Hoodwinked. Diana Palmer

pretending that she didn’t already know.

      “Jake Edwards,” he said. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “You don’t smoke, do you?”

      “No, but I don’t mind it.” She started the coffee maker and found him a big blue ashtray. “Here. My dad gave it to me for Christmas, so he’d have someplace to put his ashes.” She sighed, remembering that. It had been just after Christmas that she’d lost him and her mother.

      He watched the expressions move across her face with curious, quiet eyes. “Thanks.” He leaned back in the chair, drawing her attention involuntarily to the breadth of his chest and the muscular strength of his arms. Where the knit shirt was open at the throat, a mass of black hair was visible, hinting at a veritable forest of it beneath it. She felt herself going warm all over. He was a sensual man. The coverall he wore at work disguised his body, but his slacks clung to long, muscular legs and narrow hips, just as the shirt outlined his broad chest, making her aware of him as she hadn’t ever been of a man.

      If she was watching him, the reverse was also true. He found her frankly attractive, from her long dark hair to her slightly larger than average feet. She had a grace of carriage that was rare, and a smile that was infectious. It had been a long time since he’d laughed or felt pleasure. But being around her gave him peace. She warmed him. Not only that, but he remembered vividly the glimpse he’d gotten of her not long before in her oversized pajama jacket: long, tanned legs, full breasts, her hair down to her waist. He’d dreamed of her all night, and that surprised him. He hadn’t cared very much for women in the past few years. His work had become his life. Somehow, the challenges replaced tenderness, love. He’d been too busy with pushing himself to the outer edges of life to involve himself very much with people. He wasn’t going to involve himself with this woman, either; but being friendly might get him close enough to find out just how involved she was with the failure of the Faber jet. He was already suspicious of Blake, and she worked for Blake. She could be a link.

      He lifted the cigarette to his lips absently. “You were wearing a men’s pajama top that morning,” he said out loud. His dark eyes narrowed, pinning hers. “Do you have a lover?”

       Chapter Three

      Maureen stared at him. “Do I have a lover?” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s a good one.”

      That puzzled him. “I don’t understand the joke,” he said.

      “Well, look at me,” she said miserably. “I wear glasses, I’m too tall, I have the personality of a dust ruffle, and even when I try to wear trendy clothes, I still look like somebody’s spinster aunt. Can’t you just see me in silk and satin and lace, draped across a king-sized bed?”

      She was laughing, but he wasn’t. He could picture her that way, and the image was disturbing.

      He lifted his cigarette to his wide mouth. “Yes, I can,” he said quietly. “And stop running yourself down. There’s nothing wrong with you. If you don’t believe that, ask the janitorial department.”

      She felt her cheeks going hot. “I’ve, uh, caused them a lot of trouble in the past. I can’t imagine that they’d give me a reference.”

      He laughed softly. It was a pleasant sound and, she imagined, a pretty rare one. “All the same,” he replied, “they haven’t forgotten the little things you’ve done for them. Pralines from New Orleans, cotton candy from the carnival that came through, a pot of homemade soup on the day we got snow after the New Year. You can spill coffee on the carpet year-round and they’ll drop everything to clean it up. They love you.”

      She colored prettily. “I felt guilty,” she murmured.

      “Mr. Wyman, the security guard, is another admirer,” he continued, blowing out a thin cloud of smoke while he watched Bagwell finish off one last piece of pear. “You sat with his wife when she had to have an emergency appendectomy.”

      She cleared her throat. “He doesn’t have any family out here. He and Mrs. Wyman are from Virginia.”

      “You may not be Miss America, but you’ve got a heart, Miss Harris,” he concluded, letting his gaze slide back to her face. “People like you just the way you are.”

      She clasped her hands and let them droop between her jeans-clad knees. It didn’t occur to her at the moment to ask how he’d found out so much about her. “Well, I don’t,” she muttered. “I’m dull and my life is dull and mostly I bore people to death. I want to be like old Joseph MacFaber,” she said, her face brightening so that she missed the look on her companion’s face. “He took up hang gliding last year, did you know? He’s raced cars in the Grand Prix in France and ballooned on the Eastern Seaboard. He’s gone off with archaeological expeditions to Peru and Mexico and Central America. He’s gone deep-sea diving with one of the Cousteau expeditions that signed on amateurs for a couple of weeks in the Bahamas, and he’s lived on cattle stations in the outback in Australia. He’s climbed mountains and gone on camera safaris in Africa and—”

      “Good God, will you stop?” he groaned. “You’re making me tired.”

      “Well, you do see, don’t you?” she asked, with a wistful, faraway look in the green eyes behind her glasses. “That’s the kind of life I wish I could live. The most adventurous thing I do in a day is to feed Bagwell a grape and risk having my finger decapitated.” She sighed. “I’m twenty-four years old, and I’ve never done anything risky. My whole life is like a bowl of gelatin. It just lies there and congeals.”

      He burst out laughing. “What a description.”

      “It suits the situation,” she murmured. “I thought coming out here to Kansas and starting over again might change things, but it didn’t. I’m still the same person I was in New Orleans. I just changed the scenery. I’m the same dull stick I used to be.”

      “Why do you want to climb mountains and go on safari?” he asked.

      She shrugged. “Because it’s there?” she suggested. “I don’t know. I just want to get out of my rut. I’ll die one day, and I’ve never lived.” She grimaced. “The most romantic thing I’ve ever done with a man was help change a tire.” She threw up her hands. “No man who’s seen me will risk taking me out!”

      He chuckled deeply. “I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t mind taking you out.”

      She stared at him. “No. I don’t need pity.”

      “I agree,” he said easily. “I’m not offering any. You’ve got enough self-pity for two people as it is.”

      She glared. “It isn’t self-pity, it’s reality.”

      He shrugged. “Whatever. How about a movie? I like science fiction and adventure and police drama. How about you?”

      She began to smile. “I like those things, too.”

      “Got a newspaper?”

      “No,” she groaned. “Only the weekly. I can’t afford a daily paper.”

      He let out a whistle. “I haven’t been here long enough to get one started. Well, we can drive around and look at the billboards.”

      She felt like a new penny, bright and shining. “A matinee?”

      “Why not? They’re wasted on kids. I hate going to pictures at night and trying to see around couples making love in the seats. The heavy breathing makes it hard to hear.”

      “You cynic,” she accused, daring to tease him.

      He smiled at her as he got to his feet. “What about your green friend there?”

      “Bagwell, it’s early bedtime for you tonight,” she told him.

      “Apple,” Bagwell said and let out a war whoop