Read Online Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis - Free Book Online

and the gate swung apart as though it had been whisked open by invisible hands. Jennifer thought immediately of the magical palace in
Beauty and the Beast
. The beast’s palace. The outrageous but not unappealing idea that Philip was going to take her to a cozy bachelor pad and make love to her gave way to a truly terrifying notion: not only might he be sinfully wealthy, he might also be taking her to a far from cozy mansion to introduce her to his parents. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
    “I hope that I don’t seem vulgarly inquisitive,” she said in a voice that was distinct and polite. “But where are we going?”
    “I’d like to make you acquainted with some friends of mine.”
    Friends. “Do they live in a mansion?”
    “No.” His smile enlarged the word. “In trees.”
    That set her back. The wagon traversed fifty yards of a wooded drive and then turned bumpily into a narrow, snow-packed lane. Stiff branches pelted the car doors and windows with a clapping rattle. High withered grass reached through the snow to brush the car frame. She wondered if there was some inoffensive manner of phrasing a question that asked teasingly if these mysterious tree dwelling friends were members of the ape family. She had decided there was not when he said, “You don’t wear perfume,” as though it had just occurred to him.
    For some odd reason there was approval in his voice. “True. I never remember.”
    “That’s good. They might not have liked it.”
    They live in trees. They don’t like perfume. Ho-kay. The ultraconservatism of someone who could be offended by women wearing perfume accorded not at all with someone leading a raffish and precarious existence in a tree house. The man was pulling her leg.
    “These friends of yours—they
are
human?”
    “Jennifer! I strip. Would I expose you to any of my unsavory associates?” he asked playfully.
    His tone was light as spun sugar, amusement rimmed the corners of the long fascinating mouth, and yet some little understood sense within her seemed to be registering his subtle anxiety. Or it might have been her imagination. Surely it wasn’t possible that this beautiful, bossy, sensual person could be that vulnerable.
    Anyway, every shred of evidence indicated that he came from a family whose members shipped their money to the bank in semitrailers. One wouldn’t think he had to work at all, much less at something that disturbed him. Confused as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him about his family directly. His connection or at least what seemed to be his connection to wealth and power was strangely embarrassing to her. She wasn’t sure why, perhaps because it seemed so alien. Reared herself in a genteel, modest prosperity in the milieu of the small college where her mother had taught economics, she had experienced nothing of the world of the great and grand beyond the fairy tale version of it depicted on television andin films. But surely these people didn’t let their sons strip in nightclubs.
    “Why do you do it?” she asked, her voice raised to carry over the scratching branches. Studying his face intently in the reflected gleam of the headlights she caught every nuance of his expression as it became a powerful combination of cynical amusement and some darker thing that she barely glimpsed.
    Tersely he said, “They pay me.” He paused. “A lot.”
    She might have pointed out that there were plenty of other jobs that would have done the same without requiring him to take off his clothes. But the memory of his kiss was growing warmer inside her instead of fading, and the sky was the color of magic. Jennifer relaxed back into the seat—and into the new and wonderful glow of frivolity.
    “More than the Emerald Lake Library, do you think?” she asked. “Can women be Cougars too? Do you give lessons?”
    “Yes. No. And I’d be delighted to show you how to take off your clothes. To be honest, though, I’d be much more interested in results than in