Trophy Wives Read Free Page A

way Thomas McKinlay Senior had lived those last few months after the stroke. He’d been totally incapacitated: unable to walk, talk, feed or bathe himself. She couldn’t bear it….
    â€œAnd you?”
    Ethan’s question startled her. “What?”
    â€œDo you live at Summerhill?”
    â€œA lot of the time. I have an apartment in town. It’s handy if I have late pick-ups or drop-offs.”
    â€œYou look like a city girl.”
    Lucy laughed. “I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or not. What does a city girl look like?”
    He took his time answering. “Too delicate to be a farm girl, I suppose.”
    â€œDelicate? Looks can be deceiving. I delivered my fair share of lambs and calves as a kid. And I like to ride. Do you? We have horses.”
    Ethan nodded and, undeterred by his earlier experience, he reached his hand out to the instrument panel again. “Haven’t ridden in years. I’d like that.”
    Techno music blared out from the ancient radio. The alacrity with which the volume was turned down prompted a smile from Lucy. “I bet you’re a jazz man.”
    Another flash of white teeth. “Now, how would that be obvious?”
    Oh, I dunno. The slow stroke of your fingers over your jaw. The black-velvet voice. And eyes that should, by rights, freeze hell over, but instead crackle with heat. Aloud, she told him she had once caught the New Orleans Mardi Gras, and they discovered they had actually been there the same year.
    The conversation progressed onto a range of artists. Ethan was obviously an aficionado, whereas Lucy had a wide range of tastes and wouldn’t be pinned down to specifics.
    She smiled into the night. It was fun to pass the miles in good-natured banter. The next few days promised to be interesting.
    But Ethan took issue when Lucy lamented that she could not dance to jazz. “There’s dancing, and there’s dancing,” he told her, and the warmth inside the car seemed to wind up a notch. “Jazz is sultry. Music for hot nights.” He paused, then took a soft hissing breath. “Or cold nights and a big fire.”
    His voice sizzled along the back of her neck. Lucy imagined that voice spilling into her ear millimeters away, pressed up close in the light of a leaping fire.
    Her throat went dry. “Are you warm enough?” she asked, forgetting she had already inquired.
    â€œPlenty.”
    They passed the last half hour in silence. He hunkered back in his seat with his head on the rest and appeared to drift off to sleep. There was little traffic and the silence wasn’t at all awkward. Lucy had learned these last six months to read people well and act accordingly. There were times to fill every second with conversation, and times to sit and let the other person take the lead. She could be quiet, if that’s what the client wanted. Funny, when she remembered always being in trouble at school for excessive chatter. Always being in trouble at school for everything….
    She glanced often at the man at her side. He was as delicious as a Chocolate Thin biscuit, she decided, thenchanged her mind with a grin. Lean, not thin, shoulders that broad, or legs—as far as she could decently tell—that looked long, strong and robust could never be termed thin. No way, no how.
    So far, she liked everything about him. He had an honest, appreciative way of looking at her. He digested every word spoken to him and considered every word he spoke back. It showed in the long pauses punctuating his conversation, as if he were listening intently for the truth in your voice.
    His voice: lazy, deep and gritty. Slow, almost a drawl. John Wayne! Lucy almost gasped when she realized he sounded just like the cowboy in the movies. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do….”
    Altogether an intriguing package. She wondered what his marital status was. He wore no ring, but that meant