Linnear 01 - The Ninja Read Free Page B

lips were plump, which gave her an innate sensuality.
    He grasped her firmly under the arms and lifted her with him.
    She immediately drew away, crossing her arms over her breasts. ‘Don’t do that.’ Still she eyed him, made no move to pass him by. Her fingers curled, rubbing the flesh of her arms as if his grip had bruised her.
    ‘Haven’t we met before?” he said.
    Her lips jerked in a quick quirky smile. ‘You can do better than that, can’t you?’
    ‘No. I mean it. I’ve seen you somewhere before.’
    Her eyes darted for a moment over his shoulder. When they again alighted on him she said, ‘I don’t think -‘
    He snapped his fingers. ‘In Sam Goldman’s office. The fall or the winter.” He cocked his head. I’m not mistaken.”
    Her eyes seemed to clear as if, with Sam’s name, some almost invisible curtain had been raised within them. ‘I know Sam Goldman,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve done some freelance jobs for him.’ Now she put one long forefinger up to the centre of her lips, the clear-lacquered nail burnished by the light. The inconstant sound of the voices down the beach seemed to swell like the roar of a crowd at the advent of a grand-slam home run or a bit of defensive heroics in the outfield.
    ‘You’re Nicholas Linnear,’ she said, and when he nodded she pointed at him. ‘He talks about you all the time.’
    He smiled. ‘But you don’t remember our meeting.’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, really. When I’m involved in my work…’ Her shoulders lifted, fell again.
    Nicholas laughed. ‘I might have been somebody important.’
    ‘Judging by your reputation, you are. But you just walked away from all of it. I think that’s odd.’
    Squinting up at him, sunglasses, she looked no more than a college girl, as if the sunlight passing through her had somehow illuminated some previously hidden inner innocence. At last her eyes slid away from him. ‘What’s going on up there, anyway?”
    ‘They found a body in the ocean.’
    ‘Oh? Whose?”
    He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.”
    ‘Haven’t you just come from there?” Her gaze slid back from the distance over his left shoulder, touching his face. It was like a cool summer’s breeze after sundown. ‘You must’ve seen them pull it out.” Her eyes were better than arms, keeping him at a carefully measured distance. There was something peculiarly childlike in that, he thought. A hurt child - or scared. It made him want to reach out and touch her reassuringly.
    ‘I left before it happened,’ he said.
    ‘Aren’t you in the least bit curious?” She seemed unmindful of the wind that flicked at the thick mane of her dark hair. ‘It could be someone from around here. You know how incestuous this place is - we’re all from the same business.”
    ‘I have no interest in it. No.”
    She unfolded her arms, put her hands in the front pockets of her cut-off jeans. She wore a plain, sleeveless top. It was turquoise and set off her eyes. Her firm breasts swelled with her breathing, the nipples visible points. Her waist was narrow, her legs long and elegant. She moved like a dancer.
    ‘But you do have interests, I see,” she said flatly. ‘How would you feel if I looked at you that way?”
    ‘Flattered,’ he said. Td certainly feel flattered.’
    Justine was an advertising art designer, living four houses down the beach, who found it convenient to work out of the city during the summer.
    ‘I loathe New York in the summer,’ she told him the next afternoon over drinks. ‘Do you know that I once spent the entire summer in my apartment with the air conditioning on full and never once moving out of the door? I was deathly afraid I’d get overwhelmed by the stench of dogshit. I’d call D’Agostino and have them send up the food and, once or twice a week, the office would send up this big brawny fag - who was doing the director under the desk during coffee breaks - to take my designs and bring me my cheques. But even with that,