Tender Stranger. Diana Palmer

looked at her with a dry smile, and when the waiter came, he gave a double order.

      “Yes,” he told her, “I like coffee, too.”

      “You seem very traveled,” she remarked, pleating her napkin.

      “I am.” He leaned back in his chair to study her. “And you’ve never been out of the States.”

      “I’ve been nowhere—until now.” She smiled at the napkin. “Done nothing except work. I thought about changing, but I never had the courage to do it.”

      “It takes courage, to break out of a mold,” he said. He pulled the ashtray toward him and lit a cigarette. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m doing it anyway. This is one habit I don’t intend to break.”

      “‘I’ll die of something someday,’” she quoted. “There are lots of other clichés, but I think that one’s dandy.”

      He only laughed. “Smoking is the least dangerous thing I do.”

      “What do you do?” she asked, curious.

      He thought about that for a moment, and pursed his lips as he wondered what she’d say if he told her the truth. She’d probably be out of that chair and out of his life so fast…He frowned. He didn’t like that idea.

      “I’m in the military,” he said finally. “In a sense.”

      “Oh. On active duty?” she continued, feeling her way because he seemed reluctant to elaborate.

      “No. Inactive, at the moment.” He watched her through a veil of smoke from his cigarette.

      “Is it dangerous, what you do?”

      “Yes.”

      “I feel like a panelist on ‘What’s My Line?’” she said unexpectedly, and grinned when he burst out laughing.

      “Maybe you’re a double agent,” she supposed. “A spy.”

      “I’m too tall,” he returned. “Agents are supposed to be under five feet tall so that they can hide in shrubbery.”

      She stared at him until she realized he was joking, and she laughed.

      “Your eyes laugh when you do,” he said absently. “Are you always this sunny?”

      “Most of the time,” she confessed. She pushed her glasses back as they threatened to slide down her nose. “I have my bad days, too, like everyone else, but I try to leave them at home.”

      “You could get contact lenses,” he remarked as he noticed her efforts to keep her glasses on her nose.