Hoodwinked

by Diana Palmer

  v1.5

  February 24, 2008

  Hoodwinked

  Diana Palmer

  Dear Diary,

  Today the new plane mechanic, Jake Edwards, caught me staring at him in the lunchroom. And the irate look in his smoldering brown eyes made me blush something awful! I don't usually make a habit of staring at MacFaber Corporation's mechanics, but there's just something about this new guy that made me take notice.

  I'm thinking that maybe I should keep an eye on him just in case he's up to no good. After all, there's this awful rumor going around that someone's been sabotaging the Faber-jet designs. Could this mesmerizing mystery man somehow be involved? I mean, Jake's so different from all the other plane mechanics. He's got a wrestler's build, dark, intense eyes and such a commanding presence. And he can be so utterly disarming when he speaks in that rich, velvety voice of his. Yes, I think it's high time I find out all I can about the secretive Mr. Jake Edwards

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  contents

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  SILHOUETTE BOOKS

  300 East 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017

  ISBN 0-373-81013-X

  HOODWINKED

  Copyright © 1989 by Diana Palmer

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  * * *

  For Pat Howard

  With Love

  One

  ^ «

  Maureen Harris was already an hour late for work. One thing after another had conspired to ruin her morning. The washing machine in her small duplex in the suburbs had flooded, her last pair of hose had run just as she put them on, then she'd misplaced her car keys. She ran into the offices of MacFaber Corporation bare-legged with her long black hair threatening to come down from its braided bun on top of her head, her full skirt stained with coffee that she'd tried to substitute for breakfast in a drive-through place on the way.

  A tall, burly man was just coming around the corner as she turned it, coffee cup still in hand. She collided with him with a loud thud, fell backward, and the coffee cup seemed to upend in slow motion, pouring its contents all over the carpet, splashing him, and splattering her skirt even more.

  She sat up in the ruins of it all, quickly retrieving her wire-rimmed, trendy new glasses from the floor and sticking them on her nose so that she could see. She stared up blankly at the taciturn, very somber man in gray coveralls, her green eyes resigned. "I didn't pay my phone bill on time," she said, apropos of nothing. "The telephone company has ways of getting even, you know. They flood your washing machine, put runs in all your stockings and cause you to spill coffee and trample strange men."

  He cocked a heavy eyebrow. He wasn't handsome at all. He looked more like a wrestler than a mechanic, but that was definitely a mechanic's coverall he was wearing. His dark eyes ran over her like hands, narrowing, curious, and a faint smile touched the mouth that seemed carved out of stone. It was a nice, man's mouthwide and sexy and deliberate. He looked Roman, in fact, right down to the imposing nose and brooding brow. Maureen knew all about brooding brows; she had once taken an art class and spent long hours dreaming of imposing Romans. That had been years ago, of course, before she discovered reality and settled down to being a junior secretary in the MacFaber Corporation.

  Since he didn't speak or offer a hand, she scrambled to her feet, staring miserably around at the coffee splatted all over the champagne-colored carpet. She pushed back her hair. "I'm very sorry that I ran into you. I didn't mean to. I really don't know what to do." She sighed. "Maybe I ought to quit before I'm asked to."

  "How old are you?" the man in the mechanic's outfit asked. He had a gravelly voicevery deep, like rich velvet.

  "I'm twenty-four," she said, faintly surprised by the question. Did he think she was too young for the job? "But usually I'm very competent."

  "How long have you been here?" he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  "Just since the month before last," she confessed. "Well, I've been here in this new building since it opened, that is. But I've worked for the corporation for six months." Since just before my parents died, she could have said, but she didn't. "I was chosen out of the typing pool to take one of the old secretaries' places. I'm very fast. I mean, my typing is very fast. Oh, dear. Do you suppose I could rush out for some sand and toss it over this stain in the carpet before someone sees?"

  "Call the janitorial staff. That's what they're paid to do," he said. "You'd better get busy. MacFaber doesn't like idle employees. Or so I'm told," he added in a cold, steady tone.

  She sighed. "I don't think he likes anybody. He never sticks his nose in here, anyway, so it's a good thing the company can run itself. He never comes here, they say."

  Both bushy eyebrows went up. "Do tell? I thought he worked in this building?"

  "So did we," she agreed. "But then, we all came up from the old engineering building when this new building was completed three months ago and they added so much new staff. The secretaries, I mean. Even Mr. MacFaber's secretary, Charlene, is new, so none of the secretarial staff has ever laid eyes on him. And Charlene gets her work through the vice president in charge of production, kind of secondhand from the big boss," she added, leaning close. "We suspect that he's disguised as the big chair in the boardroom."

  "Fascinating." He cocked his head to one side. "He sounds like a figment of someone's imagination, doesn't he?" he mused, and almost smiled.

  She studied him for an instant. He didn't look like a man who knew how to smile. He was bighuge, in fact. He was tall and streamlined for a big man, very commanding, with a broad face and deep-set dark eyes. His hair was straight and thick and jet black, and his wrists had a feathering of dark hair, too. She felt that he probably was that way all over, and then wondered at her sudden curiosity. She wasn't all that comfortable with men as a rule. She was rather plain, for all that she had a budding sunny personality and dressed neatly. Men hardly noticed her, even now that she had fifty dollars' worth of new makeup.

  "Are you new here?" she asked shyly. "You're a mechanic, aren't you?" she added, pushing her slipping glasses back on her nose. Really, she thought miserably, the frames she'd chosen were outrageous; they sat way down on her cheekbones. If only she didn't wear glasses. If only she was beautiful and sexy

  "I'm relatively new" he answered her earlier question "and I'm wearing a mechanic's coverall, so that should answer your second question."

  "Then you must be working on the new Faber-jet design," she said excitedly, curious at the sudden stillness of his big body when she mentioned that.

  "Yes," he said noncommittally. "You're familiar with it?"

  "Sort of," she said, sighing. "Nobody can figure out why it's such a lemon. The computer people ran one of those very expensive design graphics, and according to it, the modifications should produce a big improvement on the old Faber jet design. But it performed very badly on its first test flight. That's too bad. I guess it will give Peters Aviation the edge on us." They were the competition and were trying to outmaneuver MacF
aber by producing the new design on their own small jet first.

  "It might appear that they have the edge, but don't count on it," he said coolly. "Hadn't you better get to work?"

  She flushed a little. He sounded full of authority somehow. Probably he was married and had children. He was old enough. How old? she wondered, glancing at him as she picked up her purse and the coffee cup. Middle or late thirties, definitely. He had a few gray hairs and there were lines on his face.

  "I'm Maureen," she said. She shifted her feet and peeked up at him through her glasses, wishing she had Charlene's gift of gab. "What's your name?" she asked.

  "Jake," he said shortly. "Excuse me. I'm late."

  Jake. He didn't look like a Jake. She stared after him. He was pretty dishybig and capable looking. And he'd made her feel different. Almost reckless. Imagine her talking to a man like that and being bold enough to ask his name. She grinned to herself. Maybe she wasn't totally helpless. It was like a milestone in her life, and she was glad that she'd decided to stay in Wichita. She'd thought that a change of scenery might bring her out of her shell and help her become independent and capable. It still might. But her newfound male co-worker hadn't seemed too interested. Not that she was surprised. She had so little luck in attracting men. Maybe it was the glasses. If she hadn't been so nearsighted without them, she might have put them back in her purse and risked talking to hat racks and potted plants.

  She dashed into Arnold M. Blake's office breathlessly and sat down behind her desk. She glanced at the phone. One line was open. Thank God. Mr. Blake was at his desk. Maybe he wouldn't realize how late she was. She punched the second of the four lines and rang the janitorial department.

  "Someone has spilled coffee all over your spotless carpet in the entrance," she reported with blithe innocence. "Could someone attend to it, please?"

  There was a world-weary sigh on the other end. "Miss Harris?"

  She swallowed. "Yes."

  "No problem," came the dry reply. "Late again, are you?"

  She flushed. "My washing machine flooded."

  "Last time," the man's voice drawled, "it was a strawberry milk shake"

  "I'm sorry," she groaned. "It's my karma, you see. I must have been an ax murderer in a previous life."

  "We'll get up the stains, don't you worry. And thanks for that bag of pralines you brought us from New Orleans," the voice added. "We all enjoyed them."

  She smiled sadly. She'd had to go home for a few days to approve the sale of her parents' home. It was her last link with the old life. They'd planned to move to Wichita, Kansas, with her, but a tragic car wreck just before the move had taken their lives. She'd almost gone back herself, after that, but she had decided that a new start might help ease the pain. So she'd invested the money she'd received from the sale of her parents' home in half of a duplex in Wichita and stayed there. Since she'd already gotten her job with the MacFaber Corporation, at least she didn't have to worry about living expenses. The pralines had been an afterthought, and she was glad now that she'd thought to bring the harried janitorial staff a little sack of treats.

  "Thanks." She hung up and dabbed again at her skirt. It would have to be light blue. Nothing was going to take that stain out.

  "So there you are," Mr. Blake said from the doorway, smiling at her. "I need you to take a letter, Miss Harris."

  "Yes, sir." She grabbed her pad and pen. "So sorry. I was late, and I've spilled coffee Everything's gone wrong"

  "No problem," he said easily. "Come in, please."

  She took several letters in a row, all pertaining to the new Faber-jet design. She never paid much attention to what they contained, which was so much gibberish when he started using technical terms. She had to ask the spelling of one or two of them, but Mr. Blake was very patient and never yelled.

  Joseph MacFaber, it was said, could rage like a wounded bear when he was in a bad temper. But then he was filthy rich and used to getting his own way. He spent most of his life trying to commit suicide in a variety of dangerous hobbies, from what Maureen could gather, and left his subordinates in charge of the MacFaber Aircraft Corporation in his absence. He was in Rio now, she'd heard. He'd been away for the better part of a year, getting over the death of his motheror so they said. Mrs. MacFaber had died in a car wreck in Europe, gossip said, and MacFaber was still grieving. They said he'd been driving the car, so perhaps he was running away from his conscience. It would be a hard thing for a man to live with.

  Mr. Blake finished his dictation and Maureen went back to her desk to transcribe her notes on the electronic typewriter. That was a signal for the phone to start ringing nonstop and two other secretaries to come in and ask questions that she had to ask Mr. Blake to answer.

  It was almost time for lunch before she got enough of her backlog cleared away to even start on the mail. By then Mr. Blake was leaving, and she was left with a handful of letters that she could do nothing about until he came back.

  She usually went to lunch herself at noon, but she felt guilty because she'd been late. So she went along to the canteen and got herself a soft drink and a chocolate bar and sat by the window alone, eating it. It wasn't nutritious, but it was filling. She was finishing the soft drink when the new mechanic sat down at a table near the middle of the room and opened his lunch pail.

  Without meaning to, Maureen found herself watching him. He was so big. She wasn't used to particularly masculine men, and she usually didn't stare. But he was a dish. A real dish. She sighed, just as he looked up unexpectedly and caught her in the act. He glared at her as if he found her interest infuriating, and she flushed furiously as she quickly turned her eyes back to the window. This was absurd. Probably she'd been working too hard and her mind was disintegrating. She finished the soft drink, put the bottle up, and smiled faintly as she passed the mechanic. She meant the smile as a kind of apology, but his dark eyes only glittered more angrily.

  He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup and ignored her completely. He was still wearing his cap and kept it pulled down over his face. She felt uncomfortable. He made her feel like a man chaser, and she wanted to crawl off into a corner and hide. His anger had actually hurt her.

  She put thoughts of the mechanic at the back of her mind and doggedly spent the rest of the day answering the mail. Mr. Blake had a long conversation with some official, and at the end of it he wandered around, preoccupied, for the better part of an hour.

  "Is something wrong, sir?" Maureen asked gently.

  He glanced at her, running a hand through hair he hardly had on his balding head. "What? Oh, no, thank you, Maureen. Just a knotty problem. There'll be a government inspector here in the morning, by the way. Do try to be on time, will you?"

  "Is it about the Faber-jet design change?" she asked.

  He smiled grimly. "I'm afraid so. We may be in for some stormy weather from the aviation people trying to get this thing approved."

  She nodded. He left for the day shortly afterward. It took Maureen until six-thirty to finish answering the mail. By the time she had put away her typewriter and straightened her desk, most of the other employees had vacated the building. As she passed MacFaber's office on her way to the time clock, she heard noises and paused.

  There was a voice behind the door, a solitary voiceit was muffled, but it sounded deep and hard and demanding. Its owner was apparently talking to someone on the phone. Maureen wondered if it was the venerable J. MacFaber himself in there. Perhaps he'd returned early from Rio. She'd have to ask Charlene tomorrow. She walked on by. It wouldn't do to be caught spying outside the big boss's office. She punched her card, left it, and went out of the building.

  It was a delicious spring day. A lush, green lawn stretched from the streamlined building with its glass front, and she liked the smell of young buds breaking on the trees. The parking lot was almost deserted. There was a rather beat-up-looking red-and-rust pickup truck sitting nearby. Just that and Maureen's little yellow Volkswagen. The pickup had seen better days, like he
r poor, battered beetle. It ran beautifully when it wanted to, but it was tempermental.

  With a long sigh she got in behind the wheel. It had been a difficult day. She put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened.

  "Oh, Yellow Plague," she moaned. "Why today of all days?"

  She got out and opened the hood at the back of the car, kneeling down to glare at the small engine. And there was the trouble. A gummy battery terminal, eaten up with acid. She wondered if she could hit it hard enough with the heel of her shoe to unclog it.

  She was considering that when she noticed the big dark mechanic standing a little distance away, studying her with what could only be described as a calculating stare.

  She glanced toward him, but before she could even speak, he moved closer. "Isn't this a little obvious?" he asked with faint amusement. "First you spill coffee all over me. Now your car stalls right next to my pickup."

  His pickup? She felt as if fate were out to get her. It really had been a horror of a day. And now here was this big, dishy mechanic under the impression that she was putting on an act to get his attention. It was her own fault, she supposed. To someone who didn't know her, her behavior might have seemed come-onish. And she had stared at him in the canteen.

  "It's all right," she said quickly. "I know what to do."

  "Why don't you just crank it?" he asked, eyeing her curiously. He folded his arms across his broad chest. "For future reference, I don't like come-ons. I don't have much trouble attracting women, and I sure as hell don't want you lying in wait for me every day. Clear enough?"

  That was insulting, uncalled-for and surprisingly painful. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away hurriedly. She got to her feet, staring at him numbly. She wasn't quite her old, feisty self. Losing both her parents at once had been a terrible blow, and she still wasn't quite recovered. Too, she'd always been sheltered. She simply didn't expect cruelty from people. It was shocking to find that, and mocking contempt, in a total stranger.