She grinned. “Authentic, as in dog-eared. But that’s okay. They were a find. I ran across them in a little bookstall on the left bank of the Seine. They were done in England at the turn of the century.”
“They must be valuable,” he remarked, but his attention had returned to her.
“They give me pleasure,” she said with a short smile. “That’s value enough.”
He stood silently then, simply looking at her, and surprisingly, Savannah didn’t feel awkward. For one thing, he was a delight to look back at. He wore jeans, just as he had at the studio, but the sneakers had been replaced by boots, the T-shirt and flannel shirt by a black turtleneck sweater that was a perfect foil for his tawniness, and over the sweater, a bomber jacket of butter-soft leather accentuated his broad shoulders. He had showered and shaved, and looked totally refreshed, which was remarkable for two reasons—first, because he’d managed to improve on something that was outstanding to begin with, and second, because he couldn’t have slept more than two or three hours.
For the first time she noticed the two large manila envelopes he carried under his arm. Neither was particularly thick.
“The records of the calls,” she breathed and might have been chagrined at not having noted them sooner if Jared had not looked as though he’d momentarily forgotten them himself.
“Uh, I just picked them up. Thought I’d deliver them right away.”
She eyed him cautiously. “Do you think we’ll find something?”
“I don’t know. One batch is from the station, one from the answering service.” He held them out. “Want to take a look?”
Rising from her chair, Savannah rounded the desk and took the envelopes. She opened one and fanned out the papers on the desktop.
They contained notes made by the station’s receptionists and were dated by week with the most recent on top. Straddling the papers with stiffened arms, she leaned forward and began to read. Each entry noted the date and the time, plus either a quote, a paraphrase, or a simple description of the offensive call.
She read silently for several minutes, then turned to the second sheet and perused that. Straightening, she raised a hand to her shoulder. It was a protective gesture; she felt chilled. “I had an answering machine once,” she said quietly. “It seemed to make sense. I was on call so much of the time, and it was nice to think that I could come home and know exactly who had tried to reach me and when. But the heavy breathers felt the machine was fair game. They got to me pretty quickly. So I gave the machine to one of the guys at the office.”
She looked up to find Jared within arm’s reach, and again, she was struck by his height. He was tall, sturdy, and strong. He could overpower her in a minute, yet that was not what she feared. What frightened her was the force of his pull. She felt it as something magnetic, drawing on every one of her senses until she was all but leaning his way.
She forced her eyes back down to the papers and said, “Thanks for bringing these. I shouldn’t keep you longer.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You must have other things to do.”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
He wasn’t going to leave until he was ready. And she could no more have kicked him out than she could have stripped and paraded naked on the desktop.
She felt naked anyway. In Jared’s presence, she felt stripped of defenses that had stood her in good stead for years. She wondered if he knew. She wondered lots of things about him, and it struck her that it was time she did a little probing herself.
“What—” She cleared her throat and started again. “What do you usually do during the day?”
His raspy voice was accompanied by a lazy smile. “A little of this, a little of that.”
The smile would have distracted her again, had not her phone buzzed. Moving only her upper body, she reached for it. The call was from a lawyer in the office who wanted to know which judge to request for an upcoming bribery trial. “Cramer,” she told him. “He can’t stand bribery. He’s cautious enough to avoid grounds for a mistrial, but he’ll give you every benefit of the doubt.” She answered one other minor question, then replaced the receiver and looked up at Jared.
His eyes riveted her. The slight cast to the one was intriguing, but that was only the beginning. Strewn amid their pale blue rings were flecks of gray that darkened or lightened with his mood. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed that before, particularly in light of their power. Then she realized that the power was the key, and it came from within.
Fighting its lure, she cleared her throat again and asked, “‘A little of this, a little of that.’ What do you mean?”
He seemed unperturbed by her challenge. “I do a lot of reading.”
“What do you read?”
“Fiction, nonfiction, you name it. I also have to keep up on what’s happening in the field. Country musicians tend to be around longer than, say, pop-rock stars, but that doesn’t mean their lives are static. So I keep current with trade materials. And I listen to new stuff that comes in.”
“Do you decide what to play on the air?”
“No. My music director does that. It’s his job to keep tabs on what Rhode Islanders want to hear. A song that may make it big in Tulsa could bomb here. It’s like the logo says, a little country in the city. Too much country and the city tunes out.”
She could believe it. “What else do you do, besides read?”
