Ruth’s eyes drifted back to Warren’s picture. She wasn’t a chicken, just practical. A man like Warren Sherbrooke might be friends with an average Jane like her, but that didn’t mean he’d date her.
Helen’s right, he came to the party. She could imagine the shindig the Sherbrookes threw every year. Yet, he left it to hang out with her and her friends. He was probably bored with his usual crowd. “What if that wasn’t it?” she asked the marshmallows in her mug. Should I ask him to the party? It would be easy to do. She had the phone number to his Cambridge apartment.
You risk ruining your friendship if you do. Did she want to take that risk? Nope . Ruth turned the magazine upside down and pushed it away. Tonight she’d read the newspaper instead.
***
Warren double-checked his suitcase late Wednesday night. He’d packed enough to be gone for five days. He’d love to spend more time down in Newport, but he couldn’t at this point in the semester.
“Where are you off to?” Mark, his younger brother, walked into his bedroom without knocking first, not that that was anything new. Even before they moved into the two-bedroom apartment in Cambridge, he’d done it all the time.
“Heading to Newport in the morning. You and Donna have the place to yourself until Tuesday.”
“Excellent.” Mark smiled and rubbed his hands together. “I knew I was your favorite brother.” Mark and Donna Belmont, the daughter of Senator Belmont, a close family friend, had been a couple since Mark’s freshman year at Harvard. “Why are you going down there?”
It was a fair question. For the most part, Cliff House remained closed up from January until late April. Instead family members vacationed in the multiple homes they owned in warmer parts of the country like Florida and California. “Just need to get out of the city.” He had no intentions of sharing his plans with his brother.
“And rather than soak up some sun in Malibu, you decided to freeze your ass off in Newport. Aren’t you supposed to be the genius of the family?”
One year younger than him, Mark knew how to push his buttons like no one else. “Ever think I don’t feel like flying?”
Mark shrugged and walked back toward the door. “It’s your ass. If you change your mind and come back before Tuesday, do me a favor and get a hotel room. Sunday is Valentine’s Day.”
If all went as he hoped, he’d be spending Valentine’s Day with someone special himself. “You two should get married already.” Donna spent so much time there it was as if she lived there too.
“Already bought the ring. I’ll ask her after I graduate in June.”
The announcement brought Warren to a standstill. He assumed the two lovebirds would get married, but he’d not expected that answer today. “That’s going to be a rather long engagement.” While Mark graduated that June, he still had three years of law school ahead of him. Not to mention Donna had another year at Radcliffe.
“That’s not my plan.” Mark took a step into the hallway.
He should mind his own business. When his brother proposed was none of his business, but he couldn’t. Perhaps it was because he was the eldest, or maybe it was just because out of all his siblings he was closest to Mark. That wasn’t to say he didn’t love his sister Marilyn and youngest brother Jonathon. He’d do anything for either of them. But Mark was more than just his brother. He was his best friend, too. “Just what is your plan, little brother?”
Mark leaned against the doorjamb. “We’ll get married next June right after Donna graduates. Between Donna’s mother and ours, they should be able to get a wedding planned in a year.”
Warren had no doubt their mother, Theresa Sherbrooke, a former Hollywood movie star, and Emma Belmont could put together the wedding of the year with a simple flick of the wrist. “You’re going to get married before you finish law school? Have you run that one by Dad yet?”
George Sherbrooke might be a devoted husband and loving father, but he expected things to be done a certain way. Warren suspected their father wouldn’t take the news well that his son planned to marry before he finished his law degree. He could already hear his father’s words as he lectured Mar
k on how a wife would be a distraction.
Mark nodded once again, catching Warren off guard.
“It took awhile, and I had to make some ... shall we say concessions, but I got the green light.”
“Concessions? Do I want to know?”
“I managed to convince Dad that if we got married, Donna wouldn’t be any more of a distraction than she is now, but I had to agree that we wouldn’t have children until after I passed the bar in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.” Mark shrugged. “Since I am in no rush to add to the Sherbrooke clan, that doesn’t bother me.”
Yeah, but what about Donna? She may have a thing or two to say about that one. But since it wasn’t his problem, Warren kept his mouth shut.
“As much as I’ve enjoyed this little heart to heart, I promised to pick Donna up in thirty minutes. Have fun in Newport.”
That was the plan, although with so many unknown variables, he couldn’t guarantee it. He disliked the unknown. That was just one of the many reasons he loved numbers, despite the fact that his teachers at Choate Rosemary Hall had encouraged him to study psychology rather than economics and finance as he intended.
From the moment he’d been able to walk, or at least it seemed that way, his father had groomed him to take over Sherbrooke Enterprises, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, and then enter politics like his grandfather, current Senator George Sherbrooke Senior had done. While many of his friends and even his brother Mark would have rebelled at the path set out for him, Warren embraced it. In truth, there was nothing he wanted more than to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.
“See you on Tuesday. Don’t have too much fun this weekend.”