Darling Jenny by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online Page A

chocolate with me?'
    'I…' she shook her head hesitantly. She didn't want to be with him, to let his maleness arouse that physical attraction she tried to stifle.
    'Afraid?'
    'Of course not!' Jennifer retorted, suddenly finding the voice that had forsaken her a minute ago.
    'We'll go to the "public" restaurant down the street,' Logan stated with a chiding emphasis on 'public'. 'You can see the skiers come down Snow King Mountain.'
    'All right,' Jennifer gave in reluctantly, unable to think of a satisfactory excuse not to go. She quickly quelled the thought that secretly she wanted to go with him. The very idea was preposterous.
    His arm rested lightly and uncomfortably naturally across her waist in back. Despite the thickness of her coat she could feel the flat of his hand guiding her along.
    'I see you're still wearing those silly boots,' he said, a smile teasing down at her.
    'The walks are all shovelled, and it didn't seem necessary to wear my new ones,' Jennifer replied evenly.
    'Then you did get some real boots.' His brown eyes glinted down on her rosy red cheeks that dashed with the coppery red colour in her hair.
    'They're so bulky I feel like a lumberjack in them,' she laughed.
    'And you once accused me of being vain, Jenny Glenn,' Logan baited her lightly as he turned her towards the restaurant door.
    'Stop calling me that!' she answered sharply in a lowered voice, angered that she had succumbed to his easy charm and hating the skipping beat of her heart for reacting to his caressing abbreviation of her name. 'Arrogant is a better word than vain for you.'
    'And here I thought that you had mellowed towards me,' he said with false regret as he pulled out a chair for her facing the window near the front. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.'
    'You've seldom been absent,' she retorted frostily as soon as Logan was seated opposite her. At the quizzical raise of his eyebrow, Jennifer explained, 'If it isn't Sheila telling me of your many virtues than it's the children raving on about "Uncle Logan". Why do they call you "uncle"? Whose idea was that?'
    The waitress came at that moment, delaying Logan's answer until after he had ordered for them.
    'It was the children's idea. One that neither Sheila nor I saw any harm in.' His expression was serious with a lordly tilt to his head as he answered. 'I imagine they felt they were staking a claim on me, making me an honorary member of their family. They take it seriously, and so do I.'
    The waitress returned, placing before each of them a cup of hot chocolate with swirling dabs of whipped cream floating on top. Wordlessly Jennifer concentrated on hers, feeling rebuked by his statement, and knowing hers had been offered in defense of his magnetism. She glanced at him briefly, taking in the light brown sweater with the band of white circling it and the brown stag's head inside the white. There was an allusion of hardness underneath the knitted material and beneath the smiling face as well, a determination to succeed. Brad had been ambitious, too, but with a streak of cunning in him that Jennifer had just now recognized, because she suddenly realized it was absent in Logan.
    'You try so hard to figure me out, Jenny. Why don't you just accept what you see?' Logan asked softly.
    'Once bitten, twice shy,' she answered brightly, trying to laugh at the wariness he always aroused in her.
    'Ah, but you see, I'm not trying to bite you.' Jennifer tried to catch where the slight inflection of his voice placed the emphasis, on 'bite' or on 'you'. A strange sinking feeling told her it was on the last.
    'Are you saying that a worldly man like you doesn't try to score with every girl he meets?' she asked, using a smile to hide the cutting tone of her voice.
    'Are you asking specifically about strawberry blondes or girls in general?' His knowing smile teased an angry fire alight in her brown eyes. 'I believe you think that kiss in the snow has branded you a fallen woman. It was only a