With a Little Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

her.
    With all the cheery yellow of her pants and top, Eve admitted to herself that she didn’t look like a brown mouse. If anything, a sunflower was more apt — with its bright yellow petals and brown center.
    “You really are a ‘vanity’ mirror,” Eve murmured, and turned away from the reflecting glass before she became too wrapped up in her appearance.
    But her subconscious made a silent resolution not to wear brown again.
    From now on, only bright colors would be added to her wardrobe, Drab clothing did nothing to improve her looks. “Brown mouse” — the phrase mocked her with its recollections of that night.
    Eve dreaded the time when she would meet his wife, but in this small resort community it would be impossible for their paths not to cross sometime during the course of the summer. It would be foolish to try to avoid it. But what do you say to a woman whose husband tried to pick you up?
    What kind of marriage did he have? He had said it was lonely at home and he wanted to talk to someone. He and his wife were obviously having trouble, Eve concluded. Or maybe he was just the type that stepped out anyway. No, she shook that thought away. Indulging in an idle flirtation would come naturally to him, but Luck McClure wasn’t the type to let it go beyond the bantering of words. There was too much depth to him for that.
    What did it matter? He was married. Regardless of the problems he was having, Luck was the kind who would persist until he solved them. It was ridiculous to waste her time thinking about a married man, no matter how interesting and compelling he might be.
    The closing of the screen door and the cessation of voices from the front room turned Eve to face her bedroom door. She listened and heard the opening of car doors outside. The tall arresting man and his son were leaving.
    It was just as well. Now she could come out of hiding — the realization stopped her short of the door. She had been hiding. Hiding because he had looked at her with a man’s interest in the opposite sex and her ego hadn’t wanted him to remember that she was a plain brown mouse. So what had she done? Scurried off into her hole, just like a brown mouse.
    Never again, Eve resolved, and left her “hole” to return to the front room. The only occupant was her mother. Eve glanced around, noticing the Jaguar was gone from the driveway.
    “Where’s dad?”
    “Mr. McClure drove him back to the car. They called a garage. A man’s coming over to pick up our car and replace the broken windshield,” her mother explained. “He should be back shortly.”
    An hour later her father returned, but it was the mechanic who brought him back — not Luck McClure.
     

 
    Chapter Three
     
    THE ROWLANDS WERE without transportation for two days. On the morning of the third day, the garage owner delivered the car, complete with a new windshield. The day had started out with gray and threatening skies. By the time the car was returned it began drizzling. And by noon it was raining steadily, confining Eve indoors.
    With the car returned, her parents decided to restock their grocery supplies that afternoon. They invited Eve to come with them, but since they planned to visit some of their friends while they were out, she declined.
    On rainy days she usually enjoyed curling up with a book, but on this occasion she was too restless to read. Since she had the entire afternoon on her hands, she decided to do some baking and went into the kitchen to stir up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, her father’s favorite.
    Soon the delicious smell of cookies baking in the oven filled the small cottage and chased away the gloom of the gray rainy day. Cookies from two sheet trays were cooling on the kitchen counter, atop an opened newspaper. Eve glanced through the glass door of the oven at the third sheet. Its cookies were just beginning to brown, a mere minute away from being done.
    The thud of footsteps on the wooden porch floor reached her hearing,