Sandra Hill - [Jinx] Read Free Page A

eyes.
She doesn’t believe in cell phones. What century is she living in?
He tried to sound polite when he asked, “So, you’ve been camping?”
    “Not exactly.” Without elaborating, she started to walk up toward the cabin.
    He hated it when women stopped talking in the middle of a conversation, especially when the guy was being logical, not to mention bending over backward to tame his inner chauvinist. He caught up with her.
    “What was so important that you had to get in touch with me right away?” she asked when they reached her deck.
    “Right away was three days ago, babe.”
    She arched her brows at his surliness, and probably at his use of the word
babe,
too.
    Tough shit!
He tamped his temper down,
again,
and replied, “The Pearl Project starts tomorrow.”
    “And?”
    “We’ve been told that you have to be there as a Park Service rep from the get-go.”
    “And?”
    “And you haven’t confirmed.” Her attitude was really starting to annoy him.
Behave, Peachey. Don’t let her rile you. An impatient man is a dead target.
    She arched an eyebrow at him again. “Since when do I need to confirm anything with you?”
    Uh-oh! Are we gonna have a pissing contest over who’s in charge? I can guarantee it’s not gonna be her. If we have to vet every little anal thing, we’ll be here in the boonies for months instead of weeks.
He put his face in his hands and counted to ten. When he glanced her way again, he said, “We have to find a way to work together. Truce?” He extended a hand.
    She hesitated, but then agreed, “Truce,” and placed her hand in his. Her hand was small compared to his, with short, unpolished nails. He could swear his heart revved up at just the feel of her calloused palm pressed against his calloused palm.
Am I pathetic or what?
    “Are you hungry?”
    That question caught him by surprise. Was her new strategy torture by niceness? Or erotic, calloused palm handshakes? “Yeah,” he answered suspiciously.
    “Good. I picked some wild blueberries yesterday and have muffins cooling inside.”
    He didn’t immediately follow her but sat down on one of the chairs to take off his wet shoes and socks. Meanwhile, the delicious aroma of baked goods wafted out to him. The rat dog trotted over and eyed his shoes. Just as it was about to take a chomp out of one of them, Caleb grabbed the shoes and set them up on the arm of the chair. When he turned, he saw the dog running off with one of his wet socks in its mouth.
    “Boney!” Dr. Cassidy yelled out through the screen door at the thief. Four cats of various sizes were rubbing themselves against her ankles. The fat calico wasn’t among them.
    To his surprise, the dog stopped, peered back at its mistress dolefully, dropped the sock, and trotted off the porch and into the brush.
    “You named your dog Boner?”
    She made a clucking sound of disgust. “Not Boner. Boney. You know. Napoleon Bonaparte. Little dog. Napoleon complex.”
    Well, at least she has a sense of humor.
“Did you know that Napoleon had a fear of cats? Ailurophobia.”
    “No. Seriously?”
    “Yep. Learned it in a history-of-war class. An aide found the general one time in his bedroom with a cutlass in hand, trembling, because he thought there was a cat behind a drape.”
    “Fascinating.”
    Yep, that’s me. Mister Fascination. Okay, I see five cats so far and one semi-dog. What next?
    What next, he soon learned, was Indian tom-tom music, along with some guttural chants, coming from a tape deck inside: “Ay-yi-yi-yi! Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi . . .” Two cages in one corner, one holding what looked like a porcupine with a splint on its leg and the other holding a bird with mangled feathers.
And
the good doctor taking off her T-shirt, whose sleeves were wet, leaving her with just a sports racerback running bra kind of thing. Nothing scandalous. It was midway between a granny-type cotton undergarment and a hoochie mama Victoria’s Secret scrap of sexiness, but still . . . It was pink.