Stevie Lee by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online Page B

“Stevie”—he leaned forward, resting his hands on the table in a show of honesty recognized all over the world—“I’ll get a job whether you hire me or not. Since you have the most to lose, I thought I’d offer my services to you first.” Sometimes Hal amazed himself with the line of bull he could concoct out of nothing. “And I was serious about the Australian trip. If you’d like to go someplace else, just say so. I have connections all over the world, and most of them owe me.” That part was pure fact. She’d have to search pretty damn hard to find a spot on the map where he didn’t know somebody with strings to pull.
    He’d answered a number of questions with his soliloquy, and hit them all dead center. The bit about offering services was weak, but then he thought she could pay his taxes again without blinking an eye. She knew it would have been a fight to the finish. Her scrambling to pay her bills and still put some extra aside. And the Australian trip—if anyone else had made the proposal, she would have laughed them out of the kitchen. But his story, completely true or not, had confirmed what she already knew about men like Halsey Morgan. They lived off the grace of the gods and a long and loyal network of friends, where money never changed hands but favors did.
    Stevie leaned back in her chair and gave him a critical once-over. She’d hired a few people in her time, and not one of them had hit her with a come-on like his, or a smile like the one he was using to charm her socks off. For a fleeting moment, she wondered how much that smile could mean to her in dollars and cents. Then she wondered for another, and another, while she took in the sensual angles of his face, the hard line of his jaw, the wind-blown look of his hair, and finally she came to a conclusion: He was pure bar bait if she’d ever seen it. She could easily imagine the hordes of women coming to flirt with him, the corresponding hordes of men coming to pick up the women—and all of them glued to their bar stools by his wild stories. It was a hard image to let go of, and that left her with only two problems.
    “What’s to keep you from paying off the taxes and running out on me midseason? Probably to Australia,” she voiced the lesser concern.
    “They call it risk, Stevie Lee. How much are you willing to risk on a handshake and a chance to get out of here?”
    Coming from the biggest risk taker of them all, his words held a challenge, and a dare. She thought again of another year trapped in Grand Lake, looking at the same old pine-covered mountains. She thought of other mountains, mountains with forests of rhododendrons and cedar, and her own adventuresome spirit rebelled. Then she thought of her second problem—herself.
    Twice she’d fallen prey to his blue eyes and golden good looks. Twice he’d effortlessly confused her with his special brand of sensuality. And twice she’d bounced back. Could she keep doing it? Or better yet, could she avoid it all together?
    One look told her the latter was asking too much. She might be hardened against love, but she wasn’t blind. But then love was different from, well, sex, she thought.
    Love was definitely different from sex, and she’d never had one without the other—at least on her side of the bed. Kip had lived by a separate set of rules, or maybe he’d been in love with everybody at the same time. Who knew? And who cared?
    You’re straying from the point, Stevie. A little voice in the back of her mind gently reminded her of the business at hand. Right, she thought, where was she? Love, sex, and Halsey Morgan.
    No! The voice screamed, an alarm went off, and Stevie jumped in her chair.
    Hal lurched back in his. Sweet Allah! All he’d asked for was a job. If she thought about it much harder, she was going to blow a fuse.
    “Friday, four o’clock.” She didn’t give herself a chance to change her mind, because above all, she couldn’t afford not to hire him. “Saturday