The Stranger: The Heroes of Heyday (Harlequin Superromance No. 1266) Read Free Page A

that one of the old guys reading in the back of the store looked vaguely familiar.
    He narrowed his eyes. Who was it? Thin, stooped,with shaggy white hair. Even from the back, the man was obviously not a local. His clothes were too ill fitting and tweedy for D.C.
    Finally, the light went on. It had been almost three years since Tyler had seen him, but this had to be Dilday Merle.
    He cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, Professor.”
    Bennie’s store was small enough that Tyler didn’t even have to raise his voice. Which meant, of course, that Merle must have been able to hear every word Tyler had said since he walked into the newsstand. Tyler wondered why the old man had kept silent so long. The last time they’d met, when Merle had been trying to talk Tyler out of printing his story on the Heyday Eight, he hadn’t exactly been shy.
    Merle turned around with a smile, and Tyler saw that the professor was holding the current copy of the New Yorker.
    â€œHello, Tyler. I’ve just been reading your latest article.” Merle glanced down. “Still chasing the bad guys, I see. Your style hasn’t changed much.”
    A small chuckle came from Bennie’s side of the counter. “Perhaps not,” Tyler said neutrally, watching as Merle walked toward him. “But then, the bad guys don’t change much, either.”
    Merle gazed at him through his thick glasses, which made his eyes seem large and owlish, as if they didn’t miss much. “And you’re still not losing sleep over it,” he said. He glanced at Bennie. “Or so I hear.”
    Bennie laughed outright at that. “If you’re lookingfor a bleeding heart, man, you better look somewhere else. Mr. Tyler here, he traded his heart in ten years ago. Got himself a bigger brain instead.”
    Tyler shot Bennie a hard look. Surely he knew better than to bring up that ancient history. What happened ten years ago was none of Dilday Merle’s business. It wasn’t any of Bennie’s business, either, but unfortunately Tyler had been young at the time, and emotional. He’d talked too much.
    But Merle obviously wasn’t interested in Tyler’s past. He stopped, set down the magazine and held out his hand. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Because I don’t need a heart this time. I need a brain.”
    â€œOh, yeah?” Tyler shook Merle’s hand, noting with surprise how firm the grip was. “Why is that?”
    Merle looked at Bennie, and seemed relieved that the vendor was fully absorbed with another customer.
    â€œBecause I’m being blackmailed. And I want you to catch the bastard who’s doing it.”
    Twenty minutes later, when they were settled at Tyler’s favorite café, and the waiter had taken their order and departed, Tyler knocked back some scalding black coffee and turned to the man beside him.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “Let’s start over. Slowly. From the beginning. Because I’m having a little trouble believing I heard you right.”
    â€œYou did.” Dilday Merle had ordered bottled water, and he was carefully decanting it into the empty glass the waiter had provided. “I’m being blackmailed.”
    This time, Tyler was better able to control his shock.But still…it was insane. Seventy-something-year-old Dilday Merle, with his old-fashioned etiquette and his bow ties, and his owl eyes?
    This stuffy, ivory-tower academic was being blackmailed?
    Though it was the lunch hour, and dozens of people thronged the quaint little café, the anonymity of the crowd provided its own privacy.
    â€œWhat the hell could anyone blackmail you about?”
    â€œHell is the perfect word for it.” Merle’s voice carried some heat. He might be close to eighty, but there wasn’t anything frail about him. “Some bastard has been calling me up, ordering me to pay him a thousand dollars every two weeks or