Free Let Me In by Carolyn Faulkner Page B

believe the asking price was three hundred thousand?"
    "Yes, it was, but—"
    "Why don't we round that up to an even five? Would that help make the painting salable to me?" he asked, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit coat to retrieve his checkbook and pen.
    Miranda was dumbstruck at the sums of money he was throwing around as if they were talking about nickels and dimes. "Fi-five hundred thousand? Dollars?"
    His wolfish smile dissolved into what looked like a real one. "To whom should I make it out?" he asked, pen poised over his check.
    She shook her head, trying to clear it. Five hundred thousand dollars would keep her in painting supplies for years to come – hell, if she lived frugally, she might even be able to quit the bank and paint full time, which had always been her dream.
    But she couldn't see selling herself – and she would literally be doing just exactly that – to a man like him. She just... couldn't. She didn't care if she had to eat ramen noodles every night for the rest of her life. She didn't want him to carry such an intimate portrait of her home so that he could jerk off to it every night.
    So she shook her head and mentally prepared herself for a fight that could have the potential to be come physical. It almost always had with Zach. She tried to ignore the way her body had begun to shake again at the mere thought of having a physical confrontation with anyone, much less a man like this who was bigger and broader than Zach had ever thought of being. "No, I'm afraid it's not for sale at any price. I've decided to keep it."
    He could see – despite how well he knew she thought she was concealing it from him – that she was quaking with fear. He didn't know what he'd done that had inspired that in her – since it was the exact opposite of what he had been aiming for, but he could see the stark truth of it in her eyes. She was almost paralyzed with it, and yet she was obviously forcing herself to tell him not what he wanted to hear – what would get him out of her hair the fastest – but rather what she wanted him to hear.
    The woman had balls, more cajones than a lot of men he knew. He would bet his bottom dollar that someone, somewhere along the line had managed to cow her into submission – probably using his fists, which made Mace see red to the point that he wanted desperately to put his fist through the nearest wall at the thought of anyone manhandling her delicacy.
    But foremost in his mind was trying to put her at ease as best he could. "Well then, my mistake. I hope you've had a profitable evening. You're very talented, and I'll look forward to seeing even bigger and better things from you in the future." He walked over to the door and stood there expectantly for her to let him out.
    When she approached the door and undid it, all the while looking at him with an unnatural wariness that he longed to wipe from those extraordinary eyes of hers, he held his hand out to her, but not too close. "By the way, my name is Mace Kennedy. I'm very pleased to meet such a lovely and talented woman as yourself."
    She blushed hotly at his words and forced herself to shake his hand politely, knowing hers was terribly cold and clammy and what that would reveal to him about her that she didn't necessarily want him to know. "It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Kennedy—"
    "Mace, please."
    Her smile was small, but genuine, he felt and he counted that as a small victory.
    "And I'm Miranda LaVoie."
    He bowed to her in an unusual impulse. "You're even more beautiful in person than you are in your painting, Ms. LaVoie."
    Her color rose again and she allowed, "Miranda, please."
    He smiled pleasantly down at her. "Miranda – your name means 'worthy of admiration', and I'm thinking it's quite apt. You have a nice evening, Miranda."
    Belatedly, after she'd seen him disappear into the night, she said, "You, too, Mace."
    Randa had figured that that would be the last she'd see of him, but she was wrong. She worked