An Independent Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

morning."

    "Am I being sued?" Sallie questioned.

    "No. The senator explained the entire situation and his wife is giving us a retraction of her previous statement concerning the general. You were right on target, doll."

    "I thought I was," she agreed cheerily. "Do you have anything else I can do?"

    "Just watch your back, doll. Several editors I know are mad as the devil that you're the only one who caught on to what was under everyone's noses."

    She laughed and hung up, but the knowledge that her instincts had been right gave her a lift for the rest of the day. Chris came by at lunch and asked if she wanted to share a sandwich with him and she accepted. There was a small cafeteria in the building offering nothing more sophisticated than soup, sandwiches, coffee and cold drinks for those who couldn't get out for lunch, but the meager fare was more than enough for her. She and Chris shared a postage-stamp table and talked shop over cups of strong black coffee.

    Just as they were finishing there was a stir among the other people eating lunch and the back of Sallie's neck prickled in warning. "It's the boss," Chris informed her casually. "With his girlfriend.-

    Sallie sternly resisted the urge to turn around, but out of the comer of her eye she watched the two figures move down the cafeteria line selecting their lunch. "I wonder what they're doing here," she murmured.

    "Testing the food, at a guess," Chris replied, turning his head to stare openly at the woman by Rhy's side. "He's checked into everything else. I don't see why he should overlook the food. She looks familiar, Sal. Do you know her?"

    Sallie narrowed her eyes in concentration, examining the woman with relief, because that kept her from staring at Rhy. "You're right, she is familiar. Isn't she Coral Williams, the model?" She was almost certain of the woman's identity, that classic golden perfection could belong to no one else.

    "So it is," Chris grunted.

    Rhy turned then, balancing his tray as he moved to a table, and Sallie hastily lowered her eyes, but not before her heart gave a breath-stopping lunge at his appearance. He hadn't changed. He was still lithe and muscular, and his hair was still the same midnight black, his strong-boned face still hard and sardonic, tanned from long exposure to the sun. By contrast the woman at his side was a graceful butterfly, his exact opposite in coloring.

    "Let's go," she said in a low tone to Chris, sliding out of her chair. She sensed Rhy's head turning in her direction and she carefully turned her back to him without any show of hurry. Chris followed her out of the cafeteria, but she was burningly conscious of Rhy's gaze on her as she left. That was twice he had stared at her. Did he recognize her? Was her walk familiar to him? Was it her hair? That long braid was distinctive enough in itself, but she didn't want to have her hair cut because he would certainly recognize her then.

    She was still shaken when she returned to her desk, due in large part to her reaction to Rhy's appearance. No other man had ever attracted her the way he did and she found to her dismay that the situation was still the same. Rhy had a raw virility, an aura of barely leashed power that set her heart to pounding and forcibly reminded her of the nights she had once spent in his arms. She might be free of him emotionally, but the old physical ties seemed to be as strong as ever and she felt vulnerable.

    Out of habit she picked up the phone and called Greg, but he was out to lunch and she dropped the receiver back into the cradle with a ragged sigh. She couldn't just sit there; her nature demanded that she take some sort of action. At last she scribbled a note to Brom asking him to notify Greg that she'd taken ill with a headache and was going home for the rest of the day. Greg would see through the excuse, but Brom, wouldn't.

    She hated to run away from anything, but she knew that she needed to think about her reaction to Rhy, and once she