“Skinny or slim? There’s a difference.”
“I guess more on the skinny side. She may be wearing glasses. She uses them to read, but she used to forget to take them off and she’d end up running into things.”
“A skinny, clumsy brunette with glasses. Got it.”
“She’s very attractive,” Regan added loyally. “In a unique way. And, Shane? She’s shy, so be nice.”
“I’m always nice. To women.”
“All right, be good then. If you don’t spot her, you can have her paged. Dr. Rebecca Knight.”
Airports always entertained Shane. People were in just as much of a hurry, it seemed to him, to get where they were going as they were to get back from wherever they’d been. Everyone hit the ground running, loaded down with carry-ons. He wondered what it was about the places people chose to leave that didn’t appeal enough to keep them there.
Not that he was against travel. He just figured he could get anywhere he really wanted to go by sitting behind the wheel of his pickup. That way, he was in charge of time and distance and speed.
But it took all kinds.
He also figured he could spot Regan’s college pal—since she was a woman, and he knew women. She’d be in her mid-twenties, about five foot five, skinny, brown hair, brown eyes, probably behind thick glasses. From Regan’s brief rundown, he didn’t imagine Rebecca Knight had a great deal of style, so he would look for a plain, intellectual type, with a briefcase and practical shoes.
He loitered at the gate, eyeing a pair of flight attendants who were waiting for a change of crew. Now that, he mused, was a profession that drew pretty women. It almost made a man feel there’d be some advantage in being stuck in a flying tin can for a few hours.
As passengers began to pour out of the gateway, he judiciously shifted his attention. Businessmen, looking harried, he noted. The suit-and-tie brigade. No amount of money could convince him that it would be worth wearing a suit for eight to ten hours a day. Nice-looking blonde in sleek red slacks. She gave him a quick, flirtatious smile as she passed, and Shane pleased himself by drawing in the cloud of scent she left behind.
Pretty brunette with a long, ground-eating stride and big, wide gold eyes. They reminded him of the amber beads his mother had kept in her good jewelry box.
Here came Grandma, with an enormous shopping bag and a huge, misty-eyed grin for the trio of children who raced up to hug her knees.
Ah, there she is, Shane decided, spotting a slump-shouldered woman with brown hair scraped back in a frowsy knot. She carried an official-looking black briefcase and wore thick, laced shoes and square glasses. She blinked owlishly behind them, looking lost.
“Hey.” He gave her a quick, flashing smile, and a friendly wink that had her backing up three steps into a frazzled man lugging a bulging garment bag. “How’s it going?” He reached down to take her briefcase and had her myopic eyes going round with alarm. “I’m Shane. Regan sent me to fetch you. She had complications. So how was the flight?”
“I—I—” The woman pulled her briefcase protectively against her thin chest. “I’ll call security.”
“Take it easy, Becky. I’m just going to give you a ride.”
She opened her mouth and made a squeaking noise. When Shane reached out for her arm to reassure her, she gave him a solid thwack with the briefcase. Before he had decided whether to laugh or swear, he felt a light tap on his arm.
“Excuse me.” The pretty brunette cocked a brow and gave him a long, considering study. “I believe you may be looking for me.” Her mouth, which Shane noted was wide and full, curved into a dryly amused smile. “Shane, you said. That would be Shane MacKade?”
“Yeah. Oh.” He glanced back at the woman he’d accosted. “Sorry,” he began, but she was already darting off like a rabbit pursued by wolves.
“I imagine that’s the most excitement she’s had in some time,” Rebecca commented. She thought she knew just how the poor woman had felt. It was so miserable to be shy and plain and not quite in step with the rest of the world. “I’m Rebecca Knight,” she added, and thrust out a hand.
She wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but on closer study he saw he hadn’t been that far off. She did look intellectual, if you got past those eyes. Rather than practical shoes, it was a practical haircut, as short as a boy’s. He preferred hair on a woman, personally, but this chopped-off do suited her face, with its pointy, almost foxlike features.
And she was probably skinny. It was just hard to tell, with the boxy, shape-disguising jacket and slacks, all in unrelieved black.
So he smiled again, taking the long, narrow hand in his. “Regan said your eyes were brown. They’re not.”
“It says they are on my driver’s license. Is Regan all right?”
“She’s fine. Just some domestic and professional complications. Here, let me take that.” He reached for the big, many-pocketed bag she had slung over her shoulder.
“No thanks, I’ve got it. You’re one of the brothers-in-law.”
“Yeah.” He took her arm to steer her around toward the terminal.
Strong fingers, she noted. And a predilection for touching. Well, that was all right. She wouldn’t squeak, as the other woman had—as she herself might have a few months before, when faced with a pure, unadulterated male.
“The one who runs the farm.”
“That’s right. You don’t look much like a Ph.D.—on first glance.”
“Don’t I?” She sent him a cool sidelong look. She’d done a lot of mirror-practicing on that look. “And the woman who is probably even now hyperventilating in the nearest ladies’ room did?”
“It was the shoes,” Shane explained, and grinned down at Rebecca’s neat black canvas flats.
“I see.” As they rode down the escalator toward baggage claim, she turned to face him. Flannel shirt open at the collar, she noted. Worn jeans, scarred boots, big, callused hands. Thick black hair spilling out of a battered cap, on top of a lean, tanned face that could have been on a poster selling anything.
“You look like a farmer,” she decided. “So how long a drive is it to Antietam?”
He debated whether or not he’d been insulted or complimented and answered, “Just over an hour. We’ll get your bags.”
“They’re being sent.” Pleased with her practicality, she patted the bag over her arm. “This is all I have at the moment.”
Shane couldn’t get over the sensation—the uncomfortable sensation—that he was being observed, sized up and dissected like a laboratory frog. “Great.” It relieved him when she took shaded glasses from her jacket pocket and slipped them on.
He was used to women looking at him, but not as though he were something smeared on a slide.
When they reached
