Read Online On the Loose by Tara Janzen - Free Book Online Page A

Kardon County Human Services Foundation was a paid position, and I held it for three years. Ergo, I had a job.”
    â€œAnd donated your salary back.” Every year, according to the magazine.
    â€œI made a donation commensurate with my salary. There’s a difference.”
    Only to a tax accountant.
    â€œThe picture of you in
Midsummer Night’s Dream
was an interesting part of the article. You must have been Titania.”
    Honey held his gaze for a second, then sat back in her seat and cleared her throat.
    â€œWe made a lot of money on our theater productions,” she said, “especially Shakespeare. The Bard is a solid seller in Kardon County, and I was the one the fairy costume fit.
Ergo,
I was Titania.”
    â€œCostume?” Excuse him, but what costume? “Did I miss something in the photo?” Like an actual costume?
    The picture with the article had shown her running across an outdoor stage at night, slipping through a fantastical forest, somehow looking like she was lit from within, trailing two ribbons, three strategically placed leaves, which left her one leaf short of even the most basic modesty, and not a damn thing else, with a bunch of other scantily clad fairies flying out of the trees behind her, all of them doing their part, practically in the frickin’ buff, for Shakespeare and Kardon County—and yeah, he’d probably spent way too much of the last four months looking at the photo and thinking about her naked.
    â€œIt was a theatrical production,” she explained, unnecessarily, “with creative license.”
    â€œIt was Shakespeare in the nude. No wonder you made so much money.”
    â€œIt was for charity.”
    â€œIt was outrageous.” And that was the goddamn thing. Her whole life had been played out in public, laid out in gossip rags, society pages, and bad news headlines. Hell, it hadn’t taken any investigative skills to build a Honey York dossier, only a couple of dozen back issues of East Coast newspapers and a few magazines. And yet, it didn’t add up. The woman had graduated from Harvard
magna cum laude,
published two books, one a best-seller, spent three years running fund-raisers for half a dozen different charities, gotten arrested for indecent exposure—and then what? Become a world-class party girl for the rest of her life?
    Smith wasn’t buying it.
    â€œAccording to the article, you played the part for three years...despite the reviews.”
    â€œYou’re working way too hard here.” She didn’t even look at him this time, but to his amazement, a faint blush of color washed into her cheeks.
    â€œThey were brutal, especially the
Times
critic,” he said, “especially about your performance.”
    â€œOnly because I have no talent other than for running around on stage half naked,” she said, flipping another page in her book, the color in her cheeks deepening.
    Okay. He’d buy that, even if it did seem a little harsh.
    More than a little harsh.
    â€œWell, you must have done something right for them to ask you to play the part three years in a row,” he said, inexplicably coming to her defense.
    Honey kept turning pages in her book, snapping them over one at a time. “Like you, Mr. Rydell, I don’t live my life based on other people’s opinions.”
    But she was still blushing. That was one nice thing about being a covert operator—things had to get completely out of hand in a very political way before anyone even knew guys like him existed, let alone what they were doing. Smith didn’t just like his privacy; he depended on it for his survival.
    And there she was, year after year, splashed all over the front page and the society page.
    â€œSo what did you do after leaving the Kardon County Human Services Foundation?” Honey’s résumé, if it could be called a résumé, dead-ended after the Shakespeare arrest. She’d disappeared