And Babies Make Four Read Online Free Page B

to his list of faults. Filthy beast voyeur, he thought grimly. One step above ax murderer.
    Uncle Gus had said he had a soft heart, but no one had ever accused him of having a soft head. He was about to spend ten days in close quarters with this woman—ten days that would be difficult enough without her thinking of him as some sort of pervert. He gripped the handle of his tackle box and shoved his big body farther under the bed, shutting his eyes against the unexpectedly charming and—though he’d have died before admitting it—incredibly arousing image of her slim bare feet with their pink-painted nails.
Hell, maybe I am a pervert
.…
    He kept his mouth shut, and hoped to hell that the “intelligent” computers had brains enough to keep theirs shut, too.
    “So you don’t think the diode corrosion will be a problem?” Noel stood beside the bed and adjusted the collar of her white oxford button-down shirt.
    “No way,” Einstein replied confidently. “And if itis, we’ll just get Sam to take a look. ’Cording to his files, the dude can fix anything.”
    “Except his manners,” Noel muttered, then winced. It wasn’t like her to be so mean-spirited—in fact, she was usually the last to say a condemning word about anyone. She ran her hand through her still-damp hair, silently admitting that Sam Donovan had an amazing knack for bringing out the worst in her. She didn’t know why. She wasn’t sure she
wanted
to know why.
    She couldn’t deny that he was good-looking. She also couldn’t deny that he had a certain animal magnetism about him that she found marginally appealing. But what of it? she thought with a nonchalant shrug. If she took away that macho, muscle-bound physique what did he have left? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. Just those incredible, heart-stopping, breath-robbing blue eyes, and that slow sultry smile that made her insides sizzle like a strip steak on a Texas grill …
    “So where is our host?” she asked abruptly. “I haven’t seen or heard him since I got out of the shower.”
    PINK piped up. “That’s ’cause he’s under the—”
    “Weather,” Einstein interrupted. “Er, the dude wasn’t feeling so hot, so he took off for a while.”
    PINK’s camera tilted questioningly to the side. “No, he didn’t. He’s—”
    Suddenly Noel heard the loud whir of Einstein’s coprocessor, a sign that he was exchanging a flood of info-bytes with PINK over their coax-cable link.What kind of information was so critical that he couldn’t wait for PINK to finish her sentence? Frowning, she left the bed and walked toward the computers, smelling a digital rat. “Okay, you two, what’s going on here?”
    “Nothing,” E assured her.
    “Nothing,” PINK echoed. “Sam’s not here. He’s never been here. And he’s not hiding under the bed, either.”
    Noel glanced sharply at the large four-poster, a horrible thought crossing her mind. What if he— But no … Donovan wasn’t the type to hide in a dark corner like a Peeping Tom. The man was all bellow and bluster, but somehow she knew he’d never take advantage of a woman. Of course, that didn’t make an ounce of difference in the way she felt about him.
    And how exactly do you feel about him? her conscience nagged.
    Noel bent down, smoothing an almost invisible wrinkle out of her sensible, knee-length navy skirt. “PINK, I think you need to run a diagnostic on your humor program. Your jokes are getting a little thin. Meanwhile I’m going to see if I can locate the absent Mr. Donovan. He said we’d need to meet this Papa Guinea character tonight. I don’t intend to miss that meeting—even if our guide doesn’t seem to give a damn about his paying clients.”
    She thought she heard a sharp hiss. Turning, she looked around … but it was only the wind rustling through the palm leaves on the terrace. Except for the prototypes, she was alone in the room. Except for theprototypes—and her annoyingly persistent