Enchanted Read Free Page B

exercise room. But not today.
    He’d been awake most of the night thinking about Kathleen, about her eyes, her smile, her legs, her child, and about her ridiculous goal. My God, he thought. A woman running McKenna Publishing. Preposterous. His grandmother may have run the company once upon a time, but a woman wouldn’t run it again. Besides, he had every intention of passing McKenna Publishing down to his firstborn son. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an heir, and at the rate he was going, his prospects of producing one were nil. He felt obligated to get married first, and that prospect, too, seemed extremely remote. But marriage and an heir had been uppermost in his mind of late. Of course, some people, like Kathleen Flannigan, didn’t let things like tradition keep them from producing an heir outside of marriage. That thought had been nagging him all day, too.
    Kathleen didn’t do things in the conventional way. What had he ever seen in her? His tastes ran to the soft, feminine, sexy types—blonde hair, petite, and sophisticated. Like Ashley Tate, the woman who’d been his significant other for ten long years, and the biggest reason he’d run away from Kathleen.
    No. That wasn’t the reason he’d run. Kathleen wasn’t his type. She was much too tall. And even though she kept her hair hidden in that prissy bun, he knew it was much too long, too curly, and too auburn. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the woman had been educated at the FBI academy. She certainly dressed like a federal agent—didn’t she own anything besides navy and gray? Didn’t she know short skirts were fashionable again? The woman had legs—his eyes and brain zoomed to her legs whenever she entered a room. Long, slender legs. The best-looking legs he’d ever seen. There were a lot of things about Kathleen Flannigan that bothered him, but her legs disturbed him the most.
    Again he tightened the tension on the bike and attempted to shove all thoughts of Kathleen completely out of his head.
    But he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. She had been just one of many things that had gone wrong yesterday. Even his housekeeper had quit. She gave him no reason, just said she’d gotten a sudden urge to travel. She didn’t know where. She didn’t even know why. She simply felt compelled to pack up and leave. A premonition , she called it. I nsanity , was Mac’s conclusion. He told her he’d increase her salary, give her a bonus. She still wanted to leave. He asked her to stick around until he could get hold of the agency. In the end, though, he couldn’t talk her into staying. Now he had no one. To make matters worse, he’d been so upset by his conversation with Kathleen, he’d forgotten to have Grace arrange for a new housekeeper. He needed someone. It didn’t matter about references, he just wanted someone who could cook, clean, and iron. Any woman would do.
    He looked at the Rolex on his wrist. Thirty seconds longer. Time to pour on speed. He stood on the pedals, leaned against the handlebars, and pumped with all his might. All thoughts but the increasing speed left his brain. He concentrated totally on pushing the speedometer to the farthest point. Just a little faster. Just a little more sweat.
    Buzz!
    “Get the door,” he gasped.
    Buzz!
    “Hell!” He’d forgotten about the housekeeper, or his lack of one.
    He stopped pedaling right before reaching the ultimate speed, grabbed a towel to wipe the perspiration from his face, hands, and arms, dropped it over the handlebars, then stormed to the front door, clad only in sweaty gray exercise shorts.
    The buzz sounded again just as his fingers reached the knob. He yanked open the door and startled the delivery boy who stood before him, eyes wide, clutching a long white box with a big blue bow.
    “Are you Mr. O’Brien?”
    He scowled. “Yes?”
    “These are for you.” The boy gulped, thrust the box into Mac’s hands, and beat a hasty retreat, not even waiting for a tip.
    Must