Free The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove by Deborah Smith Page B

a sister to Mr. Audubon, but she died in a ski lift accident in Switzerland when Mr. Audubon was only twelve.”
    “How sad.”
    “Yes.” The increasing reluctance in Bernard’s face told her there might be another unpleasant story behind the sister’s death. “Well,” he said brusquely, smiling, “I shall go and make certain that Mr. Audubon knows you’re waiting …”
    “Was it a happy family?”
    Bernard studied her in silence, as if assessing her right to know. Then he said softly, “No, it was always a most un-happy family, Miss Petrovic. Why do you ask?”
    “I want to understand him.”
    “He’s a very fine man despite his family, but also
because
of it. Sometimes the saddest upbringing molds the strongest character.”
    “I like to think so, myself.”
    “Your parents?…” Bernard let his words hang, a question.
    She shook her head. “My father was killed in a factory accident when I was a baby. My mother was a schoolteacher, but she disappeared when I was five. I hardly remember her. But what I remember is very good.”
    “She
disappeared
?” Audubon asked.
    Elena pivoted, startled to see Audubon between the open French doors. “Please, don’t spy on us,” she teased after a second. Her heart beat wildly. His slow, inscrutable examination of her new look could be disapproval or disappointment. It was very intense. “I have so few secrets left,” she added.
    “I’m sure that’s not true.”
    He crossed the patio to her and Bernard, who stepped back, smiled, and glided into the house. She smoothed sweaty palms over her trim, black skirt. It was knee-length and rather demure, she thought, except that she’d never worn a skirt made of leather before. She hoped that he didn’t think her too prim in the plum-colored blouse with its billowing sleeves and buttoned collar. Suddenly she wished that she’d worn high heels instead of black flats. And lighter-colored clothes. American women dressed so cheerfully for spring, but she, like an ignorant peasant, had chosen purple and black!
    He was dressed in a handsome casual shirt with large, graceful pockets on the chest and rolled up shirt sleeves. It heightened the width of his chest at the same time that the drape of it scooped dramatically into his well-honed waist, surrounded by the slender belt he wore with pleated tan trousers.
    His studied casualness whispered of strolls past cafés on the Riviera, of comfortable elegance lounging in the seat of a Ferrari, of sheer masculine confidence combined with very old, very aristocratic money. She began to get a headache.
    “You look very ethnic,” he said, stopping in front of her. “The blouse is very … cossack. Yes. You’re a very attractive female cossack, even if you don’t know how to ride a horse.” He paused, and now that he was little more than a pace away, she saw the admiration that made his green eyes glisten like polished jade. “And your hair …”
    He lifted a hand and ran his forefinger along the wavy strands that ended in a gently blunt style at her jawline. Mr. Rex had told her to keep the side part, but he’d performed some kind of cutting magic so that her thick hair only draped to the outside edge of her brow. She no longer had to peer through it or yank it back with barrettes.
    She almost wished for its privacy screen. Audubon’s admiration and the closeness of his body made her quiver inside; the look in his eyes sent directsignals to every reckless impulse she’d never been able to indulge before—and had never wanted so badly to indulge now.
    But she kept her eyes trained on his, scolding him for trying so openly to hypnotize her, scolding herself for being such a gullible kitten, eager for stroking. “I was investigating you,” she warned. “If you hadn’t shown up so soon, I would have pried all of your secrets out of poor, unsuspecting Bernard. I am actually a Soviet spy, you know, and very tricky. My code name is Red Delilah.”
    “Oh? I thought the