Body Language Read Free Page A

You look a little pale.”
    “I must be fighting off a bug or something,” he lied lamely.
    She just looked at him, her beautiful face serious, her eyes sober. “Clint,” she said finally, “you’d tell me if you had a real problem, wouldn’t you?”
    He glanced at her. “Of course. You’re my best friend,” he said simply. “But really, I’m just…tired.”
    She smiled at him, and McCade made himself smile back, trying to hide the way his heart had fractured into a million pieces.

TWO
    M C C ADE HAD PLANNED to shave his beard when he hit Phoenix. But as he looked into the bathroom mirror in the morning, he couldn’t bear the thought of exposing his face—and the expression of utter woe he knew was on it—to the eyes of everyone around him.
    Sandy had set an alarm clock that woke him up at ten. It gave him enough time to shower and grab something to eat before the preproduction meeting she had scheduled in her office at eleven-thirty.
    As McCade pulled on his slightly stiff jeans he mentally shook his head, amazed at himself. Why wasn’t he already long gone?
    All morning long he’d been vacillating between his choices. He could (A) hop on his bike and ride out of town as quickly as he rode in. Except he had promised Sandy he’d do that camera work for her. Of course, he hadn’t known when he’d made that promise that she had the hots for some other man….
    So he could always (B) stay in town and totally sabotage her attempts to catch this lawyer guy’s eye, then sweep her off her feet while she was on the rebound. Or he could (C) act the part of the good old best friend and help her out.
    He could help her get noticed by a nice, wealthy man who would be able to give her the kind of life she had always wanted—the upper-class, country-club kind of life. The kind of life McCade could never give her, no matter how much money he had in the bank.
    Sure, he could buy his way into a country club, God forbid he should ever even
want
to. And therein lay the problem. Sandy had always wanted the culture, the refinement, the
recognition
that came with wealth. McCade didn’t. He could afford the finest wine any vineyard in the world could offer, but frankly, he didn’t like the stuff. He’d drink beer or water, thanks a lot.
    What it all boiled down to was, McCade was content to be McCade. He had a job he liked, comfortable clothes he liked to wear, and the fact that he had close to a half a million dollars in his bank account wasn’t going to change anything except maybe the brand of beer he bought and the places he visited on vacation. Sure, he liked to live comfortably without the threat of eviction hanging over his head the way it once had. Sure, he liked to have money to spend on movies and music and whatever whim came floating in on the wind. But he saw no need to wear his wealth like a badge, hell, he flat out didn’t want to. And last time he checked, black leather jackets weren’t welcome at the local country club.
    But that was the life Sandy wanted.
    In the kitchen, McCade’s boots and jacket were still damp. He pulled the boots on anyway and took his sunglasses out of his jacket pocket.
    The hot Arizona wind dried his long hair as he slowly rode his Harley down Indian School Road east toward Scottsdale, toward Forty-fourth Street, where Sandy’s video production house was. It was April in Phoenix, and the roads and sidewalks were sizzling with heat. It had to be damn near ninety degrees in the shade. And it wasn’t even summer yet.
    As McCade pulled into the parking lot of Video Enterprises, Inc., he came to a nondecision of sorts. He had to wait and see exactly what this James Austin Whoziwhatsis the Fourteenth was like before he gave him the thumbs-up or-down. Besides, if he was going to bolt, he had to think up a good explanation to give Sandy. By now she was probably counting on his camera work for her campaign project.
    He opened the front doors of the office building and stepped into the