Read Online The Pint-Sized Secret by Sherryl Woods - Free Book Online

Jeb. Maybe this was all about protecting his image, rather than taking her on some romantic little excursion.
    Thoroughly frustrated, she sighed heavily. She was usually good at reading people. Why couldn’t she get a fix on this man? Probably because he didn’t want her to, she thought wryly.
    “What?” Jeb asked, glancing at her as he wove through heavy Saturday traffic.
    She forced a smile. “Nothing.”
    “It didn’t sound like nothing.”
    “Just relaxing. You know what they say—taking a deep breath and releasing it not only cleanses the lungs, it also restores the spirit.”
    “Is that so? I must have missed that. It sounded to me like the sigh of someone with a whole lot on her mind.”
    Brianna chafed at his easy reading of her moods. “Isn’t that pretty much what I said?” she retorted testily.
    “Not really. So, what has you stressed-out?”
    She wondered what he would think if she blurted out that he was the problem, he and his motives for seeking her out. Instead, she said, “Too much to do, too little time. Isn’t that what keeps most of us all churned up?”
    “Not me,” he claimed. “I’m a pretty carefree guy. Probably has something to do with running. After you’ve gone five miles in the morning, it’s pretty hard to worry about anything else. It’s a great stress reducer. You should try it.”
    Brianna laughed. “I wouldn’t make it around the block.”
    “Why not? You look as if you’re in pretty good shape.”
    She winced at his less-than-dumbstruck reaction to her body. “Thanks, I think.”
    He regarded her with amusement. “We’re not talking about beautiful,” he noted, “which you are. We’re talking about fitness. Don’t you have to be in good shape to go hiking and climbing around prospective oil sites?”
    “I suppose,” she conceded. “I never thought much about it. I just do it.”
    “It’s not a job for a desk-bound weakling,” Jeb pointed out. “Do you ever get to a gym?”
    “Never,” she admitted. When would she fit that in? During one of the six or seven hours she now managed for sleeping? The closest she came to having a real fitness program was climbing up and down the stairs to her office at Delacourt Oil headquarters at least once a day. It was great for the thigh and calf muscles, to say nothing of her cardiovascular system. She was hardly ever breathless when she reached the fourth floor, but she was usually very grateful that her office was no higher.
    “Maybe we’ll go running together one morning,” Jeb suggested. “You could come out to our beach house for the weekend. That’s the best place for a morning run.”
    Brianna ignored the casual invitation to spend a weekend with him, refusing to take it seriously. Instead, she concentrated on the supposed purpose of such a visit. “I’d never keep up and you’d be frustrated.”
    “Darlin’, seeing you in a pair of running shorts might frustrate me, but your pace wouldn’t bother me one bit,” he teased. “Think about it. I’ll bet once you got started, you’d be hooked for life.”
    Brianna doubted it, and decided to change the topic. “You mentioned a beach house. Has it been in your family for a long time?”
    “Years,” he said. “My brothers and Trish and I love it, but my mother hated it. She would never have set foot in the place if she hadn’t enjoyed mentioning its existence so much. She felt it gave her a certain cachet to be able to say she’d spent the weekend at her beach house. Dylan bought it from my parents a few years ago. Now it’s pretty much a weekend bachelor pad.” He glanced at her. “I was serious a minute ago. We could go sometime.”
    A whole weekend with the man, when she could barely keep it together for a few hours? Not likely. Brianna shook her head. “I don’t think so, but thanks, anyway.”
    “It’s a big house, Brianna, a place to relax and get away from everything. I wasn’t suggesting anything else.”
    She didn’t believe him