Read Online Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page A

magazine and began reading again, effectively cutting off any chance for conversation. A few minutes later, during which he hadn’t retained a single word he’d read, he peeped at her around the edge of the magazine.
    She was gazing out the window. Apparently she didn’t know or care that he was alive. Her mind was a million miles away. Rylan took advantage of the opportunity to study her profile. Her features were neat, he decided, clean and pure. Her neck was long and graceful, a perfect pedestal for her small head.
    She sniffed, idly scratched her cheek, then scribbled something in the margin of her manuscript. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. At that, he felt a spear of desire deep in his gut.
    Dammit, he still wanted her.
    She had every characteristic of a sensual woman. Why then the cold nature? Of course, there wasn’t a frigid woman alive who couldn’t be melted if handled by the right man.
    Or maybe Kirsten wasn’t frigid. Maybe her sex life with Rumm had been so fantastic that he was the only man she could see. Still. Either way, Rylan figured that he owed it to himself to find out.
    He grinned slyly. He’d always loved a challenge and had never failed to rise to meet one.
    Kirsten had become so immersed in her work that when he walked up to her desk a couple of hours later, she stared up at him vacantly through her glasses.
    “What?” she asked after bringing him into focus. “Did you say something?”
    “I asked if you were hungry.”
    She looked blankly at the tray he was carrying, then glanced over at the sofa he’d been lying on earlier. He answered her question before she asked it.
    “I finished reading the article more than an hour ago and sneaked out. You never looked up.”
    She slid her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “I got involved with this.” She indicated the scattered sheets of manuscript.
    “Interesting segment?”
    Without waiting for her to grant permission, he set the tray on the edge of her desk and scooted it forward, displacing a thesaurus and a brass cylinder that held a collection of pens and pencils.
    “Next to the last chapter,” she answered absently, while mechanically moving things aside to facilitate his unloading of the tray. Suddenly, she snapped to attention, for the first time coming fully out of her writer’s trance. “What is this?”
    “Fruit. Blueberry muffins. Alice baked them from scratch. This is—”
    “I know
what
it is, Rylan,” she said, her voice laced with impatience. “What’s it doing on my desk? Alice knows that I only snack when I’m working, if I eat at all.”
    “Yeah, she told me that.” He hiked a hip onto her desk and plucked a handful of white grapes off their stem. “But as long as I’ve interrupted you, you might just as well eat.”
    Flopping back in her chair, she looked up at him with incredulity. Before she could recover, he asked, “Why did you live in the background?”
    “In the background of what?”
    “Rumm’s life. I was particularly interested in that
People
article because it is one of the few that has anything about you in it.”
    “Charlie was the star, not I. He was the one everyone wanted to read about.” She drew one foot up into the chair and wrapped her arms around her ankle. Her posture was sweet and submissive, but her attitude was defensive.
    “Didn’t he like sharing a spotlight? Even with his wife?”
    “He wasn’t like that.” She viciously plucked several grapes, but she played with them instead of eating them. “There was no competitiveness between us. I didn’t want to share his spotlight. But even with those who did, he was generous with publicity. Ask other stunt pilots. They’ll tell you the same thing.”
    “So it was by choice that you stayed out of the public eye as much as possible?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why? Were you jealous of the groupies who were always flocking around your husband?”
    “Don’t be absurd.”
    “Hmm.” His expression was doubtful. “We filmed