Silent Partner Read Online Free PDF Page A

know, sitting in the chair opposite hers and shaking his head as he surveyed the food. “Taking Mr. Lawrence up on his generosity, I see.”
    “This is a rare treat for me, I assure you.” She’d been right last night in the SUV. Tucker did have friendly eyes. And in the light of day she could see a hint of mischief in them as well. “I usually start the day with half a bowl of oatmeal and two egg whites but, given all of the luxury around me, I decided to make an exception.”
    “I’ll bet you don’t eat your first meal of the day at one in the afternoon very often either.” Tucker dropped his gloves and his grimy tan ten-gallon down on the white tablecloth. “I heard they were about to send someone up to your room to wake you.”
    “Someone?” Angela asked coyly.
    She’d thought about Tucker while getting dressed this morning, hoping this might happen. He would never grace the cover of GQ magazine, but he was attractive in a rugged way. He had wavy, dirty blond hair that fell to the bottom of the wool collar of the leather jacket he’d been wearing last night. His eyes were large and brown, and his face was broad and ruddy beneath a three-day growth of stubble—a hint of gray rippling through the whiskers on his chin. He was a big man, too. Six three, she guessed, with wide shoulders and thick-fingered hands. He appeared to be in his midthirties, but she wasn’t sure. Maybe he was older if he’d been Jake Lawrence’s employee for twenty years.
    Tucker had a natural swagger about him she liked, too. He’d ambled into the room with one hand in the back pocket of his jeans, pulled the chair out with the toe of his muddy boot, and sat down like he owned the place. It was a swagger that told her he was confident he could handle whatever came his way. A swagger she was drawn to, as she had been drawn to another man’s once before.
    “Yeah, someone,” he repeated with a slight smile.
    “Not you?”
    “Nope.”
    “Sure, cowboy,” she said quietly so the help wouldn’t hear, slowly raising one long, thin eyebrow at him. “I bet you wouldn’t mind finding out what I wear to bed.” It was a forward thing for her to say, but she already felt very comfortable with him, as if they’d known each other for a long time. She prided herself on being a quick and accurate judge of character, and he seemed honest and sincere. A man who wore his heart on his sleeve. “Come on. Tell me the truth.”
    He tried to hold back, but then chuckled and looked down. “No, I’m sure I wouldn’t. But I’m not allowed upstairs without an escort.”
    “I thought you ran this place.”
    “I run the ranch, but not the lodge. The lodge manager is very careful about all that. Particularly with female guests.”
    “Oh,” she said, thinking back on how the maid had appeared last night and accompanied her to the room with the male attendant.
    Tucker dug into the basket of biscuits, grabbed one, and polished off half of it in a single bite. “So, how’d you sleep?” he asked through the mouthful.
    “Like a baby. It’s been a while since I slept eleven hours in one night. Usually I get six or seven. But it was as if someone had glued my eyelids shut.”
    “Happens to people all the time when they visit from back east. It’s the elevation,” he explained, shoving the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. “And all that wine you drank on the plane.”
    “I didn’t drink that much. And, anyway, how would you know?”
    “I have my sources.”
    “Well, it was the flight attendant’s fault. He kept refilling my glass and thank God he did, because if he hadn’t, I might not have survived the landing. It felt like I was on the space shuttle and we were re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.” She watched Tucker rummage through the bacon. “Do you treat everything as tenderly as you do your food?”
    “Most of the time,” he answered, finding a large, particularly crisp piece. He smiled suggestively. “But I can get rough