Linda Lael Miller Bundle by Linda Lael Miller Page B

down nearby and clinking his own glass against hers.
    Now, Shay’s eyes darted to his face. She was stung to an anger that made her forget the one she had sensed in Mitch. “Shocked? You? The adventurer, the sophisticate?”
    His expression had softened; in his eyes Shay saw some lingering annoyance, but this was overshadowed by a certain perplexity. “I wasn’t casting aspersions on your moral character, Shay, so settle down.”
    “Then what were you doing?”
    He only smiled at the snap in her voice, setting his wineglass aside with a slow, lazy motion of one hand. “From the moment I met you, you’ve been trying to keep me at a distance. You might as well have worn a sign saying Look, but Don’t Touch. Yet tonight, you—”
    She couldn’t bear for him to say that she’d seduced him, though it was true, in a manner of speaking. “I’m a woman of the eighties!” she broke in, shrugging nonchalantly and lifting her wineglass in an insolent salute, though in truth she felt like sliding down inside the sleeping bag and hiding there.
    “Yes,” Mitch replied wryly. “The eighteen-eighties.”
    “I resent that!”
    He took her wineglass and set it aside. “Strange. That’s one of the most interesting things about you, you know. Despite what we just did, you’re an innocent.”
    “Is that bad or good?”
    He took the shirt she’d been clutching and flung it away, giving her bare breasts a wicked assessment with those quick, bold eyes of his. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said, and then they made love again, this time in the light.

6
    T he box containing what remained of the Rosamond Dallas legend was a silent reprimand to Mitch. He rolled his head and worked the taut muscles in his neck with one hand. You’ll be safe with me, he’d told Shay. No heavy scenes, he’d said.
    He heard that ridiculous old car of hers grind to a start in the driveway and swore. She’d come there to have dinner and to work and instead she was making a getaway in the gray light of a drizzling dawn, afraid of encountering his housekeeper.
    Mitch shook his aching head and swore again, but then a slow, weary smile broke over his face. He regretted buying the house and he regretted ever mentioning Rosamond Dallas to his agent, but he couldn’t regret Shay. For better or for worse, she was the answer to all his questions.
    He walked to the middle of the library floor, knelt on the carpet and began going through the photographs, diaries and clippings that made up Rosamond Dallas’s life.
     
    At home Shay took a hot, hasty shower and dressed for work. She kept waiting for the guilt, the remorse, the regret, but there were no signs of any such emotion. Her body still vibrated, like a fine instrument expertly played, and her mind, for the first time in years, was quiet.
    While she brushed her hair and applied her makeup with more care than usual, Shay remembered the nights with Eliott and wondered what she’d seen in him.
    She paused, lip pencil in midair, and gazed directly into the mirror. “Hold it, lady,” she warned her reflection out loud. “One night on a man’s sleeping bag does not constitute a pledge of eternal devotion, you know. Don’t forget that you threw yourself at him like a—like a brazen hussy!” Shay frowned hard, for emphasis, but even those sage words, borrowed in part from one of her mother’s early movies, could not dampen her soaring spirits. She was in love with Mitch Prescott, really in love, for the first time in her life, and for the moment, that was enough.
    Of course, it made no sense to be so happy—there was every chance that she’d just made a mistake of epic proportions—but Shay didn’t let that bother her either. Mitch’s feelings, whatever they might be, were his own problem.
    She drove to Reese Motors and soared into her office, only to find Ivy waiting in ambush. Even though the phones were ringing and Richard’s camera crew was crowded into the reception room, Ms. Prescott sat