Mismatch by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online

gave her a sideways look as he rubbed his toe. “Maybe you should let him stay. He’ll help put a dent in the mouse population.”
    “I prefer exterminators, they walk upright.” She stuck her left foot out and frowned at it. Like an idiot, she had left her shoes off. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Wade’s sleep by clomping around in her wing tips. Now a hideous creature had slithered over her skin. “And there’s going to be a troop of them in here first thing Monday morning.”
    “You’re staying?” he asked cautiously.
    “I don’t know how long I’m staying, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t have the place going to ruin like this,” she said, picking at a tuft of stuffing coming through the arm of the sofa.
    Pulling his sock back on, Wade forced a weak smile. “I thought you’d take one look at this place in the bright light of day and run straight to the nearest realtor.”
    “I’ve never given any thought to selling it,” she said with a shrug. “Until yesterday, I’d practically forgotten it existed.” A worried frown tugged at her eyebrows. “Did you really break your toe?”
    He eased his shoe on. “No. It’s just sore.” He gave her a stern look. “You’re hard on a man, Bronwynn. Has anyone ever told you that?”
    “Maybe you’re just accident-prone,” she said.
    “Right.” Wade rolled his eyes. “I accidentally walked under that six-pack last night, and it accidentally gave me a concussion.”
    “I am sorry about that.” She climbed off the couch and went to the table to open her box of Twinkies. She tossed two to Wade and brought him a can of orange soda. “The least I can do is offer you breakfast.”
    He made a silent apology to his doctor and dug in. For months he had been promising Dr. Jameson that he would start eating right, but it hadn’t happened. There was always an early meeting preventing more than a cup of coffee for breakfast, a crisis in his office that ran over lunch, take-out burgers for supper at his desk while he pored over the latest reports for the Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development.
    He would start eating right just as soon as he got Bronwynn Prescott Pierson out of his hair. He had brought along the information on nutrition and proper diet a cute little dietician at the hospital had given him—one who had been so impressed by the title of congressman. He had met with her for over an hour, and not once had she tried to hit him over the head with anything. Funny he couldn’t think of her name as he sat watching Bronwynn devour another Twinkie.
    “You said you were up here because of job stress,” she said, licking a fleck of cream filling from her finger. “What kind of job?”
    “Congressman.” He thought she’d grimaced. “I’m a representative from Indiana.”
    “Really?” It was worse than she had imagined. When it came to stuffed shirts, politicians headed the list. “Where in Indiana?”
    “I’m from Lafayette.”
    “I was in Indiana once,” she remarked, staring across the room at a sheet of wallpaper that was so full of ripples it looked three-dimensional. “I got lost. You really ought to do something about putting up more road signs. Or is that what they meant by the slogan Wander Indiana?”
    Wade gritted his teeth as he lit his first cigarette of the day. “You’re from Boston, aren’t you?”
    “Yep.”
    “Taking time off from modeling to get married?”
    “I retired from modeling two years ago.” She wasn’t offended that he hadn’t missed seeing her picture in the magazines. It amazed her that he’d known what she had done for a living. It was her experience that politicians didn’t read anything but the
Congressional Record
and their own popularity polls.
    “Must be rough,” he muttered, arching a brow. She couldn’t have been much over thirty, and she was retired. Of course, he should have given her some credit for having worked at all. He knew plenty of wealthy young women who had