Operation Cinderella by Hope Tarr Page B

psychic?”
    Startled, she dropped her napkin. “Psychic? Why do you say that?” God, paranoid much?
    “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been partial to anything with peaches—peach ice cream, peach preserves, peach pie, and especially peach cobbler.” The grin he gave told her he meant it, that he wasn’t just being nice, and she relaxed, for a moment taking genuine pride in having pleased him, an absurdity given her circumstances, as well as dangerous.
    Forcing back the feeling, she picked up her fork and punched into the crust. “I would have guessed apple.” The sarcasm slipped out unbidden. Shit! She cast a quick glance at Ross’s face, searching for signs of fall-out, but his smile held steady.
    “Never much cared for baked apples.” He dropped his voice and added, “Besides, apple pie started out as British.”
    She let out a laugh, a real one this time. “‘As British as apple pie’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?”
    “No, it doesn’t,” he admitted, smiling.
    Though she despised his politics, really everything he stood for, there was no denying that, one-on-one, Ross Mannon was an exceedingly likeable man.
    He turned his attention back to his dessert and forked up a healthy bite. Chewing, he closed his eyes. The sublime look on his face was the kind usually reserved for someone who’d just won the lottery or had incredible sex. Watching him, Macie felt her mouth watering.
    He opened his eyes, and she quickly dropped her ogling gaze to her ignored dessert. “This would give my momma a run for her next county fair ribbon, but promise you won’t ever let on to her I said so.”
    Macie heartily doubted she would ever have the occasion to meet Mannon’s “momma,” but all the same, it was one promise she could honestly make him. “I’ll take your confession to the grave.”
    The next few minutes were silent except for plate scraping. Picking at her portion, Macie used the lull to regroup. She’d had almost two hours solo with her quarry and so far she hadn’t gleaned anything of value. Once Sam returned tomorrow, it was hard to say when she’d get him alone again.
    He pushed his emptied bowl aside. “I stand by what I said earlier. Someday you’re going to make some lucky man a gem of a wife.”
    She sent him a syrupy smile, thinking he’d just handed her the segue she needed to steer the interview to more intimate terrain. “Thank you, what a nice compliment. Being a wife and mother is my…dearest wish.” Greatest nightmare . “But first I’m considering going back to school for my Master’s,” she added, though in reality going anywhere close to a classroom was nowhere in her thoughts.
    He nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Education is important and you still have plenty of time for a family.”
    “I suppose so, but graduate school’s such a big commitment, I want to be sure. I saw from your website bio that you were at UNT for almost ten years. If you don’t mind my asking, did you take some time off?”
    A doctorate in the social sciences typically involved a four-year undergraduate degree followed by a minimum of four years of graduate work; the latter included the requisite classes, master’s thesis, doctoral comprehensive exam, and then the grand finale, the doctoral dissertation. Of course many students took longer to finish—from what Macie had seen, grad school was more of a marathon than a sprint—but still, she would have pegged Mannon for one of the few to finish in an even eight.
    His facial muscles tensed ever so slightly. A rookie might have missed it, but Macie had been interviewing subjects since her high school newspaper days. “I blew my knee out in the last quarter of the Homecoming game. That pretty much nixed my football career, not to mention my athletic scholarship.”
    Pressing her advantage, she asked, “Is that when you decided to pursue a career in sociology?”
    He laughed and shook his head. “Try road construction.”
    Road