Free Something Different/Pepper's Way by Kay Hooper Page A

receiver gently. “‘Curiouser and curiouser,’” she murmured to herself. She smiled into the darkness for a while.
    Then she fell asleep.
    Gypsy slept six hours—no more, no less. It was a peculiarly exact habit in a quite definitely inexact person. But apparently her biological clock was set for precisely six hours of sleep and not a second more. And during those six hours, Armageddon could have occurred without disturbing Gypsy.
    She dressed and went through her morning routine. She fed the animals and herself, unlatched the pet door, and checked the weather (rainy). Sunday was “dealer’s choice” when it came to the day’s drink. She decided on iced tea and made a pitcherful.
    Since her parents were coming to visit, she unlocked the front door—heaven only knew what she’d be doing by the time they arrived, so they usually just walked right in.
    Then she carried a glass of tea to her desk, put a sheet of paper into Herman, and got down to work.
    The morning advanced steadily as she worked. The rain stopped and the sun came out. Her canine and feline companions checked on progress from time to time and then disappeared. Gypsy refilled her glass once.
    With utter concentration and not a little willpower, she’dmanaged to put Chase out of her mind while she worked. And she was glad about that; not even friendship would be possible between them if thoughts of him disrupted her work, and Gypsy knew it. As impossible as she was to live with while she was writing, she was even worse when something prevented her from writing.
    Around ten A.M. she heard the sound of a car in her driveway, but continued to work without a pause. If it was her parents, they’d come inside; anyone else would knock.
    A few moments later her father came in. He was a tall man, slender and distinguished. His hair was black, save for wings of silver framing his lean face. Mild blue eyes gazed peacefully out from beneath straight brows. And lines of struggle coexisted peacefully with lines of humor on his face.
    An interesting face for any artist—and Gypsy’s mother had painted it more than once.
    Gypsy lifted an absent cheek for his kiss. “Hi, Poppy,” she said vaguely.
    “Hello, darling.” Her father saluted the cheek, and then rested his hip against the corner of her desk. Conversationally he added, “There’s a man up a tree in your front yard.”
    “Oh?” She briskly corrected a misspelled word. “That’s Chase.”
    “An admirer, darling?”
    “Neighbor.” Gypsy finished a paragraph and briefly debated over the next one before beginning to type again. “Did you ask him why he was in the tree?”
    “I didn’t want to pry,” her sire murmured.
    Gypsy acknowledged the gentle remark with a faint twinkle as she pulled the completed page from Herman. “I suppose Corsair stole his car keys again,” she explained cheerfully.
    Allen Taylor didn’t even blink. “When did Corsair start stealing keys?”
    “Yesterday. Where’s Mother?”
    “Helping Chase, I assume. She went to see if he needed help.”
    “Oh. Half a minute, Poppy; let me finish this page and I’ll be through for the day.” Gypsy was trying desperately not to think about Chase’s first meeting with her mother. But… oh, she wished she could be a butterfly poised on a flower out there….
    Just as she was pulling the last sheet out of Herman, her father spoke again. He’d wandered over to her bookcase, and now held the masked rider’s souvenir in his hand.
    “What’s this?”
    “What does it look like? It’s a silver bullet obviously.”
    “Silver plated,” her father corrected gravely.
    “It’s the thought that counts,” Gypsy reproved.
    “Oh. Where did you get it?”
    “That’s obvious too.”
    “I see.” He placed the souvenir back on the shelf.
    Gypsy’s father was very good at not asking nosy questions.
    They had just stepped into the living room when her mother and Chase came inside. And Chase looked so utterly bemused and