A Lyon's Share Read Online Free Page A

as the word spread that everyone was to leave. At one-thirty, Brandt sent Lyle Baines home, but it was going on three o'clock by the time Joan finished typing the corrected construction bid. While she covered the typewriter and straightened her desk, he affixed his signature and slipped the quotation into its envelope.
    "It's worse, isn't it?" she murmured as she saw Brandt staring out the window.
    Over his shoulder, he watched her tie the scarf around her neck, his expression grimly serious, but he gave no response to her question. His silence was a louder answer. Yet his dark vitality reassured her in some mysterious way.
    Walking swiftly, they covered the distance of the corridors from his private office to the front door. The blast of wind nearly knocked Joan off her feet as they stepped outside. His arm circled her waist in support and guided her in the direction of the adjacent parking lot. Visibility had been reduced by the driving snow to only a few feet and Joan knew Brandt was guiding her to his car on instinct alone.
    "This is ridiculous!" he snapped suddenly, and stopped.
    In the span of a few seconds, he had turned her around and was leading her back to the building. Her teeth were already chattering from the subzero temperature when the door closed behind them. Almost unwillingly, she met his penetrating gaze.
    "We're better off staying here," he said, "than taking the risk of being stranded in the car. At least, here we have food, heat and lights."
    His eyes held hers for an instant longer before Joan broke away in self-conscious confusion. The weather forecast had stated that the blizzard would continue through the night and into Saturday, which meant she and Brandt would be together, for the next twenty-four hours or more.
    "Of course you're right." Logic made her agree as she busied her suddenly unsteady fingers with the knot of her scarf. "Although once you've dined on the canteen fare, you may question whether it's food!"
    "Nothing seems to shatter your poise, Miss Somers" he grinned crookedly, "not even the prospect of possibly being stranded for the weekend with your boss."
    Joan had seen his face transformed by a smile before, but rarely had she ever been the recipient. Quicksilver excitement danced in her veins, but she quickly drowned it with the sobering memory of the petite blonde. She couldn't admit that she wasn't looking forward to his exclusive company for the weekend. Admiration and respect were the only feelings she wanted to have towards him. To know him as more than her employer might not be safe for her carefully preserved peace of mind.
    "Neither one of us is responsible for the storm," Joan shrugged, knowing her composure at that moment was not what she would have desired it to be. A thousand inner apprehensions were hammering at her nerves. "It doesn't do any good to complain about the things we can't change."
    "That saves me from apologizing for not sending you home earlier," Brandt remarked, a glitter of amusement in his eyes.
    "And that saves me from reminding you that you should have," she returned in the same light vein, and immediately regretted her lapse into the kind of teasing rejoinders she and Ed had exchanged the previous weekend. She stepped rather quickly away from him. "Excuse me while I call my room-mate so she won't start worrying about me."
    Joan felt his gaze following her as she hurried down the corridor to her office. Why can't he be fifty years old and married, she asked herself with a rueful sigh, or, at thirty-five, paunchy and balding instead of so compellingly magnetic?
    Returning her coat to its hanger, she walked to her desk and dialed the telephone number of her apartment. On the second ring, Kay answered.
    "Joan, where are you?" her room-mate demanded frantically.
    "I'm at work," she answered.
    "I've been imagining you stuck somewhere in a snowbank like half the population of Chicago," Kay sighed in relief. "Isn't the boss going to bring you home?"
    "In this