Crazy for You Read Online Free PDF Page A

tying it into a bow that looked like it belonged atop a birthday present.
    I pulled my hair into a chignon, tweaked out waiflike tendrils, and gobbed on rathair mascara that extended my lashes half an inch. If I had to wear an ugly uniform, I was at least going to look like a female in an ugly uniform.
    The front doorbell rang just as I emerged from Rhonda’s office. Muttering about people too cloddish to know that an eight o’clock invitation meant nine o’clock, Rhonda tottered off to answer it, taking mincing geisha steps in the knee-binding skirt. Everybody seemed to arrive at once, and suddenly the house was bursting with people.
    For the next two hours I was frantically busy, circulating with heavy trays, keeping the canapés and petit fours freshened, taking people’s coats, giving them directions to the bathroom, and wiping up spills. Meanwhile Rhonda threw herself into being the perfect hostess. Animated, laughing, drawing the wallflowers into conversation, managing to be everywhere at once, she sparkled like the Christmas tree in her parlor. Usually, at affairs like this, wives feel left out, but Rhonda managed to keep the enemy genders mingling to avoid the usual cluster of sports-talking guys at one end of the room and clumps of bored women at the other. The fact that Rhonda’s kissy-kissy charm was as fake as spray-on tan didn’t make it less impressive.
    The partygoers were two-fisted drinkers and were snapping up the canapés like hungry trout lunging for flies. By eleven o’clock we were running low on the goat-cheese-stuffed mushrooms and the lemongrass salmon. Hurrying to the kitchen for refills, I reached into the fridge for the last tray of canapés. At this rate, I’d have to start smearing Cheez Whiz on Ritz crackers. As I bent to retrieve the heavy tray, someone brushed up next to me.
    “Here—that’s heavy. Let me help.”
    I turned. A movie star took the tray out of my hands. He was straight out of central casting—“Get me a Pierce Brosnan type!”—and had eyes the color of a Wisconsin lake, a wide, sensuous mouth, a straight nose, and a full head of wavy, blackhair touched with silver at the temples.
    I managed to close my mouth, hoping drool hadn’t run down the front of my dress.
    He smiled. “I’ve been watching you ever since I got here, trying to get a chance to meet you. I’m Jared Kennison.”
    “I’m …” Who was I again? “Mazie.” We shook hands. My eyes flashed down to his left hand and back up again at the speed of a blink. Ringless.
    “Are you Rhonda’s daughter?” he asked.
    “No relation.” And if Rhonda heard him say that she’d rip out my fifteen-year-younger DNA, helix by helix. “I’m the hired help. Can I get you something? A drink? Ice?” I wanted to plaster the ice over my own burning cheeks. My blush was spreading like a poison ivy rash.
    “What I really wanted was an introduction to you.”
    He leaned back against a row of cabinets, frankly studying me. He had the uninflected baritone of a network news anchor, and I almost expected him to say: “While the American economy sank farther into recession, Congress today passed a resolution declaring November National Cranberry Month …”
    He was wearing a navy sweatshirt, black trousers, and dark sneakers, not ordinarily cocktail-party garb, but Jared Kennison could have worn flippers and a wet suit to Buckingham Palace and made the guys in tuxes look like slobs.
    I didn’t trust good-looking men. The first handsome man I’d known had turned out to be a serial adulterer, the second one had tried to burn me alive, and the third … well, the jury was still out on Ben Labeck.
    Rhonda hobbled into the kitchen, mermaid tail dragging. “Get out there and restock the bar,” she growled at me. “We’re out of lemon slices and the bourbon—”
    She stopped dead when she saw Jared Kennison.
    A flicker of something crossed Rhonda’s face. Shock? Wariness? Do-me-now-on-the-kitchen-counter