Prescription for Romance / Love and the Single Dad. Susan Crosby

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СКАЧАТЬ He had a feeling that, like Derek, Ramona Tate could talk with the best of them, easily winning battles simply by wearing her opposition down.

      “No one’s ejecting you, Miss Tate,” he assured her. “You have a temporary stay of execution.”

      The surprise came and went from her face in an instant. Had he blinked, Paul suspected he wouldn’t have seen it at all.

      “How temporary?” she wanted to know, banking down her eagerness.

      “That remains to be seen,” he told her. It depended on whether she actually got results that would do them any good. For now, he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Why don’t we just take this one step at a time, shall we?”

      “That’s all I ever wanted, an opportunity to prove myself to you—whichever ‘you’ I happen to be talking to,” she added with an amused smile. Rising, she cocked her head just a tad as she peered at him closely, her eyes swiftly taking inventory and reviewing everything she noted. And then she made her decision. “You’re Dr. Paul,” she declared with just a hint of triumph.

      He hid his amusement. “What makes you so certain?” he asked.

      Even though he felt that there was a world of difference between his brother and him, Paul knew that as far as looks went, he and Derek were close to interchangeable unless they were standing beside one another. It was only then that someone might notice that Derek was thinner, while he looked as if he availed himself of the gym’s facilities whenever he could, which he did.

      When they were younger, both of their parents managed to confuse one with the other, in part, Paul suspected, because neither parent ever really took the time to get to know either of them. Although, if he thought about it, Paul had a feeling that if his parents had taken the time, it would only have been Derek who would have garnered their focused attention.

      It wasn’t only the squeaky wheel that got greased, it was the noisy, silver-tongued brother who ultimately got all the attention.

      Ramona smiled up at him. The smile penetrated clear down to his bones. “Your eyes.”

      He waited, but she didn’t elaborate. “What about my eyes?” he pressed. He fully expected her to say something to the effect that they were dull, that Derek was the one whose eyes looked as if they held a host of secrets and the promise of excitement.

      But she surprised him. “You’re the one with the kind eyes,” Ramona said. “Your brother’s eyes are … unfathomable.”

      Maybe she didn’t have such a happy way with words after all. Paul interpreted her meaning. “So Derek is the man of mystery while I’m the flat, two-dimensional one.”

      Her perfectly shaped eyebrows drew together into a V. She looked surprised at his interpretation of her assessment.

      “Not at all,” she protested. “On an absolute level, you’d be the one who people would trust, Dr. Armstrong, not your brother. They’d go to him looking for a good time, not honesty.”

      Ramona firmly believed that it was never too early to begin laying groundwork in order to build a viable relationship. That was her goal at the moment to build a connection with Paul. She could accomplish more at a quicker pace if she had one of the Armstrongs in her corner, and Paul, although reserved, struck her as the one who was more real, more open. She had the feeling that Derek had his own, private agenda, one he meant to pursue no matter what. A man like that couldn’t be manipulated.

      Besides, Derek Armstrong was far too into himself to be of any use to her.

      Paul shook his head ever so slightly. “I already said you had a temporary stay of execution, Miss Tate. There’s no need to try to flatter me.”

      Annoyed with herself that she’d come across so transparent, nonetheless Ramona managed to rally quickly. “I wasn’t flattering, I was telling it the way I saw it,” she informed him simply.

      She might have given him a simple answer, Paul mused, but he had the impression that this woman was anything but that. As a matter of fact, he would have been willing to say that, despite declarations of honesty and truth, there was something Ramona Tate was keeping back.

      The fleeting thought intrigued him.

      In case she believed he was fishing for more validation, he changed the subject. “By the way, about your references—”

      Ramona was one jump ahead of him. She’d learned that a good defense was to have a good offense. “I have them right here.” Reaching for her oversize purse, she pulled it toward her, then flipped the locks open. “Your brother said he’d be getting around to reviewing them eventually, but I think they should be a matter of record, don’t you?” Taking out a light blue file that contained more than a few letters of praise, she offered the folder to him. “There’s also a copy of my academic transcript and employment history,” she told him.

      Taking the folder, Paul opened it and scanned a few of the pages. There were letters from college professors and from news editors, some of whom had the logos of local TV stations stamped on them. One was from the Washington Post. He’d expected one letter, perhaps two. If asked, he would have said that she was too young for more than that.

      “And you said that you were just twenty-five?” he asked incredulously.

      Maybe Monty had laid it on a little thick, Ramona thought. Monty Durham was the computer geek/wizard she’d befriended in her first year in college. He’d been so grateful to have someone to talk to, he became Sancho Panza to her female Don Quixote. There wasn’t anything that Monty couldn’t make a computer do, including spew out lies and make them look like gospel. There also wasn’t anything that Monty wouldn’t do for her.

      “I graduated two years early,” she told Paul by way of an explanation.

      Which was true. Eager to start leaving her mark in the world, Ramona had opted for an accelerated course of study. It had allowed her to crunch four years of high school into three and then do the same with college. To make it work, she’d attended school year-round, picking up courses part-time in the summer. In her spare time, she had also worked any job in her field she could get her hands on. That in turn gave her a much-needed solid core for her résumé. Monty had done the rest, embellishing where he could. He was also responsible for half the letters of recommendation in the folder.

      She was unusual, Paul decided, he’d give her that. “In my experience, most people like to extend their college experience if they can.”

      “Maybe so,” she allowed. “But I wanted to get started with my life,” she countered. “College was great,” she added quickly, not wanting him to think she was bucking for some kind of sainthood, “but college isn’t life. It’s more like the TV version.” Angling the monitor so that it turned in his direction, Ramona realized that she’d come full circle and made the offer again. “Would you like to read what I’ve written so far?”

      That would probably be the best way to determine whether or not she could actually do them some good, he thought. Or if having her around was just Derek’s way of having eye candy on hand.

      “Actually, I would.”

      Smiling, she hit the key combination that caused the wireless printer in the corner to come to life. Within moments, it produced the four pages she’d composed. Ramona crossed to the machine and removed the sheets, СКАЧАТЬ