The Admirer's Secret by Pamela Crane Read Free Book Online Page A

noticed her drooling.
    “No problem. I had nothing better to do, so I might as well work, right? I appreciate the business.”
    They paused in the doorway, then he held out a strong, rough hand, which enveloped hers in its grasp. It felt oddly familiar. Rugged near the fingers, but still supple in his palm. Strange. It vaguely reminded her of her father’s hands—the hands of a man familiar with physical labor. Then Marc squeezed, just as her father had squeezed her hand the last time she saw him alive.
    Haley held on for a moment longer than would feel natural, letting the touch of his skin inspire a momentary slip back to a memory of her father. The touch only lasted a long minute, but as their hands parted ways, Haley’s mind burned the feel of her hand in his.
    There’s just something about him…
    Their handshake was a simple gesture, but a powerful one. It could have been his cute smile that got to her, or his incredible body, or his— 
    Why am I even checking him out? She had tried so hard to push dating out of her mind in order to focus on her writing.
    Men were nothing more than a bad distraction. A relationship was off-li mits if she wanted a career—case closed. It was after her last blind date gone bad that Haley at last resigned herself to singledom. Her co-worker set the whole thing up, assuming it would give Haley a fresh perspective. And perspective was about all she got out of it.
    Her date’s withered flowers couldn’t make up for his gold-toothed grin and food-crusted mustache. It got even worse—if that was possible—when he insisted on dragging her to a seedy bar that night. The guy didn’t even have th e courtesy to upgrade her from some watery beer on tap to a mixed drink. Haley couldn’t get home fast enough, and she made sure her co-worker knew about it, too.
    A hundred apologies from her co-worker weren’t nearly a high enough price to pay for the guy’s beer breath in her face when he dropped her off… in the middle of the street in front of her house! The nerve—especially after putting her through four excruciating hours of bland conversation about his ex. Never again. Old maids weren’t that taboo, were they?
    “Come on in,” she said, gesturing Marc inside. “My office is upstairs.” While leading him up the stairwell, she glanced back, finding him examining the pictures lining the stairwell wall. There were several portraying her and Courtney as kids, a family portrait taken when she was five, and one of her straddling her father’s knee when she was ten. Matching wood framed the cluster of pictures.
    “Are these you?” he asked, obviously realizing she caught him red-handed staring at the cranberry wall.
    “Yep, forever ago.”
    “Oh, it couldn’t have been that long ago.”
    She laughed. So he was a charmer, was he?
    “Is this your family?”
    “Yeah, that’s them. Me, my sister, my mom, and my dad.”
    “I can definitely see the resemblance between you and your sister. And your father too.”
    “Yeah, unfortunately my sister and I don’t talk much, but she’s in college… you know how that is. Too busy partying, I’m sure.”
    “I guess we all gotta have our rebellion period, right?”
    Haley chuckled. Was hers now?
    “It looks like you had a fun childhood,” he said, before shifting his weight on the stairs.
    The conversation took an uneasy twist as her gut did a little lurch.
    “Yeah, I did,” Haley replied.
    “This picture is really unique,” he said, examining the profile of a small child backlit by a brilliant sunset. “It captures the moment.”
    She grinned. It happened to be one of her favorites too. “Yeah, we have the best view of the sunsets at my parents’ house. I miss seeing that every night. When I was a kid, my bedroom had a picture window facing the lake, so in the evening every color imaginable would pour in as the sun went down. Truly breathtaking.”
    “There’s nothing quite like a Lake Erie sunset,” he agreed. “I