One Good Turn Read Online Free PDF Page B

and silver. She had a nice smile, too, easy and natural, and while her chin was pointy it balanced her equally pointy nose. Her voice had a husky quality, which he’d found seriously sexy. As for her hair, that fiery stream of silk spilling down her back...
    He still wanted to take her to bed. Despite her rejection, he wanted her.
    Actually, now that he thought about it, she hadn’t exactly rejected him. She’d rejected his invitation to have sex with him, but she had seemed reasonably accepting of him as a person. The highlight of the evening—the highlight of his stay in Washington so far—had been the stroll he’d taken with her around the block. For the first time in ages, he hadn’t felt lonely.
    That was the thing of it—not her appearance or even her serenity so much as the fact that she could look at him and understand his loneliness. How could he have been so crass, insinuating that she’d come on to him? How could he have tried to score with her?
    He cursed. His voice was muffled by the plush upholstery, and he sat up and repeated the curse, letting the rarefied atmosphere of his father’s luxurious duplex resound with that one profane syllable. His eyes took in the marble tables, the mirrored wall, the vertical blinds and objets d’art and the plush maroon carpeting. It was all so well coordinated, so tasteful, so impeccable.
    He couldn’t picture Jenny Perrin fitting into it—yet that didn’t trouble him. The truth was, even though he was lounging on one of the couchesÿin this starkly elegant room, he couldn’t really picture himself fitting in, either.
    Somehow, that made him feel a whole lot better.
    * * *
    “I NEED A phone number,” he said to Stella the next morning. “Can you help me out?”
    Stella lifted her gaze from the unopened envelopes piled on her desk and regarded him with a skeptical look. A heavy-set woman in her mid-forties, Stella was an absolute marvel. She knew everything; she knew everyone; and if by chance there did happen to be something she didn’t know, she could find it out in less time than it took a leak to travel from the Executive Office Building to the Washington Post. Senator Milford was humble enough to think his chief aide, Lee Pappelli, was running the show. Lee was arrogant enough to agree. But the truth of the matter was, they’d all be utterly lost without Stella. She was the engine and the wheels of the senator’s staff, the backbone and the muscle, the wisdom and the know-how—the behind-the-scenes monarch reigning over this supposed enclave of democracy.
    “Well, don’t you look spiffy today,” she said, appraising Luke’s summer-weight suit, two-tone shirt and red power tie. “You have special plans or something?”
    “I’d like to have special plans, but I won’t if I can’t find out this woman’s telephone number,” he told her. “She’s a clerk in the Western Europe division at State. A summer temp, so she won’t be listed in the directory.”
    “And you want me to get her phone number for you.”
    He gave Stella his most ingratiating smile.
    “Let me get this straight. We’re talking about a young lady who chose not to give you her number herself.” Stella’s grin was mocking. “If she didn’t give you her number, it just may be because she doesn’t want you to have it.”
    “She probably doesn’t,” he conceded. “I behaved badly with her. But how am I going to apologize if I can’t reach her?”
    Stella’s grin grew wider. “And meanwhile, I’ve got all this mail to go through.”
    “I’ll go through it for you,” he volunteered.
    She chuckled and handed him the four-inch thick stack of envelopes. “You’re on, doll. What’s the girl’s name?”
    It took Luke several hours to open the letters, sort them and print out the appropriate computer-generated responses to the senator’s correspondence from his constituents. Luke considered the time well spent, however, when he returned to Stella’s desk. Her eyes