Sunny Says Read Free Page A

furnishings, trying to get his bearings. Lord knows, in the past eight
years he’d awakened in an endless array of strange places, most of them dirty
and dangerous. When he caught the scents of potpourri and lemon oil and
recognized the heavy Victorian furniture, he relaxed on his pillow and glanced
at the ceiling. His old pinup poster of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit
model, curled around the edges now, was still there, a familiar relic from the
years when he spent summers in this room and worked at KRIP in its heyday.
    He yawned, stretched, and
scratched his belly, thinking he couldn’t remember when he’d had such a relaxed
night’s rest. He’d been so tired the evening before, he’d merely stripped and
dropped into the big bed. How long had he slept? He checked his watch. Twelve
hours. It was seven a.m. on Saturday. He listened to the muffled patter of
rain and considered drifting back to sleep.
    Rain? Sounded like Little Miss
Sunshine blew it. A shame, in a way, but not surprising. Thoughts of Sunny
brought a blurry recollection of his having dreamt about her, something vaguely
erotic. He tried to recapture the fleeting remnant, but it was gone.
    Damn! What was it about Sunny
Larkin that hooked his attention, stirred him, made him feel . . . protective?
Was it her bright smile that tugged at him? Maybe it was the sweet sort of
innocence that shone from her big blue eyes, a sassy naivete that was missing
in the eyes of the women he’d encountered in the squalid, disaster-riddled
places he’d been lately.
    Or maybe it was simply her cute
little tush that reminded him that he’d been a long time without a woman. He
threw back the covers and headed for the bathroom, eager to shed the grime he’d
toted halfway around the world.
    *    *    *
    Sunny stood under the pulsating
spray, humming softly and lathering her body with herb-scented soap. With a
sudden, clattering swish, the shower curtain flew open. Her heart jumped to her
throat, and her eyes widened in shock.
    A naked man stood glowering at
her. She screamed bloody murder.

Chapter Two
     
    Sunny whipped the shower curtain
around her like a sarong. “What are you doing here?” She tried desperately to keep
her eyes on Kale Hoaglin’s scowling face and ignore the other impressive parts
of his anatomy, which he seemed to have no interest in covering. Had the man no
shame?
    “This is my house. And I’m
about to take a shower in my bathroom. The question is, what are you doing here?”
    “I live here. That is, we live here. I mean, Estella and I have been house-sitting for Ravinia. After her
death, Foster asked us to stay on and—what are you staring at?” she asked.
    “The interesting array of polka
dots.”
    She looked down at the widely
spaced, dime-sized dots decorating the clear curtain. They afforded about as
much coverage as a fly’s wing. Her face blazed. She spun around, presenting her
back to him and still gathering the transparent plastic to her with as much
dignity as she could summon.
    “Mr. Hoaglin, if you’ll step out
for a moment, please, I’ll leave.”
    “Don’t you think that ‘Mr. Hoaglin’
seems a little too formal for the situation?” he asked, stepping into the tub
beside her. “Call me Kale.” He tugged at the curtain clutched in her hands.
    “What are you doing ?” she
shrieked.
    “Taking a shower.” He held out
the soap to her. “Mind washing my back?”
    She snatched the soap and flung
it. The bar caromed off the tile wall and fell into the tub with a dull thud. “Wash
your own back, you pervert!” She scrambled from the tub, grabbed a towel, and
hurried to her bedroom, slamming the door to the connecting bath so hard that
the pictures jiggled on the wall.
    When she heard deep laughter
from the bathroom, she itched to throw open the door and give him a blistering
set-down. Instead, she took a deep breath, counted to ten, and reminded herself
that Kale Hoaglin was her boss. And, after all, this was his