child and heir to the fortune he’d made in the firearms business made this an imperative. That’s why she was being trotted out on display this summer, for sale to the most promising bidder.
Maybe it was time to pack a suitcase and run away.
Alex handed the champagne glass to a passing servant. At least Mama would have some things to be pleased about. For a summer party the turnout wasn’t bad, and the guests represented some of New York’s better families. Papa, on the other hand, was growing impatient with these soirees. All Buck Bromley wanted was to see his daughter married to a man he deemed suitable.
Alex picked out her father’s hulking shoulders among the crowd. She knew what he wanted. He wanted the son he never had—another Buck Bromley, with money and connections, who’d take her in hand and sire a pack of bullheaded grandsons to take over the company one day. He wanted to forge her life like one of his custom-made hunting rifles. Well, she had news for him. She wanted a life of her own.
“Alex, for heaven’s sake!” It was her mother, approaching with swift, nervous footsteps. Maude Bromley was a thin, plain woman, as pale as wallpaper. Her hands fluttered like dry leaves as she spoke. “How can you stand there when you should be mingling with our guests? This is your party, too, you know.”
She took her daughter’s hand and led her down off the terrace onto the lawn. There the guests, plates teetering with food, were seating themselves around umbrella-shaded tables.
“My dear, I’m so delighted to see you!” Alex found herself smothered against the ample bosom of a woman whose name eluded her. Most likely she was a Whitney or a Vanderbilt, or a member of some other clan whose founders had come to the Colonies and made their fortunes early. Most of the families who lived on Long Island’s Gold Coast were Old Money, part of the American aristocracy.
Buck Bromley, on the other hand, had married into a modest gunsmithing business and expanded it himself. Burnsides and Bromley was now the largest firearms manufacturer on the East Coast. Buck was wealthier than some of the Old Guard people. Still, in terms of social standing, the Bromleys were nouveau riches, practically bourgeois.
Alex extricated herself from the woman’s arms. Her mother had darted back to the kitchen, leaving her on her own. She sighed, feeling adrift. Most of the party guests were friends and neighbors of her parents’ generation or business associates of her father’s. Her own friends had married and moved away or gone abroad for the summer. Alex had begged to go abroad herself, but her father had insisted on keeping her at home. He didn’t want to risk her eloping with some fortune-hunting French fop, he’d said, only half joking.
Alex had never felt comfortable in crowds. She was walking faster now, down the slope of the lawn. People pressed around her, sweating, talking, eating. She fought the urge to break loose, to run to the sea like a lemming and plunge into the cold white surf.
“Alex!” She stiffened at the sound of her father’s voice. Buck Bromley turned away from the two men he’d been talking to. “Come here, girl,” he boomed. “I want you to meet my friends!”
Alex turned slowly, her face assuming a mask of polite cordiality. All he wanted was to show her off, to whip her out of the chute and run her around the ring like a prize heifer. That’s all she ever was to him anyway—breeding stock!
Buck Bromley grinned. He was a powerful man, bull-necked, barrel-chested and hard as hickory. His unruly brown-gold hair matched his daughter’s, but his features were blunt where hers were fine. His blue eyes gleamed like the flame of a gas jet, where hers were almost purple and as cool as the distant ocean.
“Come here, girl!” He repeated the order with a jerk of his head. He was not a handsome man, but his jut-jawed face exuded vitality. Men admired and followed him. Women…Alex preferred not to think about that now.
“Yes, Papa,” she said mechanically.
“These are colleagues of mine.” Buck indicated the men who stood beside him. “I invited them here for two reasons. First, I wanted them to see that I wasn’t just bragging about the beauty I’d fathered. And second, I wanted you to meet them.”
Alex glanced at the two men. They appeared to be in their forties, with thickening waists and thinning hair. The younger man was blond and vain-looking with a waxed moustache that curled upward at the tips. The other man had a florid face framed by bushy sideburns. Both were turned out in a manner that exuded wealth and arrogance.
Their names and accomplishments slid past Alex as each, in turn, took her hand. The blond man had evidently made a fortune in shipping and had just returned from an African safari. The one with the sideburns owned the biggest sporting goods business in the state of New York.
“Joe Templeton,” he introduced himself, squeezing her hand till it hurt. “Buck told me he had a pretty daughter, but I hadn’t figured on meeting a goddess!”
“Thank you. It’s always an honor to meet my father’s friends,” Alex lied in a formal voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my other guests. Please enjoy yourselves, gentlemen.”
She turned to leave, but her father caught her arm. “Walk with me a little,” he said. “There’s something I’ve got to say, and I want you to hear it.”
“Can’t it wait?” Alex asked, though she knew better. Buck Bromley never waited for anything.
“Come on,” he said, gripping her elbow and propelling her away from the party, in the direction of the beach. He didn’t speak again until they were out of earshot.
“Well, what did you think of them?” he demanded, stopping beside a blossoming honeysuckle bush.
“I assume they’re single.”
“Single and damned well-off, both of them. You could do worse, girl.”
“Really, Papa, they’re old and stodgy. What makes you think I’d like them?”
Buck Bromley shoved his hands into his pockets and stared toward the dunes that edged the whitecapped water. “Because they know what they want and they’re not afraid to go after it. They know how to take charge. They’re real men!”
Alex felt a flash of anger. For a moment she struggled to hold it in check. She tried to shift her concentration to the sights and sounds of the party, to the kaleidoscopic movement of forms and colors, the tinkle of crystal and silver, the muted cacophony of voices, and something else—a faint, mechanical, droning sound, coming from nowhere, fitting nothing, making no sense at all.
“Papa,” she snapped, “you have your own ideas of what a man ought to be. I have mine, too, and they’re not the same! A real man is somebody who cares about other people, somebody who’s gentle and loving and not afraid to show his feelings!”
“Damn it, girl!” Buck rumbled behind clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever think of anybody except yourself? Look at me! I built Burnsides and Bromley from a two-bit gunsmithing shop to one of the biggest operations in the country. It took blood, guts and sweat. For years I worked sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week. But I wasn’t doing it just for me. I was doing it for the sons and grandsons who’d come after me, who’d take over the company and keep it going!”
He took a deep breath. “Even after you were born, and we found out your mama couldn’t have any more babies, I didn’t give up hope. I knew you’d get married one day—and I counted on it being to a man
