Firefly by Linda Hilton Read Free Book Online Page B

sat down on the chair that still had its cushion and let Julie set the tray on his lap before she uncovered the plate of lightly buttered toast.  The slices had been cut into neat little triangles, and there were two dishes of jam, one red and one yellow to match the color of their contents.  Morgan stared, then picked up the knife and began to spread strawberry jam on one slice of toast.  He was about to pop the morsel into his mouth when he suddenly realized where he was and what he was doing.
    "Look, Miss Hollstrom--"
    "No, you look, Mr. Morgan."
    She was a tall girl, as he remembered from last week, and he rather enjoyed looking up at her, even if he was about to receive a lecture.
    "I won't flatter you by telling you how you miraculously saved my brother's life.  We both know he was in very little real danger."
    She wore a dress of faded green calico with that ever-present apron tied around her waist.  Morgan noticed that it was a small waist, and he turned back to his toast with a mumbled, " He sure thought he was a goner."
    "Be that as it may, I still want to thank you for the help you gave me.  My parents are inordinately fond of Willy, and I confess I would rather have had the blame for any disaster fall on your head than on mine."
    "So all I was was a scapegoat?"
    "If I thought that, I wouldn't have told you.  No, I wanted to thank you for doing a much better job than I could have done, and certainly better than poor Dr. Opper."
    "'Poor' Dr. Opper?  Hell, Horace rakes in more dough than I ever did, and he does less for it, too.  I'd hardly call that old quack 'poor.'"
    He crammed the toast into his mouth and chewed furiously, both because he was hungry and because he was already saying things he had no right to say, to Julie Hollstrom or to anyone else for that matter.
    "Well, you needn't worry about him any more.  Dr. Opper is dead."
    Morgan choked.  If he had had any more in his mouth, he probably would have choked to death.
    "Horace is dead?"
    "As the proverbial doornail.  Mr. McCrory found him lying in the alley behind the general store.  Apparently he just died."
    "People don't 'just die,' Miss Hollstrom.  Probably his heart gave out, or he had a stroke.  He didn't look too good yesterday afternoon, but I sure didn't think he'd croak this quick."
    He sipped the fresh, hot coffee slowly, careful not to burn his mouth, and mused on the passing of Horace Opper, a man he had never liked but never really gave a whole lot of thought to.
    "Shall I pour you some more coffee?" Julie asked, breaking into his thoughts.
    "No, thanks."  Then he looked up at her suspiciously.  "Just what is it you want from me?  I'm a drunk, Miss Hollstrom, and it was only sheer luck I wasn't out cold when you came looking for me yesterday.  You have Sid Ackerman and his card game to thank for that, not me."
    "I didn't go around asking questions about you, so you can rest easy on that," she began.  "But I've been around enough doctors to know one when I see him."
    "All right, I was a doctor," he snapped right back. "I'm not any more, haven't been for a long time."
    "Well, you see, my mother and brother are not exactly in the best of health."
    "They both looked pretty damned healthy to me."
    "Looks can be deceiving," she shot at him tartly.
    "Yes, they can.  For instance, why do you wear those ridiculous spectacles?  Every time I've seen you, they've been about to fall off the end of your nose, and you're always looking at people over the top of them."
    Julie knew she had blushed red from her collar to the roots of her hair.  She had to turn her back to him to push the glasses up to the bridge of her nose, though she knew they wouldn't stay there very long.
    She stammered, "That…that isn't what we have to discuss here this morning."
    "I didn't know we had anything to discuss."
    He tried to tell himself that the only reason he listened to this garbage was because he was hungry and this was the best breakfast he'd had in