Love By Proxy. Diana Palmer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ humorless man, he must be the world’s worst lover. He couldn’t even kiss. Of course, he hadn’t wanted to kiss her back. She flushed, remembering the hardness of his closed mouth. He seemed like a lonely man. She shook herself. She even felt sorry for squashed spiders, she reminded herself forcibly.

      She went back to the sink in the small kitchen of the efficiency apartment she rented from a kindly couple in a residential area near the beach. It was really a garage apartment, but it had the advantage of being like a real house. She had the family, the Kennedys, nearby if she needed help, and she could walk to the beach. She had a phone of her own and even shared the family cat, Khan, a puffy Siamese-Persian, who visited her whenever she had chicken. She’d changed into a comfortable caftan and was just putting the finishing touches to tuna-salad sandwiches when her doorbell rang.

      She frowned. Nobody ever came calling except Marla, and Marla went out with Andy practically every night now. It could be one of the Kennedys, of course, except that they were an elderly couple and never bothered her. Perhaps it was a salesman. She grinned, thinking up ways to get rid of him. Her social life was so dull that even a salesman became a welcome pest. It was great fun deciding how to get rid of them tactfully.

      The last one had been selling subscriptions to an underwater publication. She promised to send a check as soon as her sunken living-room pool was finished. She’d closed the door on a face like a mask as he tried to decide between going meekly away or calling the nearest sanitarium on her behalf.

      She opened the door as far as the chain latch would allow—it was night, after all—and came face to face with the enemy.

      Her pale blue eyes glared at him through the crack. “I do not give private performances,” she informed Wentworth Carson.

      “Thank God,” he returned. “Are you going to open the door, or would you like it removed?”

      Heavens, he was the size of a battering ram! The Kennedys would surely throw her out if he put his shoulder to it….

      With an angry sigh, she opened the door and let him in. He was wearing a trendy blue blazer with an unbuttoned white shirt and white slacks, and a dark pelt of hair showed in the opening at his olive tan throat. He looked different than he had that afternoon in his office. Big and broad and oddly sensuous for a cold fish. He made her nervous.

      He stared down at her with a frown, his eyes on the blue-green-and-gold striped caftan she was wearing, with bare feet, no makeup and her dark hair still in its neat French twist.

      “Are you Amelia Glenn?” he asked as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

      “Surely you don’t make mistakes, Mr. Carson?” she asked with a false smile. “I’d never believe it!”

      “You look more mature,” he said.

      She glared at him. “You mean I look older. I was twenty-eight last month, in fact,” she said. “About half your age…?” she added pointedly.

      “I’m forty,” he replied.

      “Twelve years your junior,” she corrected smugly. “I do feel a mere child by comparison.”

      He scowled blackly. She wondered if he ever smiled. He put his hands into his slacks pockets and stared at her openly.

      “Miss Sayers tells me you don’t work for her.”

      “No, I don’t.” She turned back toward the kitchen. “You’re welcome to join me if you like tuna fish,” she said over her shoulder.

      He closed the door and followed her into the kitchen, pulling out a chair at the small table. “Is this called Southern hospitality, or do I look underfed?”

      She couldn’t help the laughter. “Underfed, my foot. I’d hate to have your grocery bill.”

      “I have to watch what I eat,” he said frankly. “Even then, I work out at the gym to keep from looking like a walking beer barrel.”

      She laughed again, and reddened. “Sorry.”

      “No offense taken. What do you do for a living?”

      She poured coffee into two handmade pottery cups, her eyebrows asking if he drank coffee, and he nodded.

      “I’m a clerk typist for an agricultural equipment firm,” she said.

      His eyebrows arched.

      “Well, I am,” she grumbled. “What do I look like?”

      He actually smiled. Or it could be a muscle spasm, she thought wickedly. “I expected a more exotic occupation,” he returned.

      “I grew up working in a print shop. The most exotic thing I’ve ever done in my life I did this afternoon, to help Marla out.”

      “Andy Dedham started working for me last month,” he said as she sat down and shoved a platter of sandwiches between them on the table. “He doesn’t know me very well yet, but he’ll learn. I am going to pay him back in kind, and you’re going to help me. In costume, of course.”

      She froze. “How?”

      “His mother,” he replied, toying with his cup of black coffee, “is from Boston. She is a saintly widowed lady with impeccable manners, and once a month she comes to town and takes him to La Pierre for an elegant dinner.”

      “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t, not there! All those people…! And Marla would never forgive me!”

      “Where’s your spirit of adventure, Miss Glenn?”

      “Under the table, hiding,” she returned. “I can’t! Furthermore,” she added with hauteur, “I won’t!”

      He considered that, watching her with pursed lips. “Suppose I had a male stripper appear for you, at your sainted place of work?” he asked pleasantly.

      She went violently red, gaping at him. “Oh, no, you couldn’t. Mr. Callahan would fire me on the spot!”

      He smiled, very slowly. “Would he, really?”

      “You wouldn’t!”

      “Get in your rig, Cleopatra, be at La Pierre tomorrow night at exactly 7:00 p.m. and ask for Carlos when you get to the door,” he said. “Everything will be arranged. If not,” he added, studying her carelessly, “the morning after, you will have a particularly nauseating visitor, G-string and all.”

      She buried her face in her hands. “I’d die!”

      “My, my, aren’t you a paradox?” he murmured on a deep chuckle. “You seemed to enjoy your role enough, when the shoe was on the other foot.”

      “I didn’t embarrass you,” she countered. “That can’t be done!”

      “That’s true enough,” he affirmed. He leaned back in his chair, all blatant masculinity, big and dark and frankly sexy, with that shirt unbuttoned just enough to make her wonder what was under it. Dark hair peeked out of the opening, and a deeply tanned throat. He was as sensuous as any man she’d ever encountered, and twice the size of most of her dates. She would have found him СКАЧАТЬ