Hoodwinked by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

her hair down to her waist. He’d dreamed of her all night, and that surprised him. He hadn’t cared very much for women in the past few years. His work had become his life. Somehow, the challenges replaced tenderness, love. He’d been too busy with pushing himself to the outer edges of life to involve himself very much with people. He wasn’t going to involve himself with this woman, either; but being friendly might get him close enough to find out just how involved she was with the failure of the Faber jet. He was already suspicious of Blake, and she worked for Blake. She could be a link.
    He lifted the cigarette to his lips absently. “You were wearing a men’s pajama top that morning,” he said out loud. His dark eyes narrowed, pinning hers. “Do you have a lover?”

Chapter Three
    M aureen stared at him. “Do I have a lover?” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s a good one.”
    That puzzled him. “I don’t understand the joke,” he said.
    â€œWell, look at me,” she said miserably. “I wear glasses, I’m too tall, I have the personality of a dust ruffle, and even when I try to wear trendy clothes, I still look like somebody’s spinster aunt. Can’t you just see me in silk and satin and lace, draped across a king-sized bed?”
    She was laughing, but he wasn’t. He could picture her that way, and the image was disturbing.
    He lifted his cigarette to his wide mouth. “Yes, I can,” he said quietly. “And stop running yourself down. There’s nothing wrong with you. If you don’t believe that, ask the janitorial department.”
    She felt her cheeks going hot. “I’ve, uh, caused them a lot of trouble in the past. I can’t imagine that they’d give me a reference.”
    He laughed softly. It was a pleasant sound and, she imagined, a pretty rare one. “All the same,” he replied, “they haven’t forgotten the little things you’ve done for them. Pralines from New Orleans, cotton candy from the carnival that came through, a pot ofhomemade soup on the day we got snow after the New Year. You can spill coffee on the carpet year-round and they’ll drop everything to clean it up. They love you.”
    She colored prettily. “I felt guilty,” she murmured.
    â€œMr. Wyman, the security guard, is another admirer,” he continued, blowing out a thin cloud of smoke while he watched Bagwell finish off one last piece of pear. “You sat with his wife when she had to have an emergency appendectomy.”
    She cleared her throat. “He doesn’t have any family out here. He and Mrs. Wyman are from Virginia.”
    â€œYou may not be Miss America, but you’ve got a heart, Miss Harris,” he concluded, letting his gaze slide back to her face. “People like you just the way you are.”
    She clasped her hands and let them droop between her jeans-clad knees. It didn’t occur to her at the moment to ask how he’d found out so much about her. “Well, I don’t,” she muttered. “I’m dull and my life is dull and mostly I bore people to death. I want to be like old Joseph MacFaber,” she said, her face brightening so that she missed the look on her companion’s face. “He took up hang gliding last year, did you know? He’s raced cars in the Grand Prix in France and ballooned on the Eastern Seaboard. He’s gone off with archaeological expeditions to Peru and Mexico and Central America. He’s gone deep-sea diving with one of the Cousteau expeditions that signed on amateurs for a couple of weeks in the Bahamas, and he’s lived on cattle stations in the outback in Australia. He’s climbed mountains and gone on camera safaris in Africa and—”
    â€œGood God, will you stop?” he groaned. “You’re making me tired.”
    â€œWell, you do see, don’t you?” she asked, with a