An Independent Wife Read Online Free

if Sallie had heard one comment from an excited woman about how handsome Rhydon Baines was she had heard a hundred. Even women who were happily married were thrilled to be working with Rhy.
    He was more than a top reporter-he was a celebrity.

    Sallie was already bored with the entire business. First thing this morning she was going to ask Greg for an assignment, anything to get away until things calmed down. She'd already been three weeks between assignments so no one would think it odd that she was becoming restless. It was more than a month until the charity ball in Sakarya and she didn't think she'd be able to sit still that long.

    Suddenly noticing the time, she cast a last quick glance over her slender form, neat and capable in dark blue slacks and a blue silk shirt. Her hair was pulled back and braided into one long fat rope and, as the final touch, she had added a pair of dark glasses. She could tell anyone who asked that she had a headache and the light hurt her eyes; the glasses weren't so dark that she couldn't work with them on if necessary.

    Then she had to rush, and as the elevator in her apartment building was notoriously slow in arriving she used the stairs, running down them two at a time and reaching her bus stop just as the bus was closing its doors. She yelled and pounded on the doors and they slid open and the driver grinned at her.
    "Wondered where you were," he said jokingly. In actual fact, she was a regular bus door pounder.

    She made it to the office with a minute to spare and collapsed into her chair, wondering how she had made it across the street without being hit at least six times. The blood was racing through her veins and she grinned. It was time for some action when her usual method of getting to work was beginning to seem exciting!

    "Hi," Brom greeted her. "Ready to meet the man?"

    "I'm ready to do some traveling," she retorted. "I've been here too long. I'm growing cobwebs. I think I'll beard Greg in his den and see if I can't get some action. "

    "You're nuts," Brom informed her bluntly. "Greg's quick today. You'd be better off to wait until tomorrow."

    "I'll take my chances," Sallie said blithely. "Don't you always? Hey, why the glasses? Are you trying to hide a black eye?" Brorn pounced, his eyes lighting up at the possibility that Sallie had gotten involved in a brawl somewhere.

    "Nope." To convince him she raised the glasses to let him see for himself that her eyes were normal, then set them back in place on her nose. "I've got a headache and the light is bothering me."

    "Do you have migraines?" Brom asked in concern. "My sister has 'em and the light always bothers her."

    "I don't think it's a migraine," she hedged. "It's probably just a nervous reaction to sitting still for so long."

    Brom laughed, as she had meant him to, and she made her escape to talk to Greg before Rhy arrived and all chance was lost.

    As she neared Greg's open door she heard him on the phone, his voice curt and impatient, and Sallie's eyebrows rose as she listened. Greg was by nature an impatient man, one of the doers of the world, but he wasn't usually unreasonable but his attitude now didn't strike her as being reasonable. Brom was fight, Greg was "quicker" than usual, edgy and irascible, and she had no doubt that it was all due to Rhy's impending arrival.

    When she heard the phone crash down into the cradle she poked her head around the door and inquired, "Would a cup of coffee help?"

    Greg's dark head jerked up at the sound of her voice and his mouth moved into a wry grimace. "I'm swimming in coffee now," he grunted in reply. "Hell's bells, I didn't know there were so many idiots working in this building. I swear if one more fool calls me--"

    "Everyone's nervous," she soothed.

    "You're not," he pointed out. "Why the glasses? Are you so famous now that you've got to travel incognito?"

    "There's a reason for the glasses," Sallie retaliated. "But because you're being nasty I won't tell