Free Her Own Rules by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page B

better.
    How unlucky she was with men. Always.
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    No, that was not quite true.
    There had been one man. Once . A man who had been exactly right for her. He was dead. He had died too young. Such an untimely death…that’s what they had all said. And how truthfully they had spoken.
    To die at the age of thirty-six was some terrible trick of God’s, wasn’t it?
    Meredith had asked herself this question a thousand times. She had striven hard to find some special meaning in that awful, untimely death. She had found nothing. There was no meaning in it. None at all.
    And all she had been left with was a void.
    Of course there had been Cat, just a toddler, and Amelia, poor Amelia, and they had shared that void with her, and the grief. How they had mourned him…endlessly…she and Amelia. His women. The women who had loved him.
    I’ll always mourn him, Meredith thought, the old familiar sadness rising in her, filling her throat. Oh Jack, why did you die? How many times had she asked herself that in the silence of her mind. There was no answer. There had never been an answer. Not ever in twenty-two years.
    And how many times had she asked herself when she would meet another man like Jack. She never would, she knew that now, because men who were like him were among the very few. And they were already spoken for. Jack had been spoken for early on in his life, when he was only twenty-two. And he had married that youthful love of his. Amelia . Then one terrible day she had been thrown by her horse. When she was only
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    twenty-five and pregnant. And she had lost the baby and been crippled for life, a paraplegic trapped in a wheelchair. But he loved her; he would always love and cherish Amelia and she would always be his wife; he had told Meredith that and she had understood.
    And she had loved Amelia and Amelia had loved her and Jack; and Cat, she had loved her, too. Amelia had given them her blessing in her own silent, smiling way, full of approval, and gratitude for their love and kindness and loyalty.
    Jack .
    Blond, blue-eyed, tanned. So quick and sprightly and energetic. Full of good humor, tall tales, laughter, and life. No wonder she had fallen in love with him instantly, the first day she had set eyes on him. A coup de foudre .
    So long ago now.
    May of 1969.
    She had been just eighteen.
    Meredith closed her eyes. Behind her lids she could see his face. She remembered what had gone through her mind that day as she had stared back at him, held in the grip of his mesmeric gaze.
    Such a beautiful face for a man, she had thought, such a sensitive mouth and those extraordinary eyes.
    Such a lovely blue. Bits of sky, she had thought then.
    His eyes are like bits of a summer sky.
    Now, tonight, so many years later, Meredith saw herself as she had been on that May afternoon…the images of the three of them floated before her eyes.
    They were all so clear…so very vivid and alive…she and Jack and Amelia.
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    The decades fell away.
    She tumbled backward in time…tumbled back into the past.
    “Can I help you?” the young man asked politely, getting up off the steps where he had been sitting, pulling off his tortoiseshell sunglasses and peering intently at her.
    Meredith stared back at him. “I’m looking for a Mr.
    Silver,” she answered, jumping off her bike, almost falling in her haste and sudden confusion. Unexpectedly she was feeling self-conscious in front of this handsome man, so well groomed and well dressed, wearing gray pants and a dark-blue cashmere sweater over his lighter blue shirt.
    The man walked over to her, thrusting out his hand.
    “Well, you’ve found him,” he announced, “I’m Mr.
    Silver.”
    “Mr. Jack Silver?” she asked, shaking his hand.
    He nodded. “That’s right. And the only Mr. Silver who’s alive and kicking. That I know of, anyway. The rest are over there.” He indicated a plot of land behind him.

She followed the