Read Online Stranger in Camelot by Deborah Smith - Free Book Online Page B

tackle all your work this way?” he asked finally. He let the chain saw idle, liking the raw power of it humming in his hands. When he looked up at Agnes he felt a similar humming inside him, just as unadorned and powerful, deep in his blood. She was a helluva fighter, his Agnes. His Agnes. Taking a breath to clear that notion from his thoughts, he watched her put a hand to her ear and shake her head.
    He cut the saw’s motor a little more and called cheerfully above the sound, “I’d like to see you in a garden taming thorny roses.”
    “You have a rose garden?” she yelled back as she dragged away a limb.
    Damn. That kind of question forced him to do gymnastics with his answer. “Only a small garden. At my place in the city.” John coughed. The only garden he had was the withered brown fern he’d left on the fire escape outside his flat’s back door.
    “You’ve got a town house?”
    John cursed silently. More gymnastics. “Something like that.”
    She dropped the limb alongside others in a pile to be burned, then put her gloved hands on her hips and gave him and his vague answer a sardonic look. Her luscious hips, like her attitude, were provocative. John gunned the saw’s engine and smiled at her.
    “Keep sassing me, Mr. Bartholomew, and I’ll jam your motor.”
    He turned the motor off, hoping to win a few more minutes of her entertaining conversation. “I never sass beautiful women who carry battle-axes.”
    She nodded and patted the hatchet, which she’dhung from a tool belt around her waist. “Smart man.” She went back to work, latching on to a new limb with both hands. “So you’ve got a London town house with a rose garden, huh? Where do you keep the yacht and the Rolls?”
    “No yacht. And I drive an ordinary old car.” That, at least, was entirely true.
    “Let me guess. You look like a Ferrari man. Classy but not conservative.”
    He muttered under his breath and gave up. “That’s me. A Ferrari. Sleek, fast, and powerful.”
    “I knew it!” She looked heavenward. “He says he drives ‘an ordinary old car,’ ” she drawled wryly, shaking her head. “There ain’t no such thang as an ‘old Ferrari.’ An old Ferrari is a classic Ferrari.”
    “Well, all right,” he said, defeated. “It’s a classic Ferrari.”
    “I know about Ferraris.” She jerked a branch free and tossed it toward the pile. Her voice became somber, the playful drawl gone. “My dad had a couple. Used to let me cruise around Los Angeles in one, when I got my first driver’s license. What a car!”
    “Tell me more about your parents.”
    She shook her head and kept talking. “What year is your Ferrari?”
    John considered her slowly. She wasn’t ever going to tell him about her parents, he suspected. He knew why. He’d researched them along with her. Over the years they’d gambled away all the money she made in television, mismanaged her trust fund, and left her broke when her career faded. A year after she turned twenty-one they’d died in a car accident near Las Vegas.
    He knew from personal experience how terrible growing up with irresponsible parents could be. He wished he could assure her he understood her shame.
    “John?”
    “Hmmm?” He blinked swiftly and tried to remember what she’d asked him.
    “Your Ferrari. What model is it?”
    He searched his mind for information on Ferraris. If she’d asked him about classic guns or knives, he could have told her volumes. But no. She wanted to chat about Ferraris! “It’s one of those late-sixties models, I think.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “I never get a chance to drive it.”
    “You don’t drive at all? Oh, I should have known! I bet you also have a big Mercedes sedan and a chauffeur. Right?”
    This was an impossible conversation. John thought about simply dropping the chain saw, leaping over the tree trunk between him and Agnes, and kissing her until she stopped asking questions.
    He began chuckling wearily. She’d probably take the