A Self-Made Man. Kathleen O'Brien

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the baby to her other shoulder, she studied the possibilities. “No men at all. What about a woman, then?”

      Kara looked blank. “But we always use a man. The costume is huge. The eyes are so high—”

      “Then we need a tall woman.” Lacy scanned Kara’s trim five-feet-ten inches. “What about you?”

      Kara looked stunned, confused by this departure from tradition, terrified at the sudden responsibility. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’ve never… We’ve never… I just couldn’t.” But she wanted to. Lacy could see a tremulous hope in her eyes. “Could I?”

      “Of course you can,” Lacy said steadily, putting her free hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “The kids all love you. You’ll be wonderful.”

      “But I can’t.” Kara braided her fingers anxiously. “Oh, my goodness, the newsletter! And I was just about to—”

      “It doesn’t matter. I’ll help you get the newsletter sent out. Whatever else there is can wait.”

      “No, really, this can’t.” Groaning softly, Kara gnawed on one already-tortured fingernail. “Oh, this is the worst luck! I was just about to give a tour—”

      “I’ll take the tour.” Lacy put a little steel in her voice, though she still smiled encouragingly. “Now for heaven’s sake, Kara, stop worrying and start dispensing birthday presents before Ronny Harbaugh starts a riot in the pediatric ward.”

      Kara’s answering smile was equal parts gratitude and anxiety. “Oh… All right, I will, then!” She bustled toward the hallway, turning back at the last minute, her face lit with a new inspiration. “You know, you probably should conduct this tour, anyhow, since you’re the director. He’s not just any investor. He’s the type who’d expect the red carpet treatment, isn’t he?”

      Lacy’s stomach went suddenly cold. She gripped the infant more carefully as she felt the room take a quick, violent tilt and right itself in the blink of an eye. Aware of the baby’s parents watching her with a sudden, instinctive anxiety, she fought the urge to follow Kara down the hall.

      “He?” She spoke loudly enough to reach the bank of elevators where Kara waited. Her voice sounded normal, thank God. “Who?”

      But she knew. She knew even before Kara stepped into the waiting elevator and turned with the name on her lips. “Only the most gorgeous man on Pringle Island, you lucky thing,” Kara called back. “Only that hunky Adam Kendall.”

      HE HAD TO GIVE HER CREDIT. The lady had guts.

      Adam raised one eyebrow as he watched Lacy coming toward him, her posture erect, her chin high and set. Even though Kara Karlin had popped in about half an hour ago to promise that Lacy would be arriving soon, still Adam would have bet his left cuff link that she’d never show. The tour would be quietly foisted off onto some underling.

      He had assumed, in fact, that it was Lacy’s search for a suitable underling that had kept him cooling his heels here in the waiting room of the community relations department. Not that he’d minded—the room was designed for comfort. The chairs opened roomy, inviting arms to visitors. Peach pillows as soft as upholstered clouds tumbled across the sofa. Cheerful apricot artwork smiled from behind the desk. Gentle, indirect lighting spread a buttery glow over every wall.

      The room positively oozed warmth. Lacy Morgan, however, stopping now in the doorway to take a deep breath, did not.

      Dressed in a knife-slim, glacial-blue suit, her long, thick hair pulled back into a cruel, shining knot at the nape of her pale neck, she affected the room like a blast of refrigeration. She didn’t hurry, even after she saw him sitting there. She smoothed her sleeve carefully, then touched the top button of her collar, which was high, slightly Oriental, and clearly in no danger of slipping open—now or ever. Then she moved to her desk, a study in graceful efficiency. Her slim heels clicked against the wood flooring with a sound that reminded him of ice falling into an empty glass.

      She fingered a few papers pointlessly, then looked up, gazing at him with a cold calm. “Kara tells me she promised you a tour,” she said politely. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

      “Really.” He smiled. “Are you sure?”

      She obviously hadn’t expected that. A faint line marred the snowy placidity of her forehead before she caught herself and smoothed it away. “Sure of what?”

      “That you’re sorry to have kept me waiting.” He hitched one leg over the other and watched her from the comfortable embrace of the armchair. “After last night, I thought perhaps you might have welcomed the opportunity to…put me in my place.”

      “Your place, Adam?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t presume to know where your place might be.”

      “Well,” he murmured. “Under your thumb, perhaps?”

      She laughed, a brittle sound that once again reminded him of ice cubes tinkling against crystal. “Actually, the last time I remember thinking about where you should go, it was somewhere considerably farther south. And somewhat warmer.”

      “Oh?” He smiled and let his gaze travel slowly south across her body. He couldn’t help himself. He knew what she meant, of course—that he belonged in the lowest level of Hell. But she wasn’t very good at this game, was she? She had thrust, but the effort had left her exposed.

      In the space of two hot, blinking seconds, she knew how it had sounded. Her eyes widened, and her fingers tightened on the papers they held.

      He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. He waited for the signature cherry-red circles to bloom in her cheeks. She had always been a blusher. She had blushed when Mrs. Bickens called on her in Calculus, when Adam’s fellow construction workers whistled at her as she picked him up after the late shift, when her aunt scolded her for coming in beyond the stroke of midnight….

      And, with an intoxicating innocence that had sent quakes through his entire system, she had blushed in his arms when he undressed her. Though they had been alone in the melting summer darkness, it had taken a dozen murmuring kisses to coax her fingers away from her burning cheeks.

      But, to his surprise, she didn’t blush now. If anything, her strangely immobile face, ivory under its weight of dark hair, grew even more pale.

      She stared at him a long moment and then, slowly, she came around the desk and leaned against the corner. She adjusted her skirt with graceful hands. A wink of silver at her wrist showed beneath her cuff and a scallop of white lace retreated obediently under her hem.

      The shift brought their knees together, separated by no more than a sliver of an inch. It was deliberate—he could see the challenge in her steady gaze. She was completely unaffected, she was assuring him, by both his words and his body.

      “Perhaps we’d better get something straight,” she said in a voice that was commendably even, if not quite natural. “Touring potential investors is part of my job. Don’t flatter yourself that I would let anything you did in the past—last night or ten years ago—keep me from raising money for this hospital.”

      He stared back at her, realizing that suddenly, absurdly, he was angry. Angry at that marble-statue face, at that automaton voice, at those graceful hands that no longer trembled. What a waste. What a criminal waste of sweet fire and flesh and blue-moonlight blushes.

СКАЧАТЬ