Gentle Pirate (2 page)

Kirsten shrugged, thoroughly irritated now, but she refrained from any more clever remarks. There was always the unfortunate likelihood that she would soon be needing Silco Electronics for a reference.

Having successfully shut her up, Simon Kendrick allowed himself a small smile of victory. "I appreciate the report and will study it thoroughly. Quite frankly I didn't expect you to have something like this pulled together for me."

Kirsten acknowledged the dim compliment with a brief motion of her neat head and waited to be dismissed. Whatever he had originally planned to say when he had requested her presence in his office had apparently been tabled until he read the report. Reluctantly she gave him credit for the effort he seemed to be making toward arriving at a careful decision. It was more than she had expected.

But instead of a nod of casual dismissal, the large man shifted slightly in his chair, the hook out of sight behind the desk, and regarded her openly.

"I understand you came to Richland a short time ago, yourself. Have you been successful in finding an apartment?"

Kirsten stared at him, suddenly quite suspicious. Since when did higher-ranking members of the corporate hierarchy condescend to small talk with lower-ranking members? She knew the answer. When they wanted something.

"I've found a pleasant enough place," she told him cautiously, naming the apartment complex in which she was living and instantly regretting having been careless with the information.

"I've had very little time to hunt for an apartment. It seems as if I've been swamped since the first hour I arrived!" he told her with more feeling than Kirsten would have expected. If the effort at chatting was being made to lower her barriers a little, she decided, it wasn't going to be successful. She'd had too much experience with large, domineering men who thought in military terms.

"Silco has probably put you in the River Inn?" she suggested politely, knowing that's where virtually all of the new high-level employee's stayed until they found private residences.

Simon Kendrick nodded, the lines of his mouth turning down expressively as he did so. "I'm growing heartily sick of hotel food already and I've only been there a week. I thought I'd do some serious apartment hunting this weekend. I've been collecting as much information from others as I can so that I don't waste my time looking at unlikely places."

Realizing abruptly that her own complex might now be included on his list. Kirsten decided to remove it from consideration immediately. Some basic female instinct prompted her words, although she hadn't yet acknowledged any genuine danger.

"You would probably want one of the new town-house apartments on the golf course," she suggested quickly, too quickly.

"Oh, I don't need a great deal of space." He smiled pointedly. "And I don't enjoy golf." It didn't occur to Kirsten for an instant that his lack of interest in the sport was in any way due to his missing hand. If Simon Kendrick wanted to swing a club at a small white ball, he would find a way. Probably a very efficient way. "How big are the apartments where you're living?"

"One and two bedrooms." she answered in a small voice, thinking fast. "But the rooms really are small. And the place could use more landscaping. The pool is tiny. During the summer I imagine there won't be room to move in it," she finished on a happier note. Simon Kendrick looked like a man who liked his exercise. He wouldn't be content with doing laps in a postage-stamp-size pool!

"It's almost spring already and I can't even imagine using a pool right now. For a desert, this area certainly isn't very warm." he remarked calmly, never shifting his gaze away from Kirsten's.

"But this
is
a desert, you know," she went on as chattily as possible, fighting down a strange trapped feeling. "I've been told the temperature can reach a hundred and ten in July and August." What was she so worried about? From the look of things she probably wasn't going to be around herself this summer! What did she care where this man chose to live? There wasn't any rational reason for it, but Kirsten knew she didn't want Simon Kendrick living near her.

"Good. I've always preferred heat to cold," he told her without batting an eye. Reaching out suddenly with the hook on his left arm, he snagged a memo calendar, drew it close, and jotted down the name of Kirsten's apartment complex. Then he nodded in the dismissal she had been expecting.

"Thank you, Miss Mallory, you've been most helpful. I'll get back to you as soon as I've had a chance to study your report, if not before…" He let the sentence end with an unfinished note, almost a speculative note, but Kirsten wasn't paying much attention. She was removing herself quickly and thankfully from his office.

With an automatic smile for Susan Phillips, the efficient older woman Kendrick had selected the first day as his secretary, Kirsten hurried into the corridor and down the stairs of the two-story building to her library. Ben Williamson stuck his elegantly shaggy blond head out of his office and stopped her en route.

"How did it go, Kirsten? Did the ogre take a bite out of you?" Ben's laughing brown eyes met hers and she forced herself to relax. After all, nothing terrible had occurred yet. Why was she so tense?

Casually Kirsten shrugged and smiled back. "Nothing as drastic as a bite, but I wouldn't want to be hanging around at feeding time! I don't think there's a lot of mercy in the man!"

"That goes without saying." Ben grinned. "Why do you think Silco hired him in the first place? You don't send a lamb to do a wolf's job!" His masculine appreciation of an older, tougher man was obvious. In five years, when Ben reached thirty-five, thought Kirsten sarcastically, he probably hoped people would talk about him in the same terms! Men!

"You're right," she finally sighed. "You have to remember I'm more accustomed to the sedate atmosphere of academic libraries where people aren't so inclined to measure accomplishment in money terms. Or if they are, they manage to be more civilized about it!"

"I know, love. Look, it's Friday. Don't forget I'm picking you up around seven for dinner, right?"

Kirsten took in the ingratiatingly friendly smile and nodded agreeably. "I won't forget." For some reason the way Ben's hair curled slightly around his ears reminded her of how severe Simon Kendrick's hair was cut. In both cases, she decided, the haircuts were indicative of the personalities of the two men. Ben was a man a woman would never need to fear, no matter how he hoped to become more like Kendrick! With that thought Kirsten relaxed a little more. She hadn't realized just how tense she had been in the interview.

"See you at seven." she called and continued the rest of the way down the hall. Walking into the one-room library, she discovered an engineer examining a technical manual on transistors and immediately the professional side of her nature took over. Putting Simon Kendrick completely out of her mind, she went forward to help. So many engineers had seemingly never learned to read!

That evening Kirsten took her time getting ready for the date with Ben. He was a good man, she told herself firmly, pulling on sheer panty hose. A man totally different from Jim Talbot, and wasn't that what she wanted? Never again would she get involved with the tough domineering type, she promised herself. That sort of man was all very well in romantic novels, but she had learned the hard way how painful marriage to the type could be. Literally. It would be a long time, if ever, before she forgot the fear and pain of the last night she had seen her husband alive. That had been over three months ago. Jim had been killed in a car accident within a week after she had fled the house in the dark hours of the early morning. She had left with nothing but her clothes and the keys to the car that had been hers before the short-lived marriage.

Taking a deep breath, she put the whole sordid picture out of her head and concentrated on preparing for the evening with Ben. Safe, dependable Ben. Deliberately she selected a long, soft yellow dress that would be pleasant for dancing. Ben was fond of dancing and that suited Kirsten. They had started dating a month ago, although Kirsten knew that was far too soon for a newly widowed bride to be out gallavanting around. But this bride had felt no grief after her husband's death. Only a sense of relief. Besides, few people knew how recent the tragedy had been. She made no secret of her status as a widow, but had carefully allowed people to think more time had passed since Jim's death than was the case. If some wondered why she had gone back to using her own last name, none questioned it to her face. And what business was it of anyone else's?

Kirsten took a last turn before the mirror in the bathroom with its yellow towels hanging from the racks, the yellow shower curtain, and the yellow rug. It was difficult to tell where the bathroom furnishings stopped and the yellow gown began, she thought with a sudden giggle. An objective survey of her slender form revealed nothing new. After twenty-eight years Kirsten had no illusions about the limitations of her own looks. The large, intelligent gray eyes were the best feature of an otherwise pleasant but certainly not beautiful face. The soft brown hair was loose tonight because she knew Ben liked it that way. While certain women had made it clear that at her age she should consider getting a cut, men never complained. As there was nothing particularly outstanding about the rest of her. Kirsten decided, she was entitled to the luxury of wearing her hair any way she liked. It was kept pinned up at work, of course, because it gave her what she considered a more professional look that way. With a small grimace she whirled away from the mirror to answer the sudden knocking on the door.

Ben's happy face when she opened the door was reward enough for the effort she had taken. Apparently she had managed to make herself fairly presentable tonight, Kirsten decided.

"You're looking very tasty, love," Ben told her cheerfully, guiding Kirsten into his small sports car and waiting to close the door until she had gathered in the yellow skirt. Kirsten knew he was going to say that. He always said it.

"And you, as usual, are looking too well turned-out for Richland," she grinned back through the open window. It was true that Ben generally looked modishly dressed. Kirsten suspected that a fair-sized chunk of his salary as an engineer went into his wardrobe and the flashy TR7 in which they now sat.

"I know. I'm wasted on this burg. We both are. What do you say we skip the scintillating evening awaiting us at the River Inn and catch the night flight over to Seattle?" He slid into the seat beside her.

"You're serious, aren't you?" Kirsten laughed, glancing sideways at his handsome, if somewhat soft, profile. He flicked a quick look back at her while shifting out of the parking lot and she thought she detected a note of speculation in the playful brown gaze. Better squelch that in a hurry, Kirsten told herself. Ben was easy to squelch. "Well, I'm sorry, I can't make it tonight. I forgot my flippers!"

"It doesn't always rain in Seattle, Kirsten. And even when it does, people ignore it! Part of the mystique of the city, I'm told!" Ben returned his attention to his driving as he pulled out into the light evening traffic. "Why don't we check it out sometime and get a firsthand report?"

Kirsten hesitated. The invitation was undoubtedly for more than a casual visit to check the weather in Seattle. She had been expecting it and had toyed with different approaches to handling it. But all her answers so far had boiled down to "no." She felt no respect for her late husband's memory, but Kirsten had been too badly hurt, suffered too many doubts about her own judgment, to jump immediately into another serious romance.

"Ben," she began as gently as possible, only to have him toss her a cheeky grin and take the problem out of her hands.

"Don't worry, love. I won't rush you. Can't blame a guy for trying, can you?"

"You know how much I've enjoyed the past month," she smiled back, grateful again for his lighthearted approach to life.

"And that's good enough for now," he finished. "Come on, love, let's show this town what class is all about!" With that he swung the tiny wedge-shaped car into the parking lot of the sprawling hotel overlooking the Columbia River. It was too dark now to see the wide stretch of water that flowed serenely in front of the hotel, but Ben nevertheless asked the hostess for a window table. He always requested a window table. A very predictable man.

The attractive dining room with its floor to ceiling windows and soft lighting hummed in a pleasantly busy fashion. Linen and silver gleamed softly as the staff moved efficiently in response to the usual weekend crowd.

"I feel as if I've memorized the menu," Ben grumbled good-naturedly as he accepted it from the waiter. "It would be worth that trip to Seattle just to eat someplace new!"

"The town's growing. I see they're putting in a new fast hamburger place just down the road! How can you imply a lack of restaurants? That makes five new fast-food places in the past year, I'm told."

"Terrific. And are they going to feature an extensive new wine list?" Ben took the one which was being proffered by the waiter and automatically handed it to Kirsten. "This is the part I look forward to," he confided. "Although as far as my taste buds go, you might as well order jug wine! Will you do the honors again?"

"You may have memorized the menu, but I think I could recite this list in my sleep." She smiled, bending her head to examine the few French offerings. They had already tried the interesting California labels. Ben's willingness to leave the wine selection to her pleased Kirsten. It was one of those things she genuinely liked about him. He wasn't so hung up on the macho routine that he had to try and fake his way through a subject he knew nothing about. When he had discovered she had a real interest in wines on their first date, he had handed her the list and told her to choose. Now he waited patiently while she scanned the list, inquired as to his menu selection, and finally made her choice. By unspoken mutual agreement she always let him handle the routine of accepting the wine from the waiter and tasting it. Instinct told her he would balk at relenquishing the masculine role entirely.