The Fall Of Shane MacKade. Nora Roberts

profession that drew pretty women. It almost made a man feel there’d be some advantage in being stuck in a flying tin can for a few hours.

      As passengers began to pour out of the gateway, he judiciously shifted his attention. Businessmen, looking harried, he noted. The suit-and-tie brigade. No amount of money could convince him that it would be worth wearing a suit for eight to ten hours a day. Nice-looking blonde in sleek red slacks. She gave him a quick, flirtatious smile as she passed, and Shane pleased himself by drawing in the cloud of scent she left behind.

      Pretty brunette with a long, ground-eating stride and big, wide gold eyes. They reminded him of the amber beads his mother had kept in her good jewelry box.

      Here came Grandma, with an enormous shopping bag and a huge, misty-eyed grin for the trio of children who raced up to hug her knees.

      Ah, there she is, Shane decided, spotting a slump-shouldered woman with brown hair scraped back in a frowsy knot. She carried an official-looking black briefcase and wore thick, laced shoes and square glasses. She blinked owlishly behind them, looking lost.

      “Hey.” He gave her a quick, flashing smile, and a friendly wink that had her backing up three steps into a frazzled man lugging a bulging garment bag. “How’s it going?” He reached down to take her briefcase and had her myopic eyes going round with alarm. “I’m Shane. Regan sent me to fetch you. She had complications. So how was the flight?”

      “I—I—” The woman pulled her briefcase protectively against her thin chest. “I’ll call security.”

      “Take it easy, Becky. I’m just going to give you a ride.”

      She opened her mouth and made a squeaking noise. When Shane reached out for her arm to reassure her, she gave him a solid thwack with the briefcase. Before he had decided whether to laugh or swear, he felt a light tap on his arm.

      “Excuse me.” The pretty brunette cocked a brow and gave him a long, considering study. “I believe you may be looking for me.” Her mouth, which Shane noted was wide and full, curved into a dryly amused smile. “Shane, you said. That would be Shane MacKade?”

      “Yeah. Oh.” He glanced back at the woman he’d accosted. “Sorry,” he began, but she was already darting off like a rabbit pursued by wolves.

      “I imagine that’s the most excitement she’s had in some time,” Rebecca commented. She thought she knew just how the poor woman had felt. It was so miserable to be shy and plain and not quite in step with the rest of the world. “I’m Rebecca Knight,” she added, and thrust out a hand.

      She wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but on closer study he saw he hadn’t been that far off. She did look intellectual, if you got past those eyes. Rather than practical shoes, it was a practical haircut, as short as a boy’s. He preferred hair on a woman, personally, but this chopped-off do suited her face, with its pointy, almost foxlike features.

      And she was probably skinny. It was just hard to tell, with the boxy, shape-disguising jacket and slacks, all in unrelieved black.

      So he smiled again, taking the long, narrow hand in his. “Regan said your eyes were brown. They’re not.”

      “It says they are on my driver’s license. Is Regan all right?”

      “She’s fine. Just some domestic and professional complications. Here, let me take that.” He reached for the big, many-pocketed bag she had slung over her shoulder.

      “No thanks, I’ve got it. You’re one of the brothers-in-law.”

      “Yeah.” He took her arm to steer her around toward the terminal.

      Strong fingers, she noted. And a predilection for touching. Well, that was all right. She wouldn’t squeak, as the other woman had—as she herself might have a few months before, when faced with a pure, unadulterated male.

      “The one who runs the farm.”

      “That’s right. You don’t look much like a Ph.D.—on first glance.”

      “Don’t I?” She sent him a cool sidelong look. She’d done a lot of mirror-practicing on that look. “And the woman who is probably even now hyperventilating in the nearest ladies’ room did?”

      “It was the shoes,” Shane explained, and grinned down at Rebecca’s neat black canvas flats.

      “I see.” As they rode down the escalator toward baggage claim, she turned to face him. Flannel shirt open at the collar, she noted. Worn jeans, scarred boots, big, callused hands. Thick black hair spilling out of a battered cap, on top of a lean, tanned face that could have been on a poster selling anything.

      “You look like a farmer,” she decided. “So how long a drive is it to Antietam?”

      He debated whether or not he’d been insulted or complimented and answered, “Just over an hour. We’ll get your bags.”

      “They’re being sent.” Pleased with her practicality, she patted the bag over her arm. “This is all I have at the moment.”

      Shane couldn’t get over the sensation—the uncomfortable sensation—that he was being observed, sized up and dissected like a laboratory frog. “Great.” It relieved him when she took shaded glasses from her jacket pocket and slipped them on.

      He was used to women looking at him, but not as though he were something smeared on a slide.

      When they reached his truck, she gave it a brief look, then gave him another as he opened the door for her. She granted him one of those cool smiles, then tipped down her glasses to peer at him over them.

      “Oh, one thing, Shane…”

      Because she’d paused, he frowned a little. “Yeah?”

      “Nobody calls me Becky.”

      With that she slid neatly onto the seat and set her bag on the floor.

      She enjoyed the ride. He drove well, and the truck ran smoothly. And she couldn’t help but get a little glow of satisfaction at having annoyed him, just a bit. Men who not only looked as good as Shane MacKade but had the extra bonus of exuding all that sex and confidence weren’t easy to take down a peg.

      She’d spent a lot of her life being intimidated on any kind of social level. Only in the past few months had she begun to make progress toward holding her own. She’d become her own project, and Rebecca thought she was coming along very well.

      She gave him credit for making easy conversation on the trip, annoyed or not. Before long they were off the highway and driving on winding back roads. It was a pretty picture, hills and houses, pastures and trees that held their lush summer green into the late, hazy August, an occasional horse or grazing cow.

      He’d turned the radio music politely low, and all she could really hear from the speakers was the throb of the beat.

      The cab of the truck was neat, with the occasional strand of golden dog hair drifting upward, and the scent of dog with it. There were a couple of scribbled notes attached by magnet to the metal dash, a handful of coins tossed into the ashtray. But it was ordered.

      Perhaps that was why she spotted the little gold twist of a woman’s earring peeking out from under the floor mat. She reached down and plucked it up.

      “Yours?”

      He flicked a glance, caught the glint of gold and remembered that Frannie Spader had been wearing earrings like that the last time they…took a drive together.

      “A friend’s.” Shane held out his hand. When the earring was in it, he dropped it carelessly amid the coins.

      “She’ll want it back,” Rebecca noted idly. “It’s fourteen-karat. So…there are four of you, right?”

      “Yep. Do you have any brothers, sisters?”

      “No. But you run the family farm?”

      “That’s the way it worked out.