What Are Friends For?. Naomi Horton

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      Feeling more in control, she added a few drops of vanilla and a sprinkle of sugar to the cream and eggs, then started beating them with a wire whisk. It was time, she told herself calmly. In three weeks, she was going to be thirty years old. Too old to still believe in miracles. It was time she shook herself free of Conn once and for all and got on with her life, because she would be damned if she was going to turn into one of those silly calf-eyed women who waits and waits and waits...and then one day wakes up to realize that an entire lifetime has slipped by and her dreams have turned to dust.

      The French toast had cooked to a deep golden brown by the time Andie heard the shower go off. A couple of minutes later Conn padded into the kitchen in a waft of soap-scented steam, cleanly shaven and barefoot, dressed in a ragged old pair of denim cutoffs and nothing else. He was still fit and lean, she noticed idly, his shoulders still solid, belly still flat and hard. And he could still make her heart give that silly little leap with just one lazy grin.

      Ignoring it, she simply smiled. “You look almost human again. Feel better?”

      “Actually, I feel like a damned fool,” he muttered. Walking across to her, he bent down to give her a chaste—and chastened—peck on the cheek. “Sorry. I don’t know what the hell I thought I was doing, grabbing you like that. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

      As she knew all too well, Andie thought wearily. “Forget it, Devlin,” she told him easily. “You’re a man. Men do stupid things all the time. It’s what makes you so endearing.” Refusing to think about it, she slid three thick slices of French toast onto a warmed plate and handed it to him. “Eat this. You still look a little rough around the edges.”

      “Feel a little rough around the edges.” Grinning, he took the plate and padded into the sun room, raking his fingers through his wet hair. “I still can’t believe I had the brass to haul you out of bed and all the way out here just because I was feeling sorry for myself.”

      “You’re allowed,” she replied casually, carrying her own plate across to the table and sitting down. “Most of the time you’re an intelligent, competent businessman with a solid grasp on his life and destiny. I figure you’re entitled to one night of generalized stupidity, all considered. Just don’t make a habit of it.”

      Conn winced slightly. “Point taken. Still friends?”

      “Forever.” She said it easily, the ritual as old as their friendship.

      Conn just nodded, prodding the French toast thoughtfully. He’d been thinking about Andie in the shower—a few salacious thoughts, granted, but it had been more than that. Thinking about how she was always there for him, about how he sometimes just took for granted that all he had to do was shout and she’d be there, calm and collected and in control.

      “You, uh...” He looked at her thoughtfully. “You didn’t really have someone with you when I called tonight, did you?”

      Andie stared at him, fork halfway to her mouth. “What a question to ask!”

      “You would tell me, wouldn’t you? If you were getting serious about someone?”

      “It’s the strangest thing....” Andie cocked her head slightly, as though listening to something. “I could swear I hear my mother. Didn’t that just sound like my mother?”

      “All right, all right,” he growled. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”

      “It is my mother!” She looked around with exaggerated surprise. “I was sure she was in Portland this week.”

      “Don’t be a wise guy,” Conn muttered. “I’m dead serious, Andie.” Realizing, with some surprise, that he meant it. “We’ve never kept secrets from each other. I know you and that French banker, André or Albert or whatever his name is, have been seeing a lot of each other lately.”

      She leaned back with an exaggerated sigh, crossing her arms. “I presume you mean Alain DeRocher, the French-Canadian investment analyst you introduced me to last year. Yes, we have been seeing each other pretty often, or as often as possible, considering I live on one side of the continent and he lives on the other. And no, he wasn’t with me tonight. Nor was anyone else, for that matter. Happy?”

      Conn gave a grunt, only half-mollified. “So you and he aren’t...?” He lifted his eyebrow eloquently.

      “Connor!” She gave a burst of laughter. “It’s none of your business if we are!” Still grinning, she looked at him with amusement. “Although, to forestall any more questioning, no, we are not—yet,” she added slyly.

      “Yet.” Conn’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Meaning he’s thinking about it.”

      “Of course he’s thinking about it—he’s French!”

      “And you’d...?” He lifted his eyebrow again.

      “Now that’s really none of your business!”

      “So you’re thinking about it, too.”

      “Connor!” Andie took a deep breath, then let it out again with a quiet laugh. “I bet he would at least bring me flowers and wine before trying to peel me out of my jeans.”

      Conn winced. “I said I was sorry about that, damn it.”

      “Mmm.” She looked at him for a moment, an odd expression on her face. “What I’m saying, Conn, is that I just don’t know how I feel about him. He’s certainly everything a woman could want....”

      Conn gave a grunt, not liking the expression on her face. Not liking the idea of DeRocher trying to peel her out of a damned thing, flowers or no flowers. “He’s too old for you.”

      Andie’s left eyebrow arched indolently. “Excuse me?”

      “Well, hell, he’s got to be fifty if he’s a day.”

      “Forty-one.”

      “Like I said, he’s too old for you.”

      “I like older men.” There was a dangerous glow in her eyes.

      “He’s probably married.”

      “He’s never been married.”

      “Never?” It was Conn’s turn to lift his eyebrow. “Don’t you think that’s damn strange? That this perfect specimen of a man has never been married? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

      “It tells me,” she said sweetly, “that he is considerably wiser that some men I could mention.”

      “Sounds to me as though he’s got some sort of problem. In the fun-and-games department, I mean.”

      “Trust me,” Andie shot back even more sweetly. “He has no problem in that area at all.”

      “I don’t even want to know how you’ve figured that out if you haven’t even—”

      “Didn’t you tell me just last week that you don’t have to take a boat out to know whether it’s going to handle well in heavy weather or not? Gut instinct, I think you said.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ