LITMIR.BIZ

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his muscular arms and pursed his lips, surveying her as if he’d just made a discovery. “Absolutely,” he said. “Listen, Piper, I’ve been meaning to call you and see if you’d like to go out sometime. What do you say?”

      Not quite sure if he was asking her out or asking her if he could ask her out, Piper nodded. “That would be nice…I think.”

      He nodded confidently, as if he expected no less than her acquiescence, and chewed on the inside of his cheek. A smile curved his fetching mouth as he studied her legs. The silence stretched between them until Piper felt as if she stood on two juicy drumsticks.

      She gestured toward her van, which was still running. “Well, I guess I’d better be going.”

      Henry, nodding and chewing, watched her while she climbed inside awkwardly, aware of the expanse of thigh she revealed in the process. Embarrassment mixed with doubt and anticipation made her queasy as she drove away, and she suddenly remembered why she’d stopped dating in the first place—it hadn’t been worth the strain. She’d barely begun her day, and she was already exhausted. Still, she was making progress. She had the threat of a date anyway.

      More out of habit than necessity, Piper slowed at the caution light before proceeding onto Patty Richards Kegley Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of town. Twenty-two years ago Patty Richards Kegley had made the mistake of stepping out onto what had then been called Main Street in front of the single Mudville fire truck as it rushed to a grease fire at the drive-in on the far end of town. For her misfortune, she’d been immortalized in street signs, and the drive-in had created a sandwich in her name. Piper hoped if she herself incurred a mortal wound within city limits, she would at least warrant an entrée.

      The Mudville morning rush hour typically dragged on for a full fifteen minutes when nearly one hundred workers leaving the midnight to 7:00 a.m. shift at Blythe Industries food plant clogged Kegley Boulevard in a semimad dash for a window seat at either Tucker’s Good Food Place or Alma’s Eats. Piper avoided the tangle by timing her commute for seven-thirty, which gave her ample time for the ten-minute drive and a cup of coffee before she donned her lab apron at eight.

      The rain started falling in sheets just as the company’s familiar blue and gray concrete sign came into view. Blythe Industries lay long and wide in a carved-out section of woods about a mile outside of town, past Trim’s Food Market, the new high school and the old car wash. Pure coincidence had landed her the job of chief food scientist when the plant opened a year ago. She’d been visiting her grandmother and they’d run into Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Blythe over apple oatmeal at Alma’s. The businessman had been ecstatic to learn of Piper’s educational and professional background and offered her a job on the spot. Not entirely thrilled with her position as a label-ingredient tester at a Biloxi packager, and eager to be near her aging grandmother, Piper had accepted. The money was better than average and she’d made quite a dent in her college loans, but she found it amusing that she, who was allergic to chocolate and averse to sweets in general, was in charge of creating many of the desserts ordered at fast-food restaurants all over the country.

      She was glad to be starting a new project today, she decided as she circled the full parking lot searching for a vacant space, despite the fact that someone from the Bentley Group was arriving this afternoon to offer tips on the kind of dessert they were looking for. Working with a suit looking over her shoulder didn’t rank high on her list, but if Bentley signed for a new dessert, Edmund Blythe had promised her a very handsome bonus, so she aimed to please. Plus, a new face would take her mind off her after-hours manhunting mission. Her nerve was dwindling rapidly.

      Through thrashing windshield wipers, she spotted one wide parking space on the end of a row and headed toward it. Cursing the van’s absence of power steering, Piper started turning well before the spot to leverage a good angle. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small black sports car dart around the corner and wheel deftly into the spot. Piper slammed on the brake, bouncing her forehead against the unforgiving steering wheel and biting her tongue. Pain exploded in her sinuses while stars floated behind her eyes. And she had the vaguest thought that the cut in her mouth would affect her tasting abilities for the day. Damn pushy salesmen! They bombarded the plant daily, trying to coax Edmund Blythe into using their branded ingredients in the desserts produced on the line.

      She pressed her hands against her forehead, blinking back involuntary tears. A low thumping noise invaded her senses and she realized someone was knocking on her window. Loath to move her pounding head, Piper glanced up slowly to see a man standing outside beneath an umbrella, peering in at her. He wiped away the rain on the glass, then yelled, “Are you all right?”

      Her first instinct was to fling open the door and send the stranger sprawling, but her head hurt so much, she could only nod. He knocked again and motioned for her to lower the window. She cranked down the glass gingerly, giving him the same two inches she’d allowed Lenny this morning.

      However, if she hadn’t been so angry, she would have appreciated the fact that the stranger was a measurable improvement over Lenny. His dark hair was cleanly shorn and he was wearing a shirt—a dress shirt, no less—and a tie, which was reason enough for pause in these parts. His clear eyes were the color of the rain dripping from his umbrella and topped with dark eyebrows, which were drawn into a vee. “Are you all right?” he demanded again.

      Furious at her physical response to the nitwit, she swallowed a mouthful of blood and narrowed her eyes at him. “You,” she said thickly, “are a menace.”

      The man’s eyebrows shot up and he pulled back a few inches. “Me?” he sputtered. “What about you? Don’t you know you’re supposed to have your lights on when it’s raining?”

      Piper licked her lips, testing her tongue. “I didn’t expect,” she said, her voice escalating with each word, “anyone to be driving like a maniac in the parking lot!” She winced at the pain and exhaled.

      “It’s a good thing you had your seat belt on,” he snapped.

      “It’s a good thing I’m not carrying a gun,” Piper returned.

      He scowled, gesturing. “Are you all right or aren’t you?”

      “I’ll live,” she muttered, fingering the goose egg fast forming on her forehead.

      “Look, give me a minute to move my car,” he said. “You can have the parking space.”

      “Don’t do me any favors,” she said dryly.

      “I didn’t see you,” he said tersely, “or I would have gladly let you have the spot.” He strode toward his car, shielded by the umbrella. His movements were jerky as he unlocked the door and lowered himself inside. Within a few seconds, he had backed out of the spot and disappeared around the corner.

      Piper eased into the space, her heart still racing from the encounter. After she turned off the engine, she leaned forward and rolled her eyes up at the sky, hoping for a few minutes’ reprieve to make the dash into the building. When none seemed forthcoming, she fished a plastic grocery bag out of the glove box. After tying the handles under her chin, she took a deep breath, then shot out of the door into the unrelenting cloudburst.

      She didn’t make it far. Her pumps didn’t have the same grip as her trusty clogs. One second she was jumping puddles, the next she was flat on her back on the pavement, completely winded and half-submerged, her head held out of the water, she suspected, by the knot rising swiftly on her crown. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. Mercifully the rain suddenly stopped.

      “You’re accident prone,” a male voice said above her.

      Piper opened her eyes slowly to see the salesman kneeling over her, his umbrella providing the imagined lapse in the downpour. She considered the depth of the puddle—surely drowning would be less painful than dying of humiliation.

      “Are you all right?” He grasped her arm and pulled her to her soggy feet, but she felt off balance and leaned heavily on his arm.

      “I should have let you keep the parking spot,” she murmured, still a little fuzzy, and very, very wet. Water streamed off her

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