Future Perfect Read Online Free PDF

stared into the flames. Her face was accented by wide cheekbones, a firm chin, a small straight nose with a smattering of freckles. Her eyebrows were delicate arches, her lashes long and thick. Her eyes were … blue? They’d been themost wonderful mix of blue, green, and golden brown this morning when he’d held her in his arms.
    She turned toward him, and he saw a flash of green and gold in her eyes. “Mr. Donovan, won’t you sit down?” she said. “You’re impossibly tall to start with, and if you insist on standing, my neck won’t survive this conversation.”
    Web lowered himself into another easy chair with a smile. “Impossibly tall? I’m only six five. I played college basketball, and I was the runt of the team. Now,
those
guys were impossibly tall. Tell me, is it Janet?” he asked, out of the blue.
    She laughed, and Webster felt a thrill of triumph race through his veins. “Are we starting
this
game again?” she asked. She had a smile, a real, genuine smile on her lips, not one of those very polite, Victorian half smiles.
    “What do you do for fun up here?” he asked. “Jennifer?”
    “Me in particular?” she asked, ignoring his second question. “Or do you mean ‘you’ in general?”
    “You in particular. Is your name Jane?”
    Another laugh, and it was frighteningly musical. Webster had that peculiar tight feeling in his chest again.
    “I bake bread,” she said. “I sing in the church choir, I go riding. I own a gelding, he’s stabled about four miles down the road.”
    “A gelding?” he said, the firelight making his black hair glisten. His lips curved in a smile. “I would have thought a woman like you would have a stallion.”
    Double entendre time again
, Juliana thought.
Fine
,
two could play this game
. “Stallions can be more trouble than they’re worth, Mr. Donovan,” she said.
    She met his eyes steadily, and he laughed.
    “Tell me, what else do you like to do?” he said. “Besides ride your horse?”
    “I love books,” Juliana said. “My aunt and I are always reading something. We particularly like mysteries, you know, who-dun-its.”
    “Well, there you go,” Web said, his teeth flashing in the dim light. “You read books, I write ’em. We’re a perfect match.”
    Juliana took a sip of the brandy, feeling it warm her all the way down to her stomach. She raised one eyebrow skeptically. “What exactly are you writing, Mr. Donovan?”
    Not Mr. Donovan,
Webster
, he thought. He wanted to hear her say his name.
    “Well, to be perfectly honest,” he said, and she glanced over at him. His slick facade was still carefully in place. His words were only an expression; he had no intention of being perfectly honest at all. “I’m planning to make this second book another contemporary western,” he said. “I haven’t actually started writing yet. I’ve kind of been procastinating, which is why I came out here. I’m trying to break my pattern of fooling around and get going with the work.”
    “So you set up your computer, then take a six-hour nap in the middle of the day?”
    He laughed, but it was a touch too hearty. “Trust me, that wasn’t procrastination. It was survival. I hadn’t slept in over two days. I get … dangerous when that happens.”
    She had noticed.
    With a shower of sparks, a log fell out of the confines of the andirons onto the bricks of the hearth.
    Webster put his glass down and removed the screen.He knelt down and used the fire iron to wrestle the log back up into the fire. He stayed there on the rug in front of the fire, sitting at Juliana’s feet. “So when do you have a night off?” he asked. “When can I take you out to dinner or dancing or a movie—or anything?”
    He could hear her skirt rustle quietly as she shifted position in the chair. “I’m sorry, Mr. Donovan,” she said softly, “but I don’t go out with guests.”
    True, none had ever asked her before, since most of her guests were happily married or old enough