The Pretender Read Online Free PDF Page A

be…Jewish?”
    “Yeah. What’sthat word—great word, means cojones —balls. Which I can’t use since she’s a girl. You know the—”
    “Chutzpah?”
    “Yeah. That’s the one.” Sam gave a cackle of laughter. “The girl’s got hutzpa, that’s for sure.”
    Naturally, old uptight Alex didn’t crack a smile. Just looked him in the eye and got straight to the point. “What do you want to do about her?”
    Sam narrowed his eyes andscratched his chin, just to give his lawyer the notion he was thinking it over. Truth was, he was feeling damned excited. Happy, even, for the first time since he’d gotten the terrible news from New York. There was an itch under his skin he recognized and remembered from his considerably younger days, an itch that said there was adventure afoot. A challenge. Hell, he never had been able to resista challenge.
    “Cards have been dealt,” he growled. “I’ll be curious to see how she plays hers. Won’t you?”
    The lawyer raised his eyebrows again, but only said mildly, “Are you going to want to meet her?”
    “I might.”
    “When—”
    Sam waved a hand impatiently. “When the time’s right.” Damn lawyers always had to pin things down. “For now, just…tell her to go ahead and bringthe damn cat. Then we’ll wait and see.”
    Alex closed up the computer and tucked it into his briefcase. “Don’t wait too long,” he said, as he slid the briefcase off the wood plank table and headed for the door. He gave a nod and a wave as he went out, leaving the door open.
    Sam grunted and went to shut it, hobbling a little. Damned legs—still feeling the effects of that crazy stunt he’dpulled a few weeks back, he supposed. He sure did hate being old. Simple thing like riding hell-for-leather across a meadow shooting at helicopters with a deer rifle wouldn’t have bothered him a bit, back in his stuntman days. Woulda been all in a day’s work. Nowadays, he paid a heavy price for such foolishness.
    Sure was fun, though. He cackled with pure glee, remembering how it had feltto bring down that chopper along with the man who’d shot and wounded his ranch foreman and tried to kidnap his baby great-grandson. I may be old, he thought, but I ain’t through livin’ yet.
    Instead of pulling the heavy pine plank door closed, he stood in the cabin’s doorway and watched his lawyer stride through the meadow grass and swing himself into the waiting helicopter. Nice to be thatyoung, he thought with an inward sigh.
    Good man, Alex Branson—way too serious and buttoned-up for a youngster, but they don’t come any more honest or loyal. Which, for a lawyer, is saying something. Yeah…he’s a good man. I shouldn’t jerk his chain like I do.
    But damned if it ain’t fun.
    Sam watched the little blue chopper lift off and bank away toward the mountain ridge—looked justlike a dragonfly, he’d always thought. He watched until he couldn’t see it anymore, then turned and hobbled back into the cabin, closing the door behind him. He made his way to the table and picked up the black-and-white photo that was lying there. He stood for a long time gazing down at the photo, an eight-by-ten glossy—what they used to call a studio headshot—of a woman.
    “Ah…Barbara. MyGod, but you were lovely.” He no longer cared that he spoke aloud when there was nobody but himself to hear.
    A wave of sadness swept over him, and after a while he slid the photograph back into the manila envelope where it had been kept for more than half a century. That was the best place for it—the past. The past was dead, done with. The past was nothing but sadness and regrets.
    He shook himself, shaking off the sadness. And he grinned. He couldn’t wait to see what the future was going to bring.
    Sage leaned one shoulder against a support pillar and watched the first passengers from the New York flight make their way toward him down the glistening corridor. First-class passengers first, of course: businessmen with cell