One Good Turn Read Online Free PDF Page A

spilled out.
    Lucas slowed to a stop and eyed the town house from the corner. “Do you want to go back in?”
    “Not if you don’t want to dance,” she said, hoping that he’d admit he’d been exaggerating when he’d told her he hated dancing.
    He continued to scrutinize the house. “Do you live around here?”
    “Thirty-sixth street. How about you?”
    “I’ve got an apartment in Capitol South,” he said, ruminating. “Are you sharing your place?”
    She nodded. “There are four of us. It’s a two-bedroom apartment, though, so we aren’t too crowded.” She’d heard of summer sublets with three and four people sharing a single bedroom, sublets so overpopulated that some tenants had to sleep in the living room. “How about you?”
    “The place is all mine,” he said. At her wide-eyed look, he clarified, “Actually, it’s my father’s. He maintains an apartment down here for business reasons. He’s letting me stay there for the summer, as long as I’ll put him up when he’s in town.”
    “That’s very generous of him,” Jenny said, although she privately thought that it was also rather isolating. Part of the fun of spending the summer in D.C. was meeting new people.
    Lucas stared at the house for a minute more, then shrugged and waved toward a silver BMW parked at the curb. “That’s my car,” he said. “Why don’t we go to my place?”
    “Your place?” A tiny alarm clanged inside her skull.
    “Sure. We’d have it all to ourselves.”
    The alarm clanged louder. “What do we need it all to ourselves for?” she asked dubiously.
    His smile appeared strained, as if he resented her for requiring him to spell out his intentions. “What do you think?”
    “I’m not going to go to bed with you, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
    Her bluntness took him aback. His gaze hardened and she noticed the muscle flexing in his jaw again as he mulled over his response. “Don’t blame me for misunderstanding,” he grumbled. “You came on to me, don’t forget.”
    “Came on to you?” She cautioned herself not to lose her temper. She’d thought she had broken through to Lucas a little, maybe planted the seeds of a new friendship, maybe introduced a little warmth into his aloof disposition. That he was good looking, that his smile had aroused her, that she could imagine herself pursuing a relationship with him—eventually, if they spent more time together and got to know each other better—it was irrelevant. With one sentence he’d exposed himself as a jerk. “You think I came on to you? All I did was say hello!”
    “And leave the party with me,” he said.
    “And take a walk around the block with you,” she emphasized. “So?”
    “So, that’s the way these things are communicated.”
    “Well—” she was feeling progressively more disillusioned about Lucas, and more sorrowful about it “—let me make myself clear. I do not want to go back to your place with you, nor do I have any desire to invite you back to my place.”
    It dawned on her that his impatience had vanished, replaced by what appeared to be genuine bafflement. “Then why did you come over and talk to me?” he asked, as if he could think of no other reason for a woman to be friendly to a man.
    “Because you looked lonely, that’s why,” she snapped, furious with him for proving to be so shallow, and with herself for having been so dense. Furious because she would have liked to know him better—but never would. Furious because she truly preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt, open to them, trust them—and it hurt to find out that some people simply didn’t deserve her trust.
    Spinning on her heel, she stormed down the block to the town house and inside, refusing him a parting look.

Chapter Two
----
     
    LONELY. OH, GOD, he was lonely.
    Slamming the door behind him, he dove headlong onto the leather couch in the living room. He lay there in the dark, inhaling the rich scent of the leather,