A Woman Like Annie by Inglath Cooper

Author:Inglath Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2003-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CLARICE HADN’T BEEN this nervous since her first prom in high school. She glanced at the clock beside the fireplace in her living room. Six twenty-five. Five minutes if he was on time.

Thanks to Annie, the entire meal was ready. Nothing to do there. She did another recheck of her makeup, glanced again at her sheer-stockinged legs to make sure there were no runs and brushed at the skirt of her black dress with the back of her hand.

A car slowed on the street outside her house, turned into the drive with a recognizable rumble, lights piercing the living room window before flicking off.

He was here! Clarice’s stomach dropped twenty stories. It seemed like two hours before she heard footsteps on the walk outside, and then the doorbell rang.

She counted to ten—don’t look too anxious, Clarice!—then went to open it. All the cliché’s applied to the man standing on her doorstep. He had on casual clothes, white shirt and jeans, a three-button blazer, and he looked good enough to devour.

“Hi,” he said, holding up a bottle of red wine.

“Come in,” she said, waving him inside with one hand, taking the wine with the other. “Thank you. You didn’t have to bring anything, though.”

“Hope red was all right.”

“Red is great. We’re having steak. Come on in.” She waved him inside, beckoning for him to follow her through to the kitchen.

“Nice house,” he said.

“Thanks. I like it. It’s not huge, but I’m gone a lot and don’t really need extra space to take care of.”

She opened a drawer, rummaged around for a corkscrew and held it out to him. “Do you mind opening the wine?”

“No,” he said and made short work of it while she pulled two glasses from the cupboard above the sink.

“I was surprised to see you in church this morning.”

“Figured it would do me good.”

“Did it?” she asked, punctuating the question with her most flirtatious smile.

“It certainly didn’t hurt,” he said, the smile he gave her back falling way short of the response she’d hoped for. Hmm. Too much? Maybe subtle was more appropriate, which wasn’t going to be easy. She didn’t do subtle. Annie did subtle.

The point didn’t pass without a pinprick and a flash of the scene in her sister’s kitchen the night of Tommy’s birthday party. The look she’d seen on Jack’s face then was the one she wanted to see now. Only directed at her.

She led the conversation in a general direction: tell me about your work, what sports do you like. A half hour or so later, she’d employed every Carnegie conversational tactic she knew. But Jack, unlike most men she’d known, had a way of turning a question around so that she ended up doing the talking. “So where did you and Annie grow up?” he asked before she could think of another Carnegie-approved question.

“All over the place,” she said, hitching a thumb over her shoulder at the grill visible through the sliding glass door at the back of the kitchen. “Let me just throw these steaks on.

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