Fast Courting by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online Page A

was aware of this man solely as a sexual being. As such, he was dangerous, dark and powerful. And his implication infuriated her. Throwing caution to the winds, she took the offense. “You take a lot for granted!” she seethed. “What makes you think I would jump into bed with you? Are you propositioned that often?”
    His jaw tensed. “It has happened.”
    “Well,” she said with a glare, “ I don’t work that way! I don’t proposition men, for one thing. And, for another, you could no more get me near the game of basketball again than you could coax me into a pit of rattlers. I didn’t want this assignment to begin with!”
    From somewhere deep within she found the strength to pull her arm free of his grip. Driven by anger—at Daniel for having provoked her, at herself for having been provoked, and at Bill for having put her in the situation at all—she wheeled away and headed for her car at a fast clip. The March wind whipped at her hair, catching the edges of her coat and flaring them out to the sides. She had reached the car and was fumbling with the lock when the brass ring was taken from her fingers and those same fingers were enclosed in the pervading warmth of Daniel’s hand.
    “Let’s take my car,” he said with a firmness that brooked no argument and a gentleness that precluded protest. To her astonishment Nia found herself being led toward, then tucked into, the front seat of a sporty Datsun 280Z. Not knowing quite what to say, she remained silent while Daniel circled the car and slid behind the wheel. His grace was an extension of the coordination she’d witnessed on the court earlier.
    The purr of the motor was far smoother than her shaky mood. Staring out at the empty parking lot, she brooded. The self-satisfied, sexist overtone of his comment had rankled her, though she had to admit that her reaction had been unusually strong. What was it about Daniel Strahan that inspired such fire? Perhaps she felt threatened, she mused grudgingly; after all, he was more of a man than she’d come across in ages. Or was it the air of mystery about him?
    They were on a back road headed west before Nia forced herself to speak. “Where are we going?”
    “There’s a small place not far from here where we can get something to eat. Italian. OK?” He spared a mere second to dart a glance at her, otherwise keeping his eyes glued to the road, and missed Nia’s shrug.
    “Why are you doing this?” she asked, calmed by the steady motion of the car and the passage of luxuriant greenery by the roadside.
    “Taking you to lunch?” He paused. “I owe you.”
    Her head swung around. “For what?”
    In profile, there was an angularity about him, from the even plane of his forehead beneath its brush of dark hair and the straight line of his nose to the firm set of his lips and the squared-off angle of his chin. “For failing to return your calls all week and causing you to make an unnecessary stop out here today. The least I can do is to feed you.”
    “Anything to keep the press happy, is that it?” she snapped, clinging to the last of her dissipating anger with something akin to survival instinct.
    Again, he shot her a fast glance. “No. Actually, this is more person to person.”
    Better that than man to woman, she thought. “But aren’t you afraid,” she couldn’t resist a jibe, “that in the course of a lunch you might inadvertently spill some little private tidbit that I’ll greedily snatch up?”
    “I trust you.”
    “Perhaps you shouldn’t. I may be with Eastern Edge as an editor, but first and foremost I’m a writer. A reporter, if you will. Don’t you know that reporters are slimy creatures who will seize upon anything for the sake of a story?”
    “You wouldn’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you’re with Eastern Edge , for one thing. That magazine doesn’t print ‘tidbits’; it only goes in for complete, well-planned and skillfully executed articles.”
    “If you believe