The Uneven Score by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page A

choke.
    “Hell,” he growled.
    “Are you going to take me to the police?” she asked. “I’ll go quietly. Here, let me put my horn away.”
    “Don’t move.”
    Whitney didn’t move.
    Graham frowned down at her, the moonlight casting shadows on his angular features, augmenting—quite unnecessarily, Whitney thought—his menacing look. “I won’t be calling the police,” he said ominously. “This is just between us, Ms. McCallie.”
    “Somehow that doesn’t reassure me, Mr. Graham,” she replied.
    He grinned sardonically. “I didn’t think it would. You put up a hell of a chase this afternoon.”
    “It’s all those sixteenth notes and triple-tonguings I do.”
    “I’m sure,” he said wryly.
    “I don’t get winded easily.”
    The barest hint of a smile touched his all too memorable mouth. “No?”
    She didn’t like his tone. It was too intimate, too seductive, for a man with a rifle. “No,” she repeated with finality and decided she would be better off not trying to explain diaphragmatic breathing and such to him. The man obviously didn’t understand musicians. “You know, you don’t need all those weapons. I’ll cooperate. Do you always carry a gun?”
    “No, but there’s been trouble with poachers in the area. However, if I’d known I’d be- dealing with you, I’d have brought along a few more weapons. I’ve underestimated you once today. I don’t intend to make the same mistake twice.”
    “You didn’t underestimate me.” She did not want to wound this man’s male ego, at least not as long as he had the rifle and she just had her French horn. “I was just protecting myself. You caught me at an awkward moment. Now, of course, everything’s changed.”
    “It has, has it?” He seemed incredulous, wryly amused, and totally confident. And tall, Whitney thought; very tall.
    Intending to look nonchalant, she leaned back against her suitcase and kicked out her feet, her horn lying across her thighs. “I’m not in your office,” she pointed out. “And you have no proof that I ever was there. There’s nothing you can do to me, and therefore no reason for me to run.”
    “I can nail you for trespassing, Ms. McCallie.”
    She tugged the small mouthpiece off her horn. “Ah, but you’re trespassing, too,” she said, almost idly, as she dumped her spit that had accumulated in the tangled tubing of her horn into the grass. “We’d both go down together, Mr. Graham.”
    He laughed once, curtly. “And I thought you’d given up on the wide-eyed innocent act. This is my land, Ms. McCallie. Don’t pretend—”
    “Your land!”
    Unable to stop herself, Whitney leaped to her feet, horn dangling from one hand, ready to accost Daniel Graham. He was lying. He had to be! Paddie would have told her this was his land! Even she wasn’t that crazy!
    Graham shifted the rifle, just enough to remind Whitney of its presence. “Easy,” he warned.
    She caught her breath and sat back down. “You’re not serious,” she said, but she knew he was.
     Paddie had deliberately not told Whitney that the groves belonged to Daniel Graham. No wonder she had warned Whitney away from the main house! Damn her, Whitney thought. From Paddie’s point of view, it all made perfect sense. If Whitney had known this was Graham property, she would have insisted on staying at the cottage. And even if she had by some weird chance let Paddie talk her into camping out on his land anyway, Whitney would have had to pretend ignorance. Now her ignorance was real.
    “So you are going to pretend you didn’t know you’re camping in my grove,” Graham said.
    “But I didn’t.”
    “You fail to amuse me, Ms. McCallie.”
    “So I’ve gathered. Look, can’t we be friends?”
    He eyed her for a moment. The shadows hid his eyes, but she could see his wariness and suspicion in the hard line of his jaw. “I think you should explain,” he told her in an altogether steely drawl.
    “I did—this afternoon, remember? About