Persuasive Lips by Sherry Silver Read Free Book Online

totally unrelated. Like she’d been drafted or the I.R.S. was auditing her. She climbed the steps to the porch, opened the screen door and stumbled in, letting it bang shut. She dropped her shoes and kicked them under the foyer bench.
    “I’ve told ya a hundred times to close the door gently, don’t ya know,” Mrs. Grogan said, as she stepped out of the kitchen, a potato and a small knife in her chubby hand. “Sakes alive, Della. You look as though you’ve been ridden hard and put up wet. Where have ya been all night?”
    Mrs. Grogan had used that cliché many times, she was referring to a horse, not illicit sex. If only she knew how right she was.
    “I’ve brought the mail in.”
    “Thanks, darlin’. Just place it on the table there, my hands are wet with spud starch.”
    “Who else is home?”
    “Chloe is napping. Shirley and Orpha are at nursing school. Now, ya haven’t answered my question, where have ya been all night?”
    She had to tell somebody, and Mrs. Grogan was the dearest friend she had. She mothered her girls at the boarding house.
    The landlady plopped herself onto a chair with a groan and commenced peeling the potato. “There’s lemonade in the Frigidaire.”
    A drink. Yes, she was so thirsty. “Thanks. Would you like some?”
    “That’d be sweet, darlin’.”
    Della a dropped the mail on the kitchen table and filled two canning jars with lemonade. She set one near Mrs. Grogan and guzzled half of the other before sitting across from her in a ladder backed chair.
    “I didn’t mean to worry you. I would have called if I had been near a phone. You know how badly I want to get into the O.S.S. like Julia?”
    “You and her were close. I got a postcard from her ‘tother day. From Australia. A kangaroo. I placed it out on the table by the divan.”
    “Anyhow, there’s this guy at work. Ashley Jones. He comes two or three times a week and brings me hamburgers from the Tiny Tavern.”
    “Best around.” Mrs. Grogan quartered the potato as it dropped into the pan of water.
    “Anyhow last night, he arranged this elaborate spy game. I fell for it. Then I felt like a fool when I finally figured out this morning that I’d been had. But by then it was too late.”
    “Too late for what?”
    Too late to save myself for my future husband. Too late not to crave a man for the rest of my life. “Too late not to fall in love with an incorrigible rogue. Too late to keep my intellectual persona. Too late to stay focused on my career.”
    “Now, don’t ya go on like that darlin’. Fallin’ in love outweighs any other dreams in this here life. And of course ya can have your career. You’re doin’ well with your secretarial job. Married ladies can stay workin’ these days until the stork announces he’s come to call.”
    Della’s eyes grew big. Married? Stork? No way. Un-unh. She eyed the government letter and dropped her hastily peeled potato into the pan. Water plopped up at her. She rinsed her hands at the sink and dried them. As she picked up the letter and ripped it open, Mrs. Grogan hummed.
    “I got it! I got the promotion! I leave...immediately!”
    * * *
    Three months later, inside the great pyramid of Giza in Cairo, Egypt, United States Office of Strategic Services Agent Della Davis smoothed her orange silk dress as she checked her kohl eyeliner in the mirror of her compact. She felt silly, wanting to look her best, well better than that gorgeous Egyptian woman she was passing the documents to. Della had been shocked to discover the incident in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had been a real mission, and now here she was making another tricky connection with the Thousand Dollar Pharaoh.
    What if she invites me to come to her him-em? The thought both terrified and intrigued her all at once. Memories of Secret Service Agent Ashley Jones flooded her brain and body. She closed her eyes. She could almost smell his aftershave and Ivory soap, almost could feel his presence.
    Della shook her