Free The Hamilton Heir by Valerie Hansen Page B

Tim asked.
    “Ah, we were just a couple of naive kids. We survived more by sheer coincidence than by our wits.” Staring across the room as if in a daze, he began to smile wistfully. “My Ellie always said she’d got me through that war on her knees. I suppose she did do a powerful lot of prayin’. Most folks did. Ellie and me, we got married as soon as I got back to the States.”
    He blinked, clearing his vision, and looked at Dawn. “She was a good woman, my Ellie. Can I tell you about her? Will you put her in your story?”
    “Of course,” Dawn said tenderly. “This is supposed to be a personal interest feature. You can tell me anything you want to and I’ll do my best to see that it appears in the paper. How about pictures? Do you have any old ones you’d like to share?”
    He snapped out of his reverie, jumped up and grabbed his cane. “You betcha. Got a slew of ’em. Wait there. I’ll be right back.”
    “Good job,” Tim said, verbally patting her on the back after Stuart hobbled out of the room. “Got him. I knew you could do it.”
    She cast a wry smile at her self-satisfied-looking boss. “I got an interview and maybe some pictures. That doesn’t make an article. I still have to write it all down and organize it so it makes sense.”
    “You can do it,” he said with a sidelong glance at the war games table. “Any general who can command an entire army division can certainly sort out the details of one little newspaper article.”
    If anyone other than Tim Hamilton had teased her like that, Dawn would have immediately made a face and playfully smacked his arm. She thought about doing it anyway. In the end, sensibility won out and she merely set her jaw.
    Such displays of informal camaraderie in regard to Tim were more than unwise, she reminded herself. They were foolhardy. Not only was she already forgetting her place and calling him by his first name more often than she liked, she was also beginning to picture him as a potential friend—or more.
    That would never do.
    Timothy Hamilton was her boss, period. He wasn’t her buddy, or her cohort, or her meals-on-wheels fellow volunteer. And he certainly wasn’t her boyfriend, even if her imagination did try to assign him that ridiculous fantasy role whenever she let her guard down.
    Then again, Tim wasn’t as stuffy and unapproachable as she’d originally thought, either. Dawn huffed silently. Life had certainly been easier before he’d hit her car and she’d found out he had a human side, hadn’t it?
    And speaking of cars. Frowning, she stared at him. “Hey. I didn’t notice your silver BMW when I drove up. How did you get here?”
    “My car’s in the shop, too. I dropped it off this afternoon and the dealership gave me a loaner. It’s parked a few doors up the street.”
    “Why didn’t you drive your Ferrari?”
    “Logistics,” Tim said. “It was at home. I wasn’tsure how late Stuart stayed up and I didn’t want to take the extra time to trade vehicles. I may drive it to work in the morning.”
    “Oh.” She didn’t like admitting that she might have turned around and gone home without ever coming in if she’d suspected that Tim was there, but it was true. This interview promised to be difficult enough without adding the distraction his presence brought.
    Stuart returned with a photo album just in time to save Dawn from having to make more small talk. Relieved, she settled on the worn, floral fabric-covered sofa next to the old man and began to take notes while he talked about his fascinating life.
    It would have been a lot easier to concentrate on the task at hand if she hadn’t sensed that Tim was watching her from across the room, obviously assessing her interviewing style and evaluating her skills. Or lack of them.
    She couldn’t believe how hard it was to keep from looking up and making eye contact with him. If she hadn’t had Stuart’s story to concentrate on she didn’t think she could have held out as long as