Manhunting Read Online Free PDF

thing, you,” Penny cooed. “I’d adore your help. Mine’s the pink stuff down there.”
    “Coming right up,” Jake said, and he bent to pick up all of Penny’s remaining pieces of luggage.
    “You must be so strong.” Penny beamed at him.
    “Nope. Just too lazy to make two trips.” He ambled up the steps to the porch.
    Well, there’s the start of a beautiful relationship,
Kate thought, and took her suitcase into the cabin.
     
    A few minutes later, Jake went down the path shaking his head. All those macho guys who said women were all alike had never met Penny Craft and Kate Svenson. When he’d first seen the two trim blondes from a couple of hundred yards down the path, he’d assumed they were sisters. On a closer look, he’d decided they couldn’t possibly belong to the same family. Now, after spending five minutes with them, he wasn’t sure they belonged on the same planet.
    Penny was every young man’s dream—cute, friendly and undemanding. Being nice to Penny would be no hardship, although listening to her babble for more than fifteen minutes might test a man’s patience. He grinned. Probably only his patience; any other man would listen to her if she spoke Swahili, as long as he could look at her. He must be getting old. Penny was a dream come true, all right, but she was someone else’s dream, not his.
    If Penny was somebody else’s dream, Kate was his own personal nightmare. Who the hell would come to the country wearing a silk suit? And she had her blond hair yanked back so hard in that twist that her eyebrows slanted. He remembered the way she’d looked at him as he’d walked toward her—sizing him up and then dismissing him with those icy blue eyes. “Thank you,” she’d said and walked away. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees around her cabin.
    He shuddered. Kate reminded him of Valerie and his ex-wife, Tiffany. Women like that always got what they wanted no matter what it took, not caring who they trampled on to get their way. Efficient. Calculating. Manipulative. Most likely she’d come to the resort to sharpen her golf game, get a tan, snare a husband, and improve her stock portfolio.
God preserve me from a woman like that,
he thought, and grinned again. God wouldn’t have to preserve him from a woman like Kate Svenson. She’d made it very clear that she wasn’t interested.
    Forget her,
he told himself, and wandered down the path to troubleshoot the luau.
     
    Penny came to pick Kate up for the luau at six, and Kate steeled herself for the ordeal ahead.
This is the only way you’re going to meet men,
she told herself.
Jessie’s right. Just relax and have a good time. Stop whining. Be a woman.
    Penny had dressed by wrapping a turquoise flowered sarong over a tiny yellow bikini. Her earrings were turquoise, with yellow parrots on swings—the parrots made of real feathers. She was too much of everything, and yet, in her obvious happiness, she was just right.
    I could never wear an outfit like that,
Kate reflected.
Not unless I was very, very drunk.
She was feeling very, very superior until a traitorous little voice inside her added,
Maybe that’s why I don’t have any fun.
    “Put on your bathing suit,” Penny said to Kate. “Maybe we’ll get thrown in the pool.”
    “We can only hope,” Kate said. Her bathing suit was an old black one-piece, years out of style but hardly worn. She put on white slacks and a white shirt over it, tying the shirttails in a knot on her stomach.
    “That’s it?” Penny asked.
    “That’s it.”
    “That’s kind of plain,” Penny said.
    “That’s the kind of woman I am,” Kate said. “Plain. Let’s go.”
    Penny hesitated, frowning. “Don’t you want to let your hair down or something? I mean, this is a
luau.”
    “No,” Kate said evenly. “I like it up.”
    “Well, you don’t look very relaxed.”
    “This is as relaxed as I get,” she said.
    “Okay,” Penny said, shaking her head. “Maybe you’ll feel better