Sun Kissed (Crane Series) by Nancy Warren Page B

about some packing job.” Had she gone completely off her rocker?
    “You want to hire an unemployed steelworker to promote my boards?”
    “Yes. My instincts are almost never wrong. I think he can do it. Look at the way his masculinity and sexual appeal come across in a few casual snaps.”
    But he wasn’t looking at the photos, he was narrowing his eyes and staring at her face. She’d said her instincts were almost never wrong. “Define almost.”
    She grinned at him. “Trust me. I won’t use him until we’re certain. I’m going to send him to Lise Atwater. She’ll train and groom him until he’s perfect.”
    “You said he was already perfect.”
    “He’s perfect raw material. Lise will refine him into the epitome of the Crane man. This is a huge breakthrough for us.”
    She slipped a hand to his shoulder in a gesture that would look casual to anyone who popped their head round the door, but her fingertips on the back of his neck were an intimate caress. “This makes me feel like celebrating.”
    Since he knew what she had in mind by celebrating, he squelched his unreasonable jealousy over the bloke in the photos. “Just one question,” he said, when she gathered up her pictures and was on her way out the door.
    “Yes?” she turned her head.
    “Can he surf?”
    Her eyes widened and a smile played over her mouth. “I have no idea. If not, somebody’s going to have to teach him.”
    He couldn’t stop the laugh that shook him. He’d never understand marketing people. She was raving about a fellow as the perfect spokesman for a product he might not know how to use. And somehow, he was certain, even if the poor bugger couldn’t swim, that Jen would have him looking like an Olympic freestyler given a weekend and a wading pool.
    “Hey,” he said stopping her in mid-skip.
    She turned her head. “What?”
    “Speaking of surfing lessons, you’re due another. How about coming up to Byron this weekend?”
    “It’s my last weekend,” she said, and he felt her voice falter even as his belly tightened.
    “Only if you want it to be,” he reminded her.
    They’d not spoken of her delaying her trip since she got so pissed off the first time, and he’d finally realized she had to be the one to make this decision. It drove him insane, but he couldn’t make this stubborn-arsed woman do anything. He could persuade her, though, and he’d damn near exhausted both of them with his physical attempts at persuasion. A funny little smile played over her lips.
    “Okay.”
    He’d find a way to make her stay longer. He had to.
     

11
    She had to tell him. Jen stared at the phone in her hand, drew yet another calming breath— she’d drawn so many she was starting to hyperventilate—and punched Mark’s home number. It was late at night and the house slept, so she knew she’d have the privacy she needed for this, the most dreaded conversation of her life. Mark answered on the second ring, dashing her craven hope that the service would pick up.
    “Hi,” he said, sounding the same as always. “What’s up?”
    I’m sleeping with someone else and am about to shatter your world. She’d liked Mark for being so straight and honest and dependable. Now she wished he had some skeletons in his closet, an unpaid parking fine, a library book a decade overdue, anything that would help him comprehend that nice people sometimes did horrible things to each other.
    She drew in a breath and said, “Mark, I have to talk to you about something serious.” Her voice trembled a little, and she hated hearing it.
    “What’s the matter?” he sounded worried, not suspicious. Of course.
    “I don’t even know how to begin to explain this to you.” She sat on the bed and wrapped her free arm around her middle.
    “Start at the beginning. It’s usually the best place.”
    Oh, God, he was soothing her. He probably thought it was a work thing that had upset her. “You know how I really didn’t like Cameron Crane all that much when