Read Online The Quiet Seduction by Dixie Browning - Free Book Online Page B

What if the man she called Storm was actually J. Spencer Harrison, the missing district attorney? Or what if he was only pretending to have lost his memory, but was actually a crook? Not all crooks looked like those two thugs who had turned up on her doorstep the night of the tornado. She knew of one man who had belonged to two of her father’s clubs and had actually dined at the Summerlin home, who had later been arrested for laundering money for a drug cartel.
    All right, so she didn’t have enough information to build a case either way. Instinct or not, she’d do well not to let her impulsive nature lead her into trouble. Pete desperately missed his father, even though he was trying hard not to let on. The last thing he needed was to start thinking of their unexpected guest as a hero and have him turn out to be some awful person who would suddenly disappear from their lives. Or worse.
    Of course, he really was a hero, she admitted. Whatever else he was or wasn’t, at least he was a gentle man. That much was evident in the way he treated Pete. Most men tended to talk down to children. Storm treated him as an individual, and Pete responded to him the way a puppy responded to a friendly voice.
    She just hoped nothing would cause either of them to regret taking him in. Poor Pete had lost too much to risk attachment to a new friend only to lose him, too.
    Oddly enough, it never occurred to her to put herself in that same category. Storm was an attractive man—even an intriguing man—but he was only passing through, she reminded herself, not for the first time.Like one of those gorgeous migratory birds she occasionally saw, wishing it would linger long enough for her to identify.
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    First thing every morning, as soon as he’d washed the breakfast dishes, Storm took the morning paper and a second cup of coffee into the living room. There were beds to be made and laundry to be done, but he felt a deep compulsion to read every word in the Mission Creek Clarion. At this point he was grasping for straws. Too much time had passed and he was still drawing a blank. By now the storm news had been relegated to a few paragraphs in the second section, but sooner or later, something had to ring a bell.
    New District Attorney Appointed Following Harrison’s Disappearance. The headline was centered on the front page above the fold, accompanied by a photo of a well-dressed, middle-aged man with a skimpy moustache and a bad comb-over. Storm skimmed the pull-quote and then returned his attention to the picture, studying every detail. Waiting for something to trigger a reaction. Standard rent-a-bookshelf background. Nothing particularly alarming about the guy, who looked like a typical chamber-of-commerce type. So what was there about the new D. A. that affected him like a hard right to the solar plexus?
    Sitting in Ellen’s man-size leather chair, in her attractive, if slightly cluttered, slightly shabby living room, he suddenly felt compelled to do something. To collar someone and protest—
    Protest what?
    He felt the first qualms of nausea. Taking a deep breath, he carefully reread the headline, the pull-quote, then devoured the complete text again. He stared at thephotograph of the new district attorney and then he clenched his fists, closed his eyes and began to swear.
    J. S. Harrison.
    Storm Harrison?
    There was a connection there, but until he knew which side of the law he was on, and who he was running from, he’d do well to keep his suspicions to himself.
    A few minutes later he rose to begin gathering up the laundry. Ellen’s bundle had been carefully sorted and left on the washing machine. She did her own intimate garments, which Storm found amusing. Evidently she’d picked up on the way he was beginning to feel about her. Guilty, for one thing. While the last thing on his mind should be sex with his benefactress, it was growing increasingly hard to see her bursting in through the