Read Online Forsaking All Others by Lavyrle Spencer - Free Book Online

going to give yourself a hernia if you don’t slow down.”
    Allison spun around, a brick in each hand, and peered from the depths of the van to find Rick Lang lounging against the doorway beside the freight dolly, smiling in amusement. The ugly, utilitarian bobcap had slipped so far down it now almost covered her eyes. She had to tip her head way back to peer at him from under it. At that moment, to Allison’s horror, she felt a trickle of mucous run warmly from her nose down to her lip. Sniffing frantically, she thought, Oh no! Oh dear! I looklike the abominable snowman! And damn, why did my nose have to run right now?
    “Oh, God, how did you find me here?” she wailed.
    “The studio was unlocked and the lights were on, so I figured you must be unloading bricks—I thought you’d be at the loading dock.”
    Before she could hide or run, he was pulling on thick leather gloves and bounding onto the back of the van. Automatically she bent over and covered her head with both hands. From the muffled depths came the wail, “Ohhhhhhh, hell! I look like the wrath of God.”
    He answered with a wide-mouthed laugh, then she felt a hand rough up her bobcap teasingly and push her face momentarily farther toward her knees.
    “Hey, you look like an honest working woman, so let’s get to work.”
    When spring comes, she promised herself, I’m gonna bury this ugly cap in the garden!
    She stood up, knowing her face was beet red, thankful he couldn’t see much of it in the dim light of the dock area. She peered up into his smiling blue eyes, sliding the bobcap farther back on her head. Immediately it slid back where it wanted to be, and any lingering delusions Allison might have had about her appearance vanished. She must be about as appealing as a seven-year-old boy after an afternoon of sledding.Horrified, she felt her nose dripping again. Rick Lang just stood there and boldly laughed at her, a pair of bricks in his hands.
    “Hey, your nose is dripping,” he informed her merrily.
    She sniffed loudly, leaned farther back, purposely exaggerating her snot-nosed, childish appearance, swiped at her nose with the back of her gloved hand and pouted, “Well, I don’t have a tissue, smarty! And if you were any kind of a gentleman whatsoever, you would politely refrain from mentioning it!”
    He chuckled and dropped one brick. “It’s rather hard to pretend when it’s running right down.” Leaning sideways, he fished in a hind pocket and came up with a crumpled white hanky. “It looks like it’s been used, but it hasn’t,” he informed Allison. “I do my own laundry and ironing isn’t really one of my favorite pastimes.”
    “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she returned, yanking off a glove and turning her back while she buried her nose in his hanky and honked. To the best of her knowledge it was the first time she’d ever used a man’s hanky.
    “How come in the movies when this happens to girls they are somehow always daintily indisposed, with clinging tendrils of hair coming seductively loose from their topknot?” she grumbled.
    “I think I see one now.” Behind her she felt a tug ashe lightly pulled a frowsy chunk of hair that must have been hanging from beneath her cap.
    Never in her life had Allison felt more like an unfeminine klutz!
    Rick Lang didn’t mind one bit. He thought she looked delightful, bundled up in that ugly war-surplus parka, red nose running, scarcely an eyelash visible underneath that unflattering bobcap. She finished blowing her nose, turned, offered him the hanky, realized her mistake, and withdrew it with a snap. “Oh, I’ll wash it first.”
    He unceremoniously yanked it out of her hand and buried it in his pocket. “Don’t be silly. Let’s load bricks.”
    He set to work with a refreshing vigor, unlike what she might have expected from a man with a cushy job like modeling. Somehow, when she’d first laid eyes on his snapshot, she’d visualized a self-pampering hedonist, but she was