“I have no intention of asking you out again,” Jeff replied decisively.
She narrowed her eyes, fingers tightening on the dark red plastic receiver. “You don’t?” she asked, her disbelief obvious in her voice.
“No, ma’am. A man can only take so much rejection,” he drawled.
Oh, Lord. First a Southern gentleman, now an Old West cowhand. “Are you doing anything tomorrow night?” she asked bluntly.
“That depends. Why are you asking?”
She thought seriously about slamming the phone down in his ear but controlled herself. “Would you like to go out to dinner with me? Maybe we could go dancing or something afterward.”
“Gee, I don’t know. This is so sudden.”
Autumn tried very hard not to be amused. “Dammit, Jeff, yes or no?”
He laughed, the sound warming her even through the telephone line. “I really need to study your technique for asking for a date,” he told her. “Such charm. Such tact.”
“Jeff…” Her voice informed him quite clearly that he was about to find himself talking to a dial tone.
“Okay, you’ve talked me into it. What time are you picking me up?”
“How’s seven grab you?”
“Seven grabs me just fine. Thanks for asking.”
Autumn did hang up then, and none too gently.
“I hope you’re happy,” she told Babs, glaring at the innocent-looking animal who’d just come back into the room, happily wagging her tail as she looked up at Autumn. “I just made a first-class fool out of myself. Why do I let him do that to me?”
Babs gave a poodle equivalent of a shrug and settled herself into a lazy curl on the carpet, signifying her desire for a nap. Autumn sighed and picked up her book again. The sad part was, she decided as she unenthusiastically opened it, that she really had wanted to ask Jeff if he was alone.
JEFF LAUGHED when the phone went abruptly dead. Autumn Reed was really something, he mused as he replaced his own receiver, more gently than she had. Although he’d chewed Pam out but good earlier for interfering, he was actually glad that she’d taken the initiative to call Autumn to the clinic. If she hadn’t, Jeff would have eventually. Besides, if Pam hadn’t told him, he still wouldn’t know Autumn’s last name.
He was doubly glad now that he hadn’t asked Autumn out at the clinic. By doing the unexpected and leaving it up to her, he had stumbled upon exactly the right strategy for the stubborn, defiant woman. He had to pause for a moment to ask himself exactly what it was about her that attracted him so strongly, but the answer wasn’t hard to come by. He was enthralled with her. He’d never met anyone quite like her.
She tried so hard to be tough, invulnerable. She probably even believed she succeeded. But Jeff had seen her wet her lips in an unconscious gesture of nerves, had felt her tremble in his arms, had seen the color stain her cheeks when she was embarrassed. She wasn’t so tough. She’d been nervous during that phone call, despite her snippy manner. He wondered who had hurt her so badly that she’d felt it necessary to erect such a brittle shell around her inner softness.
He’d dated a few women who had really been hard, who had completely eliminated that inner softness. Autumn wasn’t one of them, thank God, no matter how she might try to appear to be. Those wide green eyes of hers gave her away. She was a witch, a sorceress, but there was vulnerability behind her skillful spells. Jeff intended to find that vulnerability.
Though she wouldn’t appreciate it one bit, something about her brought out the protective instincts within him. He was caught in her spell—so well trapped that he had no desire to free hi
mself. Perhaps this was only infatuation that he felt for her, nothing more than fascinated desire, but it was a powerful emotion. Like nothing he’d ever felt before. How could he turn away without finding out exactly what it was that possessed him?
When he pursued, she ran.
It seemed that he was going to have to be the pursued.
Jeff grinned and tugged his gray sweatshirt over his head, moving toward the bedroom. The sooner he went to bed, the sooner the next day would come. And the sooner he would be with Autumn again.
GRINDING A CURSE OUT between clenched teeth, Autumn jerked the striped dress over her head and threw it on her bed, where it landed in a slither of color on top of a pile of similarly discarded garments. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she wailed, shoving her hands through her auburn mane as she stared into her closet.
She should call and cancel, she decided. She could tell Jeff she was sick. Or in jail. She wouldn’t tell him the truth—that just over an hour before their date, she’d regressed to adolescence. She had somehow been transformed from a modern, competent woman to a silly, dithering teenager, and damned if she could figure out a way to change back. She didn’t know what to wear, she wasn’t sure what to say or do when she saw him, she was even starting to worry about the goodnight kiss. “Maybe it’s a regressive brain disease,” she mused aloud, causing Babs to look at her with interest. It just had to be biological. Surely a simple Saturday-night dinner date wouldn’t do this to her!
Her doorbell distracted her, and she frowned as she wrapped herself in a terry robe. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She decided it must be her neighbor, Emily, with whom she had become friends during the three months that Emily and her son, Ryan, had occupied the other half of the large duplex. Crossing her living room, she glanced perfunctorily out the peephole and groaned. “What are you doing here, Webb?” she asked as she opened the door.
“Thanks, Autumn, I’d love to come in.” Webb Brothers grinned lazily at her as he strolled past her, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Tall, lanky, sandy-haired Webb was the son of Autumn’s boss, Floyd Brothers, owner of Brothers Electrical Company. It had been Webb who’d convinced his skeptical, traditional father to give a woman electrician—Autumn—a chance to prove herself. Webb had been her champion, her co-worker and her friend ever since. He also took great pleasure in teasing her, and it was that particular trait that had her eyeing him warily now. She was determined to hide her current emotional state from his all-too-perceptive eyes. He’d never let her live it down.
“So, my love, you want to take in a movie tonight?” he asked, tilting his light brown head in a stance he’d carefully copied from Robert Redford because someone had once told him he resembled the attractive actor. Autumn thought he looked a bit like the young Redford, but she would never tell him so. Webb was in no need of ego strokes.