Eternity Read online

  “How? How did your father die?”

  “Fell off a boardwalk into the street and was run over by a beer wagon. It was the way he would have wanted to go.”

  Carrie could hear that there was no love in Josh’s voice for his father.

  “My mother was past her prime as an actress or as anything else by then—she had a heavy hand with the whisky too. She tried to make it in the theater as an actress, but she couldn’t even get bit parts. So, when I was ten, she answered an ad in the newspaper and traveled to Eternity, Colorado, and married a lonely widower, Mr. Elliot Greene, who had a little house in town and a grown son.”

  “Hiram?”

  “The one and only.” Josh’s mouth tightened. “Hiram was always an overbearing, pompous ass, but he’d had all his father’s attention for years and he resented me greatly.”

  Pausing, Josh smiled. “I came to love Mr. Greene. He was a kind and gentle man, and he continued to take care of me after my mother died two years after their marriage. But he died when I was sixteen and that self-important son of his inherited everything. Immediately after the funeral, Hiram told me that if I didn’t obey him, he’d throw me out on my ear. I saved him the trouble. I left the house about four hours later.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “The only thing I knew how to do: I went on the stage.”

  He paused as though Carrie were supposed to figure out more of the story on her own. It was then that she remembered something that Nora had said. “The Great Templeton,” Carrie said.

  Looking at Josh, she saw the little smile on his face. “Joshua Templeton,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “Oh?” Josh said, one eyebrow raised. It was a smug look as though to say, Of course you’ve heard of me, the whole world has. She didn’t like that look.

  “An actor?” she said as she looked down her nose at him.

  “A Shakespearian actor. The best actor in the world. The greatest—”

  At his bragging, Carrie started to get up, but he pulled her back down beside him.

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “All this time I thought you’d done something dreadful. I thought you’d been in jail for robbing people. I couldn’t believe you were a murderer. And all it was, was that you’re an actor.” She said the last word the way she’d say, bug.

  “Not just any actor.” Josh sounded hurt and disbelieving. “I’m Joshua Templeton. THE Joshua Templeton.”

  “I am Carrie Montgomery. THE Carrie Montgomery.”

  Josh laughed.

  “Would you mind telling me why you’ve felt the need to keep this from me? Why have you lied to me about your name and about what you’ve done in your past?”

  “I thought it might make a difference.”

  Carrie took a moment to figure that out. “You vain peacock. You thought that if I knew you were a famous man, I might want you for that reason. How insulting to me.”

  When she started to get up again, Josh pulled her back down and began kissing her. “But then I didn’t know you. I’ve never met anyone like you. Most women are impressed by the outward trappings of a man.”

  “You have met a sorry lot of women.”

  He laughed. “That I have. A very sorry lot. But then, the sorry lot and I were happy. They got the famous man they wanted and I got—”

  “Do not tell me what you got from them.”

  Laughing again, he rolled off of her. “Here, I want to show you something.” Digging around under the straw and under some rotting horse harness, he pulled out a small black trunk with the initials JT on it. He unbuckled it, opened it, and withdrew a packet from which he pulled out papers and handed them to her. They were photographs of the world-famous Joshua Templeton in the guise of Hamlet and Othello and Petruchio. There were shots of him in evening dress, and in another he was holding a sword and looking at the camera with a rakish gleam in his eye.

  After looking at the photos for a few minutes, Carrie handed them back to him.

  “Well?” he said eagerly. For so long now he’d wanted to tell her about himself, tell her that he wasn’t a failure in his chosen profession. He wanted her to know that maybe he wasn’t any good at farming, but he was very, very good at something.

  “I don’t like that man,” Carrie said softly.

  For a moment Josh couldn’t speak. Women all over the world liked Joshua Templeton. Hadn’t he proven that? From coast to coast in America and throughout most of Europe, he’d proven himself to be irresistible to women of every size, age, color, and marital state.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Carrie said politely, “but that man isn’t real. You know, I remember now that Euphonia had some pictures of that man—you, I guess—in her house. All the girls swooned over him, you, but I didn’t.”

  “You liked the sad but smiling man in the photo with his children,” Josh said in wonder.

  Carrie smiled at him. “That man has a soul. This man—” She pointed to the carefully posed studio pictures. “This man has no soul. There’s nothing in his eyes.”

  At that Josh began to laugh as he hugged her to him. “I was afraid that if you found out about me, it would change your feelings for me. On the day you arrived, when I first saw you, all I thought of was your beautiful little body, but I told myself I couldn’t touch you. I was sure you’d return home the moment you saw the dump where I was living.” He smiled. “My experience with making women fall in love with you involves champagne and presents in black velvet boxes.”

  “Oh? And how long did this ‘love’ last?”

  “Until I got her clothes off.” He pulled her back into his arms when she tried to get away.

  Carrie was trying to hold her body rigid, but he was kissing her neck. “It wasn’t really love, was it? Tell me about her.”

  “Who?” Josh was moving down to her shoulder.

  Carrie pushed him away. “Her! The big one in the house. The woman you stood up with in a church and swore to love and honor for the rest of your life. That one.”

  “Mmmmmm. Nora. Well, you can see why I fell for her.” The moment he said it, he knew it was wrong, and he had to hold Carrie to him. “I had to marry her. She got pregnant.”

  “Got pregnant? All by her oversized self? She should watch what she drinks or get out of the way when the stork flies by.”

  “All right. I was eighteen when I met her. I’d had a bit of success on the stage and she was an established actress.”

  “Swept little you off your feet, no doubt.”

  Josh couldn’t keep from laughing. “I was infatuated with her. I married her and Tem was born, then—”

  “Tem!” Carrie said. “What is his name?”

  “Joshua Templeton the Second.”

  “We thought you’d misspelled his name on the back of the photo. Go on, you were drooling down the front of Nora’s sagging chest.”

  “After Tem was born, I went on the road and Nora stayed home with the baby.” He paused and all laughter left his voice. “Carrie, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. I was horribly unfaithful to my wife—as she was to me—but I have always loved my children. I didn’t love any of the women I, well, took to bed, not even Nora, but I loved Tem from the moment I saw him. When I was traveling, I wrote him every week, even when he was an infant. When he was old enough to walk, I wrote him every day. I sent him presents, I thought about him, I—”

  He stopped, embarrassed by this display of real emotion. There was a great deal of difference between what he showed to an audience and what he was showing now. His voice lowered. “I never let anyone know about Tem. Oh, they knew I had a son, but they didn’t know what I felt about him.”

  “What about Dallas?”

  Josh sighed. “I knew Nora was unfaithful, but I didn’t care. She’s the type of woman that all you want from her is to get your hands on those—” He cleared his throat. “I had no desire to live with her. I sent her money and assumed sh