"Lucky," she said miserably, "what are you going to do?"
"Damned if I know."
In a fit of temper he hissed a vile word and banged his fist on the table. The blow rattled every piece of glass in the kitchen, even though it was somewhat cushioned by the newspaper he'd left lying open on the table. His jaw grinding with aggravation, he stared down at the newsprint sightlessly, periodically spiking his enraged silence with a curse.
Suddenly his whole body tensed. He grabbed up the newspaper and held it close to his face. "I'll be damned," he whispered in awe. He laughed shortly. Then he laughed loudly.
In one motion he dropped the newspaper and stood up, sending his chair over backward and crashing to the floor. He left the kitchen at a run. By the time Sage caught up with him, he was taking the stairs two at a time.
"Lucky, what in the world…?"
He disappeared at the top of the landing. She ran up the stairs after him and flung open the door to his bedroom. He was hiking a pair of jeans up over his hips.
"What's the matter? What are you doing? Where are you going?"
He pushed her aside on his way out of the room, wearing only his jeans, carrying a shirt and his boots with him.
She charged down the stairs after him. "Lucky, slow down! Tell me. What's going on?"
He was already vaulting into his open convertible when she bounded across the front porch after him. "Tell everybody I'll be back by nightfall!" he shouted over the roar of the Mustang's revving engine. "By then I'll be able to clear this whole thing up."
* * *
"Here's that reference material you wanted from the morgue." The gofer dumped a mountain of files on her desk.
Holding the last bite of her lunch sandwich between her teeth, she frowned at the extent of the research material and mumbled, "Thanks for nothing."
"Anything else?"
She bit into the sandwich, chewed, swallowed, then blotted her mouth with a paper napkin. "Coffee. From a fresh pot, please," she called after the young man as he dashed off. He was a college student who interned at the newspaper three afternoons a week. He hadn't been there long enough to become jaded. He was still starstruck and eager to please.
Her position as editorial columnist entitled her to a glass cubicle of an office, but the constant noise and hustle from the sprawling city room filtered into it. To anyone unaccustomed to newspaper offices, the incessant noise and motion would have been distracting. She didn't even notice.
That's why she wasn't attuned to the change in the climate that occurred when a man stepped off the elevator and asked for her.
His appearance had an immediate effect on the women in the room. It wasn't only that he was tall, slim-hipped, blond, blue-eyed, and handsome. It was the purposeful way he crossed the city room, as though it were a battlefield on which he'd just won the day and was about to collect the spoils of war. Even the most feminist among them secretly fantasized about being part of those spoils.
He also attracted the curiosity of the men, who, to a man, were glad they didn't have to tangle with him. It wasn't that he was of such an intimidating size, though his shoulders were broad and his chest wide. No, it was the expression on his face that was quelling. His jaw was set with inflexible resolve. His eyes were steady and unblinking; they could have been focused on a target caught in the crosshairs of a rifle sight.
He paused momentarily at the door of the small glass enclosure and stared in at the woman, who was bent over an open file on her desk, absorbed by its contents. A stillness had fallen over the city room. Computer keyboards stood silent. Ringing phones went unanswered.
The woman in the glass office seemed the only one unmindful of h
is presence as she absently dragged a pencil through her loose dark auburn hair. Without glancing up from her reading matter, she waved her hand to signal him inside.
"Just set it there on the desk," she said. "It needs to cool off anyway."
He moved forward to stand at the edge of her littered desk. She was aware of him, but it was several moments before she realized that he wasn't the college student in the Argyle socks there to deliver a cup of fresh coffee. Raising her head, she gazed up at him through the wide lenses of her eyeglasses. She dropped the pencil. Her lips parted. She uttered a small gasp.
"My God."
"Not quite." he said. "Lucky Tyler."
* * *
Chapter 8
She swallowed visibly, but said nothing.