Snow Job Read Online Free Page B

with the other hand as she sidestepped Astro’s lunge and flipped the squeaky down the hal way. The dog chased it in delight, tucking his tail and running low to the ground in the manner of his evident Border Col ie ancestors, and Elyce turned back to see Karl smiling. It unsettled her to see a smiling and happy Karl here, in the house where she’d moved when she left him.
    “Why are you here, Karl?”

    He met her stare frankly, the smile fading from his lips to be replaced with something grimmer. Standing up, brushing the dog hair from his jeans, he sat back down on the couch, looking suddenly like a grownup again, like the high-powered business executive he was. And in a businesslike way, he stated his reason for being there.
    “I’m here because I have a proposition for you.
    Something that might be to our mutual advantage.”
    Elyce put her cup and saucer down on the coffee table and sat on the couch at the farthest possible distance from Karl. It wasn’t far. It was a smal couch. “A proposition? Is this about us or about the development thing?”
    “Both,” he admitted. “About my family, anyway, and the development thing.”
    “Okay,” she said hesitantly. “I guess if it’s important enough to bring you here this early on a Saturday, I can hear you out. Although why you couldn’t have just phoned me…”
    “It wasn’t the sort of thing I thought would go over wel on a phone cal . And I didn’t know you were sleeping in, although I guess I should have assumed you would be. You always do when you get the chance.”
    Elyce wished she’d remained standing. From her current location she could smel Karl’s aftershave, lightly applied though it was. And the clean smel of his hair, which despite his long drive that morning was stil a tiny bit damp over his ears and at the back. He always kept it short, but the thick curls took a long time to dry, she recal ed, especial y in the cold weather.
    “What made you assume I’d be alone?” she asked suddenly, remembering that when he’d seen her last she’d been on a date. Or at least, on what he clearly assumed was a date. Not that she had done anything to suggest otherwise. She had to remind herself now that it actual y had been a date.
    Karl shrugged again. “I didn’t. But when I got here I only saw one car, and it was your car. So I figured I was pretty safe.”
    Astro leapt to the couch between them and turned around happily with his captured toy, tramping in a circle before settling down to gnaw at the squeaky. His goal, as always, was to disembowel the toy and remove the squeaker itself, thereby silencing it forever. On the dark brown leather of the loveseat, loose white hairs from his rough coat were already visible. Elyce knew from experience that contrasting dark hairs from Astro’s few scattered black spots would have already been shed onto the light tan duvet that covered her bed. Within minutes of his arrival, it seemed, the house was always covered in dog hair that she never seemed ful y able to clean up before his next visit.
    “You don’t want any development on the inlet, right? No matter what it is, you just don’t want it happening?”
    She eyed him cautiously. “Right. It’s a fragile, protected inlet with a specific microclimate. It needs to be left untouched. Anything you build there is going to threaten the
    —”
    “I get it,” Karl interrupted impatiently. “You made yourself clear about the shrimp thing yesterday. Although you had no trouble eating their cousins at dinner with Andrew Barron, I noticed.”
    “We’re working on a number of cases together,” she replied haughtily.
    “Are you sleeping with him?”
    His question was inevitable, but she bristled as though she hadn’t expected it. “That’s none of your business.”
    In the horrible silence that fol owed, Astro sat up with a little whine, his bright brown eyes traveling anxiously from one human face to the other as though he wanted them to say something