On Wings of Magic Read Free

barely gave Hawke time to answer and jumping from topic to topic bewilderingly.
    Half an hour later Hawke was called from the poolside to answer a phone call. Rummaging in her bag for her sunglasses, Kendall shoved them onto her nose and decided a bit grimly that she was definitely in trouble. Hawke Madison had the patience of Job. He’d answered each breathless question with amused indulgence, and seemed fascinated by her empty chatter. Now what?
    Kendall wasn’t vain by any means. She knew that men found her to be attractive and she knew that her figure was good. But she’d always admired darkly exotic beauty, and her own reflection in a mirror alwaysreminded her of a startled kitten. Startled kittens were cute, but they weren’t beautiful.
    A lot of men, apparently, liked cute women. Kendall had met some ranging from polished charmers to blunt, few-worded engineers. There had even been an Arabian sheikh who had very nearly swept her off her feet in an unguarded moment. But she had generally managed to emerge scatheless from the romantic interludes.
    She had an awful feeling, though, that Hawke wasn’t going to fit into any of her neat little categories. And that meant that past experience wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good when it came to dealing with him.
    It made her distinctly uneasy to be playing a game in which she hadn’t the foggiest idea of the rules. And something told her that Hawke was an excellent gamesman.
    So … her safest bet would be to stick with her protective coloration. Play dumb—at least until she figured out the rules of this game. And the stakes…
    Hawke returned to her side on the heels of this decision, and she managed to greet him with an unclouded smile. Innocently, she asked, “Should you be taking the time to talk to me like this? I mean—you’re obviously busy, and—”
    “I’ll make the time to talk to you, honey,” he replied easily, reclaiming his lounge.
    Kendall was tempted to snap that a forty-five-minute acquaintance hardly gave him the right to call her honey, but bit back the words with an inward sigh. It wouldn’t be in character, after all, for her to object. Dammit.
    “Besides,” he was going on calmly, “I don’t have much time where you’re concerned, do I? Relationships generally take months to develop, but you’re planning to be here for only a few weeks. I have to move fast if I plan to get anywhere.”
    Kendall glared through the shielding sunglasses and wondered if he openly stalked—or was it hunted?—every woman he set his sights on, or if this was simply his tactic for dumb blondes. Either way, she didn’t like it. Abruptly deciding not to be as dumb as all that, she raised one eyebrow above the rim of her glasses and murmured blandly, “Where have I heard that line before?”
    “All over the world, I’d imagine,” he responded dryly, a definite gleam in his eye. “Judging by your suitcases, you’ve been pretty nearly everywhere, and men are the same no matter where you go.”
    She pulled the sunglasses down her nose and peered over the top of them at him. Ignoring the rueful statement on his own sex, she said with all the sweet innocence she could muster, “I’ve never approved of summer romances, Hawke. They tend to fizzle out as soon as the weather starts to cool.”
    “But we’re in the subtropics.” He smiled slowly. “It’s hot all year round.”
    Kendall hastily pushed the glasses back up her nose, torn between irritation and amusement and unsure which emotion was showing in her eyes. Oh, she would have to watch herself with this man! She sensed that he was utterly determined … and determined men were dangerous.
Dumb
, she reminded herself sternly.
Play dumb!
“I came here to rest, Hawke,” she told him earnestly.
    “Rest from what?” He was smiling, but his eyes were intent.
    Caught off guard because he had taken her words literally, Kendall automatically told him the truth. “There was some trouble in South