The Best Way to Lose by Janet Dailey Page B

was leaving,” he muttered, too aware that there was no one else around.
    “You haven’t finished your drink.” She gave him a short look of surprise. “After loading all those boxes in the car, you might as well take a few minutes to cool off.” She turned her back to him again, and he heard the clink of ice being dropped into a glass.
    Needing a diversion, he picked up her appointment calendar and flipped through a few pages. “You’re going to be in New Orleans the middle of July?”
    “Yes.” She turned to see the appointment book in his hand but made no sign that she objected. “I try to go there a couple of times a year just to browse through some of the smaller antique shops in the suburbs. Sometimes it’s an easy way to find a bargain or to locate the fourth chair to some table set of a client.”
    “That’s about the time a new towboat is supposed to be coming out of the shipyards. Maybe if the dates coincide, you can come to her launching.”
    “Maybe.” She didn’t dismiss the suggestion, but she didn’t appear interested in it either.
    Masking his frustration, Trace studied the datebook again. “I don’t see many social engagements listed.”
    “Couples are usually invited to parties,” she informed him smoothly and crossed the wooden deck to remove the leather-bound appointment book from his hand. “Single women tend to be the bane of most social gatherings. Half the wives are afraid that I am so sexually deprived that I’ll seduce their husbands if I’m alone with them for more than five minutes. And half the husbands are hoping that I will.” There was a bitter ring of ironic amusement in her voice.
    “You could always arrange to have a male escort,” Trace countered. “I don’t believe that you haven’t had volunteers.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t exactly a surfeit of single males over the age of thirty in this area. When you find one, I can almost guarantee there’ll be something wrong with him. If he isn’t grotesquely overweight, stupid, or a drunkard, then he’s probably an ex-wife beater. Besides, I’m not that desperate for a man,” she declared coolly.
    “Aren’t you?”
    Pilar didn’t like the way he looked at her when he said that. There was something dry and measuring about it that set off little twinges of unease. He reached out and lightly rubbed the back of his knuckles down the bareness of her arm. The unexpected caress of his hand stunned her, and she pulled awayfrom it. The sudden action made her a little dizzy.
    “No, I’m not,” she retorted.
    “You want to be looked at, but you don’t want to be touched … by anyone. Is that it?” he murmured.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her pulse fluctuated wildly as she avoided his eyes, stiff and resistant to their probe.
    “I’m not sure that I do, either.” There was the clunk of a glass being set down. Then a hand, cool from the iced glass, was gripping her arm, its pressure firm but not forceful. Pilar let herself be turned to face him squarely. Defiance ran hotly through her blood. “Maybe you can explain some things to me.”
    “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, it isn’t likely I will,” she countered with frosty indifference, but she felt unsteady.
    “What am I doing here tonight?” he challenged.
    “What a ridiculous question!” Pilar declared with incredulous amusement. “You came to collect things that belonged to your family.” She swung away from him and started to take a sip of the bourbon, but Trace took the glass from her hand before it touched her mouth.
    “You’ve had enough to drink,” he stated and ignored the indignant breath she drew in protest of his high-handed action. This time he held both her arms so she couldn’t turn away. “Now, tell me—why tonight?”
    “It was your idea,” she reminded him curtly. “I didn’t suggest it.”
    “But you agreed to it,” Trace countered, watching her closely.