Mail-Order Millionaire Read Online Free PDF

help. He didn’t need anyone’s help. He was completely self-sufficient. He had money, a job and the lifestyle he wanted. He’d been cooking by himself, living by himself and working by himself for the past year and he liked it that way.
    Then he looked at her out of the corner of his eye and decided that if she were in the other room he wouldn’t be able to study her profile or her long lithe legs in her stretch pants. He was trying to reconcile the picture in the catalog with the reality. It was only natural. But it wasn’t necessary.
    This woman was making him behave irrationally, but only because he’d been alone so long. It was the name of the game in these remote weather stations. One week on and one week off. People who lived normal lives didn’t let their imaginations run wild because an unexpected guest dropped in. They didn’t think about their underwear or salivate every time they got close.
    He went to the cabinet for the sherry and refilled her glass. The smell of spices wafted from the pot. Feeling uncomfortable because of the silence he figured it wouldn’t kill him to tell her he appreciated her effort in coming up there. He’d blathered on needlessly about his financial situation, so why stop now?
    “Have I thanked you for coming all this way to bring the boots and the food?”
    Steam filled the little kitchen. She tilted her face up to his. “I didn’t have any choice. I promised I’d bring them and I did. Besides, I was afraid you’d complain to the management and I’d lose my job.”
    He nodded understandingly, but he was unaccountably disappointed. She’d thought he was some kind of crank at the same time he was thinking she was as cold as rime ice. Maybe they were both wrong. “Why don’t you set the table?” He handed her some silverware and then he spooned gumbo and rice into two bowls. Before he set them on the table, he shoved an armchair to one side of the table and pulled his swivel chair to the other. She sat across from him and filled her spoon, then held it up in front of her to cool. Their eyes met and some mysterious force caused him to lift his wineglass and say, “To new boots and new friends.”
    She looked surprised at his toast, but she set her spoon down and silently raised her glass to his.
    “And to new underwear,” he added. “Is it in the box?”
    She nodded and told him how much she liked the gumbo. It was true. There was a sharp kick that awakened your taste buds, then a wonderful mellow blend of shrimp and spices. “I’ll bet your wife misses your cooking when you’re gone,” she remarked.
    “I’ll bet she doesn’t. I don’t have a wife at the moment, and I’m sure she doesn’t miss anything about me.” He didn’t mean to sound bitter, but that was the way it came out.
    “I see,” she said, and he was afraid she did see, with those huge dark eyes that regarded him so solemnly. There was nothing like rehashing the past to put a damper on the present. Why did they have to talk about his ex-wife? It was time to change the subject.
    He leaned back in his swivel chair and swirled the wine in his glass. “How do you like your job at Green Mountain?”
    “It’s all right. I like solving problems, and other people’s problems are always easier to solve than your own.”
    “You don’t look like you have any problems,” he said. It was true. Her gaze was steady, her face unmarred by worry lines.
    “Really? I’ve got a whole farm full of them, maple trees that won’t produce, a sugar house that’s falling apart and equipment that dates from my grandparents’ time. Not that it matters. If the sap doesn’t run, I won’t need it.”
    “So you have a farm.” He stirred the rice into his gumbo. “That’s how you learned to drive a tractor.”
    She nodded. “It belonged to my grandparents, and now it’s mine.”
    “Have you lived there all your life?” Strange how everything she said was fascinating to him, as if she’d arrived in a space