Read Online After Midnight by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page B

and scrambled to her feet. Whatever she’d hooked was giving her a run for her money. She pulled and released, pulled and released, worked the pole, moved up the bank, muttered and clicked her tongue until finally her prey began to tire. She watched Kane watching her and laughed at his dismal expression.
    â€œYou’re hoping I’ll drop him, aren’t you?” she challenged. “Well, I won’t. Supper, here you come!”
    She gave a hard jerk on the line and the fish, a large bass, flipped up onto the bank. While Kane dealt with it, she baited her hook again. “I’ve got mine,” she told him. “I don’t know what you’ll eat, of course.”
    He sat down beside her and picked up his own pole. “We’ll just see about that,” he returned.
    Two hours later, they had three large bass. Nikki had caught two of them. Kane lifted the garbage and then the cooler with the fish into the boat.Nikki forgave herself for feeling vaguely superior, just for a few minutes.
    Kane had forgotten his tragedies, his business dealings, his worries in the carefree morning he was sharing with Nikki. Her company had liberated his one-track mind from the rigors that plagued men of his echelon. He was used to being by himself, to letting business occupy every waking hour. Since the death of his family, he’d substituted making money for everything else. Food tasted like cardboard to him. Sleep was infrequent and an irritating necessity. He hadn’t taken a vacation or even a day off since the trip he’d taken with his wife and son that had ended so tragically.
    Perhaps that very weariness had made him careless and caused his head injury. But looking at Nikki, so relaxed and happy beside him, he couldn’t be sorry about it. She was an experience he knew he’d never forget. But, like all the others, he’d taste her delights and put her aside. And in two weeks after he left her, he wouldn’t be able to recall her name. The thought made him restless.
    Nikki noticed his unease. She wondered if he was as attracted to her emotionally as he seemed to be physically. It had worried her when he’d admitted that he had a lover. Of course, he thought she did, too, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. But it could be, she was forced to admit,remembering the feel of his big arms around her. He could be her lover. She trembled inside at the size and power of his body. Mosby had never been able to bring himself to make love to her at all. He’d only been able to touch her lightly and without passion. She hadn’t known what it was to be kissed breathless, to be a slave to her body’s needs, until this stranger had come along. There were many reasons that would keep her from becoming intimate with him. And the first was the faceless lover who clung to him in the darkness. She didn’t know how to compete with another woman, because she’d never had to.
    She forced her wandering mind back to the fishing. This had been one of the most carefree days of her life. She was sad to see it end. Kane had agreed to come to supper, but she was losing him now to other concerns. His mind wasn’t on the fish, or her. She wondered what errant thought had made him so preoccupied.
    â€œI have to make a telephone call, or I’d help you clean the fish,” he said when he left her at the front door of her beach house with the cooler.
    â€œBusiness?” she asked.
    His face showed nothing. “You might call it that.” He didn’t say anything else. He smiled at her distractedly and left with a careless wave of his hand.
    Nikki went in to clean the fish, disturbed by his sudden remoteness. What kind of business could he have meant?
    Â 
    Kane listened patiently while the angry voice at the other end of the telephone ranted and railed at him.
    â€œYou promised that we could go to the Waltons’ party tonight!” Chris fumed. “How