One Good Turn by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page B

decide how to repair the damage. “It was my friend Sybil who figured out you were rich,” she explained. “She said rich guys don’t wear socks.”
    He glanced at his naked ankles and laughed. Then he scrutinized her bare calves and her tiny feet crisscrossed by the leather straps of her sandals. “By that standard, you must be rich, too,” he deduced.
    “I’m not a guy,” she pointed out.
    He took a bite of his roast beef sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “All right. I’m rich. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I come from a wealthy background. My father does well, and his father before him did even better.”
    “Was your grandfather a power-broker, too?”
    “He had friends in high places,” Luke said vaguely. “He was a banker, not a lawyer. He was one of those lucky bankers who played econominc upheavals perfectly and always wound up on the top of the heap. He wears socks, though.”
    “At his age, he probably needs them.”
    Luke laughed. “How about you? Do you come from a long line of school teachers?”
    Smiling, she shook her head. “My parents run an insurance agency outside Chicago.”
    “Chicago, huh,” he said with a nod. “You’ve got an accent.”
    “No,” she corrected him. “Everyone else has an accent.”
    He laughed.
    “Did you have a good visit with your father yesterday?” she asked.
    His smile faded. “It was okay,” he said, then cut himself off. He averted his eyes for a minute, gazing up toward the illuminated dome of the Capitol building, then turned back to Jenny. “We ate dinner at a private club in Georgetown. The City Tavern. It’s one of my father’s favorite places to eat when he’s down here. And we sat there, eating and talking...and I kept thinking...” He drifted off again, curiously pensive.
    “Thinking what?”
    He looked directly, unflinchingly at her. “Thinking about how you were just a few blocks away,” he said.
    Jenny’s heart beat faster. She understood that Luke’s words had been said not to soften her up but simply because they were the truth. She was touched—more than touched. She had thought about him last night, too, thought about how pleased she was that he’d called her and how much she was looking forward to seeing him the next day, and how greatly she hoped he wouldn’t spoil their budding friendship by trying to get her into the sack. But to realize that he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him moved her deeply.
    She wasn’t going to get a crush on him. She wasn’t going to romp with him through a crazy, meaningless two-month affair. And while she wasn’t sure exactly what his objectives were, she trusted him enough to find out.
    “I’m not looking for a summer romance, Luke,” she warned him.
    He continued to gaze steadily at her. “Neither am I,” he said.
    Simultaneously, without consciously intending to, they both lifted their wine glasses and drank.

Chapter Three
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    THE CONCERT, LIKE the picnic, was unexpectedly refined. Seated on the steps in front of the Capitol, with an unobstructed view of the Mall and the sunset above the Potomac River, Jenny and Luke listened to the band perform not just marches but classical compositions, jazz, show tunes and a concerto for harp solo so delicate Jenny had to remind herself that the music was actually being performed by Marines.
    As enchanted as she was by the band’s artistry—and by Mother Nature’s artistry in painting the dusk sky with streaks of pink and mauve—one part of Jenny’s mind remained fixed on Luke. He sat to her left on the red-checked tablecloth, which he’d folded into a rectangle and spread across the hard stone step to cushion their seat. Several inches of space separated her hip from his, yet she could feel the heat of his body all along the left side of hers, a heat far different from the summer warmth of the evening air. She was conscious of his tawny hair brushing the collar of his shirt in back, the sharp