his childhood.
Halfway down the hall, the door to his sister’s room opened, and
out stepped Molly.
    She was wearing a dress that bared so much
flesh she might as well have been naked.
    They stared at each other while the ceiling
fan stirred the humid air. Molly shifted her weight and the strap
of the dress slid down her bare shoulder.
    She suddenly felt hot, even in the dress she
had deliberately chosen for comfort in the sweltering heat of the
old Victorian house.
    Suddenly, Sam strode across the small pace
that separated them and gripped her shoulders.
    “Where in the hell did you get that
dress?”
    “Is it customary to greet guests that way in
Florence, or is that your idea of good manners?”
    “Good manners be damned! I asked where you
got that dress.”
    “From my closet. It’s filled with frocks
designed to drive bankers mad.”
    Samuel had a sudden vision of Carmondy’s
face, his lust for Molly as clear as if it had been stamped there
in red ink.
    Holding Molly’s shoulders, he backed her into
the room and kicked the door shut. She glared at him.
    “I charge more if you insist on using caveman
tactics.”
    “This is no time for your jokes, Molly. Get
out of that damned dress.”
    “You didn’t say ‘Pretty please.’“
    “You will
not
wear that dress to
this party.” He released her and stomped across the room to the
closet.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    He jerked open the door and began to rummage
inside. “I’m getting you a decent dress.” The coat hangers rattled
in alarm as he shoved them around. “Bea is bound to have something
suitable hanging here.”
    “Suitable! Suitable for what? A wake?”
    “Suitable for polite Florence society. While
you’re here you
will be
suitable, or you’ll have me to
deal with.”
    “How dare you!”
    He found what he was looking for and turned
around, holding the dress in a death grip.
    “This is my house and my town, and I won’t
have you doing anything to jeopardize everything I’ve worked
for.”
    “Just who do you think you are, barging in
here and ordering me around? I’m a grown woman and perfectly
capable of deciding what I will or will not wear.”
    Molly had never been so angry in all her
life. She had come to Florence somewhat reluctantly, but she had
been willing to keep up appearances for her father’s sake. All that
had gone by the wayside now. Samuel was giving orders as if he
owned all of Florence and half of