CHAPTER NINE
On a warm spring morning about eight months later, Barbara awoke slowly and stretched luxuriously, like a cat, savoring the soft comfortable feeling of the satiny sheets that covered the king-size bed. Sleepily, she opened her eyes, reaching for the spot where Ralph's body should have been.
He must have gone downstairs already, she thought, finding his side of the bed empty.
Yawning, she slipped her feet into the backless slippers on the floor at the side of the bed and, wrapping the sheet around her naked young body, moved across the room to open the windows that opened onto the Hudson. Letting the sheet slip from her lusciously contoured body, she stretched again, closing her eyes and letting the bright spring sun play over her sleep-laden limbs.
For a moment she felt li
