The Deadliest Option by Annette Meyers Read Free Book Online Page A

exactly.” She smiled at Wetzon. “Admit it, sweetie pie, you’re just a wee bit mad that I’m involved in this, and you don’t have it all to yourself.”
    “That’s not true, and you know it.” Wetzon found herself sputtering. Was Smith right? No, she couldn’t be.
    “Wetzon.” B.B. was at the door. “Howie Minton for you.”
    “Howie Minton?” Smith groaned. “Not again. How many years is this?”
    “He called last week. “ Wetzon laughed. She stood up and brushed the crumbs off her skirt. “Tell him I’ll be right there, B.B.” To Smith, she said, “He wants to try again. I think I’ve been working with him for over five years now, right?”
    “At least.” Smith tucked her chin back in the reflector.
    “This is it, he says.”
    “Humpf.”
    “This time may be for real. L.L. Rosenkind has stopped doing principal business. I told Howie to think it over and call me only if he was really serious.”
    “Give me a break.”
    “He’s grossing over a million for his trailing twelve months.”
    Smith dropped the reflector with a thump. “Jeeezus!”
    “Smith.” B.B. appeared at the door again. “Jake.”
    “Oh, good.” Smith followed Wetzon into their office. “Clean up out here, B.B., will you? There’s a good fellow.”
    They separated, went to their respective corners and reached for their phones.
    “Jake, precious,” Smith breathed.
    “Hi, Howie,” Wetzon said.
    B.B. came back into the room with the remains of their lunch and a stricken look on his face. “Wetzon,” he whispered. “I forgot to tell you. A letter came for you by messenger. It’s on your desk.”
    “I’ve thought it over, Wetzon, my friend,” Howie’s unctuous voice spilled out of the receiver. “I want to go forward. I’m going to take a vacation for a week and then we can get started.”
    Wetzon picked up the letter on her desk. It was addressed to her in violet ink. The paper was heavy rag of the Tiffany type.
    “You’re such a darling—” Smith was saying.
    “Great, Howie,” Wetzon said, turning the letter over and tearing it open with her finger. “I’m going to make up a list of firms for you and then we can talk again when you get back.”
    She hung up the phone in time to hear Smith say, “She’s jealous that I’m stealing her thunder on this one.”
    Furious, she swiveled around in her chair, ready to do battle with Smith, automatically pulling the notecard from the envelope. The signature caught her eye and stopped her. It was from Janet Barnes.
    The grieving widow was inviting them to lunch on Monday.

8.
    W ETZON CAME OUT on Fifty-seventh Street after her ballet class feeling euphoric, as she always did after class, so alive her skin tingled with antennae, decidedly an extrasensory sensation. Her long, ash-blonde hair, which she had taken down out of its usual topknot, swung back and forth in a loose ponytail, drying the damp wisps around her scalp. As she headed toward Broadway, she was thinking she might walk home. It was still light and she would be just another suit walking home in her Reeboks—the ubiquitous Manhattan professional woman’s outfit.
    “Yoo hoo, Birdie!” Carlos was standing on the corner of Broadway and Fifty-seventh, or rather, he was doing jetés, his slender, lithe body as limber as it was when they were both chorus dancers—gypsies—on Broadway.
    “You’re making a scene, you gorgeous creature.” She captured him by putting her hands on his shoulders and holding him down and planting a kiss on his lips. They were exactly the same height.
    “As if I cared.” He tossed his dark head. The large diamond stud in his left earlobe sparkled. In fact, everything about Carlos sparkled. “I’m not the one in the business suit and the ugly shoes. Are you ashamed of your old friends?” He gave her a stern look, but he was smiling broadly, and there was that devilish glint in his jet eyes.
    “What a terrible thing to say, but just what I’d expect from you.”