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  Janet sat silent, eyes cast down, beginning to water …

  “Oh, God, again? Listen, Janet, and carefully. You’ve got the hots for Bill McNeil. Right? So be prepared for a trip to the moon. Maybe it’s about time. On the other hand this very well might not be what you think … LOVE. It might be nothing more than a little girl from Kansas who’s ready for her first step into something called life, and sex is part of it. Since you never tried it, let it be with someone like Bill McNeil. If it goes no further, at least he’s a gentleman. Mama, though, isn’t easy to exorcize. Don’t underestimate her.”

  Kit wasted no time. Bill said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it, but she didn’t give up easily. Besides, she’d been around Bill’s mother Violet long enough to know which guilt buttons to push.

  “You’re one crumb-bum friend,” Kit said. “I’d have thought you of all people would have remembered my birthday. Now, don’t get carried away and send me a Rolls-Royce. Just bring your sweet adorable miserable self—”

  “Hey, I’m sorry I forgot. Kit. Congratulations. If you’re having the immediate world I’ll bring a—”

  Kit quickly interrupted. “No, this year it’s going to be very small and very private and I’m only inviting close friends, so forget a date. I’m getting sentimental when it comes to sharing the most important day in my life. You want the guest list? Brother Charlie and wife Carol, and—”

  “It’s okay, surprise me, see you Saturday.”

  For the next five days Janet could think of nothing but meeting Bill again, and by Saturday night her fantasies had become so real that she sat nervously next to him at Kit’s dining table and wondered if her feelings for him were written all over her face, or if he could read her mind. She looked at Kit, who was laughing at a joke Nat had just told. Bill seemed to think it was hilarious, as did Charles and his wife Carol.

  Janet forced herself to join in the laughter, though she had hardly heard a word. Her mind was distinctly someplace else. She was remembering that Kit had advised her to come late, wearing the white matte jersey. “Let him eat his heart out, it fits like a second skin …”

  Whether he was eating his heart out or not, she had no idea. When Kit made the introductions he’d merely said, “We’ve met.”

  She had turned to jello on the spot, relieved that he remembered her but worried that it might only be with annoyance.

  Now, sitting next to him, she was uncomfortably aware of the effect of him, not only in her stomach but between her thighs … She wanted to be so exciting, exotic, a brilliant conversationalist. But on the few occasions that he spoke to her, she sat there with a fixed smile, with such snappy ripostes as … “New York? Just wonderful …” In fact, the answer to almost every inquiry he made was “wonderful, just wonderful.” She knew what he must have thought of her conversation … pure boring.

  When the cake … thank God … was finally brought in, Kit blew out the candles and Nat took up his glass of champagne in a toast. “To Kit, long live the queen.”

  They all raised their glasses and joined in the toast.

  Then came the final disaster of the evening for Janet. As she was putting her glass down, it became detached from her hand—and landed in the middle of Bill’s lap. Jolted by the cold and wet, he stood up immediately and grabbed a napkin.

  Janet merely wanted to die. Clearly God had decreed the end of this affair with Mr. Bill McNeil before it even began … “I’m so sorry, I’m really so, so—”

  “It’s okay …” But his tone implied otherwise. His pants were soaked and when he went to Kit to kiss her and say “Happy Birthday,” he added that he hadn’t been in wet pants since he was three and thought maybe he should be excused to go home and change his diapers. Janet was destroyed….

  Charles and Carol had taken her home. It wasn’t until five in the morning, as she lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling, that she gave way to the tears, telling herself, over and over, that she had lost him.

  Nathan Weiss had been born into a wealthy family that had run a well-respected brokerage firm for over two generations now. He had cut his eyeteeth on stocks and bonds, and within a year after finishing Harvard Business School—three years younger than his classmates—Nathan Weiss was considered the boy wonder of Wall Street. If he didn’t take this status seriously, he was well aware of the enormous responsibility of handling and investing millions of dollars for other people. That had been drummed into his head from day one by his father. So, much as he adored Kit, he always left her by four o’clock on Sunday afternoons to go to his club’s steam room and have a massage to revitalize himself. He didn’t enjoy having to leave, but he needed to be in top shape for Monday morning when the market opened.

  In the beginning of their romance Kit was exasperated with him. “You’re a coward—a 6-foot, 170-pound weakling.” He would nibble on her ear lobe, smile, kiss her and leave. She would lie back and smile like a Cheshire cat. Nat left her feeling more fulfilled than if she’d slept with a half dozen men. Who needed them? It was the quality that kept her happy. Foolish smart-ass she might be, Kit told herself, but she at least knew a good thing, so to speak, when she saw it …

  When he left the day after her birthday party, she lay in bed thinking that if she wasn’t careful she just might let down her guard one day and find she had fallen in love all over again. No, not this girl, not Kit Barstow. Falling in love was too painful. She’d tried it once, hadn’t she? Once was enough and she liked things just the way they were. Keep it light. Look at poor Janet. She’d almost died last night when that sonofabitch split without saying goodnight to her. Mama McNeil certainly hadn’t taught her Billy how to be gracious. And military school and M.I.T. hadn’t taught him anything more than how to be an uptight engineer. Big deal, so Janet accidentally spilled the wine. So what if the front of his pants were wet. The truth was that Bill was a spoiled, egocentric child at times. Also a louse. And poor Janet. She might have become a hugely successful model in the big tough city, but somehow she’d never acquired the thick skin that went along with it. Janet was just too vulnerable …

  She picked up the phone and called her. “Hi, cookie, what’re you doing?” As though she didn’t know … drowning in her tears. Well, Kit knew what tears felt like too, though the world rarely was allowed in on it.

  A long silence. “Nothing. Just … just sort of taking it easy …”

  “Okay, so you’ve had enough of that … now, where would you like to go for dinner?”

  “Kit, I’m really not hungry, but thanks all the same—”

  “Listen, Madame Butterfly, dry your wings and get your little ass out of bed—”

  “Thanks for being such a good friend, Kit, but I honestly don’t think I’m up to it—”

  “In that case I’ll pick up some goodies from Chang Lee’s kosher kitchen and bring it on down to your room. We’ll read fortune cookies. Who knows what the future will …”

  I already know my future, Janet thought. I ruined it for good last night over a glass of wine … “Kit, please don’t think I’m being ungrateful but I just have to be alone to sort things out. Okay? You do understand?”

  Of course she understood. The rats. Men were a flawed species—except for Nat, of course. Whoever invented the word love was probably some sadistic character.

  “Okay, Janet. I’m against it, but if that’s the way you feel, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Kit. I’m sorry if I ruined your party.”

  “You didn’t ruin anything. It was that fool stalking off like someone had stolen his teddy bear.”

  “I really can’t blame him. I mean, after all, it was the second time I spilled a glass on him, and I feel such a fool.”

  “So he should be happy it wasn’t hot coffee, he could have wound up with a scorched pecker. Now get something to eat.”

  “I will, and Kit … thanks for everything.”

  Buy Come Pour the Wine Now!

  About the Author

  Cynthi
a Freeman (1915–1988) was the author of multiple bestselling novels, including Come Pour the Wine, No Time for Tears, and The Last Princess. Her novels sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. Born in New York City’s Lower East Side, she moved as a young child with her family to Northern California, where she grew up. She fell in love with and married her grandmother’s physician. After raising a family and becoming a successful interior decorator, a chronic illness forced her to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle. At the age of fifty-five, she began her literary career with the publication of A World Full of Strangers. Her love of San Francisco and her Jewish heritage drove her to write novels with the universal themes of survival, love, hate, self-discovery, joy, and pain, conveying the author’s steadfast belief in the ability of the human spirit to triumph over life’s sorrows.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1990 by Cynthia Freeman Survivor’s Trust

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4804-3566-7

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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