Stroke of Luck Read Free

job. She bit her bottom lip and tried not to panic. This wasn’t a disaster. All she had to do was retrace her steps. With a moment of clarity, Annalisa knew exactly where she’d lost the pass. It had been after she’d fallen into the canoe. The fall, combined with the proprietary way Robert Buchanan had grabbed her camera to keep it from getting wet, had put too much strain on the lanyard. Her worst fear was that the pass was at the bottom of the river. Maybe she’d been lucky and it had fallen on the ground.
    Whatever had happened, Annalisa had one hope of fixing things. She had to take the tram back to the river and see what she could find. She turned, intent only on getting there as fast as possible, and ran straight into a wall of stone.
    “Oomph,” she grunted.
    “Ow. Damn it, woman, I swear you’re a menace.” Robert Buchanan was still scowling. Annalisa took a second to wonder if he ever smiled.
    “Me?” she demanded. “I’m not the one sneaking up on people. And why were you following me so closely? Haven’t you heard of personal space?”
    “Personal space?” he asked, a strange look on his face, part question and part disbelief.
    She waved away his question because she saw what he held in his hand. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I just realized I lost that and was panicking a little trying to remember what had happened.” She shifted so her large camera bag with the monopod attached to the bottom with a Velcro strap went behind her hip. As she did so, the extruding monopod aimed itself at his left knee. She cringed and closed her eyes in horror, visions of knocking him out of the competition and single-handedly ruining America’s chance at winning gold in next month’s Olympic Games dancing through her mind. But his reaction time was…well, Olympic. He stepped back, caught the errant monopod with one hand and flipped it harmlessly away, glaring at her all the while.
    “Jesus. ‘Personal space’, she says. You’re like a secret weapon. You took out three guys leaving the river. It’s a wonder you didn’t drown us both.”
    Though he was glaring at her and treating her like a five-year-old, she smiled brilliantly at him. First, he was drop-dead sexy, even if he was as surly as a grizzly bear on a futile hunt for salmon. Second, he’d rescued her—or at least her press pass. To her, that was grounds for celebration. So she didn’t respond to his obvious error in blaming her for the accident, just gushed her thanks instead.
    “It’s so great that you found my credential. They’re very particular about them and although I’m sure I could get another,” she wasn’t sure of any such thing but he didn’t need to know that, “it would probably have meant tons of paperwork and I would have missed my next assignment.”
    She hesitated for a nanosecond then went with instinct. She leaned forward, getting close enough even with her oversized breasts to place a chaste kiss on his cheek. His hands were at her waist and held her in place, not letting her back quickly away as she’d planned. She got a close look at his fabulous blue eyes and felt as if she were falling into a cool, wet pool. Although it was only for a few seconds that he held her close, she was seriously considering taking another taste of him—this time of those stern lips, to see if she could coax a smile from them or taste the humming impatience there. His pupils widened and she knew one thing—he wanted her but he wasn’t going to lose control. At least not now. With a regretful sigh she prepared to pull away, just as he pushed her.
    The combination of the two moves overbalanced her and the only thing that kept her from falling full against him was the pressure of his hand on her arm.
    “Jesus. You’re unbelievable, lady.”
    Annalisa righted herself and smiled again. “Thanks. You’d think having lived with this body since I was fourteen I’d be accustomed to it, but I’m kind of like a Weeble. I wobble