Larger than Life Read Free

have to go over before I leave. How about a late dinner?”
    “You’re on.”
    She looked back at Travis. “Mr. Foxx, I
am
sorry. It’s a shame you had to come all this way for nothing. Please try to understand. I just don’t want a book written about me.” She smiled, a shadow of the blinding onstage grin, but curiously more realand infinitely sweeter. “It was nice meeting you.” Then she took her manager’s arm and vanished down the corridor to the dressing rooms.
    Travis stood still for a long moment, listening without really hearing the muted roar of the departing audience. He wasn’t particularly disappointed by Saber’s refusal; in fact, he had expected her to refuse. But he’d hardly become known as a brilliant journalistic writer by giving up whenever a subject refused to confide in him.
    So rather than wasting energy in being irritated, he thought carefully instead. He thought about where Saber and her manager would likely go for a late dinner. Then he turned on his heel and hurried toward the stage door.
    As he’d expected, his subject returned to her hotel to dine, where the late night quiet and relative dimness of the restaurant lessened the odds of her being recognized. Watching them from across the room as he finished his own meal, Travis noted that she’d changed into slacks and a silk blouse but hadnot chosen to sport sunglasses, a hat, or any of the other traditional—and usually ridiculous—trappings of disguise.
    His chance came when the pair he watched had reached the coffee stage of their meal and Saunders left the table with an audible request to his client to please get some rest before her morning flight. Grabbing his opportunity, Travis rose quickly and crossed to her table, where she was going over sheet music.
    “May I join you?” he asked, sliding into a chair.
    She gazed at him for a long moment, a look of irony in her silver-gray eyes. “Oh, please do,” she invited gently.
    “I hate rudeness in strangers, don’t you?” he said conversationally.
    “It’s trying,” she agreed.
    “And it’s so hard to get rid of the determined ones, I find.”
    She sighed. “Mr. Foxx—”
    “Travis, please.”
    Giving him another of those direct, ironic looks, she sighed again. “Travis, you have what I can seeis a well-deserved reputation for tenacity. I can admire that. In fact, I’m that way myself. But to even the most tenacious eventually comes something that’s … out of reach.”
    “In your experience?” he inquired politely.
    “A truth of life, let’s say.”
    “Saber—You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
    “Strangers do,” she murmured.
    He couldn’t help but smile at her left-handed acceptance. “Saber, I adhere to another truth of life.”
    “I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what’s that?”
    “‘He can who believes he can.’ I learned that at my father’s knee.”
    Saber sat back, smiling a little. “From what I’ve read, your father nearly invented that philosophy. He was a self-made man, wasn’t he? Built a knowledge of electronics into a world-renowned firm?”
    “He did indeed.”
    “You chose not to follow in his footsteps?”
    “I prefer writing. My brother runs the firm.”
    “I didn’t realize you had a brother. Other siblings?”
    “Two sisters …”
    Later, Travis realized with something between shock and amusement that he’d allowed himself to become the interviewee rather than the interviewer. And the amusement in those silvery eyes revealed that she had deliberately planned to turn the tables on him. She now knew far more about his life and past than he knew about hers.
    “Very good,” he noted dryly with a small salute.
    “Thank you.”
    “I don’t suppose you’d consider a fair trade of information?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Travis’s hunting instincts were now fully roused. He studied her keenly across the table. “Mind if I make a few guesses?”
    “Go right ahead.”
    He sat back, mentally