Sweet Talkin' Guy

“Unlike you.”

“I knew if we talked a little longer, you’d understand me better.” He cocked her a grin. “Hey,” he said, lowering his voice. “My deal is a two-way street. Something for you, something for me. Besides, the only place I’m a tomcat is in…”

He stopped himself. Don’t blow it, Andy. It’s a soda fountain, you jerk, not a pick-up bar. Which the lady’s already pointed out.

He glanced at the plate, debating if he should eat those last few fries. Hated to waste them.

“Something for you?” she asked. “Like what? Money?”

“Sure. Money.”

“Liar.”

He did a double take.

“You’re transparent, too, you know,” she said softly. “You want me to open up, then let’s have you go first. Tell me, Mr. Sweet Talkin’ Guy, what it is you really want.”

And he thought he was the cut-to-the-chase, tell-it-like-it-is reporter. “It’s not sex, if that’s what you’re thinking—”

“Please. You’re a good-looking, charming guy but I seriously doubt you’ve ever had to concoct a let-me-interview you story to get laid. You, the tomcat in bed.”

Damn if heat didn’t flood his face. Normally he was the one who made the opposite sex blush.

The tension between them had shifted. He felt off-balance, but even more surprising, he felt that he was not the one in control.

Problem was, he never discussed his dream. Didn’t like to open up like that to people. But at the moment, he wanted to talk about anything other than tomcats and sex and, Lordy Lordy, how this woman and her peekaboo lace and renegade attitude would undoubtedly be hot between the sheets…

“I want to write a book,” he said hoarsely, followed by a long, cold drink of lime phosphate.

“What about?”

He set down the glass, cleared his throat. “History.”

“You want to write a book on history?” She pursed her lips, obviously realizing she’d just insulted him. “Sorry. I mean, I figured you’d write something like…”

“Hunter S. Thompson?”

She gave a little shrug.

Andy leaned forward, his hand sliding next to hers with the movement. Her skin was soft, warm, and he wondered where on her body she dabbed that rose scent.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he said huskily. “Underneath this secondhand fleece jacket and ten-year-old tie-dyed T beats the heart of a guy who loves this land and its history and wants to do it justice.”

The way she stared at him, her eyes shining with surprise and understanding, made him wonder if she’d been misjudged so often it took her aback to be accused of the same.

After a moment, she whispered, “What’s your room like? I mean…”

“Where will we sleep?”

She paused, then nodded.

“We’ll sleep separately. Hey, this is business. I’m not fool enough to do something that would result in a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Post because one of its reporters crossed the line.”

Shut up, Andy. As Shakespeare might have said, “The man doth protest too much,” because all Andy could think about was crossing the line, running his hands through those silky curls, caressing her skin, inhaling sweet lungfuls of Dulcinea.

But he couldn’t. And wouldn’t.

“It’s a fancy honeymoon hotel, so the room’s gotta have some kind of couch I can sleep on,” he continued. Probably one of those “love seat” numbers that would require his knocking back plenty of aspirin after folding his six-two frame into a pretzel for an entire night. “You can have the bed.”

Daphne chewed on her bottom lip. No one else knew who she was. And Andy wouldn’t dare blow her identity. Or make a wrong move. After all, he needed her for the interview. Which meant her idea for a last-chance weekend where she could be free, anonymous, was this close to being a reality…

On the bus ride up, she’d even thought about visiting the old mining site, less than a mile away, where her great-great-great-great-grandfather Charles had staked his claim. His former shanty was now a fine Victorian home, filled with family artifacts she hadn’t seen in years. Maybe if she visited the exact spot where her ancestor had experienced the most happiness, well, who knew? Some of it might rub off on her, too.

Even if she ignored the emotional reasons she wanted to stay, there was a darn good practical one. The tour bus didn’t return until late tomorrow afternoon. Which meant unless she could finagle a ride back to Denver, she was stuck in Maiden Falls for the next twenty-four hours.

She looked into Andy’s eyes, seeing something different in their cool-blue depths. Tenderness. Compassion, maybe.

She gave herself a mental shake. The guy’s a reporter, for God’s sake.

But he hadn’t phoned in a story on her, which he could have done easily. He’d approached her with a business proposition, one that would benefit both of them.

She felt again that rush of exhilaration she’d had earlier when she’d seen the tour bus, imagined this escape. Oh, how she yearned to be impulsive again, to jump into life and experience it fully before society’s rules, her family’s expectations and G.D.’s “constructive criticism” stifled every such whim.

Daphne tapped her glass against his drink. “To not judging books by their covers.”

“BELLE’S ROOM,” Daphne said, reading the brass plaque on the door of the second-floor room at the inn. “And what is this saying underneath? ‘Never fold a good hand’?”

Andy swiped his card in the lock. The room hadn’t been ready when he’d checked in, so he hadn’t seen it yet. He hoped all that frilly, lacy, bleeding-heart crap was confined to that historical parlor downstairs. Otherwise, a guy could OD on froufrou if he stayed here too long.

“This room is named after Belle Bulette,” he said, “one of the ladies of the evening who worked here from around 1891 until that fatal gas leak in 1895—the one that took all the shady ladies’ lives.”

“All of them?”

“Even a judge, they say, who’d been having a late-night drink with the madam.”

With a click, the door opened. “Besides being a working girl, Belle was also a sharpshooter and gambler. She took men’s money both at the gambling tables and in the bedroom.” Andy gestured for Daphne to enter.

“Enterprising woman,” Daphne murmured, stepping inside. She stopped abruptly. “Oh, excuse us!”

“What?” Andy looked over Daphne’s shoulder.

She paused, then gestured toward the smoky mirror that covered the wall behind the brass four-poster bed. “I could have sworn I saw the reflection of…” Her voice trailed off as she shifted her gaze to the bay window seat across the room.

“What is it?”

“A woman,” Daphne whispered. A chill washed over her. “Sitting on that ledge, taking a sip from a flask.”

Late-afternoon light filtered through the gauzy curtains on the bay windows. Andy glanced back at the mirror. Thanks to its hazy tint and the minimal light in the room, his and Daphne’s features were indecipherable. All he could really see was the color of their hair. Hers, dark, almost black in this muted light. His, red. Reminded him of what his granddad had always said before a game of checkers. Smoke before fire.