Free A MAN CALLED BLUE by EC Sheedy Page B

asking if he'd prefer something else and his declining, she removed his salad and headed back to the kitchen.
    "You don't like salad?" Simone asked.
    "Hate lettuce. Have since I was a kid."
    Simone realized she'd just asked him a personal question. Her first. She also noticed he answered her in his normal voice.
    "Nobody hates lettuce. It's practically un-American."
    He leaned back, ran a finger back and forth over the polished edge of the table, and watched her. "Everybody hates something. I figure lettuce is pretty harmless."
    The subject of lettuce exhausted, they lapsed into silence, until Mrs. Dreiser brought their main course.
    Abruptly, Blue stood. "This is stupid," he said, and striding down to Simone's end of the table, he scooped up her plate under the eyes of a stunned Mrs. Dreiser. "Marie, would you please bring my plate, some cutlery and whatever, to—" He glanced around, then back toward the room they'd been in before dinner. He gestured toward it with his shoulder. "In there." With his free hand, he grasped Simone's wrist and tugged her to her feet. Too surprised to resist, she went along.
    He towed her back to the smoking room.
    Blue selected a small table from a side wall and placed it between the two wingback chairs in front of the fireplace, and while Mrs. Dreiser briskly set it, he put on a CD from Simone's collection. Soft jazz.
    He refilled her wineglass and sat opposite her. " This is more like it. Never eat with a person if you can't see the whites of their eyes, my dad always said."
    Underneath the small table, their knees touched. She tried to ignore it. "Really?"
    Blue chuckled. "No, but if he'd thought of it, he would have. Between spits and ales, that is," he added.
    Simone warmed. "I'm truly sorry about that, Blue. I wasn't thinking."
    He shrugged off her apology. "It's okay." He ate a piece of thinly sliced roast beef. "So tell me. Do you always eat like Elizabeth the First?"
    She answered with a question of her own. "Where do you usually eat?"
    "On the deck of Three Wishes, watching the sun go down, whenever I can."
    "Three Wishes?"
    "Fifty-three feet of sleek lines and purring engines. She's one beautiful lady. We're inseparable."
    Simone gave him a questioning look.
    "My boat."
    "Sounds like a case of true love."
    "It is."
    "No real-life lady in your life?" She couldn't believe she'd asked the question, but didn't deny the tightness in her breast as she waited for his answer.
    "Around it? Yes. In it? No."
    Pleased with his answer, Simone didn't bother analyzing why. Instead, she sipped her wine. The room, the music, the big comfortable chair were relaxing. It had been forever since she eased back, let go. She slipped off her shoes and sank deeper into her seat, pushing her plate to the side. Suddenly, she wasn't the least bit hungry—except for more of Blue's voice.
    "So tell me about her, this boat you love so much."
    He stopped eating and smiled. "Never ask a man to talk about his boat or his golf score. Unless, of course, you're planning to spend the night with him," he teased.
    "Isn't that what we're doing?"
    He shook his head. "Uh-uh. What we're doing is spending the evening together. Different thing entirely. Besides, I'd rather we talk about you."
    She shifted uneasily. "Shall I use the trite line there's nothing to tell—or shall I be honest and say I'm uncomfortable talking about myself."
    Blue's eyes locked with hers. They were filled with an intense, fixed interest, and she had the crazy notion his eyes were keys, keys that could unlock secret places, opening them to the light and air.
    He, too, pushed aside his plate, his meal half-eaten.
    "I'd like to get past that," he said softly. "I'd like you to be comfortable with me."
    Simone squirmed under the strength of his gaze. She couldn't imagine herself ever being truly at ease with this man. "My life isn't easily understood."
    A ghost of a smile played over his mouth. "With a mother like Josephine, I'm not surprised."
    Simone