Bound to Happen
Page 17
“Me? Amazing? In what way?”
“Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather this afternoon when you and Ruth Collins pulled that eagle-out-of-the-hat trick.”
“What makes you think I had anything to do with that?” she asked, trying to sound casual when she was actually worried that Ruth had broken her promise to keep her source anonymous.
“Because aside from the ranger, who obviously hadn’t reported the birds, there were only two other people in the world who knew those eagles were there. And since one of them hadn’t considered the birds as a possible deterrent, that left you.”
“Now I’m amazed,” she said, pulling away slightly to lead him to the stairs that went up to her bedroom. “You’re a very clever man, Joe Bonner.”
“I know. That’s how I also figured out why you’re no longer working for Darby Development.”
With her mind elsewhere, Leslie wasn’t prepared for all of Joe’s cleverness. She came to a halt with one foot on the bottom step and stared at him in true astonishment. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a very clever man, remember?” he said, moving her along with him as he started up the steps. “I went there this afternoon looking for you. Imagine my surprise when they told me that you’d quit.”
“Imagine mine when I decided to,” she muttered, more to herself than Joe, as she recalled that day in the hospital when she determined that if her life was to be the way she wanted it, she would have to make some changes.
“I hope you won’t regret it. I wouldn’t have asked you to give up your job. Even though Darby Development operates at the polar negative to everything I believe in, we could have worked something out so we wouldn’t have been constantly fighting, you know.”
“Wait a second, Joe,” she said, turning on the step above him to look him straight in the eye. “I love you, and I’d do almost anything you asked of me. But I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’d like to say that I quit my job and conspired with Ruth Collins to get the project thrown into the district courts for you. But the truth is, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again when I made those decisions. I made them for purely selfish reasons. Getting the ski-resort project into the courts was the only way I could make up for what I had done in my ignorance. And you know that going to court isn’t a guarantee that the project will be stopped. It all depends on the judge and whether or not he eats Grape Nuts or Frosted Flakes for breakfast.” She turned, and they continued their ascent up the stairs in the most natural way, hardly aware of where they were going. Knowing only that their paths and their destinations were the same, logged on the same map for all time.
“As for my job, well, I think that was pretty much over the minute I saw the mountain. I never would have been able to do a good job for Darby and live with myself after that anyway.” She glanced up at Joe. “Are you very disappointed that I didn’t do it for you?”
Joe smiled. His eyes were warm but quite serious when he shook his head and answered. “No. Not at all. I’m very proud of you. And I love you very much.”
“What?”
“I said, I love you very much.”
“Say it again, please.”
Again Joe smiled. This time his gladness shone in his eyes. They had reached the top of the stairs. He made a quick perusal of his surroundings as his hands reached out and took hold of the sash on her robe. Apparently having found what he was looking for, he turned his full and undivided attention back on Leslie. The expression on his face sent chills of delight racing up and down her spine.
“I … love … you,” he said, his voice a deep, stoking caress that coiled the muscles low in Leslie’s abdomen. “I … love … you,” he repeated, advancing on her, forcing her to walk backward in the direction he wanted to go, step by carefully calculated step. “I … love … you,” he said again, releasing the sash and following her into the bedroom. “I … love … you.” The robe slid from her shoulders and landed in a heap on the floor. “I … love … you.”
A Biography of Mary Kay McComas
Mary Kay McComas is an acclaimed romance novelist and the author of twenty-one short contemporary romances, five novellas, and three novels. McComas has received several honors and awards for her work, including the Washington Romance Writers’ Outstanding Achievement Award and two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times (one for Best New Author and another for Innovative Series Romance).
Born in Spokane, Washington, the third child of six siblings, McComas graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nursing. She worked for ten years as an intensive care nurse. After marrying her husband and having their first child, the family moved to the Shenandoah Valley in northern Virginia, and McComas soon retired from nursing to raise her family, which included three more children.
Throughout her childhood and into college, McComas battled undiagnosed dyslexia. As a result, she was an infrequent reader in her youth and early adulthood. It wasn’t until after the birth of her youngest son that McComas began reading for pleasure—books hand-picked by her older sister for their humor. Gradually, she branched out with her own choices, reading widely, until one book changed her life. “Eventually I bought IT. You know … that one novel that even a dyslexic amateur can tell is poorly written, with no plot and horrible characters,” she explains. “I told my voracious-reader husband, ‘I can do better than this!’ And he said, ‘Then do it.’”
McComas’s first book landed her an agent, who helped sell four of McComas’s stories and secured the author a four-book contract within a year. McComas published her first book, Divine Design, in 1988, and followed it with seven more paperback novels.
A favorite of both fans and reviewers, McComas has been nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award eight times and has been a Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist twice, once for Best Short Contemporary Fiction and once for Best Novella. Over the course of her “third career,” as McComas refers to it, she has expanded her scope beyond contemporary romances. She frequently contributes to Nora Robert’s J. D. Robb anthologies and her paranormal novellas have garnered continuous praise.
McComas continues to live in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, three dogs, and a cat. Her four grown children live nearby. Read more about Mary Kay at marykaymccomas.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Mary Kay McComas
Cover design by Julianna Lee
978-1-4804-8430-6
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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y McComas, Bound to Happen