Read Online Always Time To Die by Elizabeth Lowell - Free Book Online

distracting and she had a lot of work to do.
    From beneath lowered lashes she watched while he shrugged out of his jacket and denim shirt. Stripped down to a black turtleneck and faded jeans, he went to a storage cupboard at the back of the room. He pulled out some yellowed, fragile papers, and went to work with a piece of equipment she assumed was some kind of scanner. Despite the size of his fingers and a physical strength made clear by the fit of the turtleneck, he handled the papers with a delicate patience that intrigued her.
    “You’ve done that a lot, haven’t you?” she asked.
    Dan nodded without looking up.
    “But you’re not an archivist?”
    He nodded again.
    She didn’t take the hint. “Then why did you take on the job of translating microfilm into computer files?”
    He looked up at her. In the stark light and shadows of the room, his green eyes had a catlike glow. “I wanted to.”
    “Why?”
    “Why do you care?”
    “I’m curious. And don’t bother telling me about curiosity and the cat. Been there, heard that, wasn’t impressed.”
    The line of his mouth shifted slightly. Almost a smile. But then, his face was in shadow so she couldn’t be sure.
    “Somehow I’m not surprised,” Dan said.
    “Somehow I don’t think much could surprise you.”
    He looked at the smoky gold of her eyes and knew she was wrong. She surprised him. Everyone else walked on tiptoe around him, trying not to disturb whatever was brooding inside him. But did she tiptoe? Hell, no. She nudged and nipped and kicked.
    “When I was thirteen, I chose to microfilm the computer files as a school project,” he said, surprising himself again. “Back then, the newspaper wouldn’t let me near the really old stuff, so there’s a lot still to be done.” He lifted and turned the sheet and hit the button again. “I modified a computer scanning program and kept working on it until I left for college when I was eighteen. No one else could figure out how to make my program work, so they just kept on with the microfilming and I’d do the ‘translation’ when I visited.”
    She looked at the power implicit in Dan’s shoulders and shook her head.
    “What?” he said.
    “I’m trying to picture you as a pencil-necked geek teenager. Ain’t happening.”
    “Muscles don’t reduce your IQ.”
    “Maybe in your case.” Carly shrugged.
    “You have something against men who aren’t nerds?”
    “As long as they don’t mistake brawn for the Second Coming of Christ, no.”
    “Somebody burned you good.”
    “No. Somebody bored me. Big difference. Then he couldn’t believe I didn’t want him. Finally had to serve the jerk with a court order not to be where I was, ever, under any circumstances.”
    “How long ago was that?” Dan asked.
    A quality in his voice made her look at him again. Though he hadn’t moved, there was a difference in him, more intense, more alert, all relaxation gone.
    “Eight, nine years,” she said. “A long time.”
    Whatever had tightened his body left as silently as it had come. He leaned back into his chair and said, “Not long enough, apparently.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re still afraid of men.”
    Carly didn’t like that description. Being careful wasn’t the same as being afraid. “I don’t like men who won’t take no for an answer,” she said. “The big boneheads are more intimidating than the smaller sizes of stupid. Must be something genetic in me that makes me avoid the big ones.”
    “Common sense?” he suggested dryly.
    “Bingo. So what interested you about the past enough that you spent a lot of time down here scanning old newspapers and making high-tech computer files out of microfilmed data?”
    For a while she thought he wasn’t going to answer. So did he. Then he surprised both of them.
    “I believed that the past explained the present,” Dan said.
    “It does.”
    He lifted one shoulder. “The recorded past? Not really. It’s written by winners. That leaves