“I’m basically a very nice person.”
“No, you’re not.” He grinned as he dealt the cards. “But I like you anyway.”
“I am nice,” she insisted, keeping her face carefully bland when she spotted two aces in her hand. “Ask anybody—except my last two supervisors. Open for two.”
Jacob obliged her by adding his two cookies to the pot. He liked her this way—warily friendly, competitive, relaxed, but ready to pounce on any infraction. He supposed it didn’t hurt that the firelight painted interesting shadows that played over those fabulous cheekbones. He checked himself—and his hand. This seemed as good a time as any to find out more about her.
“What did you do, before you came here to decide to be a lawyer?”
She made a face, then drew three cards. “I sold underwear. Ladies’ lingerie, to be specific.” She glanced up, waiting for the disdain, and was mollified when she didn’t see it. “I have a drawerful of great stuff I got on discount.”
“Oh, really?” He thought about that for a moment, wondering just what her idea of great stuff consisted of.
“Yeah.” She was delighted to see that she’d drawn another ace, but she kept her voice even. “The problem was, this particular supervisor wanted you to take the money, box the silks and keep your mouth shut—even when the customer was making an obvious mistake.”
He tried to imagine her keeping her mouth shut. He couldn’t. “Such as?”
“Such as the pleasantly plump lady who was going to torture herself in a size eight merry widow. Bet three.”
“And raise it two. What happened?”
“Well, you open your mouth to make a gentle suggestion and before you know it you’ve got a pink slip.”
“You’d look nice in pink.”
She giggled and raised him two more. “No . . . a pink slip, the boot, the ax. Canned.” When he still looked puzzled, she elaborated. “Your services are no longer required.”
“Oh. Terminated.”
“Right.” His term seemed to describe the injustice of it perfectly. “Who needs it?”
“You don’t.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks. Three aces, pal. Read ’em and weep.”
“Straight flush,” he countered, and had her sputtering while he piled up more cookies. “You don’t have the temperament to work for someone else.”
“So I’ve been told,” she muttered. “Several times.” She was down to her last five cookies. Her luck, Sunny thought, had been on the down side too long. “But if it’s a matter of learning how to adjust or learning how not to eat I’m going to have to go with the first. I don’t like being poor.”
“I imagine you could do whatever you wanted to do, if you really wanted to do it.”
“Maybe.” And that had always been the problem. She had no idea what she wanted. She dealt the hand and, deciding to be reckless, went for an inside straight. And ended up with trash. A bluff was always better than a fold, she thought, pushing her miserly pile of cookies into the pot.
He cleaned her out with a pair of deuces.
“Here.” Because winning always put him in a good mood, he offered her a cookie. “Have one on me.”
“Thanks a lot.” She bit into it. “Your luck seems to be on tonight.”
“Apparently.” He was feeling a bit reckless himself. She looked a great deal more appetizing than the cookies. “We could play one more hand.”
“For what?”
“If I win, you make love with me.”
Surprised, but determined to keep her poker face intact, she swallowed the bite of cookie. “And if I win?”
“I make love with you.”
Popping the rest of the cookie into her mouth, she studied him as she chewed. It would almost be worth it, she mused, to see his face if she took him up on it. Almost worth it, she reminded herself. Either way, she would win. And she would lose.
“I think I’ll pass,” she said lightly. Rising, she walked over to the sofa, spread herself out on it and went to sleep.
Chapter 6
A blast of music ripped Sunny out of a dead sleep and had her rearing up. When lights blinded her, she groaned and tossed a hand over her eyes in self-defense.
“Who ordered the party?” she asked as Tina Turner roared out rock at top volume.
Jacob, who had dozed off in front of the fire, simply pulled the blanket over his head. Whenever he slept, he preferred to do it like the dead.
Swearing, she pushed herself up off the couch. She had stumbled halfway to the stereo before it dawned on her. “Power!” she shouted, then immediately raced over to sit on Jacob. She heard a muffled grunt from under the blanket and bounced gleefully up and down. “We’ve got power, J.T. Lights, music, hot food!” When he only grunted again, she poked him. “Wake up, you slug. Don’t you know you can be shot for sleeping on sentry duty?”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was bored into catatonia.”
“Well, snap out of it, pal. We’re back on the circuit.” She yanked the cover off his face and grinned when he scowled at her. “You need a shave,” she observed. Then, in her delight, she gave him a loud, smacking kiss between the eyes. “How about a hamburger?”
He got a bleary look at her face, all smiles and mussed hair. To his disgust, he felt his body responding. “It can’t be more than six in the morning.”
“So what? I’m starving.”
“Make mine rare.” He pulled the blanket over his face again.
“Uh-uh. You have to help.” Ruthlessly she ripped the blanket off him again. “Up and at ’em, soldier.”
This time he opened only one eye. “Up and at what?”
“It’s an expression, Hornblower.” She shook her head. “Just how long were you in that lab?”
“Not long enough.” Or entirely too long, if all it took to arouse him was a skinny woman sitting on his chest. “I can’t get up when you’re sitting on me. Besides, I think you broke my ribs.”
“Nonsense. I’m ten pounds underweight.”
“You wouldn’t think so from here.”
Too cheerful to be annoyed, she scrambled up, took a firm grip on his forearm and, after some pulling and tugging, dragged him to his feet. “You can make the french fries.”
“I can?”
“Sure.” To demonstrate her confidence in him, she kept her hand in his and pulled him into the kitchen. “Everything’s in the freezer. God, it’s cold in here.” She rubbed the bottom of one stockinged foot on the top of the other. “Here.” She tossed him a bag of frozen fries over her shoulder. “You just dump some on a cookie sheet and stick them in the oven.”
“Right.” He thought he could figure out the workings of the oven, but he hadn’t a clue as to what a cookie sheet might look like.
“Pans are . . . down there.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of a cabinet while she contemplated the package of hamburger.
“The meat’s frozen,” he pointed out.
“Yeah. Well, we’ll have sloppy joes.”
“Which are?”
“Delicious,” she assured him. Whistling along with the music, she began to rattle pots. Cooking was far down on her list of favorite pastimes, but when push came to shove she was willing to give it her best shot. “Here, use this.” She handed him a long, thin piece of metal blackened by heat.
