A Lyon's Share by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online Page A

self-consciously.
    "Anything that can keep a woman quiet for fifteen minutes must be worth at least a penny," he mocked.
    "If you must know." She glanced up from her sandwich into the vivid blue of his eyes, now lazily veiled by thick lashes. "I was wondering how much longer the storm would last."
    "Getting tired of my company already?"
    "Not as tired as you must be of mine," Joan retorted, not able to match the lightness in his voice.
    "On the contrary." There was an eloquent shrug of his broad shoulders. "As a matter of fact I was just wondering how an attractive girl like you has avoided the altar."
    "It's more a case of the altar avoiding me."
    "Then you aren't a career girl." The smoothly firm line of his mouth was pulled into a wry smile. "That means some day I'll have to find myself another secretary, and just when I was becoming used to you, too."
    "I haven't handed in my notice yet, Mr. Lyon." Joan said stiffly.
    "It was Brandt last night," he reminded her with a wicked light in his eyes. Their dancing gleam was disturbing and Joan looked away. "Surely there's someone special in your life, isn't there? Or would you have me believe that you dress sexily for a maiden aunt?"
    She blinked back the sudden sting of tears, pride surfacing with a rush. She couldn't tell him of her empty weekends, of the countless nights she had spent in her own company. Those half-forgotten words she had spoken last week when she had intimated that her weekends were always occupied had come back to haunt her. White lies or any kind of lies always seemed to compound into more.
    "I don't know if—" Joan hesitated, then plunged forward, hoping she wasn't burying herself in a series of lies and silently apologizing to Ed Thomas for seeking refuge in his name, "—Ed is exactly special, but I am fond of him." That statement was at least the truth.
    "Have you known him long?" The tilt of the leonine head indicated a casual interest.
    "No, he's a brother of my room-mate's fiancé." Her fingers were tearing nervously at the uneaten portion of her sandwich.
    "Your room-mate is the Moreland girl in the computer department, isn't she?"
    "Yes, that's right, Kay Moreland," Joan answered in a startled voice that betrayed her surprise. She had never suspected that he was even aware she had a room-mate.
    "Are you bringing Ed to the Christmas party?"
    "Well, actually," his question had caught her off guard, "he lives in Cleveland."
    "It must be pretty serious if he flies back and forth just to see you," Brandt commented.
    "And his brother," Joan added, rising to her feet in an effort to end the conversation.
    The swivel chair behind her desk squeaked loudly in protest to her sudden movement, screeching like chalk on a blackboard.
    "That chair needs to be oiled," he said, walking over to rock it back and forth.
    "I may look like an Amazon, but that chair is too heavy for me to turn upside down to get to the area where the squeak is," she said sharply.
    There was a piercing quality to the look he gave her, the harshness of controlled anger. Her chin tilted defiantly as she swallowed the tight lump in her throat. Joan had always been conscious of her size ever since her teenage days when she had towered over the boys in her class.
    His eyes narrowed as he studied her. "Have you always been sensitive about your height?"
    "It isn't something that can be ignored," Joan responded stiffly.
    "Why is it," Brandt's head was cocked inquiringly to the side, "that short girls always dream of being statuesque and tall girls want to be daintily petite?"
    "It's human nature, I suppose," she shrugged. "to want what you can't have. But I have accepted the way I am."
    "Then stop apologizing for being a tall, beautiful blonde." The crisply spoken compliment seemed to accuse her of false modesty and Joan reacted sharply.
    "Really. Mr. Lyon, you can't expect me to believe you!" Her head was thrown back in an indignant pose. "In the three years I've worked for you, you've never