The Polka Dot Nude by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

demanded.
    His head came up then, and I realized who it was. “I just came to ask you if I could borrow another of those interesting books for tonight. Sorry if I frightened you. Is it okay if I take this?”
    “I guess so, but please don’t take anything without asking me. Remember, these are the originals, and there aren’t any copies. I was just coming to get a beer. Would you like one?”
    “Sure, why don’t we take it down to the dock and have a swim first? The water’s quite clean here.”
    “It’s also frigid. Just ask my toe—the blue one. It’s been in."
    “You’re not afraid of a little cold water, are you?” He laughed. “A big girl like you.”
    “Big girl” ranks second only to correcting my grammar in insults. I’m not a big girl, I’m a tall woman. “Maybe it’s not too cold for a big boy like you,” I said, and got the beer.
    He didn’t seem to mind being insulted. “Come down to the dock and keep me company anyway. I’ve got to go home and change first.”
    I took four beers in a pail with ice down to the dock, and was comfortably sagging in the deck chair when Brad arrived. I thought he’d look like this in bathing trunks: a golden, muscled, tapering torso; the chest not overly hirsute, but with a good masculine path of hair. Great legs, long and straight. I also suspected he’d wear white to optimize his tan. If I half closed my eyes, I could imagine it was last summer, and I was looking at Garth. I opened my eyes, and noticed Brad was making a close scrutiny of my own white body. At least he wasn’t scowling. Far from it. To lighten the mood, I tucked my tongue under my bottom lip and let out a wolf whistle. “You must pump iron,” I complimented.
    “No way, it deforms the pecs and glutes. I jog, play racquetball, ski, swim. Actually swimming is the perfect exercise,” he said over his shoulder as he took a pose at the end of the wooden dock, trapezoids rippling. For the next twenty minutes, all I saw of him was his head turning to the side to breathe, and his arms knifing smoothly through the water. He swam to a distant island, then turned around and swam back, without resting. Pretty good for a man his age. Was that why he worked out so hard, to retain his boyish figure? Vain creature.
    He wasn’t breathing so very hard when he climbed out. “Show off,” I said, in a desultory, unimpressed voice, and opened another bottle of beer. “Here, you’ve earned this.”
    He stretched out on the dock. “How’s the work going?” he asked. "I haven’t seen you out all day.” When he lay down, the heaving of his chest was more noticeable. He sounded quite winded too.
    “I’m in high gear, and may have to go into overdrive. I have competition. Belton—the big paperback people—are putting out a hack job on Rosalie. A guy named Hume Mason specializes in this sort of thing.”
    “I’ve heard of him. He’s done quite a few, hasn’t he?”
    “About half a dozen, I guess.”
    “I liked his one on Dean Mathers, the rock star who OD‘d a couple of years ago. He caught the flashy, sleazy life-style very well,” Brad said, and turned his face to the sun.
    “Flash and sleaze—he’d be good at that. He’s kind of a specialist in it.”
    “That’s unprofessional, Audrey, cutting up the competition. What’s the matter, jealous?” he teased.
    "Jealous of that creep! You’ve got to be kidding. He’s just exploiting Rosalie, making a quick buck on her death.”
    When he turned his head and looked at me, his smile wore a jeering edge. “I seem to remember you regretted she couldn’t have timed her death more conveniently.”
    “That’s different. I’m doing an authorized biography. I got the facts from the horse’s mouth, not gossip from old scandal sheets.”
    “You got the facts she was willing to dole out. Mason’s book will be less biased.”
    The fact that he had closed his eyes again annoyed me. If you’re going to have an argument, the least your enemy can