A Heart Speaks by Lavyrle Spencer

Author:Lavyrle Spencer [Spencer, LaVyrle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101537893
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2005-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

A PROMISE

TO CHERISH

With

gratitude

to my friends in

Independence and Kansas City—

Bea, who gave me the map

Barbra, who showed me the old orchard

and

Vivien Lee, who took me to the “C C”

CHAPTER

One

AS THE FIRST suitcase came clunking down the luggage return of Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Lee Walker checked her watch impatiently, drummed four coral fingernails against her shoulder bag, and studied the conveyor belt with a frown. It moved like a sedated snail! She glanced at her watch a second time—only one hour and ten minutes before the bid letting! If the damn suitcase didn’t roll out soon, she’d end up at City Hall in these faded blue jeans!

Lee glowered at the flapping porthole until at last her suitcase came through. She sighed deeply and strained to reach it.

She plucked it off the conveyor belt and flew—a tall, dark-skinned flash of loose black hair and aqua feathers, the worn patches on the backside of her tight jeans attracting the eyes of several men she adroitly sidestepped. The feathers in her hair lifted with each long-legged slap of her moccasins on the terminal floor until she came at last, panting and winded by the thin Denver air, to the Economy Rent-A-Car booth.

Twenty minutes later the same suitcase hit the bed in Room 110 of the Cherry Creek Motel. Lee reached to yank the shirttails free of her jeans at the same time that she released the catch on the suitcase and flipped it open. Her hand halted. Her jaw dropped open.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Lifeless fingers forgot about buttons. Stricken eyes stared at the strange contents of the suitcase while one hand covered her lips, the other clasped her suddenly queasy stomach. “Oh sh … “ Her eyes took it in, but her mind balked. “No … it can’t be!” But she was staring not at the mustard-colored envelope containing the bid for a sewage treatment plant she’d worked on for the last two weeks. Instead, a half-naked blonde tootsie lifted a pair of enormous breasts and smiled a come-hither message from the cover of a … a Thrust magazine.

For a moment Lee was struck motionless with disbelief. Thrust? She stood hunched over, horrified, her thoughts whirling. Then frantically she scrambled through the suitcase, throwing out item after item—a gray sweat suit, two pair of dress trousers, a man’s shaving kit, two neatly folded shirts, royal blue jockey shorts— royal blue?—black socks, Rawhide deodorant, a pair of well-worn jogging shoes with filthy laces, a hair blower, and a brush with very dark brown hair caught in its white bristles.

She ran a thumb over them, then dropped it distastefully and quit scrambling through the contents to grab the identification tag dangling from the suitcase handle.

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