One Good Turn Read Online Free Page A

her.
    He resumed walking, and Jenny fell into step beside him. They turned the corner onto another tree-lined block of preserved historical houses and quaint street lamps. She didn’t dare to look directly at him again, but a quick glimpse informed her that he, too, had buried his hands in his pockets. She recalled his tapered fingers, the way he’d held his beer bottle by the neck, the way his wristbone had protruded. She noticed the masculine hair, a pale brown shade, growing over the sun-bronzed skin of his forearms.
    To distract herself, she asked, “Where are you working?”
    “On the Hill.”
    “The Capitol? How exciting!”
    He shrugged nonchalantly.
    Eager to spend her last summer before graduation in Washington, she had taken the civil service exam for summer employees and sent in a general application, agreeing to accept a job wherever an opening could be found. The State Department had contacted her, performed a security clearance on her, and hired her as a floating clerk to replace the regularly employed administrative assistants when they took their vacations. Some of the college kids she’d met were in the city on special grants to do research at the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian, and some with financial resources Jenny lacked were involved in volunteer work for political parties and the like.
    But to work at the Capitol—that was where the glamor was. “What do you do there?” she asked Lucas.
    “I’m a gofer,” he said modestly. “I’m working in Senator Howard Milford’s office.”
    “Senator Milford? Wow!”
    He eyed her quizzically, and she realized she must be coming across like a hick. She refused to temper her enthusiasm, though. “My father got me the job,” he elaborated, as if that was supposed to make it less thrilling.
    “Does you father work in Washington?”
    “Not directly.” Lucas reflected for a minute, his gaze losing its focus again—or else focusing on something Jenny couldn’t see. “He’s a lawyer, representing clients who need access. He maintains contacts with a lot of people on the Hill. He does a fair amount of business here in town.”
    Lucas’s voice had taken on a quality of—not quite disapproval but distaste, perhaps. It was considered fashionable to frown upon influence peddlers like his father. But most people were secretly jealous of their power.
    Jenny wondered if Lucas was. She herself wasn’t. Raw power had never held much appeal to her.
    “How about you?” he asked. “Where are you working?”
    “State.”
    “Yeah?” He smiled. “Do you get to read any juicy communications?”
    She smiled back and held up her hand. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”
    “Oh, come on—one little leak won’t kill you.”
    She shook her head. “I can’t.” Then she relented with a laugh. “To tell the truth, I don’t see much juicy stuff at all. I’m in the Western Europe division, which is about as un-juicy as you can get. It’s all friendly communiques.”
    “Not a single dirty little tidbit?” he goaded her.
    “You want a dirty little tidbit?” She leaned toward him, as if about to confide an earth-shaking secret. “One of the big policy makers in the Western Europe division—a deputy assistant secretary whose name you’d know if I ever mentioned it—is addicted to M&M peanuts.”
    Lucas feigned shock. “No!”
    “It’s the truth. He goes through a one-pound bag every couple of days.”
    “Is he fat?”
    “If I described him to you you might figure out who he was.”
    Lucas laughed again. And then she saw it—a tinge of warmth in his eyes, an almost imperceptible change but one Jenny recognized because she’d been searching for it, hoping for it. A flicker of light, a hint of hope, a glimmer of spirit. She saw it and felt as if the universe had all of a sudden become a better place.
    It made no sense. Why should this man mean anything special to her? Why should he have such a profound effect on her? Why was she willing to work so