LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      DANIEL paced in front of the picture window, trying not to listen as Lindsay talked to Christy on the telephone. The younger girl was obviously all broken up to hear that Lindsay wasn’t coming home. From what he could hear of the one-way conversation, Daniel deduced that she dreaded the thought of spending the night with her grandparents and was putting up quite a fuss.

      “Christy, honey, I’m sorry, but you’re just too young to stay alone all night,” Lindsay was saying again. She’d been like a record stuck on that sentence for the past five minutes. Daniel marveled at her patience even while he longed to snatch the telephone out of her hand and tell that spoiled kid to shut up, for God’s sake. There were worse things than an impromptu sleep-over at grandma’s house.

      But then he hadn’t ever been very good with kids. Even his own.

      Especially his own.

      So he refrained from suggesting that a firmer hand might cut down some of the wrangling. Who was he to criticize? And besides, Lindsay looked so wrung out from the battle of wills already. Make that battles, plural-the one with her sister and the one with him. She looked whipped. She clearly wasn’t a born scrapper, was she?

      In fact, now that he’d had time to observe her more closely, he began to feel slightly ashamed of the tone he’d taken with her over the Hamilton Homes deal. Was he just so accustomed to playing hardball professionally that he didn’t know when to ease up?

      Or was it worse than that? Was it perhaps petty and vindictive…and personal? Was it maybe that he hadn’t been able to resist retaliating for what she had said about him all those years ago?

      Looking at her now, with the haze of swirling snow behind her, he could almost see it all happening again.

      “McKinley’s wife is missing? Well, I’m not surprised—she probably ran away from him,” Lindsay had blurted angrily to one of the other stenographers that day, clearly unaware that Daniel was standing in the doorway behind her. “Who wouldn’t? Daniel McKinley thinks he’s wonderful, but he’s just a money-mad workaholic.”

      In all fairness, Lindsay couldn’t have known the truth. Daniel wouldn’t discover the truth himself for two whole nightmarish days. The roaring void of grief and pain that had opened at his feet had not yet sucked him down into its final black hopelessness. But, maddened by his fear, he had been looking for someone to lash out at, and Lindsay was elected.

      “You, there.” His voice had sounded vicious, weird and steely, a half-human, robot voice. “What is your name?”

      Everyone in the room had gasped, he remembered. At first Lindsay didn’t answer. Her small, oval face had blanched to a sickening, bloodless white, and her eyes had registered mute horror. “Lindsay Blaisdell,” she had whispered finally.

      “Well, you have five minutes to clean out your desk, Miss Blaisdell,” he had ordered in that same alien voice. She was afraid of that voice, he could see that. He was a little afraid of it himself. “You’re fired.”

      He passed his hand over his eyes, as if to wipe away the vision. He didn’t want to relive that day. Not now, not ever again. Recalling himself with an effort to the present, he swiveled and paced to the window on the other side of the fire. A safe distance—from there the crackle of the logs muffled Lindsay’s words into unintelligible coos and murmurs. He dropped onto the sofa and watched her.

      Lindsay Blaisdell. It was ironic, wasn’t it? Of all the people with whom he could have been snowbound…

      He still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock of seeing her climb out of that helicopter. At first he’d thought she hadn’t changed a bit. With her long, dark, braided hair wet and tousled from the snow, her cheeks a bright, wind-stung pink, she had looked very much like the naive woman-child she’d been back then.

      But fifteen minutes in her company had changed that impression for good. He took a sip of the coffee Roc had left on the end table and tried to analyze where exactly the change had come from.

      It wasn’t her face. She still had the face of a teenage Madonna, her dark blue eyes set wide apart and tranquil, her mouth full, upturned, serene, her expression one of unassailable innocence.

      No, the difference was in her body, he decided. Seen like this, with her back to him, the honeyed firelight trickling along her hip and thigh, which were outlined by her skirt as she leaned against the desk, she looked sexy as hell. Her hips, in particular, were a work of art. Erotic art, straight out of a bad boy’s dreams. And a grown man’s palms would cup perfectly around them, just where the swell began to flare out from her narrow waist.

      Which brought him to Robert Hamilton. Or did it? Daniel gripped his coffee mug tightly, letting the heat burn into his palm. Though her shocked denial had rung true, still…something, somebody had to account for the way that body moved. Its sensuality was definitely awakened.

      “Christy, honey, I’d better go now. This is long distance, and I’m using Mr. McKinley’s telephone.”

      Lindsay looked at him over her shoulder, her face sheepishly apologetic, and instantly his emotional kaleidoscope refocused, innocence again dominating the picture. With her lower lip between her teeth and her brows knitted in the middle, she looked like a child herself, a nervous kid who was worried that she might have irritated the grown-ups.

      He waved her concern away with an upturned hand, suddenly annoyed with himself. He took another swig of coffee, burning his throat with an ill-advised gulp. Oh, hell, what did it matter anyway? Maybe she was as pure as those snowflakes out there. Or maybe she and Hamilton were sleeping together twice a day, as regular as flossing. He, for one, didn’t give a damn.

      “I’m sorry that took so long,” she said suddenly, and he looked up to see that she had cradled the receiver. Sighing, she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I think this must be the onset of adolescence. She argues with me about absolutely everything.”

      “Yes, I hear the teenage years can be fairly hairraising,” he said politely. “I assume Christy doesn’t consider going to her grandparents’ house exactly a trip to Disneyland.”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” Lindsay said, still kneading her neck. “Come to think of it, the old place does bear a slight resemblance to the Haunted Mansion.” She walked over to stand near him by the fire, her upraised hand resting behind her head, her loosened braid spilling in thick, dark waves over her arm. “But you’re right, of course. Christy doesn’t feel comfortable with her grandmother. Even before our parents died, we were never—” she seemed to be looking for the right word “—very close.”

      “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky, and

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