Free Corbin's Fancy by Linda Lael Miller Page B

ordinary hat. As you can also see, this hat is totally empty.” She held the hat out and the spectators peered into it, mumbling.
    Bravely, Fancy plunged her hand into the hat. “Remember, Hershel,” she muttered, under her breath, “you can be replaced.”
    For the first time in weeks, Hershel came out of the black bag that hid him without incident. The audience was stunned at such a feat, and they not only cheeredbut flung precious pennies in a veritable frenzy of acclamation.
    By midafternoon, Fancy was twenty cents richer and flying higher than Phineas’s balloon. Again and again she had performed her act and it seemed that she and Hershel could do no wrong. For once, the tide of fortune was flowing with them.
    But in the space of a heartbeat, everything went wrong. Fancy extended the hat for perhaps the tenth time that day, enjoining the rapt spectators to see for themselves that it was empty. Nothing there, no siree.
    At which time Hershel leaped out of his hiding place and scampered into the crowd, dragging the black bag behind him for several feet before shedding it, like a second skin, on the grass.
    Two old ladies fainted and a man in bib overalls grumbled fraud.
    “Hershel!” Fancy shrieked, rushing after him and colliding with a rock-hard chest in her hurry.
    She straightened, a queer premonition jiggling in the pit of her stomach, and saw what she had both hoped for and feared.
    Jeff Corbin was standing before her, clad in brown trousers and the kind of flowing, open-throated shirt typical of a sea captain, holding a squirming Hershel in both hands. A grin quirked one side of his mouth. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d start singing.”

Chapter Five
    A BITTERSWEET PANG STRUCK F ANCY AS SHE REACHED out, her hands trembling slightly, to take the errant rabbit from Jeff’s hands. She had gone to desperate lengths to avoid seeing him again, and yet she knew a certain joy that he had found her.
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded, as the people who had been watching her act began to drift away.
    The indigo eyes were unreadable, veiled. If Fancy had hoped for some statement of affection, she was bound for disappointment. “I saw the balloon,” he said, gesturing toward Phineas’s craft. It was aloft now, dancing in the breeze, bound to the earth by four separate ropes.
    “Oh,” said Fancy, biting her lower lip.
    The sharp blue gaze sliced back to her face and Jefflifted his hands to his hips. “Did you think I came to swear my undying devotion?”
    “Of course not!” she snapped defensively. But there was still the question of why he had come, and it crackled in Fancy’s heart and mind like a bonfire.
    He looked affronted. “Don’t you believe me capable of such a noble emotion?”
    Fancy was stung because she loved this man, wholly and irrevocably, and she hadn’t planned to feel the things she was feeling, ever. “I cannot imagine you swearing ‘undying devotion’ to anyone. Undying lust is another matter!”
    Jeff laughed and Fancy knew conflicting needs to slap him and hold him close. “That I will admit to,” he said. “Where you’re concerned, at least.”
    Mostly for dramatic effect, Fancy whirled and stormed back to her table, where she thrust the malcontent rabbit into his cage and slammed the door after him. Males! They were all alike—stubborn and self-centered and completely uncooperative! Why, the moment things were going well, one could count on men to snarl them up again!
    When Fancy had secured Hershel underneath the table, she lifted her eyes to Jeff once more and was nettled to see that he had not been paying the least bit of attention to her flouncing umbrage. Damn him, he was watching Phineas’s balloon with the rapt interest of a little boy.
    “Go back to Wenatchee!” she hissed, furious. “I don’t want you here!”
    Now he turned to face her again. The thumb and forefingers of his right hand slid sensuously across his mouth in a motion she knew