DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

By Jane Bierce

Published by Awe-Struck E-Books

ISBN: 1-58749-426-4

Electronic rights reserved by Awe-Struck E-Books, all other rights reserved by author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to cover artist, Ariana Overton, who passed away shortly after completing it. She was a talented artist and writer who by her gifts and insight made outstanding contributions to electronic publishing.

Chapter One

Penelope Birch parked her small car beside the mud-spattered four-wheeler that was hidden from the two-lane mountain road by a dense stand of cedar trees. It was right where Hal Jacobs said it would be in the detailed directions he'd drawn. With an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she read the sign that marked a narrow foot trail into the woods.

Spruce Pine Camp
Development and Research Dept.
Jacobs Camping Supplies Co.
KEEP OUT - Private Property

Well, she was convinced that she wasn't wanted!

The effect of the white letters stenciled onto the dull camouflage-green wood was alarmingly official. She knew it was the elusive vice-president of Jacobs Camping Supplies Company who had constructed the sign, the camp, and--to hear Hal tell it--the mountain-man persona that went with it. She had the feeling one more step would put her in danger of facing someone menacing and authoritative.

The drive north of Asheville into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina had been experience enough to make Penny think seriously about turning her Mazda around and heading back - not only to Asheville, but all the way to Atlanta. This was a long way from the more friendly confines of her office at Southern Images, Inc. This assignment was certainly shaping up to be one she would rather pass on -- or give to her partner Shelby Haines.

Shelby, however, had her hands full trying to talk her father into extending them a little more money to pay the bills for yet another month.

Penny gritted her teeth and kicked off the flat-heeled shoes she wore when she drove. On the floor of the passenger side of the car were two pairs of shoes-- her favorite navy spike heels and a pair of atrocious boots which looked like a lumpy combination of children's storm rubbers and a clown's saddle oxfords. Their only redeeming feature was that they were navy blue and buff--if you could call it that.

Hal Jacobs had insisted his wife Lucinda rummage through his office closet to find the stupid shoes, saying Penny would need them to cope with the trail into Spruce Pine Camp. Lucinda also loaned her a pair of thick wool socks to cushion the shoes to her feet, considering they were probably a size too large.

She certainly would cut a fine figure back in Atlanta, Penny thought ruefully, as she got out of her car attired in her navy business suit, carrying her cordovan briefcase, and wearing the ridiculous hiking shoes.

Hal estimated it would be a quarter-mile trek from the road to the campsite. Along the highway Penny had noticed signs that stated distances to side roads or roadside stalls and figured a quarter of a mile wouldn't be too far to walk. But she hadn't counted on the rough terrain, as the faintly marked path led around rocks and between ominous looking bushes. The hike to the clearing where she would find Miles Jacobs gave her time to reflect on the assignment ahead.

According to all the background material she'd been able to find through the usual business-reference channels, the Jacobs Camping Supplies Company appeared to be a small but growing firm. Most of their mail-order business was devoted to outfitting people who actually enjoyed living more than an hour at a time away from air conditioners and indoor plumbing.

Penny shivered at the thought. She would, however, do anything to keep Southern Images from closing the door of their office forever.

Hal Jacobs had been thrown from his horse Saturday afternoon and was now reposing in traction in an Asheville hospital, with one large problem--his brother Miles would have to represent the firm in a series of three camping trade shows over the next three weekends.

According to his older brother, Miles was the man responsible for testing every item the company sold. With great single-mindedness, he devoted most of his time to engineering new products, habitually holed up in these rugged North Carolina woods somewhere. He looked upon intrusions as capital offenses.

Miles would not be pleased, Penny had been warned, that he'd have to be cleaned up, dressed suitably and toted off to the trade shows right when he claimed to be on the verge of developing the perfect backpacker's stove.

The midmorning sun warmed Penny's back. She was tempted to take off her jacket, but it had just come back from the cleaners and she didn't relish the idea of pressing out wrinkles herself.

The breeze that bent the tops of the pines on either side of the grassy path threatened to unsettle her hair from its businesslike arrangement of a loose braid that circled her crown. She warily eyed the birds flying over her head and hoped they wouldn't mistake her hair for their nest.

The path dipped suddenly and Penny felt her foot slip. But in the instant she thought she was going to fall, the tread of her shoe caught, and she was afraid she would fall in the other direction.

Darn. This outdoor stuff was enough to send her over the edge! A short, simple picnic she could handle, maybe even an evening at the annual Art Show in Ponce De Leon Park, but this unscheduled trek into absolute wilderness was asking too much of a city girl.

She took a deep breath and persevered, even though her lungs protested and her legs felt as though they were burning beneath her pantyhose. The heavy socks she wore had picked up their share of stick-tights and shepherd's purse, fortuitously holding them away from the sheer nylons. Maybe the hose would survive--even if Penny didn't.

The path led into a clearing that sloped gently downward to a fairly broad stream. There in an area of tall weeds was a rough plank shack in the shade of a lone oak tree, and half a dozen tents of strange colors, shapes and sizes, looking like a fairy ring of mushrooms with attitudes. The place appeared to be deserted.

All I need, she reflected as she caught her breath, is to be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere alone.

Hal had warned her his brother was not above capriciously taking off into the hills with a backpack for days on end. If that were the situation she confronted, he'd advised her to turn around and go back to Asheville immediately, and they would retrench and rethink.

That prospect was the most attractive she'd faced since she'd driven from Atlanta to Asheville the day before to visit Hal in his hospital room.

She took a few more steps through the tall grasses and decided she had to do something. Planting her feet firmly where she was, she gathered her strength.

"Yoo-hoo," she called, the way she'd heard an old housekeeper on her block call the neighbor children in to dinner. "Mr. Jacobs? Are you here?"

She listened for a long moment, but all she heard was the wind sighing through the pines and the slight murmuring of the stream. Between searching for the nerve to holler again or the energy to turn and tramp back through the trees to her car and some trace of civilization, Penny stared at the collection of tents, feeling alone, very alone.

"Who wants to know?" a deep voice challenged, roaring from somewhere and filling the clearing with an echo.

A mountain of a man appeared from just beyond the farthest tent, the sun gleaming off his sun-bleached hair and beard. Miles Jacobs' shoulders strained the tan shirt he wore, and his legs, beneath hiking shorts, were sturdily muscled and covered with a nebulous glinting of hair.

"Ah--your brother Hal sent me to--find you," Penny stammered, still winded from her walk.

"Yeah?" he asked, skeptically, closing the space between them with long strides.

Penny gripped her briefcase with both hands in front of her and braced herself against the anger she felt radiating from him. Hal had warned her Miles' reaction to being interrupted would not be pretty. She just hoped he'd had his distemper shots.

"Your brother Hal--ah--fell from a horse Saturday and is in a hospital in Asheville," Penny explained quickly, before Miles could get too close. "He's going to be fine, but it means you'll have to take his place at the trade shows for the next three weeks, and he hired me to--help you get ready."

"He did, did he?" Miles asked, stopping in front of her and clamping his broad hands on his lean hips. "And what is it he thinks you have to do to get me ready to go to the...trade shows?"

"Hal discussed your...ah...clothing and appearance, your manner of...ah...speaking and your familiarity with soliciting and writing up orders from clients," Penny said, trying valiantly to remember the important points of the long conversation she'd had with Hal the day before. All the while, the dark hazel eyes of the man in front of her bored into her with palpable intimidation.

It was hard to realize Hal and Miles Jacobs were of the same parentage. Hal, in physical pain in the hospital had nonetheless been every inch the Southern gentleman, cultured and articulate in his speaking, and acutely organized in his mental processes. Miles, on the other hand, seemed to barely retain his grasp on civility.

Miles snorted and turned away from her to stare at the stream below them. "Why doesn't he send Lucinda to the shows? She's in charge of Marketing and Distribution."

"I imagine she doesn't want to leave him while he's in such difficulty," Penny supplied.

Miles grunted and grabbed the long, light brown hair at the back of his neck. With his rough fist, he flicked it into a shaggy mane that settled back down along the lower edge of his shirt collar. Then his blunt fingers scratched his bushy beard at the corner of his jaw.

He swore softly, perhaps not even knowing what he was saying.

Slightly braver, Penny moved toward him so she could see his face again. Now that his attention was off her and he had become introspective, she gathered her wits about her and tried to decide exactly what she could do with him to shape him up for public appearances.

At least he had no visible tattoos. He didn't reek of tobacco or alcohol.

He opened his mouth, showing strong white teeth, then closed it again. "Yuh!"

"Hm?" she asked, afraid he had said something to her while she was speculating on how he would look without the bushy beard.

"I ought to at least go into town and see how he is," Miles said.

Penny agreed silently that that was, indeed, the least he should do. At least he was being reasonable. He hadn't slain the messenger for delivering the message, unwelcome as it was. She could work with a rational man, and if he were the engineer of the firm, he no doubt had a logical mind. It was all a matter of finding the right approach.

"I'll stow the gear I'm working with in the shed. Then we'll drive down to Burnsville to call him," Miles proposed, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

"The very least you could do," Penny said under her breath, feeling the full strength of the autumn sun, the exertion and the discomfort of being with this unbearable man overpowering her carefully constructed politeness.

She straightened her shoulders and loosened her grip on her briefcase.

"Well, I'm not about to chase back to Asheville if Hal's going to be out of the hospital by the time I get there and decides he can handle the shows on crutches!" Miles argued. "He's done things like that to me before."

"Hal's in traction," Penny told him. "The doctor isn't planning to release him until Friday, and then he'll probably be laid up a couple more weeks at home. There's simply no way for him to make the air flights--stand for long hours at the display stall--"

"All right! All right!" Miles growled with a wave of his hand. "Let me get the site cleared up and we'll leave. Nice shoes..."

Penny looked down at her feet and was about to tell him what she thought of the shoes when his dusty hiking boots disappeared from her field of vision.

"Come help me with some of this stuff," Miles ordered in a bellow that echoed against the trees.

This is not part of the agreement, she groused mentally, following him to the furthest tent.

Penny hadn't had much time to assess the conglomeration of apparatus he quickly gathered up and stashed in his shed. He locked it away with his cache of food and whatever else was in the windowless plank building, scarcely bigger than a respectable closet.

Penny trudged back toward her car, carrying her own briefcase and another Miles Jacobs had thrust into her hand just before he'd strapped on his backpack and picked up his laptop computer.

The trail was mostly uphill, and Penny grimaced at the subtle allegory of the situation. In no mood to talk, and having even less breath for it, Penny found herself hard-pressed to keep up with Miles. Just about the time she decided to drop back and rest for a moment, Miles stopped dead still in the middle of the trail and scanned the treetops.

"Hear that?" he asked in an excited whisper.

Penny just stared at him, afraid to move a muscle.

He grinned down at her as though he was sharing some great secret with her.

Penny was about to ask him what he was so excited about when Miles turned and started out again at the same pace he'd set before.

Then Penny realized the mistake she'd made. She'd been literally putting her best face on a difficult situation. Chameleon-like, she had adopted a protective coloration, smiling to avoid the reputed temper of Miles Jacobs, the monumental wrath Hal had warned her about. Miles thought she'd observed and enjoyed whatever it was he'd noticed.

At least he relaxed a part of his surly attitude.

As she approached the place where she'd almost fallen earlier, she paused and studied the spot, finding a better approach. But the grass was still wet and the footing remained treacherous.

When he heard her stop, Miles turned around to see what she was doing. He wiped his free hand on the flank of his hiking shorts as though he were preparing to extend it to her. But when she handled the situation on her own, he took another stride toward their objective.

"You like those shoes, don't you?" he asked.

Having enough to do just to keep walking and breathing, Penny didn't say anything. All she cared about was that the ungainly looking shoes kept her in an upright posture.

But she had established a tenuous rapport with Miles, no matter how accidentally, and she would need it for the ordeal of the next few days. She would have to be careful not to destroy it by some false, ill-advised move.

"Follow me into town," Miles ordered, wrenching the tailgate of his four-by-four open with a powerful display of upper body development. Effortlessly, he tossed his possessions into the back of the mud-covered vehicle.

He was disgustingly fresh from the hike, not even breathing hard.

Penny sagged into the driver's seat of her car and gulped restoring air into her burning lungs before she removed the awful hiking shoes and shoved her feet into the blessed cool comfort of her flat driving shoes.

Miles glanced over at her as he slammed the back of the four-by-four, but she could not get a good look at the expression on his face.

Not that she particularly cared at this point. She didn't like this assignment, but she was going to have to put personal feelings aside and do the best she could. Southern Images hung in the balance; a failure on this project would mean the failure of the whole venture, and Shelby would never forgive her.

* * *

"What is this--person you sent out here?" Miles demanded of Hal over the pay phone, leaning against the plank wall in the barbecue restaurant on the highway outside Burnsville.

"She's an image consultant," Hal told him, in his familiar beleaguered-patience tone.

"Image consultant? What the hell's that?"

"She's going to help you get ready to represent us at the trade shows."

Hal was talking to him as though he were a backward child again, and Miles resented it.

Miles let loose with a string of expletives that, had they been said at any volume above a mumble, would have melted telephone relays between Burnsville and Asheville, if not beyond.

"--And that too," Hal said. "Are you aware utterances like that are viewed as unacceptable in polite society?"

"The bears out here don't mind!" Miles spouted. He looked across the empty dining room at the young woman who hunched over a cup of coffee and glanced at her watch every few minutes. "Do I have to do this?" he asked.

"Yes," Hal answered flatly.

Miles ran his rough-knuckled hand over his beard and took a deep breath. "All right," he conceded with a sigh. "We'll get an early lunch here and come straight to see you."

"Miles, is that such a good idea?" Hal asked.

"I had a bath this morning, for Pete's sake!" Miles said and hung up without bothering to say good-bye to his brother.

On the drive from Spruce Pine, he'd told himself this turn of events would just have to be dealt with as well as possible. But he was so close to working the bugs out of his latest project, he was loath to abandon it for even a moment, let alone three weeks.

He studied the young woman--Penelope Birch--as he crossed the room toward her. Lord, they probably looked like a prize pair! He in his saddlebag shorts and she in a business suit and high heels.

So. She was supposed to turn him into a gentleman in three days, was she? There wasn't a lot he couldn't do for himself. If he wanted to, he could talk for hours without using his colorful language. And back in his college days, he'd been known to rent a tux for a dance. The girls didn't think he was so terribly ugly, either. In fact, that might have been the problem, occasionally. Many were the times he'd been distracted from his studies by a pretty girl, and suffered for it.

Well, if she thought he was a total boor, he might as well let her do her stuff and make him over in the image of his older brother. He could always shuck the trappings of civilization and head for the hills when the job was over.

He sat down across the table from her and picked up the steaming mug of coffee waiting for him there.

"How is Mr. Jacobs today?" she asked, probably unaware what her gray eyes did to him when she looked up from under her lashes.

"In a lot of pain," Miles said. But he deserves it.

"I'm sorry."

"I told him we'd get some lunch and head into the city to see him."

She frowned. "Well, if you want to stay here," she said, "I could go ahead and-- "

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

Her glance darted around the room. So it was roughly paneled, smudged with fingerprints and decorated in tacky beer logos. She could be forgiven for not knowing how good the food was. The scent of years of wood fires hung over the place like last year's Christmas garlands.

"I just have a lot to do--in Asheville," she said, her delicate hand covering the top of her half-empty coffee mug when the waitress in a stained apron waved a coffeepot in her direction.

"You're not one of these dames who doesn't eat, are you?" he asked.

In that suit, she could be a lot skinnier than she looked, which would be a shame because her face was really pretty, despite the makeup.

"No," she said, then the corner of her mouth turned up just a little.

"Well, the health department hasn't closed this place down yet," Miles said.

"They've probably never found it," she quipped ruefully.

He laughed.

And just when he thought her smile might take over her face, it shut down into an introspective mask.

"There's so much to do," she said softly. "Your wardrobe, and getting you familiarized with the display stall and the catalog. You'll have to memorize the prices on all the items Hal wants to push--"

"How did you get into this?" he demanded.

Her chin came up and her glare cut him short. "I am not the issue here," she said. "You are. We have to concentrate on getting you ready for these trade shows. I am merely here to facilitate your preparation. Do you understand?"

He frowned. She might not have seen his displeasure as it was concealed by his beard, but it was a ferocious frown. He didn't want to be made over. Especially by some snooty city gal who strung together carefully pronounced four-syllable words that only self-important twits used.

But if it had to be, it had to be.

Miles drank the coffee and dropped a few bills on the table.

"If you don't want to eat here, then we might as well get going," he said, getting to his feet. "We'll go to the farm first. Hal can wait a little while."

She looked up at him, then stood up gracefully, as though she had a copy of Gone With the Wind on her head. There was a line of her chin and a set to her shoulders that told him she had a stubborn streak a mile wide. It won his respect, grudgingly.

* * *

Penny was not surprised that Miles expected her to follow him to the farm where Hal and Lucinda lived. She was oddly comforted by the knowledge she would be less likely to get lost, and may actually get there a lot more easily than she would have without a guide. Somehow she knew Miles tended to take the shortest routes wherever he went.

In the noonday sun, the farm glowed with early autumn colors. The grasses were dying to a light gold, and rampant wildflowers bent in the breeze. Four horses browsed in the pasture, unconcerned when two cars rolled past them into the barnyard.

Before Penny had even switched off her motor, Miles had leaped from his four- by-four and was conversing with the Irish setter. He hauled his gear from the back of his car while she was struggling with her briefcase and her shoes.

With long strides, he hurried into the house through the back door and dumped his backpack in the utility room. Penny had to wait for him to move out of her way before she could enter the room off the kitchen to leave the hiking shoes on a newspaper beside boots and galoshes.

Miles immediately dumped the contents of his laundry bag into the washer and set it to whir and slosh softly. The refrigerator was his next stop. With a broad hand, he grabbed two cans of beer from the shelf in the door and extended one toward Penny.

"No, thank you," she said politely.

He put the extra can on the table in the middle of the spacious kitchen, probably to save the energy of putting it back in the refrigerator and taking it out again if he decided he wanted it for himself.

"Lunch?" he asked. "We can probably find something for sandwiches."

"I--ah--think I'll go to my room and freshen up," she said stiffly, knowing how prissy she sounded but not able to do anything about it.

"You're staying here?" Miles asked.

"Lucinda invited me to. She's uncomfortable with Hal being in the hospital, and I would have to submit my motel bills as part of the cost of my service, so..." She shrugged and hurried from the kitchen to the main stairway.

Lucinda Jacobs had taken her into the Jacobs home for the night and tried to make her comfortable, but old farmhouses in the midst of fields and forests were not Penny's favored milieu. Those horses nickering in the night made her nervous and the muffled hoot of an owl struck fear into her heart.

Why does he make me so nervous? Penny asked herself, tossing her briefcase onto the bed in her room. She had to gain some objectivity. He was merely a project, the raw materials to shape into--into what?--a salesman. Yes, that was the appropriate focus for all of this.

But she sensed, under all that hair and beard, under the rough language and free-floating anger, there was a man who was worth making over.

She wondered if she was equal to the challenge.

Chapter Two

Miles pulled everything he deemed edible from the refrigerator and piled it onto the broad kitchen table. He then grabbed a long, sharp knife from the cutlery drawer and surveyed the table for the most likely combination.

Spreading a paper napkin in front of him on which to construct his sandwich, he began his engineering project. Rye bread. Slice of ham. Slice of corned beef. Another slice of corned beef. Slice of Swiss cheese. Hot, brown mustard spread thick if not efficiently with the sharp knife.

The sandwich still needed something. Returning to the refrigerator to grab a jar of sauerkraut, he reached two fingers into the jar to remove a clump of the contents and spread it over the Swiss cheese. Miles topped it with another slice of rye bread.

Perfect!

He wiped the brine off his fingers with a paper napkin and threw it in the direction of the wastebasket at the end of the counter.

Miles was about to wash the third bite of his sandwich down with a swallow of beer when Penelope Birch appeared in the doorway, still looking much too businesslike.

"Come on," he said with a lift of his beer can. "Help yourself."

"I--ah--think I'll make myself a cup of tea."

"Hey, I'll get you a plate -- your own knife --" he offered, trying to be hospitable.

"That won't be necessary," Penelope said with politely clipped tones.

"As soon as we're done here, we'll go check on Hal," Miles said around another healthy bite of his sandwich. Then he shook his head. "Serves him right. I've always told him there's no sense in riding a horse when you have a Volvo."

Penelope made some kind of sound but it was masked by the cascade of water into the empty metal tea kettle.

"I suppose Lucinda is in her glory," he went on. "There's a born worrier for you. Detail person, she calls herself. She'll have that hospital whipped into shape by the time Hal gets out!"

"She seems very nice to me," Penelope said, leaving the kettle on the stove and looking for a cup in the cupboard.

"Yeah, nice," Miles conceded.

"She's been very helpful to me," she said in a very defensive tone.

Yeah, that's probably because you're just like her, Miles thought. Business woman, tied to a desk and a paycheck. Too inhibited to spend much time out in the woods. He snorted and reached for the jar of kosher dills.

Miles noticed that Birch was eyeing the apples and bananas in the wooden fruit bowl as though she wanted something but was afraid to take it. With a sigh, he picked up the bunch of bananas, wrenched two off, and handed them to her.

"That's not going to be much of a lunch," he jeered, although, of course, it wasn't a bad start.

Birch separated the bananas and returned one to the bowl. Then she delicately removed the peel and took it to the wastebasket, also picking up a wadded napkin from the floor.

Not eating in the barbecue restaurant in Burnsville suddenly appeared to have been a good decision, Miles reflected. If she had been as picky at eating a rib as she was with the banana, they'd have been laughed out of the place by the regular patrons.

When the kettle had boiled, he told her where she could find the tea bags and watched as she dunked one up and down in her cup a few times, carefully squeezed a few drops from the bag and discarded it. Miles didn't like hot tea anyway, and watching someone fuss over making a cup of it was excruciating. Then she drank it without sugar or lemon or anything!

He had no idea why he watched her put the cup to her lips. Watching her exquisite pink lips adjust to the rim of the cup did strange things to him. He scratched his beard and frowned.

Occasionally looking over at him as though he were some aboriginal beast she was deathly afraid of, Birch sat primly at the table with her mug of tea and banana and made it all last as long as his two sandwiches, beer, three kosher dill pickles and apple.

"I suppose I'd best put on a pair of slacks to go see Hal," he said, wiping his beard with a napkin.

Then he discovered there had been a strand of sauerkraut stuck in his beard beside his mouth. No wonder she'd been glaring at him.

Maybe he was being too hard on her, Miles thought, pushing his chair back with a loud scraping noise. He didn't like being called away from his work when he was so close to a breakthrough, but nonetheless, it wasn't her fault. Hal had chosen to ride a horse and was as much at fault for this situation as he'd been for many other instances of awkwardness in the past.

"Excuse me," he grumbled and headed for the downstairs bedroom which had been his since Hal and Lucinda married.

He only sensed Penelope Birch's disdainful attitude when he left the kitchen, but two loud slams of the refrigerator door conveyed a lot more to him. He had gotten to her!

As he changed into tan slacks and a shirt he wouldn't be afraid to wear to Hal's office, he thought it might be fun to see just how much patience the woman had. It wasn't necessarily fair of him to take advantage of the situation for his own amusement, but Hal was paying her to make him perform like a trained monkey at the trade shows, so he might as well get some entertainment out of the experience.

When he finished combing his hair and his beard, she was standing in the kitchen with her briefcase in her hand, calmly waiting for him to make the first move.

The kitchen had been straightened up, and he could imagine how efficiently she'd moved around, putting things back into the refrigerator and rinsing cups to put them into the dishwasher.

"I'll drive!" he said, snatching the keys to his four-by-four from his pocket and jangling them authoritatively.

She followed him to the car.

* * *

Penny never liked hospitals. Her mother was a nursing supervisor and had wanted Penny to follow in her utility-shoed footsteps, but Penny had never been able to handle--well, yucky things. Babysitting had even been too messy for her, so she'd made extra money for her education by tutoring high school students in French and Spanish.

Therefore, she cringed at walking through the corridor of the hospital where Hal Jacobs was being treated, and would not have gone there at all had not Miles been such a hard case. She felt she would be looking after her own interests to know exactly what Hal had to say to Miles about the project ahead of them.

Miles seemed to tense when they neared the private room at the end of the corridor on the top floor. It had a magnificent view of the North Carolina hills and the rooftops of Asheville.

"Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Miles said, stopping at the foot of the bed to study the traction equipment with the interest of a mechanical mind. "Don't tell me you're testing this thing to market it."

"That would be your job," Hal said, smiling as he put a file folder on the table that stretched across the bed. He reached his hand out to his brother, but Miles ignored it by glancing at the headlines of a newspaper strewn across the bed. "I'm glad you saw fit to honor us with your presence. We need to talk over what you're going to do at the trade shows."

"Look, I'm here because you're hurt, not because I've agreed to do the--" he took a deep breath and looked over at Penny, "disgusting trade shows."

Penny realized that removing the bite from Miles' spicy language was going to be a major undertaking, but he was trying manfully to accomplish that on his own. Was it because he liked her, she wondered, or just because she was a woman who maintained somewhat of a proper demeanor? Men, however, tended to save up all their dirty words and string them together at one time when they lost their tempers. Miles seemed a prime candidate to join the classification.

"Those trade shows have always been responsible for a large share of our revenues, little brother," Hal reminded him. "Without the contracts we get from all the department stores, the sporting goods chains and the catalog suppliers, we're dead in the water. And there goes your little stove project, your search for the perfect backpack frame, and your other pet projects, many of which are probably still figments of your demented brain."

"You know I hate trade shows," Miles said through gritted teeth.

"I'm not crazy about them myself," Hal confessed.

"I thought you and Lucinda enjoyed them," Miles argued. "You sure seem to spend a lot of the company's advertising budget on them."

"As I said, they're a necessary part of our business. We've found it to be a very efficient tool for marketing, dollar-for-dollar." Hal shifted uncomfortably in his bed. "Damn. I could use a bourbon neat," he sighed, then took a swallow of ice water.

"I'll see if I can get something past the nurses," Miles said sincerely with a lowered voice.

"Don't bother," Hal said. "They've got me so full of painkillers, I won't dare go near the booze for a year. Now, before you give me any more grief about these shows, I'd like you to take a look at the sales figures for the last fiscal year--and what we've got so far this year--here, in this file."

"They don't look so bad," Miles said.

"Look at the next page--the monthly breakdowns--"

Miles turned pages then threw the folder back down on the pile Hal had taken it from and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration.

"All right!" he conceded, his expression more sullen than it had been before. "What do I have to do?"

"You're going to have to learn everything about every product we sell, whether we make it ourselves or handle it for someone else," Hal said.

"That shouldn't be too hard," Miles said. "I've tried everything we sell, within reason."

"But your opinions of some of the products might color your sales pitches," Hal cautioned. "You've got to treat every single item we sell as though it was the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"Don't I always?" Miles said, mockingly.

"No, you don't always!" Hal said, echoing his tone. Then he turned serious. "I haven't been able to show Lucinda your files on certain products you field tested due to the language you sometimes use! Items which we have had some success selling, by the way."

"Well, sorry," Miles mocked.

"I wouldn't put it past you to back off selling one of our products if someone had a better one," Hal said. "And we can't have that."

Miles spread his hands in a gesture of acquiescence.

"You'll have to learn who buys for whom and what they can use," Hal pointed out. "Lucinda has lots of material on file, and you're going to have to memorize it. Not just what we have sold before, or to whom we have sold it, but you're going to have to go after new clients. We're desperate to get into certain chains with as many of our own products as possible. There are a couple of catalogs I was hoping to get into. And then there are some products we might want to consider for our own catalog."

"Wait! Wait a minute! I'm having a hard time keeping up with you," Miles bellowed.

He was so loud that a passing nurse poked her head into the room and hissed at them.

Miles's face colored beneath his beard. "Sorry," he apologized to the nurse's retreating back.

"And you should do something about the way you look," Hal went on.

"Come on!" he said, trying to contain his feelings. "I live out in the woods, Hal. I've got a reputation for trying everything we sell. Anyone who knows anything will understand that I dress this way and look this way because it's who I am."

"Not necessarily," Hal said. "The serious buyers will look at it as a gimmick. Believe me, I've observed people at these shows who think they can come in dressed like a grizzly bear and attract a lot of attention. But that's generally the hallmark of someone who doesn't know what he's doing. As a firm, we're too well established to resort to a trick like that, and we need too many serious orders to play these little games."

"All right," Miles conceded. "I've got a shooting jacket and khaki pants..."

"Blazer, dress shirt, slacks and tie," Hal said firmly. "If you weren't a size larger than I am, I'd let you borrow my trade-show duds, but you're going to have to come up with your own. Ben and Pete will be starting for Oklahoma City tomorrow morning with the truck carrying the stall and the merchandise, so if you want to be sure that the airline doesn't send your clothing to Bangkok or Rio, I'd suggest you take care of that matter right away."

Penny had been taking notes on just about everything Hal had said. Now, when Hal had seemed to cover everything that was on his mind, she put the cap back on her pen.

"Perhaps we can do that on the way back to the farm," she suggested.

The nurse came back into the room carrying a tray of medication. She shooed Miles and Penny out the door, telling them that Hal needed his rest.

"I don't know why he needs any more rest," Miles complained, striding down the hall to the elevator. "He's got us doing all the work."

"I'm sure just healing is putting a strain on his metabolism," Penny said.

"Oh, of course you'd be on his side. He's paying you."

She gave him a look, but he was ogling a passing nurse, and the attention was being reciprocated.

* * *

"Have you ever been to Asheville before?" Miles asked her, obviously trying to make conversation as he maneuvered the four-by-four out of the hospital parking lot into the afternoon traffic.

"I can't say that I have," Penny answered, clamping her hand firmly around the door handle. Her hand had barely recovered circulation from the ride in from the farm. Luckily, she was left-handed, so she had been able to take notes without any problem. Her left hand clutched her briefcase in a similar death grip.

"Where do you generally buy your clothes?" she asked Miles.

"I don't buy many clothes," Miles said, scanning the street ahead of him. "Companies send me samples of their outdoor clothes to try out, just like we send them our products. Or I order them through catalogs."

"You don't go into stores?" Penny asked, wondering why she wasn't surprised.

"There's one place in this town where I can get a few things--probably what you and Hal have in mind," Miles said, and Penny could hear in the tone of his voice that he thought going into a store was a waste of time. But they'd run out of options.

He seemed to work his temper out in his driving, leaving Penny to grit her teeth and say nothing as they careened through Asheville's twisted streets, up and down hills and past blind intersections. The Bluegrass music which came from the tape deck Miles belatedly switched on seemed to calm his nerves but the strains of screeching fiddles and other strange stringed instruments did nothing for Penny's.

The store in a shopping center catered to men of larger than normal size, and Penny felt relief at seeing suits and jackets hanging in neat racks along the walls. Even the smell of the place made her feel she was once more in a world where she knew what she was doing.

Oblivious to the conversation between Miles and the young salesman, she headed for the rack of jackets. She was comparing the colors of blazers when Miles moved past her to another part of the rack and began pushing hangers back and forth. She overheard enough of Miles's conversation to know what sizes he was looking for, so she blithely chose what she thought would fit in with Hal's expectations of suitable trade-show garb.

She moved on to other displays to select shirts and ties and two pair of slacks, then carried them to where Miles was still looking for a jacket.

"Here," she said, "try these on."

Miles, not pleased to be interrupted while doing something he viewed as distasteful in the first place, looked at her selections and said something ungentlemanly.

"A simple 'No, thank you,' would have sufficed," Penny admonished softly, pushing the clothing at him.

"A blazer?" Miles asked, fire in his eyes. "The last blazer I wore had a duck on the pocket. And I don't wear neckties."

"Mister Jacobs--"

"If I'm going to buy clothes, it's not going to be something that will spend the next fifty years in a closet and go to Goodwill when I die," he argued. "I'll buy something I'll get some use out of. And I think this sportscoat is what I want."

Penny shook her head at the sportscoat, then handed her selections to the clerk to be replaced where they belonged. She decided to take another tack in dealing with Miles. If she was going to accomplish anything with this man, she had better start from where he was and show him that what he wanted was all wrong. Then she would lead him to what he really needed.

"All right," she said, trying to neutralize her own opinions, "try it on."

She had to admit that the tan and brown herringbone wool was probably a better choice of color for Miles than the gray blazer she had chosen, but the suede leather patches on the sleeves were rather--rustic. The way the fabric stretched across his broad shoulders was very--interesting.

"It's a bit large in the waist," the salesman said. "Perhaps a size smaller? But, no, the shoulders would be too tight. I could have it altered for you by the end of the week."

"We need it Thursday afternoon at the latest," Penny said, crisply, hoping their stringent time schedule would make it necessary to go back and look at the blazers.

"I'll have to ask the tailor," the salesman said. "One moment please."

Miles slipped away from Penny to study himself in the floor-length, three- sectioned mirror and by the time Penny caught up to him, he was sauntering away to another area of the store. He sorted through piles of shirts in plastic bags, his blunt fingers bunching them together then moving on, leaving the little bins in chaos.

He grunted and handed several samples to her and she realized to her horror that they were knit turtlenecks.

"Really, Miles! These are out of style!" she protested.

"Then why are they in this store?" Miles asked. "Look, this color goes nicely. If I'm going to stand around for hours on end, I don't want to be fidgeting with a tie and a shirt that's going to be all wrinkled at the end of the day."

"All right, you have a point," she agreed reluctantly. "But take the one that blends in with the jacket. Once you shave your beard--"

"Who said anything about shaving the beard?" Miles demanded.

"Psychological surveys of attitudes which people have about men with beards state--"

"They didn't ask me," Miles argued, moving off again toward a rack of slacks.

"Miles--"

"Penelope! God, what a name," he mumbled to himself with a shake of his head. He chose a pair of slacks and held them to his waist, then shoved them toward Penny. "I guess this is it."

"What about shoes?" Penny asked.

"I've got shoes," Miles said. "These."

Penny looked down at his feet and saw the same hiking shoes he had worn in the

mountains. She swallowed what she had thought to say.

"Don't you have a nice pair of oxfords?" she asked.

"Oxfords aren't for standing around in," Miles said. "They're for sitting behind a desk so you can take them off."

She turned away. I need this job, she thought to herself. Without this fee, Southern Images goes down the drain.

"I have a pair of sneakers--" Miles said.

"The tailor says he can have the jacket ready by Thursday at four," the salesman said, hurrying from someplace in the back of the store.

"That will be fine," Miles said. "What kind of shoes do you suggest with this outfit."

"We have a nice soft loafer--" the salesman said, already leading the way and from the grin on his face, Penny could guess he had visions of a healthy commission dancing in his head.

Penny took a deep breath and followed.

She had to admit that the finished product was pretty impressive as she watched Miles pose in front of the mirror, sportscoat, slacks, and turtleneck with pricetags still hanging. Not what she envisioned in the first place, but she could live with what she saw.

The salesman didn't miss a beat as he rang up the sale and asked Miles if he needed any underwear or socks.

Penny closed her eyes.

"I'll take care of that when I come back for the jacket," Miles said, taking his credit card from his wallet.

Penny stifled the sigh of relief that almost escaped her.

"You'll have to go to a barber," Penny said as they crossed the parking lot.

"The beard stays," Miles restated.

"It's too straggly," Penny argued.

"I can trim it myself," Miles said.

"It would look so much better if you'd have a professional trim it, and your hair."

"No!"

"Miles!"

He growled something under his breath and climbed into the car. He drove silently to a barber shop, taking a little more care with his corners than he had before. When he pulled into a plaza which had a barber shop, the white-smocked man inside was just changing the sign from open to closed.

"You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?" Penny accused.

"Yes!" Miles said proudly.

"We can go somewhere else," Penny said.

"No," Miles countered. "It's my hair and my beard and I don't trust it to anyone else."

"You are one of the most exasperating men I have ever met," Penny said glumly.

Miles turned the steering wheel and scooted the four-by-four back out into the traffic and headed for the farm. "I'm hungry," he said.

Somehow, Penny was not surprised. Making her so aggravated must have taken a lot out of him.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Miles heard his grandmother telling him that a gentleman should never provoke a lady.

Humphf!

He'd never had much interest in being a gentleman, at least one by his grandmother's definition. As for provoking, he'd never given that much thought, either. But Penelope Birch was trying to be a lady, and whether she was one or not, he thought it might be fun to see just how much provoking she could handle.

He had no interest in being a gentleman, or being in style. Shucks, if he was going to be at a camping equipment trade show, he ought to look as though he knew what he was talking about, not like some gussied-up salesman.

Penelope Birch would have had him dressed up like some dandy who did his most serious camping in a forty-foot Winnebago with a glass of Scotch in his hand.

Not Miles Jacobs!

"I need to stop for gas," Miles said, and pulled into the lot of a convenience store.

While he was paying for the gas, he noticed the cans of chewing tobacco, and told the clerk to give him one. He had a friend up in the hills who tied some of the prettiest fishing flies he'd ever seen. Maybe if Miles gave him a full can of chew, he'd give Miles an empty can to keep some flies in. The can he was using now was so full of flies that every time he tried to take one out, he scratched his finger on a fish hook.

Nonchalantly, Miles put the can of chewing tobacco on the dashboard of the car so he'd remember it the next time he went up to Burnsville.

In the reflection of the windshield he saw that Penny looked at the can and turned her eyes heavenward.

Miles tried not to make a sound, but he couldn't help it. Maybe she thought he was humming to the music on the CD player.

It was clear that if a gentleman never provoked a lady, he was missing out on a lot of fun.

Chapter Three

Ignoring Hal's setter, Bones, who yapped at his heels, Miles couldn't get into the house quickly enough when they returned to the farm. The clothes he was wearing were beginning to chafe in the close places, and he thought he and Penny had taken about enough of each other for the afternoon.

He grabbed one of the big red apples from the fruit bowl in the center of the kitchen table and excused himself to change into jeans.

Much as he expected, Penny didn't object. She looked like she was itching to get at the notes she'd taken during their conversation with Hal. It would be just as well if she holed up in her room or the den and left him alone. He had a lot of thinking to do.

He dropped the bag that contained his purchases from the clothing store on a cushioned rocking chair he never sat in and promptly and intentionally forgot they were there.

It was more important, he decided as he clamped his teeth into the apple and took a large bite of it, that he get comfortable, and that meant shucking the slacks and shirt he was wearing.

Stripped to his skivvies, he caught a glimpse of himself in the cheval mirror Lucinda insisted on storing in his room. His tan had not yet begun to fade; there was still a definite line between his briefs and where the top of his jeans rode when he took off his shirt.

But damned if he didn't look scary enough to send little kids screaming to their mommas with his thick, scraggly beard and long unruly hair. Maybe he should trim the beard. Just a little.

No. He needed the beard.

He headed for the bathroom as he was, hurrying when he remembered that if Penny had not gone upstairs--if she was in the den and should happen to look up-- he'd be profoundly embarrassed. They'd both be embarrassed. He couldn't think that Penelope Birch had ever seen a man in his drawers.

She'd probably go screaming back to her momma!

But he felt vaguely relieved when he heard footfalls somewhere upstairs. When he reached the bathroom, he locked the door behind him.

Damn! His robe wasn't hanging on the back of the bathroom door where he usually left it. Lucinda must have taken it down and washed it. Darn that woman.

Darn all women. Especially little blond ones with prissy attitudes and flawless faces. They'd be the death of him.

* * *

Penny had been looking out the window of the upstairs hallway, sitting on a windowseat, when Lucinda drove into the farmyard in the family's Volvo. Putting her notes together and closing them in her folder, Penny hurried downstairs.

Her arms filled with grocery bags, Lucinda was already trying to open the back door when Penny reached her to help. She was hampered by the dog Bones who was torn between welcoming his mistress and investigating a stranger in the house.

"I understand you and Miles looked in on Hal," Lucinda said, blowing a strand of her blond hair out of her eyes as she placed the bags on the kitchen table.

"Hal was very encouraging," Penny said. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Your duties here don't include scullery maid," Lucinda said with a laugh.

"Really, I'd like to get my hands on something that I can control," Penny said, reaching for a head of lettuce and a bunch of celery Lucinda had removed from the bag and laid on the table.

"Miles has been that much of a beast, eh?" Lucinda asked under her breath, as though she expected Miles to materialize at her elbow.

"I can understand that he doesn't like to have his plans interrupted, even to help his brother," Penny said. "But, after all...I swear he has an attitude that would peel paint."

Lucinda laughed suddenly. "I'll try to tame him down with a thick steak. Then maybe he'll be a little more docile when I hand him the files Hal wants him to study tonight."

Penny recounted the visit to the haberdashery and accepted Lucinda's sympathetic smile and amused giggles as recompense for her discomfort.

"None of this is going to be easy," Lucinda said, shooing Bones to his corner of the kitchen where he sprawled on a floppy bed but kept a watchful eye on the activities.

Lucinda looked up at the clock. "Actually, I'm glad you offered to help with dinner," she said. "I have to get over to the hospital and take Hal some papers to sign. So if you don't mind making us a tossed salad, I'll put some rice on to boil, and we'll muddle on from there."

"Nothing like taking a few whacks at a carrot to work out the aggressions," Penny sighed then laughed. She didn't think there could possibly be enough carrots in the world to work out all her frustrations tied to Miles.

"What is Miles doing?" Lucinda asked, taking a pot down from a crown of pegs over the stove.

"I heard the shower going when I was upstairs," Penny said. "But that was a long time ago. Maybe he's taking a nap."

"Miles? Take a nap?" Lucinda snorted. "That'll be the day. I don't think he ever sleeps! Either he's in his room making funny little drawings of camping stoves or he's out in the barn tinkering with who-knows-what."

"I don't think I heard him go out," Penny said. "Then again, I was going over my notes."

Lucinda put the pot on the stove to boil then went along the hallway to Miles' room. She knocked softly and called his name.

There was a muffled noise in response.

"Miles, could you go out to my car and bring in Hal's briefcase?" Lucinda asked. "He wants you to look over the files on our clients."

Penny didn't hear what Miles said for the rush of water over the head of lettuce she was washing, but a few minutes later he came through the kitchen, wearing faded jeans and a threadbare flannel shirt. Bones bolted from the corner of the kitchen floor and followed him out the back door.

He returned carrying the briefcase and let it settle heavily on a bench by the hall door. "Need me for anything else?" he asked Lucinda, pausing to see what the women were doing.

"I just wanted to warn you Hal told your mother that you're home, so she'll probably call tonight," Lucinda said, pouring rice into the pot of boiling water.

"That's all I need," Miles muttered and returned to his room.

"Dinner in twenty minutes!" Lucinda called after him, turning to the table to unwrap the steak. "Moodier than usual," she muttered to Penny. "I never would have gotten you into this if we hadn't been desperate. And at that, it was Hal's idea. I went to college with Shelby's older sister and when she told me what Shelby was doing, I was intrigued and told Hal. Well, Hal never forgets anything, and he thought, when he got hurt, that an image consultant would be the perfect solution to our problem."

Penny decided to reserve judgment on that.

Lucinda was arranging the steak on a broiler pan when she tilted her head back and called Miles again.

"Miles, could you go call the horses into the barnyard and feed them?" she asked, then lowered her voice. "If I stop to do that, I'll be late getting to the hospital to see Hal and he'll be a nervous wreck."

Miles once again trudged through the kitchen and the dog Bones once again got up from his corner and followed him out the door.

"I swear he's had a bee in his bonnet ever since I came to Asheville to marry Hal," Lucinda sighed. "I don't know whether it would take a flyswatter to get rid of it, or an exterminator."

Penny kept her opinion to herself and straightened a fork at one of the three places on the kitchen table.

* * *

Miles didn't particularly like the horses, especially since one of them was responsible for Hal's being in the hospital. He didn't trust any species that didn't understand him. That was probably why he didn't get along with women either, he reflected.

But it was no great problem to coerce the horses into the barnyard, with Bones to yip at their heels and nudge them in the right direction. Miles filled the grain basins and water trough.

From the safety of the other side of the fence, he looked the four of them over closely to see if they had caught anything dangerous in their coats. Hal wouldn't like it if something happened to these strange animals.

Deciding he didn't need to do any more to them, like currying them or checking their hooves, Miles leaned against the fence post and watched them chomp on their grain for a while.

Frankly, he preferred his horsepower with four-wheel drive and heavy-duty suspension.

It was a pleasant evening, getting nippy but with a clear blue sky. Soon the clocks would be set back to real time, and not long after that, he'd have to come back to town for the winter.

Maybe it was time to start looking for a place of his own. Hal and Lucinda had always told him he was welcome to use the first-floor bedroom in the wintertime, and any other time he was in town the rest of the year. He preferred living out at the campsite, though.

The thought of building a house for himself out there would defeat the whole purpose of having the wilderness camp. It wasn't a true test of a tent if you could run into a house when the rain got too heavy. You didn't have good data if you just observed after the fact.

"Miles! Dinner!" Lucinda called from the house.

Without turning to look at her, he raised his hand to signal that he'd heard her.

Damn! He didn't want to look at her. She'd be standing there on the porch, looking like an earth mother, the superwoman who could do everything-- ride horses, run her husband's company, bake bread and look beautiful.

Not that he was now or had ever been in love with his brother's wife. That wasn't it at all. It was just that Hal and Lucinda loved each other completely and quite visibly, and seeing them together made him jealous of their happiness.

He felt a twinge in his gut when he thought about it, having at last identified what his uneasiness was all about. Jealousy. It was an unworthy emotion, beneath him. Somehow it was obscene to be jealous of their happiness.

Miles would never do anything to hurt them, or to let them know how he felt about what they had. It was easier to stay away from the farmhouse, and the office, and everywhere else they might be if he could avoid them.

But avoiding them wasn't always possible. Nor was avoiding seeing lovers anywhere.

It would be wonderful to love someone, to trust someone, but he'd never met anyone who didn't know he was Hal Jacobs's brother. And Horace P. Jacobs's son, and that Horace P. had challenged each of his sons to be successful in their own right by their thirty-fifth birthdays.

Hal, it seemed, would succeed. Miles had grave doubts about himself.

Oh, he'd make the stove he wanted to make, just as Hal had created a business. But Miles had also made some other camping trinkets that had done very well for the company, and he knew it wasn't enough. His father could very well deem him a success, but it wasn't going to mean anything, because Miles didn't feel like a success.

And what was more depressing was that he didn't know what it would take to get that feeling--and he wanted it more than anything else in the world.

He kicked the base of the fence post with his booted foot and, judging the post to be solidly imbedded in the earth by the stinging sensation in his toes, he turned and started back to the house.

* * *

"I know the usual rule at this table is to avoid talking business," Lucinda said, passing the bowl of salad to Penny, "but since I have to go see Hal tonight, I'm going to break the rule--"

"It's yours to break," Miles said, unfolding his napkin and placing it in his lap.

Penny took the salad bowl and served herself, not without noticing Miles's demeanor at the table had changed from lunch and wondering if it was for her benefit.

"Touche'," Lucinda said. "The files I brought home are those of our clients whom you might run into either in Oklahoma City or Portland."

"Wouldn't they be grouped one way or the other, regionally?" Penny asked.

"No," Lucinda said. "These are people who travel on expense accounts. They choose the show which fits into their schedule, rather than the one that's closest."

Miles shook his head grimly, making his attitude very clear.

"You must learn who buys what and how many we can expect them to contract for," Lucinda told him.

Penny was making mental notes as she ate. There were ways of accomplishing tasks like this that she was very good at; all she had to do was convince Miles she knew what she was doing. She looked across the table at him and found his hard eyes leveled at her in challenge.

She watched him defiantly as he turned to his steak and cut precise bites from it. Perhaps the large lunch he'd eaten had taken the edge off his appetite and he could now approach a meal with less urgency and therefore better manners. If she had to teach him how to eat properly, she would be in for a battle she didn't want to tackle.

The telephone rang. Miles pushed his chair back and stood up, rather than standing up and pulling one foot across the chair, as he had done at lunch. More and more, Penny was seeing the episode at lunch as a defiant show to provoke her into abandoning her assignment--something she was not prepared to do.

Penny observed Miles as he leaned his broad shoulders against the wall where the telephone hung and handled the receiver with his large, tanned hand. It seemed that the instrument was almost too small for him to use.

Miles didn't seem happy with the conversation, but Penny paid no attention to what he was saying, fascinated with the way he stood, the power that seemed barely contained by his temperament.

Miles returned to the table, less concerned with his plate than he had been before. Obviously what he'd heard in the conversation was bothering him.

"That was my mother," he said, picking up his napkin and repositioning it on his lap. He turned to Lucinda. "She'll be arriving later in the week to help you take care of Hal when he comes home from the hospital."

"Well, that will be some relief," Lucinda said, seeming to be more amenable to the idea than Miles was. "Running the office and taking care of Hal is certainly a challenge, and after two days of it, I'm about ready to throw in the towel."

Miles's lower lip flexed, and Penny wondered what his expression would have been if his beard had not shielded it from her sight. But she sensed a bit of sympathy extending toward Lucinda that had not been there before.

Lucinda touched her napkin to her mouth, then put it down on the table. Wearily, she got to her feet. "I'm sorry to leave you like this, but I have a lot to go over with Hal, and the nurses on his floor are very strict with visiting hours. I guess they've been warned that he's a workaholic and are trying to keep him from jeopardizing his recovery by doing too much."

"Don't worry," Penny told her. "I'll clean up the kitchen."

"I'd appreciate that," Lucinda said. "There's half an apple pie in the refrigerator if you want dessert. Help yourselves."

Miles nodded and went back to what was left of his steak. Then he helped himself to another portion of the rice and the rest of the salad.

Penny tried not to study him, but she'd about finished her meal and there was not much she could do, politely, but to sit there across the table from him and try to think of conversational openings that wouldn't offend him.

"You don't have to stare at me that way." he said testily.

"I'm trying not to," Penny said.

"I suppose you're trying to think up some way to make life more miserable than it already is," he said.

Penny thought for a moment, then got to her feet and started to clear her place and Lucinda's. It was not the way she had been taught at home. Her mother would have been appalled if anyone had started to clear the table when someone was still eating, but the sooner this chore was accomplished, the sooner she could start the evening's study session.

Scraping dishes and rinsing them in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher made an unashamed statement of her need for activity and gave her a chance to ignore the man sitting at the table. When she turned from filling the detergent cup in the dishwasher, though, she nearly bumped into him as he rinsed his own plate. When she looked up, he surveyed her levelly.

"You'll see that I do have some concept of leaving the campsite the way I found it," he said, placing his dirty silverware in the rack just as she had.

"I thought we could get right to work here at the table," Penny said. "We'd have some space to spread everything out."

"No," Miles said firmly.

"Miles--"

"I'll build a fire in the den and we'll work in there," he said. "I have no intention of sitting on a hard wooden chair all evening." He headed, not toward the den, but out the back door, Bones following him.

Penny was just as glad to be alone in the kitchen. She made decisions about the leftovers that erred on the side of conservation, although she slipped the last scrap of steak into the dog's dish and hoped he'd be happy with it.

Miles had not yet returned to the house when she was finished, so she went upstairs to change out of her high heels into a pair of knitted slippers she carried in her travel bag. Glancing in the mirror over the dresser in the guestroom, she noticed that her hair was fraying from its arrangement and pulled the hairpins from it, allowing the loose braid to fall down over her shoulder. It was going to be a long evening, so she might as well be comfortable.

When Penny went back down the stairs to the den, Miles was already puttering with the fire, one eye on the news on the television in the corner of the room.

Sitting down on a couch, Penny noticed a wedding picture of Hal and Lucinda across the room and got to her feet again to take a closer look at it.

"Have Hal and Lucinda been married very long?" Penny asked.

"Four years," Miles said, putting a small log on the fire, then closing the screen.

"She seems very devoted to him," Penny observed.

Miles made a noise and dusted his hands on the thighs of his jeans. He turned away from her and opened Hal's briefcase on the coffee table. There was something in his attitude that closed her off more than usual.

"Did I say something wrong?" Penny asked. "I--thought--"

"Yes, they are very much in love with each other," Miles said, tightly. "Now, can we get to work?"

"Whatever you say," Penny agreed.

"Maybe I should start with the companies we sell to," Miles said, lifting files out of the briefcase with a large, raw-knuckled hand. "What kind of organization is this? He's got them by people's names rather than the companies!"

"He's probably cross-referenced them in his office," Penny said. "The first thing you notice when someone comes up to you at a trade show is probably the person's name."

"That's a stupid way of doing it," Miles appraised, sorting through the files with some consternation in his expression.

"I imagine Hal isn't too keen on letting his company files out of his office," Penny went on.

Miles swore softly. "How am I supposed to learn all this?"

"Have you ever learned things by association?" Penny asked, moving to sit beside him on a couch. "You pick out a few important facts that are interrelated."

Sitting down beside Miles was a mistake. His position on the couch with its slick surface conspired to make her slide into him as she tried to read the file he was holding. The contact of their bodies had the effect of flame to dried grass, stinging and singeing, an explosion of heat that took her breath away.

Penny quickly drew away, afraid he'd felt the same intense sensation she had. She dared not look at him, because whenever their eyes met, it was as though he could see into her soul, into her very being--and that she kept hidden from everyone. With a quick breath, she focused her attention on her task.

She pointed to facts he could relate to the man whose name was on the file, but Miles resisted any help. Perhaps he had felt the same sensation she had and was withdrawing behind the wall she was working so hard to tear down. She would not let him. Resolutely, she forged on.

After going through a few files with Miles, Penny gave up. She took a copy of Jacobs' catalog from the briefcase and went to the comfortable chair to study it.

Miles sprawled on the couch and occasionally read aloud to himself, or got up and paced the floor as he tackled this task his own way, so Penny studied camping stoves and cooking utensils, hiking boots and things her life had no use for.

"All right!" Miles's angry voice cut into her concentration. "Help me with this! I haven't had to memorize anything since college. I had no idea this would be so hard."

"Why don't you take a break and get into a better frame of mind?" Penny suggested.

"Go get a piece of that pie Lucinda offered. Come back to this with a fresh outlook."

Miles looked at her skeptically. Before he left the room, he put another log on the fire. He returned, balancing two plates of pie topped with thick slabs of cheddar cheese, and two large glasses of milk.

"I think better when I'm not hungry," he explained, handing her a plate and a glass.

Penny decided that establishing a rapport with Miles precluded making any reference to a diet she might try to stay on. She ate the pie and cheese and drank the milk, enjoying it.

"Now, there are a few tricks to memorization," Penny started to instruct Miles.

He seemed to be in a more receptive mood when they went back to the work. Perhaps he'd decided he needed her help.

Lucinda returned home and entered the den, prepared to watch them rather than to jump into their work session. She looked tired, Penny thought.

"How's Hal tonight?" Miles asked, straightening up one file and replacing it in Hal's briefcase.

"He must be getting better," Lucinda said with a sigh. "He's beginning to get unbearable."

"That sounds like Hal," Miles said.

"He wants you to see some of his other files, so I think you should go into the office tomorrow and work there," Lucinda said, a bit tentatively, as though she knew she was going to reap an argument. "He keeps some pretty sensitive material on people he doesn't want to sell to because of their credit records, people he wants to make some sort of contact with, and what products he's anxious to place--sensitive information he doesn't want to let out of his own filing cabinet."

Miles ran a hand through his hair and scowled. "Considering how much trouble I'm having with these files, it's going to take forever to get a handle on all that."

"At least I'll be there to help you," Lucinda said, as though she were comforting a child she was leading to a dentist's office. "Between Penny and me, you'll get the hang of it."

Lucinda excused herself, and Penny listened to her footsteps going slowly up the stairs.

"She seems very fatigued," Penny observed.

Miles shrugged. "Of course, she is," he said, preparing to get back to work.

"Has she been ill or something?"

"How should I know?" Miles demanded. "I've been gone for three weeks."

Penny decided that it was none of her business.

"I just wonder if this is going to do any good at all," Miles said, pausing to stare into the fire.

"You saw the figures Hal showed you," Penny said. "You know the success of the firm over the next year depends on the sales you come up with on this series of trade shows. Even your own research depends on--"

"You're beginning to sound like one of them," Miles complained. "This isn't really your problem."

"Yes, it is," Penny sighed. "Southern Images--my company -- is just starting out. We haven't had many clients and we've had to borrow heavily from my partner Shelby's family to get going at all. I need you to be a success as much as Hal and Lucinda do."

"Well, that's just part of the risk you take when you strike out on your own," Miles said. "I've always told Hal I could get a job working for someone else and be just as happy, maybe even more so. But he keeps saying our best course lies in staying together, working together. There are times when I'd rather just forget about this whole business and all the problems that are wrapped up in it."

"I know exactly how you feel," Penny said, not so much as practiced sympathy as real empathy.

"Anyone who goes into business for himself has the rest of the world bossing him," Miles said. "Frankly, I don't have a lot of concern for your problems. I'd rather be up at Spruce Pine working on my stove."

"The matter at hand, however, is that you learn who your customers are," Penny said, picking up a handful of folders and opening the first one. "If you see a name tag that says Bob Grierson, what is going to come to your mind?"

"A total blank!"

"No! Think! Your stove project depends on your getting him to take a larger order this year than last. What are you going to sell him?"

Miles ran both hands through his hair and set his jaw. "Last year he bought five hundred units of the 310 stove and two hundred units of the 202 utensil kits."

"No, it was the other way around."

"Damn!"

"No, that's good!" she encouraged him, perhaps with more enthusiasm than she felt--as though she was cajoling a puppy who'd gotten a little closer to the newspaper. "You got the products right -- which would be acceptable so far as making a good impression on him. What is the next thing you say to him?"

"Watch for our new stove..."

"No! Ask him how his sales of those items were," she suggested. "Never try to sell something that isn't ready to ship as soon as the order hits the sales department."

Miles spouted something Penny tried to ignore.

"I'd recommend you try to sell him the next higher product of whichever category he had the strongest response on," Penny advised. "Or, if he doesn't move on that, show him your small backpack frame and point out that it's one of the items you're having the most reorders on."

Miles crumpled back on the couch and stared at her. "You should take this job," he growled.

"I have a job," Penny reminded him. "Right now it's getting you to learn all of this. Now, if you see a tag that says--Woody Kennery?"

Miles groaned and got to his feet. "He represents a firm like ours--makes some things, has a catalog of their own products and some other manufacturers. Made those shoes you wore today."

"So?"

Miles stared at her. "Isn't that enough?"

"You're there to sell to him, not to buy from him, at least for the purposes of this exercise."

"Then I'll ask him which of our products he got the most orders for."

"Right. That's a start," Penny said, then yawned. She would have to force herself to keep going through all these files. Maybe by midnight, Miles would get the hang of this. And maybe not.

Chapter Four

Penny had just come into the kitchen of the Jacobs' home the next morning when a teaspoon slipped from Lucinda's hand as she was preparing coffee. It clattered to the floor and Lucinda stared down at it with some consternation.

"I'll get it for you," Penny offered, since the spoon had skittered close to where she stood at the table.

"Just put it in the sink," Lucinda said, retracing her steps to the silverware drawer to get a clean one for measuring coffee into the coffee maker. "I've been all thumbs lately."

"You're under such a strain," Penny said, uneasy that Lucinda thought she had to apologize for such an trivial lapse. "Maybe you should skip work and just spend your time with Hal."

"No, I can't do that," Lucinda said, shaking her head. Her hands shook as she finished her task. "My hands are stiff from the chill in the air. I'll go to the office a little later than usual. We generally try to get there by nine, but I think I'll wait and leave about then."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Penny asked, rubbing her own hands together to warm them.

"No. Really," Lucinda protested. "Everyone at the office is taking on a little more than their own work to help me out. It will all smooth out eventually."

Lucinda moved slowly around the kitchen, making her toast and pouring her juice with great care, as though she was doing each task for the first time. When Penny offered to help, Lucinda shook her head.

After a few minutes, Miles appeared from his bedroom, wearing well-washed jeans and a knit shirt, a dark green cardigan dangling from his hand. "Is the coffee ready?" he asked, his voice deep and rough-edged, as though he was not used to speaking this early in the day.

"In a few minutes," Lucinda said, placing a jar of marmalade on the table. "What can I fix for you?"

"I'll do it myself," Miles said, waiting for Lucinda to move away from the refrigerator.

With swift, graceful movements, he pulled out two eggs, the package of bacon and a potato. Penny was fascinated to see how he started several rashers of bacon to fry in a big iron skillet, chopped the potato without bothering to peel it, and cracked the eggs both at the same time in one hand. He combined everything in the hot skillet and pushed it all together with a few deft strokes of a wooden spatula, humming softly to himself with crescendos accenting some virtuosity only he could appreciate.

His breakfast smelled -- interesting, if you could stand the scent of eggs and bacon that early in the morning. Obviously, Lucinda had trouble with it. She stared at the concoction as Miles added salt and pepper, then picked up her coffee and toast.

"I think I'll -- just take this into the living room," Lucinda said. "I need to go over some -- things."

"Does Lucinda look a little pale to you?" Penny cautiously asked Miles when he finally set the heaping plate at his place on the table.

"How should I know?" he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. "She's a blonde."

Penny couldn't quite fathom what that had to do with anything. But she had her suspicions. She smiled to herself and poured Miles a mug of coffee.

"Are you ready to work on the files this morning?" Penny asked Miles as she handed him his coffee.

Miles took the cup and tasted the coffee before answering. "I thought I'd do a few things around here first," he said. "My four-by has to be washed if I'm going to park it in the lot over there. Then I'd better see what needs to be done around here. Hal is a great one to let repairs slide. Or maybe he just leaves little chores for me to do so I'll think I'm working for my keep."

Penny didn't have to be told he was stalling. He had no intention of going to the office any sooner than he absolutely had to. She, on the other hand, had to make him concentrate on the business at hand. For a moment, however, it was best to let him eat his breakfast in peace.

"Lucinda says she's leaving for the office at nine," Penny said.

"That sounds about right," Miles said, and devoted his attention to what was on his plate. "I ought to be able to get the car washed by then."

"We could use my car," she proposed.

"Ha! That thing? I'd barely fit in that tin can."

"I'll drive..."

"Nah." He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand.

He got up from the chair and made two pieces of toast and refilled his juice glass.

Penny felt suddenly cut off, closed out of whatever Miles was thinking. He occasionally looked off into the distance while he chewed. Maybe he was thinking about his camp stove. Maybe he was just thinking up more ways to make her life miserable. Maybe he was thinking of that moment the night before when they had been sitting on the couch and accidentally--

Penny swallowed and looked away from him. It would do no good to dwell on that situation, brief and unremarkable as it was. The problem was that--it was all she could think about at this moment. She had to--find something else to think about. Something to do!

Well, she certainly had nothing to do for a while. She'd made her bed as she'd gotten out of it and cleaned up after herself as she had gone about dressing in her slacks, shirt and blazer. She had an hour to kill, even with collecting up the breakfast dishes, rinsing them and putting them into the dishwasher. When she reached for Miles' skillet, he twisted around in his chair and waved her off.

"I'll take care of that," he said. "You--go do something else."

"I'll work on Hal's files in the den," she said. "I'll be there when you're ready to go to the plant."

"Does this mean you insist on riding with me?" he asked, raising his voice as she left the kitchen. "You couldn't give me a break and ride with Lucinda?"

"It will give us more time to go over the files," Penny said, returning to the kitchen door. "I'll see how much you retained from last night. We'll get an idea of how well that memory technique works for you. If it doesn't work, we'll start with something else when we get to the office."

Miles groaned. "There's no way of getting away from you, is there?"

"You are going to wash your car," she said and went on to the den without waiting for a response.

* * *

Miles parked the four-by next to the open door of the warehouse. Inside the building, two men were loading a large truck with boxes that seemed to form an endless barricade between the warehouse and the door that led to the business offices. Off to one side, probably destined to go onto the truck last, was the compressed display stall for the trade shows. Somehow, Penny knew it would take some doing to get Miles past these men.

She was right. He roamed the cold, drafty warehouse and inspected the labels on each of the boxes, counting up how many held catalogues, hand-outs, freebies and merchandise samples. When he had about reached the end of the row of boxes, and Penny was hoping to steer him toward the office, another worker came over to Miles and greeted him with a hardy handshake and a slap on his back. Once again, Miles answered questions about Hal's condition, and peppered his conversation with words of questionable propriety regarding the horse who threw Hal and what had happened to his settled, if off-beat, lifestyle as a result.

Fine, Penny thought, as Miles was about to run down. Now we can get into the office and get to work.

Yet it was not to be. Another man came over, and part of the process was repeated.

"Guys, it looks like I'm not going to get back up to Spruce Pine for a while," he said to the newcomers. "Can you hurry with whatever you have to do today and go up there and pull down the tents for me? There should be enough room in the shack for you to store them, but if there isn't, bring the overflow back here."

"Hey, now the big boss is laid up, we can slough off and go up there," one of the men said with a broad grin.

Miles pulled himself to his full height and squared his shoulders. "Who is the big boss?" he asked them pointedly.

"We just let Hal think he is," the other man said, then laughed.

Miles slapped him on the back and started toward the office.

Penny tagged along, glad to be headed toward stable walls, desks and chairs- -maybe a cup of coffee--the sounds of telephones ringing and machines clicking. Normalcy. Civility. Order.

She turned to go into Lucinda's office, hoping to get some direction on what facet of the problem to approach next when Miles plowed right past her to someplace else without so much as slowing down. Startled, she hurried after him.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"My office," he said, fishing for the key in his pocket. "I have a few things to do before we get to work on Hal's files. Don't look at me that way. We have all day."

The room was more of a workshop than an office. There was a desk pushed off in one corner, with stacks of files and camping supplies catalogs banked against a computer. A drafting board stood in a more prominent place, along with a laboratory bench complete with a sink.

Miles placed his briefcase and his laptop computer on the lab bench and proceeded to do whatever it was he felt was most important.

"I need to download all my data into the computer --" he said before deciding Penny wasn't going to understand what he was doing any more than she approved of his taking the time to do it. He just muttered to himself and went on as though she was not there.

In a few minutes, she realized he had no intention of making the job take less time than it could be stretched to consume, so she left and went to Lucinda's office.

Lucinda looked up from a ledger and removed her reading glasses. "Where's Miles?" she asked, as though it was no surprise that he was not with Penny. It was just another inconvenience in a hectic day.

"He's in his office, downloading his laptop computer and ignoring me," Penny said, moving a chair closer to Lucinda's desk before sitting down.

Lucinda marked her place in her ledger and put it aside, not without effort.

"Let's give him a few more minutes," Lucinda suggested. "It will give us time to organize the files Hal wants him to go over. You can use Hal's office. Miles's cubbyhole is always so intimidating, even when it's been cleaned--which isn't often. He refuses to let anyone in when he's not there, so we just tell the cleaning crew to stay out. Considering what Miles puts up with in the field, I'm sure he can deal with any amount of dust that collects in there."

They went across the hall to an office, which was much more the type of accommodations a chief executive officer should have, even in a small company that dealt with camping equipment. It was neat and masculine and quietly efficient in its use of space, but it had touches here and there which told what the company was all about.

Penny could not have changed a thing to improve the impression it made on a prospective customer. That was the way she always viewed any venue while she was on a job.

Lucinda found the files in the bottom drawer of Hal's desk and spread them out on the blotter. When she had made certain she had everything she wanted Penny to see, she patted the back of the leather chair.

"You may as well make yourself at home and familiarize yourself with this," she said. "I'll have someone bring you some coffee, and in about twenty minutes, we'll go drag Miles out of his lair."

Indeed the material in front of her was sensitive, Penny acknowledged, and wondered how she was going to insure Miles knew all of this, in proper order, to act on it if necessary. He certainly hadn't shown any great ability to memorize the night before, and if he snubbed a firm Hal was anxious to do business with or made a deal with someone Hal did not want to work with, it could be disastrous.

She pressed her hands to her cheeks and glared at all the notes. Did she dare photocopy them?

"Ready to go drag Miles from his den, kicking and screaming?" Lucinda asked, bringing a pot of coffee into the office and placing it on the credenza.

"It depends on who is doing the kicking and who is doing the screaming," Penny said, getting up from her chair.

"Very funny," Lucinda said flatly.

"Do I dare copy these files?" Penny asked.

"Why?" Lucinda asked as they started down the hall.

"I don't think Miles can handle the material in them in his head," Penny confessed.

"That may be the only way," Lucinda said. "But it's going to be a last resort. Hal would be furious if any of it got out."

"I understand," Penny said.

Miles looked up from his bench when they walked into his office. His hair was disarranged, as though he'd run his hands through it several times, and his shirttail had parted company with the waistband of his jeans as he had hunched forward, leaving a wide band of tanned skin exposed.

He looked up at them as though they were interrupting him at a crucial stage, bringing him back from some glorious exploration, and for a moment Penny felt sorry for him. Then she remembered this was Miles she was dealing with, the man who seemed bent on making her job as miserable as possible.

"You can't put it off any longer, Miles," Lucinda said, firmly and evenly. "The camp stove can wait, but the trade show won't."

"Give me a few more minutes," Miles pleaded, but when Lucinda shook her head, he got up from his stool and followed them without even putting the stool back in its place under the bench.

For some reason, Penny had to put the stool where she thought it belonged. As she touched it, she felt the warmth of the seat, created by Miles having sat there. She let go of it abruptly and hurried after Miles, as though trying to leave behind that unformed, unidentified feeling that threatened to wedge its way into her tightly constructed defenses, defenses which were proof against any man.

Miles stalled. He had to wash his hands. Pour a cup of coffee. Make a phone call.

Penny placed her hand on the phone as he was about to raise the receiver.

"Miles, we have to get to work," she said, and handed a sheaf of papers to him.

He sat down in Hal's chair, turned it to the side on its swivel, and propped his feet up on the corner of the desk. Suddenly he was as lost in reading as he had been in puttering at his workbench.

Penny threw up her hands and sank to the couch on the other side of the room, watching as he gnawed on the index finger of his left hand and made grunting noises now and then.

"Ready for a drill on what you just read?" she asked when he put the papers aside and reached for another stack.

"Not particularly." Miles looked into his coffee cup and decided it needed to be refilled. "At least some of this stuff makes sense," he said. "I know the products of some of these companies. That stuff last night--sheesh!"

When they finally took their break, Lucinda invited them to go to lunch with her, mentioning a place to Miles that he obviously had some liking for, because he didn't grouse. He did, however, take the keys to the Volvo from Lucinda's hand and insisted on driving.

Lucinda seemed at a loose end, not being able to drive the car. Miles exercised more care with his driving than he did in his own car, but still he seemed to take corners a bit more tightly than was safe. Penny saw Lucinda cover her mouth at one point, as though she wanted to say something and was physically restraining herself.

Miles resisted any attempt at discussion of business during the meal. He bought a newspaper and asked Lucinda to catch him up to date on local politics, particularly on environmental issues. Lucinda seemed willing to humor him for the sake of his cooperation later. Penny felt she would not have been as accommodating.

But one thing was encouraging. In the presence of the public, Miles did at least show some social graces in his table manners. Granted, he went back to the salad bar twice, but Penny reasoned he probably had little opportunity to eat fresh salads in the wilds of Spruce Pine Camp. She tried to be understanding.

"I'll go back to the office with you for a few minutes. Then I have to go see Hal," Lucinda said, settling into the car after lunch. "What am I going to tell him about your progress?"

"Tell him that I'd have this camp stove project done by now if it weren't for his stupid broken leg," Miles growled.

* * *

"This is the schedule for the trade show," Lucinda said, handing a brochure to Miles. "Maybe you should match up some of your files to the companies that are listed there on the back, but they generally are only about half the ones that show up."

Penny tried to read the list while Miles held it, but only got a censuring look from Miles.

"Friday evening, there's a cocktail party given by one of the major companies at the hotel where you'll be staying," Lucinda went on.

"Well, I can skip that," Miles said.

"No, you can't," Lucinda corrected. "You'd be surprised how much business is done at the party. You have to be there. Besides, it may be the only time you have access to some people. During the show itself, you're more or less tied to your booth." Lucinda searched for something in her desk.

"You know I don't like these things," Miles protested.

"Neither do I," Lucinda told him. "You just have to put up with them."

"Lucinda--" Penny said, wondering how she was going to say what had to be said and still not alienate Miles. "I think Miles might--have a major problem with--a cocktail party."

"--Afraid I'll get sloshed and--" Miles shot at her.

"Of course not," Penny said. "I just think it's a tall order to jump into a situation like that, when these people are only--words on paper at this point."

"You're going to have to go with him," Lucinda said, laying two airline tickets on the desk in front of her. "We always reserve a suite when we go to a show, in case we need someplace to talk to clients away from the hassle. Do you think you two can coexist for a few more days?"

"No!" Miles roared before Penny had a chance to voice her own uncertainty.

"Well, you'll have to," Lucinda said. "Which one is going to handle the details?"

Miles pointed to Penny and threw the trade show brochure down on Lucinda's desk. He stalked out of Lucinda's office and left Penny to be briefed on the details.

Lucinda sank into her chair with a heavy sigh. "What do you think?" she asked. "Can Miles pull this off?"

Penny looked through the collection of material Lucinda had given her, stalling for time, but the answer had to come. It was inevitable.

"I'm doing the best I can, but he's not very cooperative," she said, knowing the success of Southern Images also weighed in the balance. She vowed not to be apologetic, only frank.

"I guess we have been fooling ourselves to think he would be accommodating," Lucinda said, picking up a pencil and tapping it on her desk. "Well, from what I know of Miles, I'm really not surprised."

She motioned for Penny to sit down, and Penny gave Lucinda her full attention.

"Miles was born bright," Lucinda divulged. "He was reading early, without even being taught. He had mechanical ability, too, I understand. He could take things apart and put them back together again. In school, he wanted so much from his teachers they labeled him a nuisance, hyperactive, whatever the label-of-the- month was. On the other hand, he occasionally ran across a teacher who appreciated his gifts and tried to develop them. I imagine he was terribly frustrated. His favorite release has been to reject everyone and everything and go out into the wilderness. We know he has a hatred of crowds, which isn't going to help him at a trade show, either. He feels he makes his best contribution to the firm by handling the research and development, and he's probably right."

Penny nodded sympathetically. "Well, maybe now I'll have a better idea of how to reach him," she said. "You go on to visit Hal. I'll see if I can get Miles to work with me for a few hours this afternoon, if I can drag him away from his drafting table and lab bench."

The smile on Lucinda's face as Penny left the office was not reassuring.

* * *

The men wrestled two boxed tents into the corner of Miles' office, then leaned against his lab bench to rest a moment and see what he was doing.

"I'm still working on this camp stove," he told them, "if anyone will give me a little time to myself! I've just about got it, but nobody will leave me alone."

One of the men laughed and sank his hands into the pouch of his hooded sweatshirt. "If shipping slows down any more than it already is, you'll probably have lots of time to work on it," he said.

"Except you won't have any market for it," the other man chimed in.

"Things are that slow?" Miles asked, concerned.

"Hey, we had a good summer, but since the first of September, when the last of the hunting and trapping season stuff went out, we've been hurting."

"I can't tell you the last time we got paid for a full week. Forget overtime! I'd just like to string a couple full weeks in a row."

"What about the Christmas season?" Miles asked.

The men shrugged. "Look, we make a surge of shipments starting about ten days after the first trade show, then work steady through the end of the year. Usually there's a lull for a few weeks, then, wham! we get busy like a son-of-a-gun. But we need orders now, or else this place is going belly-up, sure as shootin'."

"We gotta get back to work," the other man said, "such as it is."

Miles didn't watch them go. He leaned his elbows on his bench and scratched at his beard.

So things are that bad?

He stared at the wall for a long while, thinking how far the company had come since their father had given Hal and Miles the seed money for their venture.

They had done everything together, the planning, the grunt work, accounts, the hiring. Then Lucinda had come along and taken over a little here and a little there, and Hal had started wearing a shirt and tie. Miles had gotten uncomfortable with it all, had gotten out of touch. Oh, he thought he was doing what would be best for the firm, but now he saw that he had just been running away.

Being selfish.

He didn't like that thought.

The door opened behind him, and he looked back over his shoulder to see who was there.

"Should have known it would be you," he growled at Penny.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We do have work to do."

Miles scratched the back of his neck, bringing himself back to a reality that he didn't like, particularly.

"Yeah, I guess we do. Give me a few minutes to straighten up and get myself organized and I'll see you in Hal's office."

"All right," Penny said, leaving and closing the door.

Damn! It was up to him to save Hal's butt and his own dream, whatever that had become. This was no time to be playing mind games with that blond bit of fluff, or flexing his own self-indulgent muscles. It wasn't just Hal and Lucinda, it was all the other people who depended on the company for jobs, and things weren't going well in the mountains. Winters were always hard. Damn. He was letting them down.

Miles got to his feet and washed his hands in the sink. He crushed some paper towels into a damp clump and tossed them into the wastebasket.

All right. He would do it. He had to.

* * *

It was all much like the evening before. When dinner was over and Lucinda headed once more for the hospital to see Hal, Penny and Miles went into the den and opened briefcases full of information which Miles needed to know, if not by heart, at least well enough not to embarrass himself or the firm.

Penny sensed a new intensity in Miles. He did not get up to fidget with the fire in the hearth quite so often, nor did he scowl and scratch his beard or say combinations of words which made Penny's cheeks burn.

Lucinda came back from the hospital and checked in with them, brought milk and doughnuts for them to snack on, then excused herself for the night.

Before long, Penny kicked off her shoes and curled her feet up under her in the chair, leaning her head back and listening to Miles read files aloud, then try to repeat the information from memory. There was something about his low, deep voice, and the way it sometimes trailed off when he was internalizing the information that lulled her...

"Wake up!" Miles bellowed, shaking her. "What good are you to me if you're going to fall asleep just when I'm finally getting somewhere with this garbage!"

"S-sorry," Penny apologized, straightening up and shoving her feet into her shoes. "I--must have--dozed off."

Miles ran his hand through his hair, then dropped the file he was holding onto the coffee table, where their briefcases stood open. He turned away from her and must have looked at the clock on the wall.

"I didn't realize it was after midnight," he said, with a more understanding tone in his voice. "Go up to bed. We can finish this tomorrow. Maybe we'll just stay here all day--until I have to pick up my clothes. We'll have to go see Hal, too. It will be a long day. Go get some sleep."

Penny was dazed, but not so much so that she didn't notice the profound change in Miles.

Maybe this was going to work, after all.

Chapter Five

Since her plans for leaving Asheville by the end of the week had changed, Penny gritted her teeth and called her partner back at Southern Image in Atlanta, hoping Shelby had been able to get more cash to keep the business going.

"I have to go to Oklahoma City with Mr. Jacobs," Penny told her. "He can't possibly handle the trade show without constant prompting."

"Are they paying your expenses?" Shelby asked.

"Yes."

"Good."

"Were you able to--I mean, are we going to--"

"Do you remember Tom Hathaway?" Shelby asked, not addressing the question Penny was trying so hard to ask.

"The political science major?"

"Yes, among other things. He's buying into the firm and bringing us a client," Shelby said. Her tone let Penny know Hathaway was in the office with her and listening to the other end of the conversation. "We're handling a candidate for City Council. Isn't that interesting?"

"I thought we said--no politics," Penny challenged.

"I know," Shelby put her off. "I think it's a great chance to do something really significant in the community. The candidate has been very open to our suggestions. It's a shame you can't be here to help us write his speeches. You're so good at that."

"Shelby, you're out of your mind," Penny said angrily. "This is contrary to everything we planned to do with Southern Images."

"Well, I'm glad you're so positive about our progress, Penny. You have a great time in Oklahoma City and we'll see you when you get home. By then I hope we'll have another client for you to handle."

Penny knew when Shelby was doing a con job on her, and she didn't like this turn of events one little bit.

After she hung up the phone, Penny leaned back in her chair and stared into space for a long time.

They were in trouble. Deep trouble.

* * *

Going to visit Hal that morning was a waste of time. The nurse didn't want Miles and Penny interrupting her schedule, and Hal had nothing to add to what they were already doing. There were no dazzling last-minute changes of strategy, nor sudden flashes of insight.

Penny was disappointed. After all, she was getting paid to help Hal and Miles through this difficult period, and so far, she couldn't see she'd made any contribution to shoring up Jacobs Camping Supplies Company.

When the business had all been discussed and the visit deteriorated to a discussion of family matters, Penny excused herself and wandered out into the hall. Miles and Hal needed some privacy, she reasoned. She didn't have any brothers or sisters, but she thought that, if she were in this type of situation, she'd want a few minutes alone.

Maybe it would have been nice to have a sister--someone to share private thoughts with, someone who wouldn't think your dreams were crazy and your fears senseless. She had enough of her dreams squashed and her fears discounted from her pragmatist mother. And her father was never around to even notice.

She folded her arms and looked out at the hills. Funny she should think about her father just now--then again, no. Shelby was taking them into reshaping politicians. That's what reminded her of her father. And she didn't want to think about him.

It was like being told not to think about elephants!

Miles didn't stay long. He came out of Hal's room, his forced smile becoming a scowl as he strode down the hallway to where Penny was waiting.

"What's wrong?" Penny asked.

Immediately, she saw in his eyes that she was not going to get an answer. Maybe Hal and Miles were not as close, as caring of each other as she would want to be if she had a sister. Maybe men were different. Maybe men didn't share their thoughts and bare their souls the way she thought sisters would. Maybe it was a tragedy -- or maybe it was just accepted.

"We ought to stop and get some groceries," Miles suggested when they reached the car in the parking lot. "Lucinda doesn't have the time, and with my parents coming to stay, she's going to be swamped."

"I have no idea what she needs," Penny said.

Miles sighed, and she felt his anger. "Should we go back to the house and make a list?"

"It might be the best idea," Penny agreed.

"Oh, all right," he conceded. "We've wasted enough time, we may as well waste some more."

"Didn't it go well with Hal?"

She hadn't intended to come right out and ask him so bluntly. But there it was.

"It never goes well with Hal," Miles said. "First he tells me what to do, and then he tells me he doesn't think I can do it."

Penny cringed. Things weren't going well, and she didn't know how to salvage the situation.

* * *

Penny put the last of the groceries away and sighed from the exertion. "I just hope Lucinda will be able to find everything when she needs it," she said, folding the last empty bag.

"You worry too much," Miles said, taking the bag of dog food from the pantry and pouring a mound of it into the bowl in the corner. Bones shambled into the kitchen and nosed around the bowl until Miles took the bag away and put it back in its place.

"Is there anything I should do so Lucinda won't be embarrassed when her in- laws come?" Penny asked.

"Oh, come on! My folks aren't ogres!"

"That's not what I meant," Penny said. "Lucinda keeps the house very nice, but I'm sure she hasn't been able to do the dusting and cleaning the way she would want to while she's running the company and going over to the hospital to see Hal two or three times a day."

"That's not what you're getting paid for," Miles said, reaching into the refrigerator to take out what he needed for lunch.

"At this point, Miles, I don't know what I'm getting paid for," Penny sighed. "I feel as though I'm not making any headway at all in regard to your success at the trade show."

Miles suddenly looked back at her with naked intensity in his eyes.

"Of course you're not seeing any results yet," he said, wrenching the top off a jug of milk. "We'll find that out after the show."

"But--"

"I'm as frustrated as you are at this point," Miles said, pouring himself a glass of milk. "All I can say is that you should go ahead and pack your bags, do whatever you have to do, and we'll do the best we can with the material we've covered so far."

"All right, I'll take your word for it," Penny said.

Penny, deciding she'd rather not eat lunch in her current mood, went up to her room and began to pack. There was no reason to wait until the evening, and waiting until the next day was out of the question because their flight would leave early in the morning.

She packed everything but her toiletries and the nightclothes she would need until she left. She looked around the room, realizing it would be used by the elder Jacobses. She snatched up a few tissues and dusted the furniture's flat surfaces, then found fresh towels to lay out on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. It was the least she could do so Lucinda wouldn't be rushing around at the last moment.

"Do you need anything while I'm out?" Miles asked from the doorway.

"No--nothing. Can I do anything for you while you're gone?"

Miles shoved his arms into his jacket while he thought over the question, then shook his head.

* * *

Damn. She'd gotten to him.

Miles jammed the car into reverse to turn it around and drive out of the yard.

Penny Birch was impossible to find fault with -- always trying to be helpful, even-tempered, unflappable -- at least on the outside. She was like a school teacher he'd once had, who'd done her best to guide him and pull him along toward his full potential, tried to show him how he fit into the rest of the world. At the same time, she kept her distance by erecting a wall a foot thick against showing him any feeling she might have had--for him or for anyone else in her classes. It was appropriate for the teacher to act that way. He wondered what it would be like if Penny's defenses fell.

Not only that, but she'd been caught up in the struggle between Hal and himself. She had the wisdom to get out of Hal's hospital room that morning and let them snipe at each other without an audience.

He and Hal were never going to come to an understanding about their basic disparity--if they could identify their differences. It had something to do with their childhood, and when either of them brought up certain things, they ended up yelling and never got anywhere. So now that the health of the business depended on Miles getting as many orders as Hal could have garnered, they still weren't able to bury the problem and work together.

Penny was caught in the middle. It wasn't her fault, but she was hurting anyway. He could see that.

The shop where he picked up his clothing was quiet and cool, giving him a chance to leave the uncomfortable thoughts about Penny in the background.

He drove across town to the barbershop, glad to see a line of three or four men ahead of him. He picked up a fishing magazine and settled into one of the chairs against the wall. But the muffled conversations and the bland reading material made it difficult for him to keep his mind from the matter at hand. Penny.

In the last few days, he'd gotten to know her too well, to almost anticipate what she would say and do. He wondered, though, how she would react if she knew his attitude was just an act. Sure, he was having a hard time learning some of the facts and figures. That was truth at its harshest. But when it came to being tough and rough-edged, he was putting her on, the way he'd been putting on the whole world since he'd found out he could get a little distance if he could come off as intimidating.

But in the end, the last thing he wanted was distance from Penny. So what if it was only lust at the moment. He'd been in the woods too long.

"Cut the hair to about here," he told the barber when it was finally his turn. "And trim the beard."

The barber was a bit more enthusiastic with his scissors than Miles had anticipated, but when he left the chair and fished a couple bills from his wallet, he consoled himself with the thought that his hair would grow back.

* * *

Penny heard Miles drive into the yard, but didn't feel compelled to leave her room and go looking for him. He was a grown man, and he could easily pick up a few packages for himself without her checking up on him.

She was exhausted from tiptoeing around his ego for three days. This afternoon she chose to conserve her energy by sitting in an armchair with her feet up on the edge of the bed, a book she had brought with her in her lap and soft classical music on the radio. It was a selfishness she thought she owed herself, especially if she was going to be spending the weekend with Miles. She'd devoted two long evenings to working with him; she was entitled to a few hours of solitude. It was not until she'd finished the book and heard Lucinda in the kitchen below that she went down to see if she could be of some help.

"Well, you certainly did stock the refrigerator," Lucinda said, taking a container of orange juice out and pouring herself a glass.

"Miles is responsible for the more exotic items," Penny said. "I just pushed the cart."

"I appreciate the help," Lucinda said.

"I thought we could have some soup and sandwiches for dinner," Penny said. "I can see you're worn out and I don't need anything fancy. Heaven knows Miles can get by with anything that lands on the table."

Lucinda was going to say something, but she looked past Penny, her eyes widening.

Penny turned to see what had gotten her attention.

Miles stood just inside the room -- or was it Miles? -- wearing his new sport jacket, a turtleneck shirt and pressed slacks. But Penny was most awed by the neatly trimmed beard and styled hair.

"Well? Do I look civilized enough for you?" he demanded, fussing with the cuffs of his jacket.

"Why--yes--" Penny stammered, trying not to show how his sudden appearance had startled her.

"Definitely," Lucinda said, nodding.

"We couldn't get a blazer like Hal wanted me to wear on short notice," Miles told Lucinda, turning around slowly.

"That will do just fine," Lucinda said--from her extensive knowledge of trade shows, Penny thought.

"You'll tell Hal I'm not going to embarrass the firm by showing up in my usual deep-woods outfit?" Miles asked Lucinda with a tone that didn't quite convey he wasn't joking.

"Of course!" Lucinda said.

Penny couldn't keep from staring at him.

But Miles seemed not to notice her dumbfounded state. He turned back toward his room.

"I'd better change back into my other clothes so I don't slop anything on these duds," he said, raising his voice as he got further away.

Slowly Penny turned and looked back at Lucinda, who was smiling enigmatically.

"I--I'll help get dinner," she offered.

Lucinda took a long swallow of her orange juice and put the glass aside on the counter.

"I'd say you certainly made an improvement in him," Lucinda said softly.

Penny shook her head. "I don't know how much credit I can take. He fought me at every turn."

Lucinda shrugged and opened a cupboard to take out two cans of soup. "Even so, I see a big difference. And it's not just in the clothes. I see a change in his attitude."

"Attitude?" Penny demanded, keeping her voice low. "His attitude--"

Lucinda stopped her with a look. "I can see it. Maybe it won't last, but I hope it does."

Penny didn't think any change would last longer than it took Miles to get back into his well-worn jeans and beard-frayed sweatshirt.

When he returned to the kitchen, he looked into the pan of soup that warmed on the range and scowled. Before Penny or Lucinda knew what was happening, he'd taken over, adding leftovers from the refrigerator. Then he whipped up a skillet of leftover baked potatoes and torn-up bread heels, liberally laced with onion and peppers.

Somehow, when Miles was involved, things were never as simple as you expected them to be, and the complicated things disappeared.

When Penny was sitting at the kitchen table across from him, she began to see something different. The food on his plate might be simple, but she noticed he didn't slurp his soup or dribble it on his beard. Some of the rough edges were dropping away.

Maybe there was hope after all.

* * *

"Aren't you afraid to leave your car at the airport for three days?" Penny asked, when Miles overruled Lucinda's offer to drive them to the airport.

"Nah," Miles said, tossing his duffel bag into the back of the four-by. "I leave it parked for days at a time up in the mountains. If someone messes with it, I can hike."

"If you say so," Penny said skeptically, putting her suitcase beside his garment bag. "I'm concerned for Lucinda. She looks very tired. Maybe she'll get some rest now that your parents are coming."

It was a moment of revelation when she closed the door on the passenger side of the car and clutched her coat against the cold drizzle of the morning. She suddenly knew what Lucinda's problem was! She smiled to herself and decided silence would be the best option.

Miles had wisely packed his clothing for the trade show and was wearing a dark windbreaker, a knit shirt and slacks, something comfortable to travel in. Penny had been afraid he would wear something bordering on battle gear and cause everyone in the airports and the plane to stare at him, if not send him through the metal detector several times. But he looked more than presentable.

"Before we start," he said, putting his key in the ignition, "did we forget anything?"

"I don't think so," Penny responded, quickly going over all the necessities in her own mind.

"You brought those files we went through last night?"

"In my briefcase." She patted the case in her lap.

"You have the tickets?"

She showed him the envelope in the side pocket of her purse.

"I guess we have to go then," he said with a sigh, then started the car.

The day was dawning a soft, moist gray. The traffic through the city was gaining tempo and the four-lane highway to the airport was busy with big trucks and pickups and every description of cars.

Penny felt empty, even though she had forced herself to eat a good breakfast.

Miles kept his eyes on the traffic, impatiently passing slower vehicles. His face was grim and he seemed unmoved to speak, except to rant ineffectually to the drivers around him.

Taking a deep breath as a reaction to one particularly creative epithet, Penny straightened her shoulders and took a firmer grip on her briefcase.

"Sorry about that," Miles said tightly.

"That's all right," Penny said. She knew he would rather be out at his campsite, even though she couldn't think of a less desirable place to be on a cold morning like this.

He took the can of chewing tobacco off the dashboard and handed it to her.

"Put this in the glove compartment," he instructed.

She took the object gingerly and obeyed, trying not to inventory the glove box. Somehow, though, she could not avoid seeing, among the charge-card slips with oil company logos and the car's documentation pamphlets, a large knife in a leather holster.

He probably had a good reason for carrying a knife there, but frankly she couldn't think of one.

She slammed the compartment closed and held her tongue when she was tempted to ask questions.

When they had parked the car, Miles was in no hurry to get to the air terminal. He locked the glove compartment and the doors, then unloaded their luggage, insisting on carrying Penny's suitcase along with his own garment bag and duffel. When Penny protested, he handed her his duffel, which was lighter than her suitcase.

Feeling it was part of her job to make things go more easily for him, Penny checked their bags and got their seat assignments.

"There's a twenty minute delay," she said when she sat down beside him, relaying the information the clerk had given her. "That shouldn't affect our connection in Atlanta, though. We have a two-hour stop there."

Miles straightened in his chair and picked up a newspaper someone had discarded there. "I hate this trip already," he grumbled.

Penny tried to think of a way to brighten his disposition, at last giving in to the truth that she had made scant progress in the past and had little chance of doing it now.

Finally their flight was called and they found their seats in a plane that was already well filled. Luckily, the third seat in the row was not taken.

Miles plopped the briefcase on the center seat and raised the armrests. There was little time in the short flight between Asheville and Atlanta for Miles to study files, but he did, ignoring the coffee and tea the attendant offered. It was just as well, Penny thought. The coffee was awful.

She steered him through the Atlanta airport with the ease and knowledge of a native, glad to be this close to home for a short period of time.

"I hope our luggage changed planes, too," Miles groused as they boarded the second plane.

"Don't even think thoughts like that!" Penny cautioned.

For the first time that morning, Miles smiled. "Maybe I'll have to rent a bear suit after all."

Penny looked up at him and laughed.

She had to catch hold of her emotions quickly. With his hair and beard trimmed, Miles was no longer as ferocious looking as he had been when she first confronted him at his camp.

When the flight attendant smiled at Miles, Penny wondered if she was flirting with him, and if he were flirting back. She could not understand why she cared. After all, it was part of her project to make him acceptable to the public.

Besides, frowning at a boarding passenger was not in the attendants' lexicon.

She tried to put it out of her mind.

* * *

It was slow progress through the aisle of the plane to their seats, and Miles was impatient. Penny was ahead of him, but only by a mere inch or two. Being this close to her, smelling the scent that came from her braided hair and from her jacket, was giving him ideas he had no room for this morning.

She knew he hated to travel and was taking care of details so all he had to do was follow her. It was a luxury just to be with her.

"Oh, good," she said, pointing to their seats. "We have an empty seat again."

"I hope," Miles said, casting an anxious glance toward the passengers boarding behind them for someone who might usurp their privacy.

She took the window seat and settled in.

He sat down on the aisle and watched to see if anyone was going to come and claim the third seat in the row.

Again he braced himself for the run-up of the engines and the shuddering of the plane as it taxied and took off. He opened his briefcase and took up where he had left off.

When he looked over at Penny, she was gazing out the window, perhaps daydreaming as they soared through high banks of clouds. She must have felt him staring at her, because she turned her head and smiled.

"Do you need help with something?" she asked.

He was slow to answer. "No."

"I'd think you'd be reaching a point of diminishing returns," she said.

"I probably am."

She shrugged. "Why don't you put everything away and enjoy the rest of the flight?"

He was going to say something about the impossibility of the word enjoy being in the same sentence with flight, so far as he was concerned. But he stopped. This flight wasn't as bad as it could have been. She was there.

"Good idea," he said, and straightened up the contents of the briefcase before snapping the lid closed.

"It will be an hour earlier in Oklahoma City," Penny said, preparing to set her watch.

He set his heavy-duty, shock-resistant, waterproof digital timepiece and looked around for something else to do. The in-flight magazine in the pouch that faced him was slick and cosmopolitan and of limited appeal. He was almost tempted to pick up the novel Penny had laid aside on the seat between them, but he thought better of it.

"So..." he said, filling the gap of the silence between them. "You seem to like to travel."

Penny looked back at him and smiled. "Yes. I've never been to Oklahoma City."

Miles shrugged. "I can't remember if I've been there before or not. I went on a trade show tour with Hal once and all the places seemed a lot alike. Hotel rooms, convention centers, restaurants--one place was a lot like another."

"Maybe," Penny said. "But I like meeting people."

Miles could not avoid the sound that came from his throat. "I'd rather be up at my camp."

"I don't doubt it," Penny said with a chuckle. "But wouldn't it have been rather uncomfortable this morning, in that drizzle?"

Miles shook his head. "I would have been in a waterproof tent, all snug in a sleeping bag, with no schedule to drag me out of it until I wanted to get up and fix myself a pot of coffee and a plate of breakfast."

It sounded wonderful to him, but Penny didn't seem to see the beauty of listening to the rain tapping on the tent and the isolation of it all.

"You're a city person," he said, and was concerned that he sounded contemptuous.

"You probably need a roof over your head, indoor plumbing and a complete kitchen."

"I've never done any camping," Penny said.

"Not even Girl Scouts?"

"It was the same day as my dancing lessons."

He could imagine her in pink leotard and tutu. God, he had to get his mind back on track!

"I suppose I'll have to stay in town until next spring," Miles said and sighed. "Work on my stove on the days I'm home and cover for Hal until he's able to get back to his office. Besides, I don't like to be in the woods during hunting season. And after that, it will be too cold to go back to the camp."

"I'd think you'd be hardy enough to endure the worst of winter up there," she teased.

"Oh, I've done it," he confirmed. "But once you know you can do a thing, why keep at it just to show you can? I move in with Hal and Lucinda for the winter. Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's. Football season. By the time I see spring-training baseball scores in the newspaper, I start itching to get back out into the field."

Penny smiled indulgently, but he knew she didn't understand his need to be away from civilization for long periods of time.

She picked up her book and started to read it from where it was marked.

He should have asked her about her own background, he reflected. Bad manners on his part, considering how he'd babbled on about himself. He knew so little about her. She'd been so professional, keeping her personal life and views locked away while they worked.

Oh, he'd pieced things together from little bits that slipped out. After all, she couldn't completely hide her attitudes. But she hadn't told him much of anything important -- like if she had a boyfriend.

Somehow that was suddenly important. She was a pretty woman, and had an air of neatness that went to the bone. Damn, she was the kind of woman he'd always admired. Not quite the ice-princess, because ice-princesses always knew what they were. More the hidden treasure.

What was he doing, thinking about a woman like that? Supposing. Fantasizing! His life had no place for a woman, not a full-time, live-in woman.

But if it did, Penny Birch would be it.

God, he was getting a headache.

"Penny, do you have any aspirin?" he asked, when he realized the stuffiness of the air in the cabin and the drone of the plane's motors were only going to make his head ache worse.

Without batting an eye, she reached into the side pocket of her purse and handed him a little plastic bottle.

Damn, she's good! he thought as he signaled for the attendant, who was pulling a drinks cart up the aisle.

Chapter Six

Once they retrieved their luggage from the crowded baggage carousel, Penny glanced around the airport and quickly determined the way to the taxis and courtesy vans. She was gratified to find a passenger van bearing the logo of the hotel where they had reservations and steered Miles toward it.

Miles appeared apprehensive boarding the van until Penny gave their hotel reservation number to the driver. The driver consulted his clipboard and checked off the corresponding note there before helping them stow their bags in the rear.

"Isn't this nicer than a smelly taxi?" she asked Miles as they settled into seats right behind the driver.

Miles didn't pass judgment on that until he noticed the "no smoking" signs on the dash and the backs of the seats. "At least we know he knows where he's going," Miles said under his breath.

"How's your headache?" Penny asked cheerfully, prepared to reach into her purse for the bottle of pain relievers.

He groaned and made a face.

"When we get to the hotel, you can lie down for a while," Penny said.

He groaned again. "I'd rather find a nice tree to sit under."

Penny smiled. "Of course," she said, and was ashamed of the patronizing tone of her voice.

Abruptly, Miles got out of his seat and bolted from the van.

"Miles! Come back--"

"Save my seat," he called from the doorway. "I'll be right back."

He paused to say something to the driver who was lounging by a sign, waiting for other passengers, then walked briskly toward the far end of the expanse of concrete walkway.

"Not to worry, miss," the driver said, leaning back into the van a moment later. "He said he just needs to stretch a little. It happens all the time with these big men who aren't used to traveling. I won't leave without him."

Penny sighed and pressed her fingertips to her temples.

This was not going to be easy.

* * *

The hotel presented its own problems. A clerk checked them in and gave them keys, then signaled for a bellman to take their bags to their suite on a polished brass cart. Penny knew Miles was about to protest they could carry their luggage themselves.

"Oh, good," she said, handing her suitcase over. "We're tired of carrying all this. Here, take this briefcase too."

Miles followed her to the elevator, his hands dug into his pockets, as though he was afraid he'd touch something and leave a smudge on the figured wallpaper or gleaming brass.

On one of the upper floors, the suite was at the end of a hall. Double doors opened from the corridor into the sitting room, and there was a bedroom on either side. It was a sensible arrangement, if a little splendid.

"Sheesh!" Miles said, looking around after the bellman left with a generous tip from Penny. "I wonder how we can afford this with the company in such bad shape."

"Well, you can hardly talk business in a boiler room," Penny said. "I'm sure Lucinda knew what she was doing. Why don't you go get yourself organized in your room and rest a while. I'll try to track down the men who came on ahead and see if they have the display set up. Maybe they can bring me some literature to put on that table over there, in case you need to entertain some clients back here."

"Fat chance!" Miles spouted. "I don't want anyone coming in here."

He stomped off into his room, and she heard the thumping of luggage being tossed around, the rattle of coathangers, the slamming of drawers.

Penny took her bag to her room but left it unopened on the little stand which stood at the foot of her bed. She removed her jacket and hung it carefully in the closet. It took her only a few minutes to freshen up and pat a few errant strands of hair back into place. She was ready to put everything in order.

She'd left her briefcase in the sitting room and now appropriated a small desk for her working space.

She heard footsteps in the hall, and a knock on the door. When she opened the door, she found the two men who had been sent ahead to set up the stall.

"We must have missed you at the airport," one said, entering the room. "We were late getting started out there, but we were so close to finishing the stall we worked a little longer than we should have."

"That's perfectly all right," Penny said, motioning for them to make themselves comfortable on the couch or one of the club chairs. "We got here without any trouble. So the stall is completed, ready to go tomorrow?"

They nodded their heads. "We got a real good spot. It'll get a lot of traffic."

"Where's the boss?" the other man asked.

"I think he's resting," Penny said. "The plane ride gave him a headache."

But as if to belie her words, the door of the other room opened and Miles stood there, bare to the waist, his jeans clinging to his narrow hips, his big toes peeking out from holes in his olive-green socks.

Penny felt herself staring at him. She took a deep breath, thinking that oxygen would clear her head. But she could only stare and wonder how his tanned skin would feel to the touch of her fingers, how strong his arms would be if they were wrapped around her.

"Hey, guys, good to see you!" Miles said, ignoring her.

Penny didn't follow the conversation as Miles shook hands with the men and sank into one of the club chairs. She could only stare at the way his muscles worked beneath the satiny layer of skin.

How could she spend the weekend in close contact with this man and keep a professional distance between them, when a part of her had just surrendered all sanity?

Realizing no one was paying any attention to her anyway, she retreated to her own room.

It was a perfect opportunity to unpack and settle in, but instead of her usual crisp and orderly movements, Penny fumbled with her clothing, dropping one of her good blouses on the floor and almost stepping on it. For some reason, her intimate apparel slipped from her hand, just as Miles knocked on her door.

"What time is that cocktail party tonight?" he asked.

"Ah - um -- My schedule is there on the desk--" she supplied, reaching for the underthings that had slithered to the floor.

"I looked there," Miles said as he opened the door.

"Oh, for heaven's sakes!" Penny said and turned to glare at him, hoping he wouldn't notice the lingerie in her hands. Wanting to spread her embarrassment around, she said peevishly, "We've been all over this! Can't you remember anything?"

"Sorry," he said abjectly, closing the door again, with himself on the outside. "I just thought--"

Penny opened the top drawer of the dresser and dumped the lingerie into it without sorting it. Then she pushed the drawer closed with more force than she thought she had. The drawer stuck and she had to open it and close it again.

"We don't have to be the first ones there, anyway, do we?" Miles asked from beyond the door.

"No."

"We could go get something to eat first, couldn't we?"

"Why?"

"The guys want to go to a barbecue place--"

"Miles--"

"Oh, all right, I guess you just don't like that kind of thing."

"I thought we could eat later, after the party."

"Oh," he said, flatly.

Penny listened for a moment, but none of the ensuing conversation was directed at her, so she finished unpacking.

She looked around the room to find something more to do, but there was only so much to accomplish in a hotel room, no matter how conscientious one was. She really should go out to the parlor and prepare mentally for the cocktail party tonight. But she could not bring herself to walk to the door and open it, to go out into the parlor and be civil to Miles Jacobs.

Penny sat down heavily in the club chair by the table and stared out the window.

This was an untenable position. She could not stay in this suite with Miles just on the other side of the door. She could not deal with it.

She felt tired, and could not fathom why. After all, she had ridden in an airplane, a taxi, and elevator. She had not put in a full day of work. And yet she was tired, drained.

Maybe it was best to just sit here and rest, to let this feeling pass.

But what was the feeling that needed to be washed out of her system? Not the weariness, because that was not dangerous. What was dangerous was her attraction to Miles Jacobs, a man who was far from the type she'd always thought she'd be attracted to.

He was too--rough around the edges--too--opinionated. Too involved in his own pursuits to be interested in anything else, to accept responsibilities for the company even in an emergency.

She didn't know how long she sat there, allowing her mind to wander at will, to scenes of Miles Jacobs in his milieu of the rustic campsite, to his brother's farm, his brother's hospital room. To this situation which had just arisen -- in the next room. Too terribly close.

She had a job to do--to make Miles Jacobs acceptable and effective in his brother's places as a representative and salesman for the camping supplies company.

Penny got up slowly and pushed her feet into her shoes. Taking a deep breath and smoothing out her skirt, she moved toward the door that led to the parlor. She had work to do, her attraction to Miles Jacobs notwithstanding.

She slowly left the safety of her own room and went out into the parlor, expecting to find Miles there in the dishabille in which she had last seen him.

Instead, Miles sat on one of the couches, reading a magazine, wearing slacks, a turtleneck shirt and his new loafers. His sport jacket was hanging over the back of a chair.

Penny drew in a deep breath. Her heart fluttered against her ribs.

He looked like a photograph in a fashion magazine, showing what the well- dressed man would be wearing to lounge around between work and a casual evening in the suburbs. He'd bring turtlenecks back into style so fast, the garment districts of the world would be in overdrive.

"Is your room comfortable?" Miles asked, looking up from the magazine.

"Yes," she said, going to the desk she had used before.

"Did you forget something you needed?"

"No," Penny said. She had brought everything with her, just as she had when she had gone to Asheville on this assignment in the first place.

"Then is something wrong?"

Penny wasn't going to answer, but then she decided she had to.

"I'm uncomfortable sharing a suite with you," she said. "I realize it's the same as staying at your brother's home while you are there, but somehow, it doesn't feel right."

"What do you mean, you don't feel right?" Miles asked. "This place is pretty nice, I think. There's all sorts of stuff in there by the sink --"

"That's not what I mean, and you know it," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said, and she could not doubt his sincerity. "I realize I shouldn't press this, since you really don't have any basis on which to trust me, but I wish you would. If...if you can't, we'll call Lucinda and ask her to authorize...something. Hey, I can find a tree to pitch a tent under. I can make do."

Penny looked around the room, then sat down at the desk and shuffled papers until she found the schedule he'd been looking for.

"The cocktail party starts at seven," she told him.

"The guys decided they couldn't wait for us to go to the restaurant with them," Miles said. "They went on to dinner by themselves. We'll get something after the party. We don't have to be the first ones there, do we?"

Penny sighed in exasperation. "No, but a lot of business will be done at that party and that's the main reason to be here."

"I need to walk," Miles said, getting to his feet abruptly. "How about you?"

"Not in these shoes, no," Penny said.

"I just need to stretch my legs," Miles said, reaching for his jacket. "I'll be back in a little while."

The sound of the door closing behind him echoed through the quiet suite. Penny drew a breath and set her jaw. This was all so difficult and uncomfortable. Maybe Miles was feeling the strain, too. Maybe that was why he was going for a walk.

She buried herself in busywork until he would return.

Finally, when there was nothing left to do, Penny went to the window and looked out at the purple shadows that were falling over the city. A strange city, one she had never seen before.

She was being silly to feel as she did, to be staying in a hotel suite with someone as self-sufficient as Miles. She'd much rather be staying here with him than by herself.

She heard a key rattle in the lock of the door and watched Miles let himself in. She was relieved to see that he seemed much more relaxed than when he left.

"Ah, you're here," he said, pocketing the key.

"Yes. Did you have a nice walk?" she asked.

He nodded and put a newspaper down on a table by one of the couches. "If you're ready to go to this thing we have to suffer through--"

"Give me a few minutes," she said, starting toward her room, "and I'll be ready to go."

"Take your time," Miles said. "I'm in no hurry."

* * *

Miles shifted from one foot to the other, waiting in a line for a nametag to wear to be admitted to the cocktail party. Penny could see that he was annoyed with the delay caused by a mix-up ahead of him, and even more put-out when he had to explain why he was there instead of his brother.

Penny was going through her own indecision, but she put her name on her own nametag and added Southern Images in clear, legible block letters. She felt a momentary twinge of being very out of place, but she peeled the backing paper from the nametag and pressed it to the lapel of her navy blue suit.

Finally, Miles placed the nametag on his jacket and headed for the ballroom where the party was being held, towing Penny along behind him.

"I hate crowds. Why do you suppose I like the woods so much? Now," he said, looking for a familiar face or a quiet place in the room, "what am I supposed to do here?"

Penny tried not to glare at him, tried not to show her exasperation at his remark.

"Miles," she sighed, "we've been working on this for three days--"

"Yes, I know," he said, apologetically. "All right, see if you can spot a familiar name on a name-tag. Damn! How do they expect us to see anything in this dim lighting?"

Penny understood his frustration. The lights were dim, and it seemed everyone had turned his back to them, intent on getting something from the bar or the buffet.

"Maybe if you got something to eat--" Penny advised Miles. "Maybe that would break some ice, or at least take the edge off--"

"I'd rather get a drink," Miles said. "But you're right. Not on an empty stomach."

Miles struck up a conversation with the man who followed him past the buffet table, but he didn't seem motivated to pursue the contact to see if there was any possibility for them to do any business. Of course, it was a tall order to manage a productive business conversation with a complete stranger while he was trying to eat raw broccoli.

They found a place to sit down while they ate, and a few men dropped by to ask Miles why Hal wasn't there. Miles should have pressed the conversations toward doing business, but even though Penny nudged him with her toe against his soft-leather loafers, he didn't take the hint -- or wouldn't.

"Why didn't you ask them anything about the products they had bought from Jacobs last year?" Penny demanded when the men had moved away.

Miles frowned. "It didn't seem right. They were asking about Hal and--"

"You've got to take your opportunities when they arise," Penny counseled him. "You might not get another chance. Someone else might get to them before you do."

She could see he was about to shrug off her remark, but he looked across the room and nodded.

"I guess I'd better get serious about this, huh?" he asked.

It wasn't easy. Miles had a difficult time making contacts with people, and was doubly frustrated when the people he did make contact with were not interested in what Jacobs had to offer.

"This is harder than I expected," Miles said, discouraged. "How does Hal do this? I feel totally inadequate."

"Maybe if you meet someone whom you have studied about," Penny said, "maybe then you'll get into the swing of things."

They walked slowly around the room, with Miles craning his neck, taking advantage of his height to read name tags. Suddenly his hand wrapped around Penny's arm hard enough to cause her to recoil from the bruising force.

"Campbell--Atalbee's Department Stores," he said under his breath. "Small camping kits, right?"

"Yes," Penny agreed, checking her memory as Miles nudged her toward the balding, heavy-set man in the sedate business suit.

While Miles identified himself and tried to launch into a query about past sales to the small chain of stores, the man seemed to be more interested in assessing Penny between healthy gulps of the drink in his hand.

"And why are you hanging around with this caveman?" Campbell asked Penny, as though he had not been paying attention to a single word Miles had said.

"I'm working on an assignment with Jacobs," Penny said, backing away slightly.

"When you finish, how about coming up to my room and --"

Miles glared at him, then grasped Penny's wrist and dragged her away to a less-populated area of the room.

"The nerve of him!" Miles fumed. "Didn't he understand that you were with me? How do you put up with people who make remarks like that?"

"Not very smoothly," Penny said. "Women have to put up with a lot of that type of thing from salesmen and bosses. It's a part of the salesman mentality I've encountered before. I think if I had been able to just ignore him, we would have been less likely to lose a sale than we are now that you turned the incident into a scene."

"I don't think I made a scene," Miles defended. "And I don't think any woman should feel she has to put up with -- "

"How short your memory is," Penny said.

"What do you mean by that?" Miles demanded.

"You weren't particularly nice to me when we first met," she said, keeping her voice low and even.

"I-- Oh, let's get out of here and find a place to eat. I can't take these phonies a minute longer."

"Miles--" Penny said, trying to keep him from bolting toward the door. "Look, you've got to grasp the opportunities that are here."

"Not if it means some lecher is going to hang all over you," Miles said.

"He wasn't that bad. I could have handled him."

"I'll handle the men like that!" Miles said, taking her hand and dragging her toward the door. "Let's get something decent to eat."

Miles must have truly been hungry, because he headed for the first restaurant in the hotel, a place where the maitre d' stood at a podium and glared first at Miles and then at the list of reservations in front of him, shaking his head doubtfully at fitting them in. The maitre d' excused himself to return to the dining room to look for a table for them.

"We can go somewhere else," Penny whispered. "There's another restaurant at the other end of the complex. This place looks sort of -- hoity-toity."

"I'm willing to wait here," Miles said. But a moment later, when the maitre d' hadn't returned, he said, "You wouldn't mind -- if we went somewhere else?"

"Let's go," Penny said, turning away from the entrance of the restaurant and striding toward the main corridor which ran the length of the hotel complex.

Miles followed her. "I can't believe that -- that man--" he muttered.

"I'm used to it," Penny said, trying to keep her annoyance out of her voice.

"Used to it! How can you get used to someone you have barely spoken to treating you like a --"

Penny forced a smile at him. "The sooner you forget about it, the sooner I can put it behind me," she told him.

"Right."

The other restaurant was less stuffy. Without much scrutiny or delay they were led to a table in the middle of the room and left to decipher their menus in the softened light.

"I think I've had enough broccoli and carrot sticks for the evening," Miles grumbled. "What do you think of a good old steak and baked potatoes?"

"I was thinking the baked sole looked interesting," Penny said.

Miles laughed. "I get enough fish while I'm camping," he said, then laughed again. "What is a treat for you is old stuff for me."

"You mean, you're tired of trout almondine?" she asked.

"I ran out of the almondine long ago. I occasionally find an old pecan tree where I get some nuts, though. But it's not the same."

"I'd think it would be better," Penny said and looked up to give her order to the waiter who approached the table.

"I really do feel bad that someone made you uncomfortable at the party," Miles said. "I can't get it out of my mind."

"Miles, you shouldn't have come away from an opportunity to make contacts for a silly little thing like that. It had nothing to do with you. People like that rarely get out of hand."

"You never know," Miles said. "If you have to put up with someone like that again this weekend, just come running to me."

"Miles, you have business to do--"

"That doesn't matter. I'll be there for you."

How things have changed, Penny thought as the waiter placed a basket of bread on the table. This was not the same man whose voice bellowed at her across the mountain meadow a few short days ago. The man who seemed to take pleasure in aggravating her at every turn.

Something had changed. She wondered what -- and why.

While she was contemplating the situation, a group of three men was seated at an adjoining table. One of the men paused and studied Miles face, then reached out his hand.

"You're Hal Jacobs' brother, aren't you?" he asked. "I heard Hal wouldn't be here."

"Fell from a horse," Miles said, getting to his feet. "Been in traction for a week, but he's going home tomorrow."

"Too bad. I wanted to see him about some tents," the man said, then motioned to the waiter. "Could we push these tables together? We've got some business to talk over."

Miles left the dining room an hour later with an order scribbled on a notepad Penny carried in her purse, plus the promise of some business if he could show his wares to another man the next morning.

"Well, that went pretty well, don't you think?" Miles said, when they were alone in the elevator, going back up to their suite.

Penny stiffened. She knew she should encourage him, give him a verbal pat on the back. "I'm sure that's a good beginning," she said.

"I hear a 'but'."

"I'm sure when you see what the profit would be from that order, you'll understand it's only a beginning."

Miles nodded. "You're right. I think we'd better go over some of the notes Hal provided for us while the names I saw tonight are still fresh in my mind."

"Right!" Penny said.

He was getting the idea of what he should do now. Maybe this would not be a total loss.

Chapter Seven

Penny was barely inside her room in the suite when she kicked off her shoes and sagged into a nearby chair. The day had been unutterably long. She wanted to close out all the jumble of information that had assaulted her in traveling and attending the cocktail party.

She needed to calm the overload of her emotions caused by spending the evening with Miles. Over dinner, they dropped their defenses and talked of many things--things she could not even remember at this moment. But whatever Penny said, he agreed with. Whatever he said, she was willing to explore.

It did not surprise Penny that Miles was a rabid ecologist. What did astonish her was his breadth of knowledge of current movements and pressures to both sustain and plunder the wilderness he loved. It was obvious his being in the woods was not a form of isolation so complete he didn't have his thumb on the pulse of a number of issues. She was impressed.

Now she propped her feet on an ottoman and focused her tired eyes on a landscape across the room. She stopped herself halfway through thinking Miles would like the print.

If she thought about him in those terms, she would lose her objectivity completely. She must remember this was only an assignment -- a bit weightier and more critical than any she had taken on in the short life of Southern Images, but an assignment just the same.

Wearily, she got to her feet and closed the drape to shroud the night scene beyond. Opening the drawer where she placed her lingerie, she removed her nightgown and robe and went into the bathroom for a quick, hot shower to soothe her frayed nerves and aching muscles.

She was toweling her hair when she heard Miles rapping gently at her door.

"Penny? Do you have a minute?" he asked.

"Sure!" she said, quickly wrapping the towel around her head turban-style.

He opened the door a second before she was prepared to face him.

"I -- I'm sorry," he said, staring at the pink satin robe which was cinched tightly at her waist. "I didn't realize you'd be ready for bed so soon." He glanced at his watch. "I didn't know it was that late."

Penny stared at him. He had removed his shirt and stood there, naked to his waist, trim and tanned and -- She tried to take a calming breath without being too conspicuous. Godlike and perfect.

"What --" Penny stammered and got no further.

"I saw you taking some notes," Miles said. "Were they names of people?"

"Yes, I tried to copy as many as I could."

"Good, because I seem to have forgotten--everyone I tried to remember."

"Give me a minute to get--organized," she said.

Miles ran his hand through his hair and turned slowly toward the door when she didn't make any move to search for her notes.

"Yes, ah--do you need--anything?" he asked. "We could order a pot of coffee from room service."

"That's not necessary," Penny said, watching as he stopped at the door and looked back at her. "I'll be with you in a moment."

Not a minute to herself! Not a second! Penny tucked a stray strand of hair into the towel that swathed her head and reached for her purse.

Her notes were haphazard at best. She glanced through them, then shoved her bare feet into a pair of yarn slippers and headed for the parlor room of the suite.

Miles had spread all his notes on the low coffee table in front of a couch. But at the moment, he stood behind the small bar in the corner, pouring something into a clear plastic cup.

"It's just orange juice and clear soda pop," Miles told her. "It looks like a screwdriver. Hal doesn't like me to drink beer at his parties, so I came up with this. It's great for a sore throat. God, the cigarette smoke! Do you want me to fix you one?"

Penny was about to refuse, then nodded her head. "Please," she said and tried to make some sense of the clutter on the coffee table.

"Anyway," Miles went on disjointedly, "I was trying to remember the names of some of the people we saw -- some whose name tags I just read in passing. I thought it would be best to be prepared if I run across them tomorrow."

"Of course," Penny said, sitting down in a club chair and wrapping the skirt of her robe demurely around her legs.

A moment later, Miles handed her a glass then sat down on the couch and placed his drink on an end table.

"All right, who did you recognize?" he asked her, reaching for her notes.

"My writing is pretty bad and the lighting wasn't good in places," Penny confessed, maintaining her grip on the notes. "I'd better try to decipher these for you."

Miles rearranged files as she read off names. In some cases, there were no corresponding files and he became flustered.

"Don't worry," Penny told him. "Don't you have some empty files we can make up? At least we can be ready when we see these people tomorrow."

Miles sighed, propping his bare feet on the table in front of him. "We're going to have to take all of this with us to the show tomorrow. You'll have to be right beside me, coaching me and finding things for me. We'll never pull this off." There was a note of hopelessness in his voice.

"Yes, we will," she assured him. "We'll have to. Come on, let's review what we have."

They must have spent nearly an hour reviewing files, until Penny noticed Miles rubbing his eyes.

"I think we've done all we can tonight," she told him. "Leave these last few files for morning. You'll be no good at all if you don't get some sleep."

"True," Miles said, stifling a yawn.

He got to his feet and removed their empty glasses, dropping them into a wastebasket. "I've put in an order for breakfast for us so we can have a few minutes of quiet before we have to face this thing. I imagine the restaurants will be jammed."

Penny was going to object until she recognized his logic. He didn't like crowds, didn't like being rushed to make decisions. It made no sense to even quibble about small issues. They just didn't matter enough.

Lost in a momentary thought of her own, she began to get to her feet and turn toward her room, but she nearly bumped into Miles.

He put his broad, strong hands on her arms to steady her. The warmth of his touch came through the thin satin of her robe. She drew a jagged breath, in reaction to the impact of the sensation that coursed through her.

"I -- ah -- didn't know you were there."

Miles gazed down at her with a serious expression in his eyes. He seemed in no hurry to let go of her.

"You're such a help to me," he said.

Embarrassed by his compliment, she lowered her eyes, only to confront his tanned and muscled chest.

She swallowed to regain her composure. She should say something, but her mind was a blank.

Her fingers stopped just short of touching the bare, tanned flesh of his ribs.

"We'll -- we'll do all right tomorrow," she said. "I'll be right there."

Though it took great effort, she disengaged herself from his grasp and went to her room, hoping he did not notice how unsteady her steps were.

For a long time, she stared at the illuminated face of the alarm clock on the bed stand. She could have -- wanted to -- touch him. Her curiosity about the texture of his skin, of its warmth and vibrancy would have been answered and she could have gone on to other fantasies.

Perhaps it was best she was stuck with this one. If she got sidetracked into wondering what it would be like to have his lips touch hers, she would never be able to --

Southern Images.

She had to think about her assignment and her firm. If anything came between her and the successful completion of her assignment, everything she and Shelby were working for would be down the drain.

* * *

Miles thought he had to be in his booth the moment the doors opened for the camping trade show. His long strides carried him across the room, past dawdlers and around late-arriving cartons. Penny had a difficult time keeping up with him, under the burden of her briefcase and purse filled with things she'd need during the long day.

When she did catch up to him, Miles was standing stock-still in front of the Jacobs booth, studying it minutely.

"Does it look all right to you?" he demanded of her.

"I think so," she replied.

"Not too busy?"

"If you had only a few products to show, yes," she told him. "But you have a lot of material to display. It has to be there. Don't worry. It's not your problem."

Miles shrugged. He was about to take off his tweed sports coat, but settled it back on his shoulders when he caught the warning look in her eyes.

Penny stashed her purse and briefcase under a table and tried to look busy by straightening stacks of brochures and business cards. Around her, the hall buzzed eerily with muffled conversations, occasional hollow laughter and the hum of air conditioning.

Miles paced. He fitfully grabbed at literature and glanced at it, then dropped it to the top of the display table, usually nowhere near the pile where it belonged. He fiddled with the gadgets on exhibit, treating them with an exquisite gentleness that seemed unusual for his blunt and scarred fingers.

Penny tried to keep everything in order, unobtrusively. She didn't want to make Miles any more nervous than he already was. Her own nerves were a bit raw, she knew.

It would be a disaster if, at the same time, Miles were to lose his composure and she her ability to calm him down.

Along the row of display booths, other salespeople were going through the same motions, trying not to look too eager or nervous. They tended to keep their own counsel as they waited for the buyers and lookyloos to make their way through the aisles to this area.

When the first group of people straggled around the corner and dispersed along the walkway, gabble arose from the first salesmen. They greeted the buyers with outstretched brochures and offers to demonstrate their camping wares.

Miles crossed his arms in front of his tweed jacket and stood with his feet spread slightly apart, braced in a posture that said he was ready to stand his ground.

But when the first buyer appeared, Miles seemed to have nothing more to say than "Good morning."

Penny read the nametag on the man's chest and reached for the folders. She was unable to find either his name or that of his firm. As he was about to move away, she thrust some literature into his hand and asked him if there was anything in particular he was looking for.

The man shook his head and moved on to the next booth.

Miles glowered at her, then turned away.

"I guess I'm not going to be very good at this," he grumbled softly.

"You've got to keep thinking that you can make a sale," Penny told him, keeping her voice low as someone else approached the booth. "I'm right here, and I'll help you any way I can."

She raised her head to signal him that he had another prospect to speak to. This time he handed out the literature and asked if there was anything in particular that the buyer was looking for.

It got a little easier as the first half-hour wore on, but nothing was happening with the order book under the table.

Then Miles spotted someone whose name he connected with a file and he began asking questions and showing products, almost as though this man was a long-lost friend.

Somewhere inside, Penny felt a surge of pride that her work had not been in vain. When the man said he'd think about the product and the price, and get back to Miles later, she felt some of Miles's pain.

"Yeah, sure," Miles said when he'd walked away.

"Don't let it get to you," Penny urged, trying to console Miles. "You really did quite well. Just keep at it."

Miles talked to people with dogged determination. He handed out literature, let buyers handle some of the equipment on display. He even began to talk about prices and discounts in a way Penny had never expected.

"Why aren't these people ordering things?" Miles demanded during a lull.

Penny shrugged and replenished a pile of brochures that had become depleted. "Maybe--maybe they wait until they have seen everything before they make decisions."

"Yeah, maybe," Miles grumbled.

"Do you need something to drink?" she asked him. "You've been talking a lot."

"I could use something," he agreed. "But not coffee."

"I'll see what I can do."

When Penny returned from the refreshment stand with a cup of soda, Miles was deep into a conversation with one of the must-talk-to names. Penny quickly jumped into the task of handing things out and answering questions, surprised she knew as much about what she was talking about as Miles did.

Still the order book was blank.

What was wrong? Penny was feeling as desperate as Miles must have been. She had failed him.

"I feel like going to lunch," Miles said after consulting his watch. "And not coming back."

She looked up at him with sympathy and understanding, even though she knew she should be giving him a pep talk about how well he'd been doing and that there was plenty of time to get orders. Her heart was in as much pain as his was.

What came out of her mouth wasn't what she intended to say. "Do you think it would be wise to leave the booth unattended?" she asked. "Even for a little while?"

"No, no," he said, capitulating to reason. "I just -- thought..."

"If you want to go find something to eat, I'll stay here and fill in for you," Penny offered, reasoning that Miles probably needed to walk around a little, maybe have a few moments to himself. For a man who hated crowds, he'd done well to cope as long as he had.

"You don't mind?" Miles asked.

"Of course not," she assured him. "You might even look for some of the people Hal wanted you to contact."

"Right!" Miles said, thoughtfully. He reached into his inside jacket pocket to make sure he had that list with him. "Look, I'm going to find something to eat, and I'll be back to relieve you in an hour or so. Should I bring something back for you or will you want to get out of here?"

Penny smiled up at him. "I'll need a few minutes to myself, too."

"Don't make any million-dollar deals without checking with me first," Miles said, trying to make light of the situation, but his eyes were still grim.

* * *

Miles strode out of the exhibition hall and didn't stop until he was outside the entrance, dragging in long breaths of overheated Oklahoma City air. Anything was better than the stifling air-conditioning of the trade show.

He needed to walk. Seeing a fast-food restaurant's garish facade down the street, he started marching toward it. He needed to push himself, to feel he was doing something physical or he would explode with all the feeling trapped inside him.

When he neared the restaurant, he saw how crowded it was and stood staring at it for a long moment, pretending to study the menu on a kiosk that marked the entrance to the outdoor picnic area.

"Jacobs!" a man called from the crosswalk of the street behind him.

Miles turned to see who had hailed him, and saw someone vaguely familiar hurrying breathlessly toward him.

"--Thought you swore off trade shows long ago," he said breathlessly, catching up to Miles and extending his hand.

At this closer range, Miles could see the man's name tag. He remembered Art Perez as one of the few friendly acquaintances he'd met when he made the tour of the shows in the early years of Jacobs. He was on the must-see list.

"Hal fell off a horse last week," Miles said, clasping the man's hand as though it were a lifeline. "He's in a cast. I'm just filling in for him."

"Too bad!" Art said, moving out of the way of some pedestrians. "About Hal and about you having to come to this thing. I know you'd rather be on your mountain at this time of year. It must be wonderful."

"Starting to get a little chilly, though," Miles told him.

"This place looks -- awful," Art said. "Come on. There's a place down the street with great Tex-Mex food. You aren't vegetarian or something like that?"

"Hell, no!" Miles said, falling into step with Art. "I eat anything that doesn't get out of the way!"

"My philosophy exactly," Art said with a hearty laugh. "It's good to get away from all those phonies, isn't it?"

Miles nodded.

The restaurant was busy but not crowded or noisy. They sat in a booth and ate the spicy food, washing it down with iced tea, although they both had considered ordering beer.

"It's too bad Hal and Lucinda couldn't make it," Art said thoughtfully, wiping his black mustache with a napkin. "But then we wouldn't have this chance to renew our acquaintance, eh?"

Miles nodded, wondering where this tack was taking them.

"We always talk about you," Art went on. "Hal tells me about your projects. He claims it's your research and development that's kept Jacobs Camping Supplies moving forward in a crowded market. He's very proud of you, you know?"

Miles looked up from his plate with some surprise.

"Ah! I see it's like that in your family, too!" Art said, grinning. "I have a younger brother, myself. It's very hard to tell him to his face how proud of him I am. But I can brag on him to a stranger until I'm a bore!"

Art took out his notebook and they began talking business.

"I don't have an order book with me," Miles confessed. "I don't want to trust my memory. You'll have to come back to the booth --"

"I've got a better idea," Art said. "This afternoon, the guys who have just come for the one day will start ordering and things will get hectic. Do you have a suite in the hotel?"

"Yes --"

"I'll meet you back there at seven. By then, I'll know what I want down to the last nut and bolt." Art tucked his notebook away and reached for his glass as a waitress approached with a pitcher of tea. "We'll make up an order then."

"Great!" Miles agreed, reaching for the check and putting a couple bills with it. Then something in the back of his mind surfaced. Oh, yes. Penelope Birch would be hungry. "Miss, can I order some of this chicken stuff to go? Or something you can put together fairly quickly?"

"We have a chicken salad --" she said, taking the bill from him.

Miles nodded. It sounded like something Penelope Birch would eat. "With a large carton of iced tea?"

"Right away, sir," the waitress said, hurrying back to the kitchen.

After he'd been given a sack with the lunch packed neatly into it, Miles remembered that Penny had decided she wanted to leave the hall to get some lunch, and in retrospect, he didn't blame her. But what was done was done. She'd understand.

* * *

The man at the table was so emphatic about wanting to order two different styles of tents Penny reached for an order book and began filling in the blanks for him. He certainly wasn't about to wait until Miles got back to the booth. Anything to keep a willing buyer from walking away and making the arrangements someplace else. She'd always been quick at math, so it was no problem giving him a tentative quote.

"Since I'm just filling in at this show," she explained, "I'll ask the head of the sales department to call you sometime Tuesday or Wednesday to confirm this order. There may be some change in the discount that I'm not aware of."

"Fine with me," the man said, tucking his copy of the paperwork into his portfolio. "Good doing business with you."

She didn't even get a chance to take a breath before someone else came to the booth and began asking questions about Hal and Lucinda, then getting down to the specifics of what he wanted to order.

Penny reasoned it was better to begin taking the order than tell someone to wait until Miles got there. He'd been gone a long time and she was beginning to worry about him.

Would his ego be hurt if he saw her taking orders when he hadn't a single one to his credit? It was useless to worry about that. She was too busy --

She heard someone at her elbow and looked up to see Miles standing there.

"How's it going?" he asked under his breath.

"Crazy," Penny told him. "This is the second order I've had to take."

"I hear they're going to start coming in fast and furious," Miles hissed.

"Want to take this over?"

"No. You're doing fine."

Miles went into the booth and put something under the table by her purse while she finished the order. Before he greeted the next buyer, he pointed it out to her.

"Your lunch," he said.

"I told you I could find a place --"

"The food I had was so good, I had to bring you some," he told her with a grin.

"I could eat cardboard at this point," Penny said, reaching for the bag.

"Sit. Eat. I'll take care of things."

Enjoying the unusual gesture as much as the delicious salad, Penny observed Miles discreetly from a corner of the booth. He talked casually with a buyer, then led him into more serious negotiations.

Where did this salesman come from? Penny wondered. Had there been some miraculous transformation over lunch she didn't know about? She watched him with a renewed respect as he hit a certain stride in talking with customers.

As the crowds thinned late in the afternoon, Penny began to arrange and file the orders Miles had taken.

"We're doing pretty well, don't you think?" Miles asked, his eyes taking on an unaccustomed brilliance. "I started thinking about these people as widemouth bass. Lure them to the bait, set the hook and then just very carefully reel them in."

"Did Hal give you any indication how much you were going to have to net on this trip to keep the company healthy?" Penny asked, straightening up the paperwork.

Miles' face suddenly became grim. "We never did come to a figure, but I suppose it's more than we've done so far. Maybe I should call him."

"I -- ah -- It's up to you," she said.

"We're meeting someone at our suite at seven. Are you going to need to rest a little? God, you must be beat. You've been on your feet all day."

His concern was unexpected and Penny was touched by it. Miles Jacobs was becoming almost civilized.

"Don't even mention my feet," Penny sighed then laughed.

"No dancing tonight?" he asked.

"Dancing?"

"Come to think of it, my feet are a little tired, too," he said, taking her briefcase from her to carry himself. "Let's go. There's a shower in the suite with my name on it."

Penny laughed and followed him wearily to the exit of the emptying exhibition hall. At one point, he had to slow down so she could catch up to him. Tired as he obviously was, he still took long strides that left her breathless.

She had hoped there was a salesman somewhere in Miles, and was gratified that he had shown up. But was it enough?

Chapter Eight

Phone calls home were always awkward, Miles reflected, as he waited for his mother to hand Hal the telephone. She had gently berated him for not communicating with her more often. He'd never convinced her he didn't have a telephone up at the camp, nor that he didn't go into town every day to check his mail.

"How's it going?" Hal asked him, sounding better than Miles had expected him.

Miles sighed. "Better," he said. "I started taking some orders this afternoon. How -- how much do we have to gross -- or net or -- whatever -- to make this trip a success?"

"Oh, you want to cut to the bottom line?" Hal asked, with surprise and amusement in his voice. Then he breathed deeply once or twice, as though he was thinking. "Well, maybe -- a third of what we need. But there's tomorrow, Miles, and there are two more shows. And after that, maybe we can get on the phone and solicit orders."

"Yeah, I guess so," Miles agreed. "It went a little better this afternoon, and Art Perez is dropping by in a few minutes to place his order. Maybe tomorrow will be better."

"You'll get the hang of it," Hal assured him.

"How are you feeling?" Miles asked his brother.

"Better, but this immobility is driving me crazy," Hal said tensely. "I won't even be able to get to the office for another week."

"Enjoy the rest while you can get it," Miles told him. "You might have to clean up after me."

"Now what?" There was a resignation to Hal's sigh that Miles didn't like.

"I'm just -- scared," Miles admitted.

"That's why you have Penny with you."

"Right." He had forgotten why Penny was with him. It had slipped his mind that she was supposed to make him into someone acceptable to the buyers whom the company relied on for orders. Maybe she had forgotten it, too. She was no longer acting like a hypercritical schoolmarm.

What had happened?

When he hung up the telephone, he looked across the room to where Penny was standing, wearing a different suit, but looking just as businesslike.

"How's everything back home?" she asked.

"All right, I suppose. Hal is getting antsy."

"I suppose so," she said with a little laugh. "Are you all set for this--client who's coming by? Do you want me to order up anything from room service?"

"I don't think that will be necessary," he said, turning on the television and flipping to a continuous news channel. But before anything interested him, there was a knock at the door and he crossed the room to answer it.

Perez came in with another man in tow. "I was talking to Greg Sheets in the elevator, and he thought he'd tag along and put in his order now. You don't mind, do you?"

"Hey, why not?" Miles said, shaking the man's hand and taking his business card. "Have you dealt with Hal before?"

"No, but I've met him at other shows. Always impressed me, but we've had problems with another supplier, so I thought we'd give you a try," he said.

Miles reread the card and handed it to Penny. She looked at it and nodded.

"Mr. Sheets," she said, leading him to the desk in the corner, "I'll take your order while Miles talks to Mr. Perez. What particularly are you interested in?"

If Sheets had made a smart remark, Miles would have stepped into the situation, but he seemed like a pretty decent guy, so he let Penny take care of him.

He was surprised at the size of Perez's order. "In this economy, people are camping," Art Perez told him. "They're not going to fancy hotels or expensive lodges. It's just as well. Makes my department look good."

Art Perez checked over his order carefully using his pocket calculator, then signed his name and tucked his pen away. "What are you doing for dinner?" he asked.

"Hey, we had lunch together," Miles said. "You don't want to have the same dumb face across from you two meals in a row. I've got to look after a few things -- "

Art shrugged. "See you tomorrow, then."

Miles took Penny to the place where they had eaten the night before, ordered the same thing, and watched her with a whole new feeling in his chest.

"So--what do you think?" he asked her, in that awkward moment after they had given their orders. "Have we done all right?"

"It's hard to say," Penny said hesitantly.

Her response didn't satisfy him. He didn't know why he craved her approval so much. He wanted her to smile and tell him he'd done a good job.

Then he was struck by two things. He was yearning for her favor as much as he'd ever hungered for that of his family. And he should be above the emotional desire for confirmation of his worth.

After all, Penny was being paid to groom him, encourage him and support him. Therefore her opinion was suspect, her approbation not the solid basis on which he could lean without concern.

She was a hired gun. So to speak.

"But -- I think tomorrow will put us over the top, so far as what we can expect from this show," Miles went on. "When I talked to Hal, I asked him for some idea of a sales figure we would need to make this trip a success, and considering the two orders we just got, I think it's within the realm of possibilities."

"That's good," Penny said, her long fingers tracing the edge of the table. "Do you have any idea of whom you might pursue for orders? We could -- go back to the room later and go through the files we brought with us --"

"I'm in no mood for another skull session," Miles said, almost angry with her for suggesting it. Then, after reflecting on the situation for a moment, he sighed. "That probably would be the thing to do, though. Maybe we can figure out the most likely clients to contact, and how big an order we can expect from each one."

"That's--that's a very logical approach, yes," Penny agreed.

There was something encouraging in her smile that he clutched at and hid away in his recallable memory. So what if she was a hired gun; she was still a woman, an intelligent person who recognized the small successes he was realizing.

Even so, as dinner was served, he found himself uncharacteristically dawdling over his food, not wanting the meal to end. All there would be waiting for him back in the suite was a couple hours of dull review of clients and orders and projections of figures and possibilities.

Not that Oklahoma City had the romantic potential of Paris or New Orleans, but with any effort, they might find some nightlife -- a bar where they played his kind of music, the heartrending, sidesplitting Country music the portable radio up at the camp brought him for companionship.

Penny wouldn't understand, though. She probably didn't own a pair of blue jeans or a plaid shirt, let alone boots and ten-gallon hat. And the clothes he'd brought along would brand him a tourist, with or without her on his arm.

What would be the use of going anywhere without Penny? He certainly didn't feel like -- looking for someone else.

The conclusion hit him with the force of a significant scientific discovery. Like an elegant algebraic equation. Miles plus Penny equals Infinity.

He hailed the waiter.

"Dessert, sir?" the waiter inquired.

"Not unless -- Penny?"

Penny shook her head.

The waiter looked at him questioningly.

"Bourbon, neat," Miles said. "Penny? Anything for you?"

"Ah -- coffee."

"Perhaps -- espresso?" the waiter suggested.

"That would be -- lovely," Penny agreed, her blue eyes demurely glistening.

Miles hid a chuckle behind his hand as he stroked his mustache. Espresso -- in Oklahoma City!

* * *

Penny kicked off her shoes and sank to the edge of the bed in her hotel room, conscious of Miles whistling in his room. Whistling usually affected her like fingernails on a chalkboard, but Miles was a true artist, probably from amusing himself for long hours in woodsy solitude. Nonetheless, she hoped he would stop soon.

He did. He sang in the shower. She could not distinguish all the words, but it seemed to be a popular song they had heard as they went from one place to another throughout their stay here. Penny wondered if he had known the song from some time before they met. It had only been -- less than a week. But it seemed like an eternity.

She preferred classical music when she was alone. Vivaldi. Mozart. Bach. Not the kind of thing one sang in the shower.

In retaliation of a type, Penny closeted herself in her own bath with a liberal portion of bubblebath and unlimited hot water. It was a luxury. In the apartment she shared with Shelby, she somehow always got to the shower last, after Shelby had used most of the hot water in their inadequate heater, and was stuck with shampooing her hair with a barely tepid drizzle.

She glared at the toes that were barely getting feeling back in them after an entire day in high heels.

She had to face the fact things weren't working out with Southern Images. Shelby wanted to take the company in a different direction. Political candidates! Horsefeathers! And she wanted to bring in another person. It was as good as saying she didn't want Penny to work with her any longer.

Penny objected viscerally to the prospect of failure -- be it personal or professional. Darn!

She had gotten so deeply enmeshed in this project that she felt as though she was working directly for Jacobs, not for Southern Images. She felt as though she was working with and for Miles. And she liked it.

What had happened? Where had she gotten off the track?

The other projects she had worked on were print campaigns, not the restructuring of a person. She'd pretty much bluffed her way through this one, she had to admit to herself. And things were turning out pretty well.

The only problem was that Miles was doing so well, her usefulness to him would end soon. She would go back to Atlanta and never see him again.

She was about to reach for the faucet to add more water to the tub, then decided against soaking any longer. She had to decide what to do next. If the job was going to be over, she had to finish it with a great flourish of success. Southern Images depended on it. Her self-worth depended on it.

But how was she going to pull it off?

She was just wrapping her pink satin robe around her when there was a knock on her door.

"Penny, do you have a calculator?" Miles asked. "Mine's gone on the fritz."

"Sure," she said, cinching the sash around her waist tightly and diving for her briefcase.

When she opened the door to hand him the calculator, Miles stood there, fresh from his shower, wearing the hotel's thick terry-cloth robe. His damp hair was slicked back from his strong-featured face.

"Thanks," he said, taking the calculator in his broad hand and smiling down at her. "I'm trying to total up the figures on the orders we wrote today to see what we're going to need tomorrow. Guess my calculator is used to mountain sunshine and not hotel lamps for its power."

"Could be," Penny agreed. She could not avoid smiling at his use of the plural pronoun.

Penny could see the clutter spread out over the square faux marble coffee table and decided, in the interest of organization, she had better join him. Otherwise, the orders and files would be a blur tomorrow, when they would desperately need to find information quickly.

"You might have trouble with the small tiles on that," Penny said, following him into the parlor. "Read the figures to me and I'll --"

Miles brandished one of the hotel's slender pencils. "I'll do just fine with this," he said.

Somehow, she'd done it. He looked as neat as a pin and was thinking of nothing but the company's business. He was even supremely civil toward her. She'd accomplished what she had thought was impossible just a few short days ago.

In an easy atmosphere of camaraderie, they went through all the names of firms represented at the show that usually did business with the company and had not yet placed orders. Miles jotted down target figures for new orders, then toted them up.

"We might just be able to pull this off," he said, his pensive expression turning into a broad grin. "We just might do it!"

"Don't be too optimistic yet," Penny cautioned, knowing she was throwing cold water on his enthusiasm. Why was the cautious side of her nature always interfering with her need for connecting with people -- one person -- a significant person, one she wanted to keep in her life?

"Oh, come on!" he laughed, reaching out to pummel her shoulder gently. "We're on the brink of doing the possible. This isn't rocket science or brain surgery. It's only business."

"Yes," she agreed, trying not to be overwhelmed by the warmth and strength of that slight contact. "It's only your business, and when we get back to Asheville, my work will be done."

There, she'd said it. He would know this was just her job. He didn't mean anything to her, and she didn't mean anything to him. It was all cut and dried. Almost over.

She got to her feet carefully and started toward her room.

"Penny?" Miles said softly when she had almost reached the door.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

If she hadn't been so tired, she never would have gotten any sleep that night. She had identified a new question, a new situation in her life that deserved her attention. She was always examining her life so closely that Shelby had long ago given up chiding her for it. Penny had carefully structured her conversations with Shelby lately so her partner would not know the deep doubts she had about herself.

But all Penny had time to consider at this juncture was that she was terribly, urgently attracted to Miles -- and that he didn't fit into her life. And she certainly couldn't fit into his. When sleep intervened, she was fantasizing what it would be like to love Miles, to be loved by him, skipping past the differences between them, addressing the basic attraction, the chemistry, the need.

* * *

The men who took care of the display showed up early the next morning, apologetically knocking at the door and trying to keep from looking directly at either Miles or Penny.

"What we usually do for Hal is collect up the bags and put them in the truck so he can check out and leave directly from the show when it closes," one of the men said. "Just makes things a little easier."

"Good idea," Miles agreed. "Penny? Are you packed?"

"I'll only need a few minutes."

"Good. Take your time. When you're finished, leave your bag here by the door and meet us in the restaurant downstairs."

"All right."

"Can we order for you if we get there first?" Miles asked.

"Yes. Tea, toast and tomato juice."

"Yech!" Miles said, teasing, and caught a furious look from her as she retreated to her room. "Hey, come on! I'm just joking."

The door that slammed wasn't.

"Things still a little prickly?" one of the men asked him, following him to his room.

"No, that door slam was probably wind-assisted," Miles shrugged, closing his duffel bag.

"She's a looker, though, ain't she?"

"Yeah, she's that, all right. Sharp, too. I don't know what I would have done without her."

* * *

Miles and Penny arrived in the exhibition hall shortly before the doors were officially opened. While Penny checked the stacks of literature and shored up sagging paper streamers, Miles dug into his briefcase.

"Do you have the Southwest Outfitters file?" Miles demanded, both his hands full of files.

"I don't think that was one of the ones we brought with us," Penny said. "I remember the discussion we had --"

"No, I don't mean Southwest," Miles corrected himself. "I mean -- eh -- S & G Outfitters. Oh, here it is."

Penny sighed, took a fist full of folders from his grasp and returned them to his briefcase. She watched Miles scan the contents of the file until he frowned.

"I wondered why that stuck in my mind," Miles growled under his breath. "That guy who was harassing you."

"That has nothing to do with business," Penny said, reaching out to take that file and replace it.

Miles straightened his shoulders and adjusted the front of his sports jacket. "Unfortunately, you're right," he said. "We do need the order--at least as big an order as last year. I think it might be best if I go looking for him and keep him away from the booth so you don't have to put up with him."

"Miles, that's admirable as a gesture," she cautioned him, "but you really should stay here."

Miles glared back at her for a long moment, his eyes almost hostile.

Why should he be concerned about her feelings? This was business, and they needed to write as many big orders as they could.

Why was she thinking of herself as part of the Jacobs firm? She was only hired, no more responsible for the success of Jacobs than one of the bikini-clad models who demonstrated how easily a rival company's tent could be put up and taken down. Yet she was increasingly feeling a loyalty, not just to Miles but to Hal and Lucinda and the other employees she had met back in Asheville.

"Look, if he comes around, you can take him somewhere else," Penny suggested. "Tell him you need to take a break from the noise and confusion. Or...that his order is so important that you'd rather go someplace where you can sit at a table --"

"--Take him to the bar?"

"He'll probably love it!" Penny agreed.

"I guess you can handle things here -- the way you have been..."

"Just do the best you can."

Miles nodded.

They began to keep a running tally of the orders from the established accounts, and as the hours dragged on, things looked better and better. Miles' confidence grew with each client he successfully landed.

His voice got a little firmer, his laugh more easy. He lounged against the end of the display table and hailed the passersby when he wasn't occupied with someone else.

Miles related tales of his life in the woods when he was given a chance, and usually brought the conversation right back to one of the products on display. The sales he made this way, although small, seemed to elate him.

Penny wondered if she had not brought him too far, too fast. There was less and less difference between him and the blustery, high-voltage salesmen at every other booth on the floor.

* * *

The crowd thinned out late in the afternoon. Penny sifted through the orders and compared the names to a list she had made the night before.

"I think we've gotten just about everything you wanted," she told Miles, barely loud enough for him to hear her. "That new client's order puts you just a shade over the top."

"Good. Let's start closing up so the boys can break down the display," Miles said, reading over her shoulder. "I doubt anyone is going to come by this late and order anything major. Maybe we can get out to the airport and come to a full stop before our plane takes off."

"Boy, that sounds good," Penny said, reaching for her briefcase.

When she straightened up, he placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

"We did it, lady! We really did it!" he said, crushing her to his broad chest.

"Yes," she said, wondering where her breath had gone. "We did it."

"What time is that flight?" Miles asked, letting her go again as though the world had not shaken on its axis and righted itself again abruptly.

* * *

He'd thought they would have time for a decent dinner before they boarded the plane, but Penny had guessed -- correctly -- otherwise. The lines in the airport terminal were long, and there wasn't a decent restaurant handy.

After they'd checked their baggage, Miles had found a concession stand and had bought them each an expensive chocolate bar. With almonds. It was a treat for him. He didn't know whether Penny would approve it or not.

At first, she seemed reluctant to unwrap hers. But when she took the first bite, after carefully breaking it off with her fingers, she got a reflective look on her face. As though she was enjoying some forbidden pleasure.

Well, now he knew a cheap way of getting on her good side, he decided, filing that bit of information away.

He hadn't realized how fatigued she was until they were walking down the ramp into the plane and had to wait while a flight attendant checked boarding passes. Penny frowned and made a disgruntled sound. She moved a step forward and flashed their passes, not waiting for the attendant to tell her where the seats were before moving down the aisle of the plane. She probably already knew.

Penny seemed impatient to find their seats. When she did, she took the window seat and sank into it with a sigh.

The line of passengers boarding after them seemed endless, but Miles watched in fascination. It was a Sunday night, after all, but he had not expected the plane to be so crowded.

He felt cramped in the center seat, especially when another man came along, checked the seat number and jammed his ticket folder into the pocket of his dark gray suit as he took the aisle seat.

Miles would have felt better if he'd had time to go back to the hotel and change into more comfortable traveling clothes. Jeans and a camouflage vest would have felt great about now. Maybe he looked a little more like he fit in with the guy beside him, but he still felt awkward. Itchy. This sport coat was itchy.

Any attempt to make small talk with the man beside him met with cold rebuff, so Miles concentrated on Penny. That just made her resume her role of looking after him.

"Do you need an aspirin?" she asked him, reaching for the purse she had stashed under the seat ahead of her.

"No," he told her. "I just wondered if you're all right."

Penny took a deep breath. "I just want to get home."

"It's too bad your car is still in Asheville," Miles said. "You could just get off in Atlanta and stay there."

She smiled weakly. "I still have to report to Hal -- tell him --"

"Yeah, I know. What time do we get in at Asheville?"

"Just before midnight. We have to change planes in Atlanta. We have about half an hour," she said, "just long enough to get from one gate to the another."

It had been great, having her to take care of everything, so he didn't have to tough out the details on his own.

"Will you go to the next show with me?" he asked.

"Wish I could," Penny said. "But my partner has a job for me back in Atlanta. A political candidate. I don't want to do it, but...."

"Wish you could go with me. We did a good job."

"We did," she said with a slight smile. "But you'll be all right on your own. Maybe Lucinda can go with you."

It wouldn't be the same.

The engines began to run up and the flight attendants started to patrol the aisle, getting everyone situated for take off.

Penny looked tense. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

When they were safely aloft and the attendants were passing out drinks, he decided on coffee, and expected Penny to get something for herself, but she shook her head, leaned her seat back and closed her eyes. Maybe she slept. Heaven knew she deserved it.

A while later, they were served a meal. He ate some of his, but Penny merely picked at hers, then looked out the window.

Was she just tired, or was she troubled about something?

Chapter Nine

Penny hadn't known what to expect when they reached the Jacobs farm that night. It was almost one o'clock, an hour when decent people should have been tucked into their beds and sound asleep.

But yard lights and porch lights blazed. Bones bolted toward Miles' car, barking at the bottom of his lungs, a deep woof that scared Penny to the core.

Miles paused in unloading the car to exchange greetings with Bones, keeping the setter away from Penny--if not by conscious plan, at least by nature.

Lucinda met them at the kitchen door, wrapped in a heavy robe and looking tired. Behind her was a diminutive, wiry looking woman who grabbed at Miles and hugged him, even as he struggled with the bags.

A grayer, thicker version of Miles appeared from nowhere, chiding Miles's mother--in terms reminiscent of Miles colorful language -- to allow him into the house before criticizing his correspondence shortcomings. Miles seemed somewhat bewildered as he fought them both off.

"This is Penny Birch," Lucinda introduced her. "We hired her to help Miles with the detail work of the trade show."

Too breathless to say anything intelligent, Penny nodded politely and moved past the family reunion.

"How's Hal?" she asked Lucinda when her forward progress into the house was finally eased.

"Uncomfortable, but better. He's sleeping. I'm glad his folks are here so I don't have to cope with him all the time." Lucinda sighed and drew her hand through her hair. "I think they've played every board game in the house."

"Are you all right?" Penny asked gently, concerned with her appearance and wanting to charge it off to the late hour.

Lucinda looked back at her with desperation in her eyes. "I don't know what's wrong," she said. "I feel rotten. I hope it's just the strain of taking care of Hal and the business by myself."

"You mean -- you're not...." Penny lowered her voice, then stalled before she could mouth the word.

"Not what?" Lucinda asked, placing her hands on the back of a kitchen chair for support.

"...You know..." Penny said, trying to back out of the trap she'd set for herself.

"What?" Lucinda pressed.

"...Pregnant?" Penny asked, softly. But it did no good to lower her voice in the confines of the kitchen, because Miles and his parents suddenly stopped talking and the word hung somewhere over the leafy centerpiece on the table.

Lucinda and Penny stared at each other, then Penny turned away.

"I just thought...from what I saw...when I was here last week," Penny mumbled apologetically.

"I...ah..." Lucinda stammered. "I hadn't thought about that..."

Mrs. Jacobs stepped forward, reaching for Lucinda's shoulders to bestow a quick hug. "I was wondering that myself," she said, a jubilant glow in her eyes. "Women have an intuitive sense about things like this. I thought maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, but if a disinterested bystander has seen the same thing --"

Penny turned away, feeling her face flush. She didn't see herself as a disinterested bystander in the Jacobs connection any longer. And that was a mistake. She'd been drawn into the Jacobs family by getting emotionally involved in Miles' work and the health of the business.

"What are you doing about the sleeping arrangements," Miles asked gruffly, picking up Penny's bags.

"Oh!" Lucinda recovered, probably glad to be off such a deeply personal subject. "I put Hal in your room and moved a camping cot in there to be with him. Mom and Dad have our room, and Penny is where she was before you left."

"So where am I sleeping?" Miles demanded. "The barn?"

Penny cringed at the testiness in his tone.

"The couch in the back parlor opens..." Lucinda proposed.

"I'll take care of it," Mrs. Jacobs offered.

"I already put linens in there, Mother Jacobs," Lucinda said. "Does anyone need something to eat?"

"Yes!" Miles said, starting toward the stairs with Penny's suitcase. "But I'll take care of it myself. You...go to bed and get some rest."

Every weary step a chore in itself, Penny hurried after him, up the stairs to the little room she had used before, switching on the light so Miles could see where to put her bags.

"Thank you, Miles," she said, reaching for the bag which held the things she needed for her night routine.

"You really think...Lucy's...pregnant?" he asked, his voice rasping to remain inaudible beyond the room.

Penny shrugged. "That breakfast you fixed the other day could have made anyone queasy," she mused.

He glared down at her, suddenly the same Miles Jacobs she had encountered in the woods of Spruce Pine Camp.

"Gad! That's all we need!" he growled.

"It doesn't render a woman suddenly inert," Penny informed him.

"I suppose not," Miles conceded, "but it's damned awkward. For the business. She's too important."

Miles was thinking about the business. This was new!

Penny took a deep breath, hoping he would understand she was tired beyond all endurance and wanted him to leave the room so she could go to bed.

"I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to Hal about the orders we got," he said.

"Yes. I'll want to see him as soon as I can, so I can get back to Atlanta and try to...talk my partner out of ruining Southern Images."

"Yuh," he grunted, starting toward the door. "We'll talk...tomorrow."

The sounds of the house, the family settling down for the night, the birds and wind and who-knew-what outside its walls, kept Penny from giving in to the fatigue that gnawed at her. Why she had ever thought she'd changed...Miles...

Why had she ever thought he should be changed?

* * *

Lucinda pushed Hal to the breakfast table in his wheelchair and fussed over him. There seemed to be a competition between Lucinda and her mother-in-law to provide him with the quickest cup of coffee and the hottest, crispest waffle.

Penny took a deep breath and tugged at the hem of her suit jacket, afraid to intrude in the family dynamics being played out in front of her.

"If you'd rather wait until after your breakfast for my report --" she suggested to Hal before taking a seat at the table.

"I'm sure you want to get back to Atlanta," Hal said, catching his wife's hand as she handed him the pitcher of syrup. It was obvious that she'd divulged the topic of the late-night kitchen conversation to him while she helped get him up for the morning. His eyes were beaming, and he couldn't seem to keep them off his wife.

"Well, I'd term the show a success, for my part," Penny said, not needing to consult the notes she had in front of her. "Miles will give you the figures on the orders he wrote. But I think it's more important to point out that he handled himself very well with your clients. He even followed through on several of the contacts you wanted to establish and made a good impression on everyone."

"He didn't rub anyone the wrong way?" Hal asked dubiously.

"There were some touchy situations," Penny said, choosing her words carefully, "when I had to remind him that I didn't need his protection, and not to say or do anything that would call attention in an unfavorable way."

"Do you think he'll be able to handle the other shows?" Hal asked, cutting to the nub of the issue.

"Yes," she said confidently, although it caused her a clutch in her heart. "If you can spare Lucinda to travel with him, it might be a big help. But I think he can deal with the trade shows by himself now. I guess my job is done."

"Frankly, I don't know how you did it!" Hal crowed, digging into his waffle. "I was afraid he would show up in a bear suit and embarrass the firm into bankruptcy."

"No chance of that!" Miles said, appearing out of nowhere in a bulky green sweater and slacks, his briefcase in his hand. "I think I've got the hang of this selling thing! Even if some of these sales fall through, I'm sure the next show will be even better."

Leaving his briefcase on the floor beside Hal's wheelchair, Miles crossed to the stove and elbowed his mother away from the eggs she was frying.

"We told all the clients that our office would give them follow-up calls tomorrow," Miles went on, as though he had been born to the business side of the concern since its inception. "That will give us today to go through the orders and check our figures -- see if we can get a little more out of each client."

The elder Jacobs had appeared in the kitchen just in time to hear this snatch of conversation. He hooked his thumbs into the belt of his heavy woolen bathrobe and rocked back on his heels.

"Now, that's the son I'd always hoped I'd raised," he chortled.

Hal looked up at his father, startled.

Miles served himself a couple of fried eggs and a mound of potatoes, then turned toward them with a satisfied grin on his face.

Penny held her breath, experiencing a shift in the family equation that might have held the force of an earthquake.

This wasn't the man she'd gone searching for in the mountains. For all his original shortcomings, she was not so sure she liked what he'd become this morning as well as she liked what he had been Saturday evening--still hungry to please, still driven to protect the family firm. No, the Miles Jacobs she saw now was a man who was looking after himself first, and rubbing his brother's nose in his success. This wasn't an attractive picture.

Having lost her appetite, Penny pushed her chair back and rose. Before she could clear her place, Mrs. Jacobs snatched the plate and silverware away.

"Are you sure you don't want your coffee refilled, dear?" she asked solicitously. "I generally carry my second cup around until I've finished the puzzles in the paper."

"No, thank you. I have a long ride ahead of me," Penny said. She handed Lucinda an envelope which contained receipts and the firm's credit cards she had been given to pay the expenses for the trip to Oklahoma City. "I'll send you our bill tomorrow when I've totaled it. It's been -- a pleasure doing business with you-- all."

"You're leaving now?" Miles asked, ready to sit down at his place, now that his plate was mounded with food.

"Yes," she said, starting toward her bags, which stood at the back door.

"I'll take those for you--" Miles said, somehow reaching for them before she could.

Outside, the mountain air was crisp and clear, with wisps of fog trailing through the distant hills, shrouding the brilliance of the autumn leaves. Penny could appreciate the beauty, if not the isolation. It was so very quiet.

Bones bounded toward them before Penny could cross the porch.

"Down, boy!" Miles commanded, and the beast stopped in his tracks. "Don't you know the lady doesn't like dogs?"

"That's probably why he barks at me," Penny said, taking the moment that Miles had control of the animal to search her purse for the keys to her car.

"Come on," he urged her.

When Miles had slammed the trunk of her car shut on her bags, he turned and stood with his hands on his hips, a very typical stance he'd assumed when they first met.

"It's been quite an experience, hasn't it?" he asked.

Penny dusted her hands together and grasped her ignition key, ready to leave- -to flee. "Yes, it has."

The breath Miles took stretched the dark green sweater across his chest. "I couldn't have done it without you," he said generously. "You're a real trooper."

"Well--it's what I get paid for," she said, starting toward the driver's-side door.

But Miles reached out and caught the shoulder of her navy blue jacket and stopped her in her tracks. Her head snapped upward and all the air in her lungs evaporated.

His lips caught hers, moist and warm and overpowering with the taste of fresh toothpaste. His mustache brushed the tip of her nose.

She felt her flesh respond to his strength. Part of her wanted to be folded tightly against the solidness of his body, but her mind struggled for control -- to resist -- to remain aloof from the creation she had worked so hard to produce. This was not the way business associates parted company.

This was not a part of the contract, real or implied. This was -- a disaster!

Penny's heart thumped. Had Miles not held her in a bear hug, her legs would have given way and she would have sunk to the trampled earth of the yard. Lord only knew what that would do to her good suit! But that wasn't the thought that was uppermost in her mind.

Miles was kissing her -- a Miles who had changed from an obnoxious mountain man to a fairly presentable human, and was now an obnoxious businessman.

She had done her job, perhaps too well.

Deep inside her, a woman who had appreciated Miles' physical appeal, who delighted in his eccentric nature, who had watched quietly from an inner corner of her soul--hoping for a romantic adventure, cheered on this one last expression of irrepressible machismo.

But the real Penelope Birch had to wield control.

When she remembered to breathe, Penny pushed him away as best she could. He got the message. Otherwise, she would not have been able to break his hold on her and she knew it.

"I--have to go," she stammered, getting into he car.

"When will I see you again?" he asked, holding the edge of the door.

She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Penny..."

"It's not...wise."

"Coward!"

"You've got a lot to do," she said. "So do I."

She put the key in the ignition and started the car. Good, it started!

He slammed the door closed and stepped backward, out of the way.

She eased the car forward, across the rutted yard toward the opening in the split-rail fence. Before she turned onto the paved highway, she glanced into her rearview mirror.

Miles was still standing there, slightly sideways, his arms crossed on his chest, his long legs encased in tight slacks, his feet in heavy hiking boots.

She almost shifted into reverse.

"No," she said aloud to herself, and turned onto the paved road.

* * *

Miles returned to the house slowly, giving Bones only a half-hearted pat on the head as he let him into the kitchen.

The sights and sounds and warmth, something he usually relished, were lost on him. He ate his breakfast, foods he usually enjoyed, and barely tasted the eggs and potatoes and waffles.

Miles didn't realize someone had asked him a question until there was a long silence and he discovered everyone was staring at him.

"Sorry," he said, reaching for his coffee. "Did someone say something to me?"

"I asked how the booth looked in Oklahoma City," Hal said. "God, your mind must be a million miles away!"

No, just on its way to Atlanta, he thought.

"Fine," he said. "Sort of...fit in with the others. Not too elaborate. Took the trip all right, I guess."

"Are you still tired?" his mother asked, refilling his cup when he put it down in the saucer.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, reaching for the cream pitcher. "Thought I'd rest a little this morning. Lucy -- I'll tend the horses for you. . ."

"I'd appreciate that," Lucinda said.

"Look, if it's all right with all of you, I'm not going back up to the camp again until spring," he said. "Aside from the shows, I'll stay here to do all the heavy stuff while Hal's recovering and Lucy's...well..."

"Good idea," his father said. "We'll be on our way in a few days, then."

Lucinda gave Miles a furtive, thankful glance.

"Once Hal's back on his feet, I'll take a place in town probably," Miles continued. "You'll...want to redecorate the room I use."

"Assuming..." Hal said.

"Well, even...if not...I ought to be out of here," Miles said. "Get a place of my own."

But he wasn't happy with the idea. Even as he tramped out to the barn to grain the horses, he frowned.

He wasn't a city person. Not a small town person, either. He liked a lot of space. A mountain. A valley. A good-sized creek with some trout or bass or pike. A few deer and a lot of squirrels and rabbits.

And the woman he was madly in love with hated all of that.

How the hell was he going to reconcile all of this?

Considering she'd just cut him off at the knees.

He'd finally given up on trying to find the words to say to her, just grabbed her and kissed her the way he'd wanted to a hundred times in the past three days. And she'd just turned and left.

How could he have been so stupid!

* * *

Penny had to stop along I-85 to get gas. She hated pumping gas. It made her hand hurt. She felt so out of her element as cars swirled around her.

At the next pump, there was a brawny utility vehicle, with decals of fish and deer in the rear windows. The driver was a big, burly guy, dressed in camouflage pants and jacket, a khaki fishing hat pulled down over his forehead.

She thought of Miles.

The pump made the sound it did when the tank was full. She swore under her breath. She hadn't intended to fill the tank.

What was she thinking of?

Miles.

He'd kissed her--and she'd run away.

Like one of the rabbits up at his god-forsaken wilderness camp.

What had she done to him? She'd been hired to change him, and she had. But he'd kept on changing, past being presentable for the trade show. He'd become another cutthroat businessman -- like his brother -- like -- like all the men she despised.

She went into the store to pay for her gas.

The man who had been using the next pump came in and asked for a can of chewing tobacco.

Darn, he reminded her of Miles!

* * *

Miles drove Lucinda to the office in his four-wheeler, discreetly removing the can of chewing tobacco to the pocket of his down vest.

They went over the orders in his briefcase like a well-oiled team, as though they had done it many times before. He was lapping up the praise Lucinda heaped on him.

"I can't tell you what it means to me that you did so well at this show," Lucinda said, pushing herself back from her desk when they had come to the end of one phase of the process. "When Hal got hurt, I had visions of having to shut down the whole company and declaring bankruptcy."

"Things aren't that bad, are they?" Miles asked.

Lucinda's tired eyes closed and she nodded. "The shows are our life-blood," she told him. "If we don't do well at the shows, we may as well liquidate. There is no way the mail-order business and other sales can make up the difference."

Miles got to his feet and paced around the room thoughtfully.

"Can you go to the next show with me?"

"I wasn't planning on it, Miles. I really don't feel well."

"I know," Miles said, leaning on her desk. "But isn't there some way we can make allowances for--your--condition? I can't shoulder so much responsibility by myself. If it hadn't been for Penny, I would never have been able to pull this off." He made a sweeping gesture toward the paperwork on Lucinda's desk. "You'll notice how much her handwriting is on those orders. Can't we work something out?"

Lucinda looked up at him for a long moment, then reached for her phone.

"Hal, how are you?" she asked her husband when she reached him through her mother-in-law. "Have you taken your pain medicine?...All right, I was wondering. Look, do you think you could spare me this weekend? Miles really wants me to go to the trade show with him...Well, I'm thinking, I really should see a doctor sometime this week. Maybe I could get something for the morning sickness. It's worth a thought."

Miles turned away while Lucinda was having a calm discussion with Hal. Maybe it was easier for Lucinda to talk to Hal about things like this over the telephone. He knew that if he ever had a wife and she was going to have a child, he'd be too dumbstruck to have a cogent conversation.

He scratched his jaw where his beard had been. He'd shaved it clean this morning, even though he'd seriously thought of letting the mustache grow again. But he'd have to shave it off again later in the week, he'd reasoned.

His thought-processes were all out of whack. Penny had made him a blathering idiot with her intrusions into his life, necessary as they were.

It wasn't all business, either. Now he was thinking of new clothes and a place to live in town and -- and a wife and a child. Damn! He was turning into a lap dog before his own eyes.

He sank into a chair across the desk from Lucinda and picked up the newspaper on her desk. He turned almost automatically to the real estate ads. He didn't need a house, for heaven's sake. Just an apartment. Maybe furnished.

God, he had no idea how to look for an apartment. Or furniture. And then you had to have -- pots and pans and towels and sheets and -- How did he ever get into this!

He closed the newspaper again and folded it.

It was all Penny's fault!

* * *

Penny didn't bother to go to the apartment first, but went straight to the modest offices of Southern Images, in a strip mall on Peach Tree Industrial.

Shelby was at her own desk, talking excitedly on the phone, promising someone the firm could handle something or other with the greatest of aplomb. Shelby was good at that -- the sure confidence that got them in over their heads at every turn. It was exciting. It was scary. Right now, it was out of the question.

"What now?" Penny said, without preamble as Shelby hung up the phone and made self-congratulatory noises.

"Another candidate!" Shelby proclaimed, pushing aside her rampant dark tresses to reinstall a dangling silver earring.

"No!" Penny protested vigorously. "I've told you over and over again that we should stay away from --"

"But that's where the money is right now," Shelby argued, getting to her feet. "Later! How was the job in Asheville?" Her eyes were suddenly much more intent on the present and concrete than on the ephemeral possibilities.

Penny took a deep breath and dropped her purse and briefcase on her own desk, ignoring the unfamiliar clutter she was over-layering.

"It was a challenge," she related. "It was time-consuming, tedious, but ultimately successful. We ought to make a bundle on this one. Not that...it matters."

"It does matter!" Shelby protested. "You're tired. That's why you're depressed. What should we charge these people?"

"They paid for all my expenses," Penny told her partner, "took me into their home, fed me, paid for me to fly to Oklahoma City and stay in a nice hotel. I know we were hoping to bill for five hundred a day on jobs like this, but --"

"I'll let you figure it out," Shelby said, reaching for a ringing telephone. "Tom will be here with our lunch soon. You can have part of mine."

That explained the clutter on her desk. A usurper, Tom Hathaway -- Shelby's friend, was already taking up her space. The man she had brought into the firm for financial stability and extensive contacts which ran through Georgia's political and economic structure.

Penny didn't sit down in her swivel chair, but stood staring at a scattering of glossy photographs of a political candidate she didn't particularly endorse.

Life was simpler when she was dealing with something she could at least believe in. When she saw a need for the effort she put into remaking a mountain man into an acceptable salesman.

Miles.

Miles with a beard and mustache and low-slung jeans.

Miles in a sport jacket and slacks.

Miles in the hotel's terry robe and not much more -- his face clean-shaven and grinning with success -- success he owed to her hours of coaching and expert advice.

Well, it didn't make any sense for her to spend another minute of her time on him. After the last trade show, he would probably go back up into the woods and pitch a tent with the bears and bugs and squirmy things.

She had no time for that.

Chapter Ten

Tom Hathaway, the new man in the firm, the only man in the firm, leaned on the corner of Penny's desk and skimmed her report on her services to Jacobs, including the duplicate of the bill she had sent them. A low whistle escaped him.

"Well, you did all right by us, didn't you?" Hathaway said, handing the folder back to Penny to put in the filing cabinet with the very few other files of completed projects.

Penny didn't like his attitude. He seemed to have taken over. Shelby didn't seem to mind, but Penny did. She and Shelby had been partners--equal partners, with equal voices in what would and would not be accomplished by the firm of Southern Images.

Shelby might defer to this man--after all, they'd dated for a while in college--but Penny wasn't about to let him push her around.

Well, that was new! She'd let a lot of people push her around, including Shelby, for all of her life. Until last week, when she'd learned she could push back. Indeed, if she hadn't pushed back, Miles would have been a disaster at the Oklahoma City trade show.

Tom got to his feet and straightened his deliberately selected power necktie. "We have a new challenge for you," he announced. "A candidate for City Council -- "

"I told Shelby that I want no part of it," Penny said, rearranging the clutter on her desk. "Right now, I'm going back to the apartment, organize my laundry, and catch up on my sleep."

"But we have a lot of work to do," Tom protested. "The election isn't very far away and our candidate needs --"

"I told Shelby when we set up this firm that I didn't want to handle political candidates." Penny turned to Shelby for affirmation. "Didn't we establish that early on?"

"Yes, but --" Shelby said, pushing back her swivel chair. "This is a job we agreed to do."

"You agreed to do it," Penny pointed out. "The two of you did that while I was out of town. You didn't consult me, and I have not changed my mind from my first stand."

"We need the money," Shelby said. "The only other thing we have is the bread company that's trying to get the zoning board to approve its expansion."

"Then I suggest you start looking for other projects," Penny said, reaching for her purse.

"Penny! Listen to reason," Shelby pleaded. "Just because you have a prejudice against politicians --"

"It's a very lucrative field," Tom pointed out. "If we'd had more time, I could have lined up enough clients to keep us busy right through the election. In fact, after the election, I'm going to start talking to people who might be thinking of running next year -- help them get an early start in positioning themselves."

"You seem to be taking on more responsibility than your position in this firm merits," Penny stated.

"Well, I am a partner, aren't I?" he demanded.

"Not so far as I know," Penny shot back at him.

"Shelby told me I could be a partner --"

"Well, it's news to me! Shelby, how could you make him a partner without consulting me?"

"I -- thought -- you'd understand. I was going to talk it over with you as soon as you got back."

"I got back an hour ago."

"Well, we're talking about it now."

"Oh, we are, are we?" Penny challenged. "Let me make my position clear. I do not like what Tom represents to this firm, and I don't particularly like him as a person, and I don't want him to be a partner in our firm."

Shelby and Tom stared back at her dumbfounded. This must not have been the reception to the situation they had expected from her. From somewhere inside her, Penny found the strength and courage to confront them and say exactly what she thought.

This was not the pre-Miles Penelope Birch who had left Atlanta a week before.

"But -- but -- Penny --" Shelby said, coming close to her to whisper in her ear, "-- his money!"

"I'm sorry. I will not compromise," Penny stated firmly. "The partnership agreement we made in the incorporation papers states that I have an equal say in all decisions about the structure and conduct of the firm. If you thought I'd just approve anything you bring up, you'd better think again."

"I thought you liked Tom," Shelby argued. "You never said anything negative about him when I was dating him before."

"That's because I knew you wouldn't want to hear my opinion about him," Penny said, dredging up the reasoning she'd gone through at the time.

"What is it you don't like? Is it something I can fix?" Tom asked.

"Can you fix your basic attitude that you're superior to everyone else on the planet?" Penny asked.

"Well --"

"I didn't think so," Penny sighed. "I'm going to the apartment and --"

"There's something else!" Shelby interrupted urgently. "Ah -- Tom moved in with me - with us."

Penny was quickly too angry to speak. She glared at them for a long moment, then sat back down in her chair.

"Say something," Shelby pleaded.

Tom's face was ashen.

"How could you do this, Shelby?" Penny demanded when she found her voice. "No! This will not do! You never told me you wanted Tom to be a partner, and you certainly didn't tell me you were letting him move into our apartment. You never asked, Shelby. You just did these things, as though I didn't matter -- didn't have any say."

"But I thought it would be all right," Shelby protested.

"It's not. Tom can work for the firm, but I don't want him to be a partner. And I don't want him, or any man, in our apartment."

Tom laughed sarcastically. "I should have known as much. You don't want any man! As though any man would want you!"

Shelby reached out and put a cautioning hand on his arm. "Tom, this is all my fault. There's no need for you to get nasty with Penny. I thought she would eventually approve. I never thought she had such a strong negative opinion about you. I...I was going to have all of this taken care of before...before..."

"So -- where do we stand?" Tom asked.

"I don't know! Penny?"

"Out of the apartment! As for -- the partnership, I'll think about it. Give me a week. I'm tired. I don't make good decisions when I'm tired."

"All right, I'll start looking for another place --" Tom said.

Penny pointed to the door. "Go! Get your things out of there...now. I'm not setting foot in that apartment until you have all your things out."

"Penny, be reasonable!" Shelby argued.

"I am being reasonable," Penny countered. "I know if we let him stay until tomorrow, he'll stay forever. And I'm not putting up with that."

"'Oh, Penny won't mind!' you said," Tom jeered at Shelby. "Just like she wouldn't mind Hurricane Andrew! All right, I'm going. I'm going!"

Penny turned her chair so she was staring at the blank wall. This was certainly not what she had expected to come home to.

If she had never met Miles, she would never have stood her ground so firmly. And she wouldn't have ruined her friendship with Shelby.

This was not a good day, not at all.

* * *

Miles felt as though the telephone had become permanently attached to his ear that morning. If it wasn't Lucinda or Hal asking questions, it was someone else telling him of a new crisis. Even when he was called into the warehouse to make notes on a shortage in inventory, the phone jangled and he was jerked back to his office to check figures on something else.

No wonder he had chosen the quiet life of Spruce Pine Camp over this hubbub.

His gut growled at him and he looked at his watch. It was well past lunchtime and he hadn't had so much as a cup of coffee during the morning. Bolting from his chair and reaching for his jacket, Miles went looking for Lucinda. If he was hungry, Lucinda must be, too.

His brother's wife looked up from her desk and ran a hand through her long blond hair. Her face looked drawn and weary.

"Have you had lunch?" he asked without preface.

She shook her head. "This phone hasn't stopped ringing. All those people whom you promised I'd call tomorrow are calling me today. Everyone is ordering at least one or two more items. God! What did you do to those buyers, hog-tie them and stuff order forms down their throats?"

Miles was going to laugh until he saw the serious look in her eyes and the pile of order forms in front of her.

"I'll never be able to do it again this weekend," he said. "It was just a sort of act of desperation. Don't expect me to be the super tyro of your sales department."

"Tyro?"

Miles shrugged.

"Humph!" Lucinda laughed. "Maybe that's what we need around here, the unstudied approach. It certainly worked."

"Hell, I haven't worked on anything so hard since junior high," Miles said. "Penny was a slave driver. I didn't get anywhere until I began to see the parallel between selling and bass fishing. Come on, let's get some lunch."

"I don't feel much like it." Lucinda straightened the forms on her desk.

Miles snatched the pen from her hand and dropped it into the holder. "You at least need a break and so does Hal, Junior. Somewhere in this town there's a chef's salad with your name on it."

Lucinda flexed her back and sighed. "All right, you've talked me into it."

They went to a place with an extensive salad bar that Lucinda always appreciated. Miles got a bowl of soup and lots of crusty bread.

"Are you serious about getting your own place?" Lucinda asked, chasing salad greens around her plate with her fork.

He nodded. "I just don't know where or how."

"I have a friend who sells real estate," Lucinda told him. "I can have her come see you sometime."

"I don't even know what I want," Miles said, then took a deep breath. "I really don't want to live in the city. Or apartment -- with all the noise and rules and regulations. Or a house with a lawn and furnace and all the upkeep."

"We have that with the farm, too," Lucinda pointed out. "You're spoiled, Miles."

Although Lucinda smiled, her criticism hurt.

"I'd really like to build out at Spruce Pine," he said. "A log cabin -- a log house..."

Lucinda looked away from him, back to her salad.

"I don't suppose it would work," Miles went on after he'd polished off half his soup.

"Why not?" Lucinda asked. "We could deed about five acres next to the road to you. You'd still have a lot of land to camp on."

"It wouldn't be the same," he said. "If the weather got too hot or too wet or cold, I'd be tempted to give up the projects and stay in the house. You'd certainly not want it bandied about that your brother-in-law didn't know enough to come in out of the rain!"

Lucinda laughed. "It's been said before."

"Thanks!"

But he hadn't told her the real reason why he thought building at Spruce Pine Camp was out of the question. There was Penny to be considered. Penny.

She certainly made no secret about not liking the wilderness life. Her knowledge of the products Jacobs Brothers made and sold was superficial and situational. He had no doubt she'd forget everything he'd told her about the individual products as soon as she got back to Atlanta.

He glanced at his watch. She should be there by now, back where she belonged. Where she definitely belonged.

Not in his wildest imagination could he visualize Penny Birch in faded blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, boots and wool socks. He couldn't imagine her cooking over a campfire or wading in the cold creek water.

Then again, the way he most wanted to visualize her was in that pink satin wrapper she was wearing Saturday night while they studied one last time. That certainly dispelled any thoughts he might have that she was skinny. Although she didn't seem to eat a lot of food, she certainly ate a well-rounded diet and seemed to enjoy some of the meals they had together.

His heart stopped for a moment and he stared out the window beside him at the traffic, not seeing anything. He'd wanted her and it had taken every ounce of his strength not to act on his impulses.

She was all wrong for him. But then, any woman was all wrong. Women needed hot water every day to wash their hair in, and telephones and supermarkets. He didn't have anything like that to offer Penny. He didn't even want to offer her an apartment in the city. She'd probably require evenings at concerts and theatres and church on Sunday mornings and an endless list of amenities.

Maybe she'd be worth it, though.

Lucinda said something to him and he looked back at her sheepishly.

"You're a million miles away," she said.

"Not quite that far," he chuckled.

"What is it, Miles?" Lucinda asked.

He stared back at her theatrically. "I thought you'd know! Don't women have intuition about things like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like Penny. I'm very attracted to her, and I'm damned useless now that she's gone back to Atlanta. She left without encouraging me very much. Of course, she has her life, and I have mine. I don't imagine she'd take to living in a tent and I certainly have no intention of going to Atlanta to pursue her."

Lucinda stared at him and waved a waitress away from the table when she offered to refill their ice tea glasses.

"This all happened in the last weekend?" she asked. "You were at each other's throats most of the time you were working together."

"Well...yes."

Lucinda slumped against the back of the booth. "I hope you didn't do anything -- unwise --"

"Of course not! Believe me, I heard her door lock loud and clear."

"Good. I'll call Penny and ask her -- for an evaluation of the situation."

"Don't you dare! And don't tell Hal! He'll never let me live it down."

"You mean, you're not going to do anything about it?"

Miles shrugged. "What could I do?" he asked. "We're from two different worlds. There's no common ground."

Lucinda let out a long sigh and crumpled up her napkin. The shake of her head told him she thought he was hopeless. But that was nothing new.

On the way back to the office, they passed a high-rise apartment building that sported a banner proclaiming "Now Leasing!"

Miles looked up at the many impersonal balconies and windows and shuddered.

What a price to pay!

* * *

"Really, I didn't think you'd mind," Shelby protested for the tenth time as Penny placed a bowl of spaghetti on the dining table of their two-bedroom apartment. "You've never raised an issue with anything I've done."

"Maybe it's about time I did," Penny sighed. "I certainly don't want a man I dislike living in my apartment. It's as much mine as it is yours."

"Yes, I agree," Shelby said, dismally.

"I don't want you to think that I think less of you as a friend over this episode," Penny told her, sitting down to serve herself.

There was a heavy silence between them.

"How was the job in Asheville?" Shelby asked, swirling spaghetti on her fork.

"I gave you the report --"

"You gave me something to put in the file," Shelby said. "But you left a lot of things out. Come on! I can see it in your attitude."

Penny suddenly lost interest in her dinner.

"Miles Jacobs turned out to be -- very nice. He just didn't want to be dragged away from the project he was working on in his camp. But once he understood the extent of the problem the firm was facing, he was much more co-operative. When we finally finished the show in Oklahoma City, he was getting the hang of selling to the specific buyers he was confronting. I don't think he'll ever want to be a salesman for a living, but he can do a creditable job in a specific situation."

"And what about him, personally?"

Penny shook her head. "I wasn't there to become his life-long friend," she commented, more to herself than to Shelby. "I did the job I was assigned and that was that."

"Sure!" Shelby said, tearing a hard roll apart. She glared at Penny for a moment, then buttered her roll. "I think you should take the first crack at this candidate we're working for. He needs a better toupee, and his clothes look like he got them from a thrift store. He's got a sitting with a photographer Wednesday. His campaign posters don't have any pictures on them, which is fine, but we need portraits for the media."

"I should have taken before and after shots of Miles Jacobs," Penny thought aloud. Before and after, and in between, when I fell in love with him.

"That's a thought," Shelby agreed. "Another thing we have to do is coach this man to clean up his language. I don't mean vulgarity. I don't think he ever learned grammar and he never finishes a sentence."

"You may have that honor --" Penny said, with mock graciousness.

"That's what I was afraid of. And Tom, of course, wants the job of developing his positions and platform."

"He's welcome to it. What else do we have to work on?"

"Not much."

Penny pushed her half-finished plate aside. "I was afraid this business would get sleazy. We were too idealistic in our vision and our goals."

"It's going to work out. Tom's got some good contacts and some great ideas."

"Sure," Penny said.

She got up from the table slowly and took her plate to the kitchen. Her briefcase was on the stool by the telephone, waiting for her. Grabbing it, she headed for the small living room, put it on the coffee table and opened it.

There was always solace in work.

There were things about the Jacobs job that had to be wrapped up, culled from the pockets of the case and tossed into the wastebasket. It would be a final act to get this whole interlude out of her system.

She picked up one of the neatly typed sheets of paper Lucinda had handed her when she had first reported to Asheville. It included the dates of the shows Miles would have to appear at. Oklahoma City. Portland. Atlanta.

Atlanta. Weekend after next.

Her heart thudded once, but she took it firmly in hand as she started a pile of things destined for the trash.

Later that evening, she was leafing through a local magazine Shelby had left on the endtable. There, inside the back cover, was an ad for the camping trade show.

Penny closed the magazine abruptly and went to her room.

This was no way to forget Miles Jacobs!

Shelby sat down in her usual chair, a cup of coffee in her hand and a serious look on her face.

"Tell me why you're so set against working for politicians," she said, a sincerity in the request that Penny couldn't deny.

She sighed and turned off the television. Shelby deserved the truth.

"My father is in politics," she started, and once the words were said, more lined up to follow. "First it was a low-level local office, and then he got more ambitious. My mother didn't mind at first. Maybe she enjoyed the excitement. But somewhere along the way, things got messy. Mom was a nurse, used to routine and order, and very straightforward. I guess Dad's schedule and ethics became an issue. I remember a lot of arguing before they divorced.

"And with a divorce on his record, Dad had little chance of being elected, according to the party. So he works behind the scenes now. I've kept track of him through the years, and I know when he's in charge of a campaign. Sometimes the truth gets lost in the mudslinging, and the best candidate isn't always the one who wins."

"You're afraid that's what we'll do?" Shelby asked. "That we'll gussy up some looser and he'll win even though he is the lesser man?"

"I've seen it happen, more than once." Penny slumped and dug her hands into the pockets of her slacks. "I want no part of things like that."

"I understand," Shelby said, thoughtfully.

Penny fidgeted and got up from the couch. "What I'm really upset about is that I always promised myself I'd never be like my father. I'd never sell out and just do a job because I was getting paid to do it. I'd believe in what I did, no matter what. With this Jacobs thing, I believed in what I was doing. I don't think I could...be at peace with myself if I worked on these political candidates with you and Tom. But I know Southern Images has to succeed, for all of us."

"I see your dilemma," Shelby said.

"I look at myself and I see I've become the things my father and mother are -- the worst characteristics of both of them. My mother is too unemotional and distant, and my father is committed only to success at any cost. I disgust myself."

She covered her face with her hands, and suddenly felt Shelby's arm around her.

"You sell yourself short, Penny," Shelby whispered, patting her shoulder. "Now that I understand your problem with this, I think it's more important than ever that you work with us, to keep us on the right track -- to give us a balanced view of what we're doing."

"That might take care of one problem, but not the other," Penny sighed.

Shelby laughed softly and hugged her. "One at a time, Penny! You always were an over-achiever!"

Chapter Eleven

Lucinda had been miserable with morning sickness the whole time she had been in Portland, so Miles and Hal decided she would be of no use to them in Atlanta. Perhaps it had been a ruthless decision, but it was for her own good and she acknowledged it.

Against all prudent medical advice, Hal had gone back to work. He'd talked an employee into swapping his van for the Volvo for the duration of his inconvenience.

There was no talking Hal out of accompanying Miles to the show in Atlanta. He was chafing at the bit, raring to get back into the swing of things.

Miles, in some random thoughts, wondered if it might be that Hal was jealous of the sales Miles had racked up in the Oklahoma City and Portland shows. They were keeping pace with the figures Hal had set for him. It was entirely possible that Miles had trod on Hal's plaster-encased toes and the old sibling rivalry was about to flare once more.

But he put the thoughts aside as unworthy.

Miles was, after all, trying to do a full day's work every day at the plant and still find a suitable apartment -- if there was such a thing. He'd seen walk-ups and walk-downs, townhouses and just about everything Asheville and the surrounding suburbs had to offer. It was a daunting chore.

Nothing satisfied Miles. He didn't know why. He tried to swallow his prejudice against city living and look at the prospects of each offering through other eyes. He tried to envision furniture and appliances and warmth and comfort, but it just wasn't there.

His frustration was too big to keep to himself.

"Do you want me to find something for you?" Lucinda offered over dinner one evening after his long diatribe on the frustrations of searching for a suitable residence.

"No," Miles vetoed without a second thought. "You've got enough to do. And I don't want you tramping around in this rainy weather."

"It's supposed to clear tomorrow," Lucinda told him, looking to Hal for support.

"If I can't find anything for myself, how can I expect you to?" Miles countered. It made sense to him, but from the look on Lucinda's face, she wasn't buying it.

She had the look of knowing something he didn't. Of course she did. Pregnant women did that. But he suspected it went beyond that, and he wondered what it was.

* * *

Penny could not avoid knowing that the camping trade show was in Atlanta that weekend; it was written up in the paper, advertised on the television, and even touted by the station blasting on a radio beside her at a traffic light.

She tried not to pay any attention all day Saturday, but Sunday morning she was cleaning out her briefcase and found the Jacobs name tag Lucinda had given her to wear in Oklahoma City. She put it aside on the coffee table to throw it away, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

Late in the afternoon, she put on her navy blue suit, pinned the nametag to her lapel and got into the trade show without even having to stand in line.

She glanced at the program that had been thrust into her hand by the usher at the door and oriented herself to the sprawling display floor.

The Jacobs booth was a long way away, beyond crowds of casual lookers and frantic salespeople pitching to professionally wary buyers. She began picking her way in the right direction, wondering why she was here, why she was doing this, but knowing that her life depended on it.

She was surprised to see Hal sitting in a wheelchair, his disabled leg stretched out stiffly in front of him. He was talking to a man she recognized as a vendor at the previous show.

"Ho!" Hal called out, spying her as she approached timidly. "Didn't really expect to see you here! Miles, look who's --"

Miles had his back to her, just beyond Hal's wheelchair, and he was intent on copying down what the man beside him was saying. His hair needed to be trimmed again, she thought, noticing how it curled over the collar of his turtleneck shirt and almost touched the tweed of his sport jacket.

"Just a minute," Miles stalled, perhaps a bit peevishly.

It had probably been a long weekend, Penny thought, excusing him, making allowances for him.

But after a brief handshake, the customer moved away and Miles turned fully toward her, his hair falling forward over his brow, his eyes averted as he dropped the order book into Hal's lap.

"What did you want?" Miles asked.

Hal chuckled indulgently and pointed toward Penny. "Look who's here," he said again.

Miles was tucking his pen into his pocket and glanced once toward Penny, then away to what he was doing. It took a moment, perhaps longer, for him to react.

Penny's heart sank. This was a mistake and she had no one to blame but herself.

* * *

He had hoped Penny would come to the trade show. But when she didn't show up the day before, on a perfectly fine Saturday when everyone was saying it was much too nice a day to stay at home, he decided she really didn't care. That he didn't matter to her. He had just been an assignment, a challenge, a job. Once she had been paid, he reasoned, she no longer cared. That's what that scene in the yard had been all about.

Sure, he'd fallen in love with her, but she had other things to do. She'd tried to let him down easy, without telling him he didn't matter to her.

Now she was here. Smack-dab in front of him. Hair just so. Suit pressed, shoes shined. Makeup perfectly dusted across her flawless cheeks. That scent. He should have picked up on it sooner.

She looked great.

And he was about to make a fool of himself all over again.

"Hey," he said when he found enough breath.

"Hey, yourself," she answered. "How are things going?"

"Fine," Miles said.

"We've done real well this show," Hal contributed, beaming and motioning to the orders he held in his lap. "We had some slack to make up. Lucinda sort of-- blew the show in Portland. She was sick most of the time."

"Is she feeling better?" Penny asked, concerned.

"Not really," Hal said. "It doesn't help that she's trying to keep going for my sake."

Penny smiled sympathetically. "And you?"

"The leg hurts like hell," Hal said, pounding on his cast with his fist. "Three more weeks and I'll be in a walking cast, though."

"Just in time for the first snow," Miles interjected, voicing the concern that nagged at him.

"Oh," Penny groaned and shook her head. "At least you have Miles to help out."

Hal laughed. "He's useless!" he said, looking up at Miles. "Hey, why don't you take a break and--whatever." He motioned toward the outer walls of the convention hall.

"Sure you'll be all right?" Miles asked.

"This thing's winding down," Hal said. "The people wandering around here are just looking. Most of the buyers are finished. I can handle this. You go get a breath of fresh air."

Miles didn't have to be told twice. He led Penny through a labyrinth of extension cords and booth supports to a back door which in turn led to the parking lot.

It was awkward.

"I'd expected to see you here yesterday," he blurted out.

Penny shrugged. "You don't need me any more."

"Yes, I do," he said, catching her hand in his.

"Hal seems to think you're doing just fine."

Miles shook his head. "I've been a mess for two weeks," he confessed.

She stopped walking, let go of his hand and looked down at her feet. "I -- I haven't done too well, myself," she conceded nervously. "My roommate thinks I'm a witch. I got really mad at her for bringing a man into the firm and not telling me about it first. He's brought us a lot of business, but..."

Her voice trailed off, perhaps self-consciously. But he wanted to hear about her business. He wanted to be taken away from the pain he was feeling inside, knowing if he messed up now, she'd be gone, and he'd be more alone than he'd been before he'd ever met her.

In the days she'd worked with him, she rarely said anything about herself. He knew nothing about her, where she got her incredibly pale blond hair, where she spent her summer vacations, if she liked pansies and broccoli and Vivaldi. She probably liked all of those things, and if he didn't do something fast, they'd never enjoy them together.

"Go on," he urged, sinking his hands into his back pockets and staring down at her intently.

"I don't want to talk about my business," Penny said. "I'm to a point where I'd just like to chuck it all and go work in a fast-food place. How are you coming with your stove?"

"I haven't gone inside my workroom since I got back from Oklahoma City," he told her. "I've been sorting out orders and looking for a place to live in town."

She looked surprised, but she didn't say anything.

"I've been stuck in Hal's office," he complained. "On the few occasions I go out to the loading docks to shoot the breeze with the guys, the intercom calls me back. Now I remember why I went out to the camp to work on the stove and the --"

Penny was giggling. "I must apologize, Miles. Did I do my job too well?"

"What job?"

"Making you into a salesman?"

He shook his head. "I took on additional duties all on my own," he said. "I've no one to blame but myself. But I can't wait until Hal takes over again. I haven't had a day off -- haven't even been up to the camp to see if everything was stowed properly!"

"We're working twelve-hour days until these elections are over --" Penny sighed.

"Look -- can you get away for a day?" Miles asked, catching her hand as she swept a lock of blond hair from her eyes. "Just tomorrow?"

Penny frowned. "I don't know..."

"I have to drive Hal back to Asheville tonight," Miles said, starting to walk back to the hall. "I know he's in a lot of pain and as soon as he takes one of his pills, he's going to be so much dead weight. I need some company on the drive. It will give us a chance to...talk things over...tomorrow. And I'll buy you a seat on the commuter plane late tomorrow afternoon. Whaddaya say?"

"Miles --"

Penny knew it was her mouth that formed the word against the breeze in the parking lot, but it was her mother's voice. It was a whine that said: Be reasonable! Be logical -- practical -- sensible!

She made her feet stop moving. She paused and took a deep breath. Miles tried to drag her along after him, his grip on her hand mashing her fingers together.

"Oh, all right," she relented. "I'll have to tell Shelby. She won't be happy."

But with each step, Penny began to feel better, as though the numbing weight she felt around her heart was giving way ever so slightly, that there was hope for a resolution to the pain she had endured for what seemed to be a lifetime.

* * *

Penny guided Miles and Hal to a nearby restaurant, handy to one of the superhighways that sliced through the eastern Atlanta suburbs, then hurried home to her apartment.

"I'm taking tomorrow off!" she announced to Shelby breathlessly. Before Shelby could protest that there were too many appointments and chores to act so frivolously, she pulled her carryall from the hall closet and began looking for casual clothes. "Can I borrow your wool plaid jacket?"

"What are you--"

"Miles wants me to ride back to Asheville with him tonight," Penny said, rooting through her bottom dresser drawer for an old pair of jeans she hadn't worn since college. "He promised to put me on the commuter plane back tomorrow afternoon. We really need to talk."

"Penny, Tom wanted you to --"

"Whatever it is, he can do it," Penny interrupted, searching for her favorite pullover. "This is more important. I have to settle some things in my mind, get them out of the way, before I can go forward --"

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Shelby asked, reluctantly getting her plaid jacket from her closet.

"What? A day off?"

"No! Are you sure this Miles character --"

"It's just that we have some -- unresolved issues."

"Oh sure!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Penny asked, kicking off her shoes and reaching under the bed for her worn leather loafers.

"You're in love with this mountain oaf!"

"He's not a mountain oaf! He's turned into a very good salesman in the crunch."

"Frankly, I think you're nuts! What more can you do for him? It's not your problem any more, anyway. We've been paid for the job and it's over."

"You don't plan on being open to follow-up on our projects?"

"This has nothing to do with a project."

"Maybe not. Just something I have to do."

Shelby threw up her hands in disgust. "How are you getting back home tomorrow evening?"

"Don't worry about me," Penny said, hoisting her carryall onto her shoulder. "I can take care of myself. Come on, drive me over to the restaurant where Miles is waiting for me."

* * *

Miles met Penny halfway to their table in the crowded restaurant and took her carryall from her. He held her chair for her and dumped the bag on the seat of the fourth chair at the table.

Penny looked up at him and smiled, and somehow watching every car that had driven into the lot since she had left was all worthwhile.

"We ordered for you," Hal said, shifting uneasily in his wheelchair. "It's taken this long to get a wait-person. I hope the food is as good as you say it is."

"What did you order?" Penny asked apprehensively.

"Steak."

"Ah! With the salad bar?"

"Of course!" Miles said.

Penny looked back at Hal. "Would you like me to get a salad for you?"

Hal laughed. "You and Miles go get what you want and I'll send one of you back for whatever catches my eye."

"Don't mind if I start, then," Penny said. "I'm starved."

Hal detained Miles from following her with an outstretched hand to his sleeve.

"What?" Miles asked, tentatively sitting down again.

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Hal asked. "I mean, I don't blame you. Penny is class by the yard. But you're very close to a point of no return."

Miles took a deep breath. There wasn't anything to say that wouldn't make him sound either like a cad or a fool. He just nodded in agreement.

Hal merely smiled and cocked his head to one side.

It was strange how there were those moments in life that were so monumental and yet so silent. No words adequately summed up the gravity of it all.

Penny attacked the salad bar like an expert, not taking time to consider anything that she didn't like, not wasting resources.

Miles, however, got hung up on his choice of dressings, of breads and then the soup.

So Hal and Penny were into a deep discussion of the trade show when Miles returned to the table.

"-- But it's really been enlightening to see the show through fresh eyes," Hal was saying. "I've learned a lot being forced into the perspective of the wheelchair, but also watching how Miles has had to deal with everything from the aspect of not having anything to build on but the facts and figures of the present. I have whole new ideas on what to do for the spring shows."

"Oh, no!" Miles groaned, putting his salad plate and soup cup down at his place and sinking into his chair. "Do we have to start planning another series of shows already?"

"Of course, right away!" Hal said. Then he laughed. "I see that's not an attractive idea to either of you."

"It's not my problem," Penny said gleefully, breaking her bread with a graceful interplay of her slender fingers. "Are you ready for me to get you some salad, Hal?"

Hal studied their plates with the deliberation of a connoisseur. "Perhaps some of the potato salad and the slaw, and the soup --" he said. "And some of that pink fluffy stuff."

"That's dessert -- " Miles teased, thinking he ought to inject a thread of parental caution at the moment. He'd taken care of Hal all weekend and it was beginning to be a habit.

"I don't care," Hal said testily.

"I'll be right back," Penny promised.

Hal chuckled as Miles watched her walk away from the table. "You've got it bad," he observed.

Miles tried to ignore him by chasing the vegetables in his soup. "She's a lot like Lucinda."

"Ha! Not a bit!"

"How can you say that? They're very --"

"Maybe by your standards. Ha!" Then he sighed. "God, I'll be glad to get home. This leg is killing me."

"Have you taken your medicine yet?" Miles asked.

"I will just before we leave here. Then I'll sleep on the way home. For that reason, I'm glad you asked Penny along."

"Yeah. Look, onto something else. How does a company set up a system of shipping on the same day they get an order? I can see how a small company can do it, but it's the big companies that make a selling point of it."

Hal shrugged. "We have about a three-day response," he said. "I've always thought that was good enough."

"But what would it take?"

"I don't know. It just doesn't seem...important..."

"But if we could do it with the personnel and the equipment we have in place -- "

"What's the point?" Hal said peevishly. "Don't you have anything better to do than worry about whether we have same-day shipping or if it takes us three days to get it off the dock?"

"Right at this moment, no. Penny...what do you think when a company says that they offer same-day shipping?" Miles asked her as she neared the table. "As opposed to taking three days to ship something."

"Sounds like they're really on the ball," Penny said, arranging food in front of Hal with the grace of someone who had served tables before.

"I rest my case," Miles said, looking across the table at Hal triumphantly.

"You've created a monster, Penny," Hal said, with a bit of an edge to his voice. "It's not enough that he's head of Research and Development, he's taking over Marketing and Customer Service now, too."

Penny laughed and sat down in her place again. She shot an encouraging glance toward Miles and he cherished it secretly.

"It all seems to be part of the same thing," Miles explained. "Tuesday when I get back to the plant, I'm going to look into what it would take. If the only problem is in speeding up sending the orders from the office to the dock, maybe all it would take is a printer and some cable."

"But there's a problem of credit verification," Hal protested, dipping into his soup.

"Oh. Maybe that can be factored in. By the end of this week, I want to get the backlog off the docks and get at least a next-day shipping policy working. We could still pick up a lot of business for the Christmas season, maybe keep our people busy a little longer. Some of them are really worried about keeping their jobs into the winter."

Hal looked up at him in surprise. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah. They're worried."

"Hm! Well--I'll speak to them."

Something had changed. Hal was taking him seriously. This was power.

But Miles backed off pressing to his advantage. It could wait. At the moment, a large steak was being placed in front of him, his brother was trying to figure out what he was going to come up with next, and the most wonderful woman he'd ever met was sitting right there at the table hanging on his every word.

Life didn't get much better than this.

* * *

Penny didn't know how Hal could be comfortable in the back of the van, but he was asleep by the time she had guided Miles out of Atlanta onto I-85. It was almost dark now, and the vehicles coming the other way had their headlamps on.

She swiveled her seat sideways so she could watch Miles drive.

Miles seemed pleased to see a familiar landmark along the monotonous superhighway and his tense brow relaxed.

"It's less than four hours to that turn-off," Miles said, as though he needed some quantifying figure to work with. He was, after all, an engineer.

"Is it that far, really?" Penny asked.

"I'm not taking any shortcuts," he said. "I'm not even going up 25. I'm taking 26. It's longer, but there's more traffic. If there's any trouble with Hal --"

"Are you concerned about him?"

"Of course I'm concerned about him. But I guess he's not as fragile as I was afraid of when we started out Friday. He's done real well, but he's been in a lot of pain." Miles looked into his rearview mirror and nodded. "He's asleep?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

"This trip has changed things," Miles mused. "He's let me take over some things he used to insist on. Well, maybe it's because I've done the two other trade shows. But I almost think it's because he knew he's taken on too much for himself and he needs me to -- get back into the saddle a little. I used to do a lot more of the day-to-day business than I do now."

"But is that what you want?" Penny asked.

"I think we each reach a point where we choose to conform to what is expected of us."

That wasn't the answer she wanted to hear from Miles. Miles, the non- conformist. Miles, the rebel.

"Hal and Lucinda need me to take over things they can't do anymore. The business is getting too big for them. There are problems that are catching up with them. Shipping, for instance. We should be shipping the day an order is placed. Other companies do it, so we should. Hal figures the way we do it now is good enough, but it's not. There may well be orders we lose by keeping someone waiting even that extra day or two."

Miles laughed suddenly. "When you dragged me out of the mountains, the last thing on my mind was how long it took an order to be shipped off the loading dock. I suppose you think you've turned me into a corporate man."

"Well, this is a side of you I'm not familiar with."

"Don't worry. Believe me, I've seen some pretty unattractive types at these trade shows. It took me awhile to realize some of the buyers weren't looking for the best tent or sleeping bag. They were looking for the most profit per unit. The concept totally floored me when I first encountered it. That's why I'm looking for another edge. We don't make products to be most profitable for the retailer. We make things to be strongest, lightest, safest or whatever for the camper out in the field. See, that's where I usually fit into the equation -- research and development. But this sales experience has been very enlightening to me. Not only have I worked a few things out with Hal -- he's seen I can work on my own and he can trust me -- but I can go back to my camping stove project with a new objective. It doesn't have to be the best camping stove ever. It doesn't have to hit every criterion I set for it. It can hit the majority of them and still be a success."

"Oh," Penny said, barely louder than a breath.

"I'm sorry. I lost you, didn't I?" Miles said, then sighed. He switched on his turn signal and prepared to pass a long semi. "I didn't mean to bore you with my epiphany."

"You weren't boring me," she said. "I think it's fascinating that something more happened than your merely taking over some sales duties for a few weeks."

"A lot has happened! The trouble is that I can't go back to the way things were."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's no one's fault -- it's just change. I'm going to miss the camp, but its time has passed."

"You mean, you're giving it up permanently?"

"Oh, no! I'm just not going to hibernate up there five or six months of the year. It was nice when I could afford it, but I forgot there were other things that were important in life."

"Such as?"

"Well, as entertaining as the chipmunks and deer and wild turkeys are, I've found that I prefer human company," Miles said. "I...ah...got used to you."

"Well, I sort of missed you, too, after spending a week with you," Penny confessed.

Their eyes met for a moment in the glow of the dashboard and the oncoming headlights, and then Penny turned to see if Hal was still asleep behind them. Assured their privacy was unbroken, she took a deep breath and forged into her own soul.

"Things have changed for me, too," she confessed. "When I went back to Atlanta, I had to work with a political candidate our new man had brought in as a client. I've actually worked harder with him, longer hours and -- if you believe this -- I had to clean him up more than I did you."

Miles laughed and shook his head.

"But I never got the kick out of the job that I got working with you. And I wondered about it. I chalked it up to your being the first individual client I've handled. Up until you, we'd worked with firms and companies trying to establish new images. It didn't hit me until this afternoon when I went back to the apartment to pack my bag."

Then she couldn't say it. It stuck in her throat. No one had ever said it to her, and she really didn't want to be the first one now. But someone had to. It was one of those things you have to blurt out and just hope the other person doesn't think you're a fool.

"What?" Miles asked in quiet impatience.

Penny still couldn't find the words. "Well --"

"Ah! That's the same conclusion I'd reached. It's the only thing that makes sense," Miles said. "And on the other hand, it makes no sense at all."

"Does it ever make sense in anyone's life?"

"It never has in mine. Not that...I've...I mean, I've never really..."

The awkwardness hung in the air for a moment or two.

"Me neither," Penny sighed.

"Well, that's all right. I really wouldn't expect anything different of you." He drew a ragged breath, and Penny realized it had more to do with his driving than their conversation. "Look, Penny, I've shied away from women because I haven't understood them. I surely don't understand you, but I'm willing to give this a try. Because I like you, and I've had enough of solitude to last at least a couple of years. This is totally uncharted territory for me."

"Yeah, me too!"

"So...don't say anything just now. Let's wait until we're on firm ground."

"Yes, I think that would be wisest."

She settled back into her seat.

Suddenly the van was going faster than it had been before, and there were no cars or trucks to pass.

"Miles?"

"Darn it all, I'm going to take the shortcut anyway."

Chapter Twelve

The farmhouse didn't seem so intimidating as the porch lights came into view in the autumn darkness. But Bones raised such a ruckus he could be heard over the van's motor.

"We're home," Miles said, loud enough to rouse Hal from his sleep.

"Good!" Hal said, yawning. "Sorry I was such poor company."

Penny released her seatbelt and reached for her bags, noticing that lights came on in the kitchen. Even though Lucinda came out onto the porch, Miles refused her help in getting Hal from the van up the gerryrigged plank ramp to the porch. Nor would he allow Penny to carry more than her own belongings.

Penny and Lucinda exchanged a quick hug before Hal ordered Lucinda into the house out of the chilly night air.

"They're getting unbearable," Lucinda muttered under her breath as she led Penny into the kitchen. "But it's nothing new."

"I suppose not!" Penny laughed, dropping her bags to the floor out of the way of Hal's wheelchair. "How are you?"

"Fine, I suppose. Tired and morning-sick."

"And I show up," Penny said with understanding sympathy.

"Oh, I'm glad to see you! You'll sway the balance a bit in my favor," Lucinda laughed.

"I'm just staying the night," Penny said. "Miles and I have some things to talk over."

"She came to the show to see if we needed her to write any orders," Hal teased, being pushed in the door by Miles. The Irish setter tried to lick his face and climb into his lap.

"We should have taken you to Portland," Lucinda said, drawing Penny to the far end of the table. "And I probably should have stayed home. Do you want coffee? I can make a pot in a few minutes."

"I want to get to bed," Hal said. "I wish..."

Miles stopped pushing his chair and straightened his shoulders. "What do you wish?" he prodded.

"That I could sleep upstairs in my own bed," Hal sighed.

"Oh, why not?" Miles said. "I'll help you up as soon as I empty the van."

"But..."

"And I'm not going to the shop tomorrow except to drop off paperwork, so I can bring you downstairs anytime," Miles continued, then turned to go back out to the yard.

Penny felt awkward and in the way. "Is...ah...the room I used last time..." she started to ask.

"Go ahead!" Lucinda said with a wave of her hand in the direction of the stairway. "My mother-in-law insisted on doing it up while she was here."

"I'm not surprised," Penny said under her breath as she hefted her bag.

Penny didn't intend to unpack her bag, only to find the things she'd need for the evening, and dawdled, waiting for Miles to help Hal up the stairs and to his room. She was just hanging her jacket in the otherwise empty closet when Lucinda came to her door.

"There are some doughnuts downstairs," she said. "Miles was saying something about making himself some hot chocolate. Do me a favor and keep him from destroying my kitchen?"

"Don't worry," Penny reassured her. "You just look after Hal."

Penny was glad for a reason to go back downstairs, to the comfortable kitchen. She puttered around, making two mugs of hot chocolate in the microwave oven. As the oven clicked off, Miles returned.

"Oh, there it is!" he said, taking a message from the refrigerator door. He read it and reached for the telephone on the wall, quickly leaving a message on someone's machine that ten o'clock the next morning would be fine.

Penny felt ultimately awkward as she stood with her back to the counter, holding two mugs of chocolate in her hands, waiting for him to notice her.

It wasn't long coming. Miles turned to her with an expression on his face that seemed to say he had cleared his schedule and she was the center of his attention.

He took the mug from the hand she extended to him and placed it on the table without taking his eyes from hers.

"I hope your being here means...what I think it means..." he said, wrapping his arms around her slowly.

Penny set her chocolate down carefully on the counter and looked up into his teasing eyes. "I don't know what it means," she said with difficulty. "It just seems that...this is the only place I seem to belong at this moment."

He tucked her head under his chin and chuckled. "That makes two of us."

Penny felt the strength and solidness of his arms under her hands as they sought his shoulders. There was something wrong in this wondrous happiness that bubbled inside her, almost exploding. It isn't right to feel this way, she thought. Then she questioned her feelings all over again. Why not?

"I need you, Penelope Birch," Miles sighed. "I can't do anything if I don't think about you three-point-six times an hour. You turned my life upside down, then disappeared."

"My job was done," she said. "Maybe too well. You turned into something I hadn't really intended."

He moved away from her, but just far enough to look down into her eyes. "I have a confession to make," he said. "I...could have made a reasonable appearance at the trade shows without the work you did on my image."

"I know that."

"But the hours you spent drilling me on the contacts were worth every bit of the aggravation I put us both through."

"For you, possibly."

"Hal's surprised that I've taken over so much of the day-to-day business for him," Miles said. "And it's not as much of a drag as I thought it would be. If I didn't think about you three-point-six times an hour, I'd be miserable, though."

"How do you know it's three-point-six times?" Penny asked.

"I made marks on my calendar for three days running, and divided by the number of hours," Miles said.

"Yes. Of course. The engineer in you. But why?"

He looked down at her as though he was surprised she didn't understand. "I'm in love with you."

His lips covered hers softly, expertly -- in her estimation. Nothing he did could surprise her anymore. It was her own reaction that astonished her -- that she kissed him back with a passion she had never known she possessed.

It was through a haze of emotions that Penny sensed something wasn't quite right. Miles's embrace evaporated and she staggered to remain upright.

"Bones! What happened, boy?" Miles said, disengaging the setter from his legs and patting his satiny sides sympathetically. "Did Lucinda toss you out?"

Penny backed away and reached for her cup of hot chocolate, not welcoming the interruption, but knowing she needed a moment to clear her thoughts. Miles playing with the dog was a comical sight.

"Would it help if I got you a biscuit?" Miles asked the dog. "Come on, boy. We'll see if we can find you a treat."

The dog eagerly followed Miles to the utility room.

"Do you like dogs?" Miles called to Penny as he opened a cupboard and rattled a box.

"Why? Do you have a good recipe?"

Miles emerged from the utility room with a shocked expression on his face. "You're not...a cat person, are you?"

"I've never had any pets," Penny told him, pausing before taking another sip of her hot chocolate. "My mother thinks pets are unsanitary. She's a nurse."

Miles's expression seemed to say, So that's it! He opened a cupboard in the kitchen and took out a box of graham crackers.

"See, that's where part of the problem is," Miles said, extending the box toward her. "You were such a professional while you were here, I barely learned a thing about your personal life. Well, if you're not a cat person, you could be a dog person."

Penny chuckled and took a couple crackers that he offered. "I could try," she conceded, sitting down at the table.

Bending close to her, Miles dipped part of a cracker into her chocolate and held it close to her mouth. "There're no calories in broken crackers," he told her. "Quick! These melt!"

Penny opened her mouth and took the cracker, her lips grazing Miles's fingertips. This was new territory for her, but as she looked into Miles's eyes and saw a smoldering passion there, she knew it was where she belonged.

* * *

They were out an on the road early, while the mountains still wore lacey veils of fog. Penny knew she had traveled this road before, and not so long ago, but it seemed unfamiliar and terribly dangerous. For one thing, Miles was unusually quiet, as though if he opened his mouth he would say something wrong.

Or perhaps Penny was projecting her own uncertainties onto him.

Miles steered hard through one tight curve of the road and Penny reached to clutch his forearm for stability and comfort.

"Don't worry--it's not much further," he assured her.

A moment later, she saw the ominous sign which had almost stopped her in her tracks before. Her heart rose into her mouth as Penny scrambled out of Miles' four-by -four, the hiking boots she had borrowed once again from Lucinda biting into the loose red clay and pine needles of the parking area.

Miles was in his element. It was as though he was a second-grader playing truant on spelling day. He took a few steps on the overgrown path, then reached back to clasp her hand.

"We can take our time," he said. "I know you're not used to hiking."

"You can say that again!" Penny laughed. "But don't."

Their voices seemed too loud for the still morning woodlands, out of place against the delicate drops of dew catching the clear rays of the autumn sun as they trembled at the tips of the pine boughs. A squirrel's progress up a tree barely echoed in the air, and a bird high over them scolded the intruders.

Somehow their silence did not seem as hostile as it had during their first encounter. Even so, Miles wasn't saying much, and Penny wondered what he was thinking. He had to be thinking something -- a man as intelligent as he was never allowed his mind to be a complete blank.

The meadow was empty of its mushroom-like tents, and the plank shed looked forlorn, a stranded shard of civilization in the wilderness.

"I'll just get my fishing gear and we'll start back," Miles said, taking his keys from his pocket.

Penny turned to survey the stream and the hills beyond the break in the trees, taking a deep breath and relaxing muscles that she normally didn't overtax with early-morning jaunts over rough terrain. Granted she was better equipped and more suitably attired today, but she felt no more at home.

There was a timelessness about the meadow, unsullied by sounds of automobiles or airplanes. No billboards touting fast-food restaurants or -- political candidates. None of Penny's reality applied. It was a thought both frightening and intriguing.

"What do you do out here?" Penny called to Miles, hoping she'd hear him over the scraping noises coming from the shed.

"What do you think I do!" came the remnant of the old Miles, the one she could deal with. "I camp and fish and play with the toys we make!"

"All the time?" Penny asked the gaping door of the shed.

His reply did not come quickly. "I think a lot," Miles said as he emerged with his fishing gear. He paused to padlock the door then hoisted his tackle box and poles. "So far I've solved nearly all the world's problems."

"So why isn't the path beaten down a little more?" she demanded playfully.

"I haven't told anyone my conclusions yet."

Miles struck out the way they had come, too laden with his gear to take her hand, so Penny was left to tag after him and rely on her hiking shoes to save her from catastrophe.

"We've got another stop before I make that appointment," Miles called over his shoulder when she lagged behind.

"I swear, I have created a monster," she groused, negotiating a treacherous wash-out.

"Ah, don't give up on me yet, Penelope," Miles responded, his laughter bouncing through the trees to be hushed by leaves and grasses swaying in the breeze.

"I thought we were going to talk..." Penny said, breathless when she caught up to him at his car.

"We will," Miles said, stowing the gear behind the front seat--with an odd collection of other things Penny didn't even want to categorize.

Just as she settled into her seat and fastened her seatbelt, Miles leaned across and opened his glove compartment. She swallowed once when she saw his hunting knife and then again when he withdrew the can of chewing tobacco and slammed it onto the dashboard.

Then he started the car. Penny was glad that he steered in a tight circle and headed back the way they had come. She was certain to continue up into the mountains would have been an unbearable journey for her. Civilization! She needed to see houses and -- stores and -- a beauty salon!

When it seemed she could breathe again, Miles turned off onto a rutted dirt road where bushes scratched at the side of the car as it went down a steep grade. The road ended in the yard of an unpainted cottage and a tumbledown barn. A pack of dogs greeted them and a lanky man in bib overalls unfolded himself from a workbench on the porch.

"Hey, Bubba! Call 'em off. I come in peace!" Miles laughed when he'd switched off the motor and rolled down the window.

"Hush, Neil and Buzz! It's just Miles. Oh! No, tisn't. Howdo, Ma'am."

Miles picked up the can of chew and waved it at Bubba. "I need another can to keep flies in. Thought I'd trade you a full one for an empty one."

"Well, you just might, but I've had to give up the chaw. Doc says I got a pre- cancerous condition on my lip."

"Too bad."

"But I got an empty can. Got a new fly for you, too! I call it a Spruce-Pine Skeeter. You just stay here, I'll get it for you, and the shipment for the month."

A few minutes later, Bubba brought a box from inside the house and handed Miles an empty tobacco can. Miles pried the lid off and gently lifted out a construction of fishhook and feathers.

"That sure looks like it'll do the job," Miles said, appreciatively turning it in the sunlight.

"I appreciate you comin' out here and savin' me a trip to town," Bubba said when the box was appropriately settled in the back of the four-by-four. "Hate goin' into town."

"I know, and it just gets worse," Miles sympathized. "Well, Bubba, see you next month. I got an appointment down the road and can't be late."

"I surely pity you," Bubba said with a wave of his hand. "Nice seein' you. You too, Ma'am."

It seemed to Penny that the ride out of this place was worse than the ride in. She held her breath until they were once more on paved road.

"Bubba was an engineer at NASA." Miles glanced at his watch and pressed the accelerator a little more. "Ought to just make that appointment."

* * *

"The moment I heard this house was coming onto the market, I knew it was what you've been looking for," the real estate saleswoman crowed.

In his haste to get out of the car, Miles had almost forgotten that Penny was with him. Belatedly, he closed the door for her as she stared at the house that sat under glowing sycamores at the top of a hill.

"This could be it," Miles agreed, taking an information sheet from the agent's hand. "Three bedrooms and a loft, fifty acres--a little more than I need."

The agent tried to hand Penny an information sheet, but Penny shook her head. The log walls of the house were daunting, the gravel drive like quicksand to her feet. But she followed Miles onto the wide front porch and entered the modest foyer behind him.

Suddenly, as she looked up from kicking off her hiking shoes, she saw the space -- the volume of the cathedral ceiling over the living, dining and kitchen areas. It was breathtaking to see so much exposed wood and space, empty of furniture and full of possibilities.

"I'll just let you wander around," the agent said. "The place is empty, but the electricity is on. I'm sure you'll want to see the basement."

"It's more space than I need now," Miles mused, touching the stone fireplace and running his hand over the polished oak mantlepiece. "But I could get used to it."

Penny didn't try to keep up to him, not knowing what features he wanted to look at. But she was thinking of phrases she might use to describe the house -- if she were a real estate agent.

Oh, come on! You have a job -- one you built with your own effort and courage. Would you give that all up? For a man who is ignoring you at the moment?

"Penny! Come here!" Miles' urgent voice broke into her soul exploration. He was leaning over the railing of the open loft. "Look at this!"

She scrambled up a stairway, glad that she had only a few steps left to negotiate when she began to feel the sting of unfamiliar strain in her thighs.

"What?" she asked, looking at skylights above the space that echoed with her forced breathing.

"Isn't it wonderful? It could be anything, really--studio, home office -- playroom."

"Yes -- I suppose so." She looked out a window and saw the gold and red of sycamore trees, right at bird level.

"You turned me into a businessman," Miles said, catching her hand in his. "I think I could turn you into someone who at least appreciates--a simpler way of living."

"You do, do you?" she challenged.

He brought her hand to his lips, but his eyes burned a fierce message. "All the traffic and hassle and pollution of Atlanta isn't good for you. And even Asheville gets to me at times. I could work in a place like this -- between the mountains and the city. I'd meet you halfway..."

"Miles..."

"Hal and Lucinda and I have been talking about how you could fit into the company -- if you want to, that is. It seems to me you're smart and clever enough to make wonderful things happen wherever you are."

"But..."

He lowered his voice and gathered her into his arms. "Isn't there something here you could...be comfortable with?"

"I suppose I could get used to...fresh air and...the slow pace," she conceded. "So long as I don't have to hunt."

"I never hunt--I hide during hunting season."

"Or clean yucky fish."

"I'm an expert at cleaning fish," he beamed proudly. "There's no reason for you to worry about that at all."

"I...I really don't like the way things are going back in Atlanta, with Southern Images. I know Shelby and the new man can make a go of it, but...but it doesn't do anything in the larger scheme of things."

"Not that Jacobs is much better," Miles chuckled.

"I'm not so sure," Penny said, breaking from his embrace and strolling toward another window with a breathtaking view of valley and mountains. "To encourage and equip city people to get out into the country and see where we all came from - - I think that has some importance."

"Well, glory be!" Miles crowed. "We see eye to eye!"

"Let's give it a try," Penny sighed, feeling his strong arms wrap around her once more.

Somewhere a real estate saleswoman was waiting for an answer. Somewhere Hal Jacobs wondered what mischief Miles could foist on the camping supplies company. Somewhere - far away -- Penny's partner was swamped with work that really didn't need to be done.

Penny and Miles were lost in a long, ecstatic kiss, high above all the problems of a world gone needlessly mad.

"I love you, Miles," Penny told him, almost afraid the words wouldn't come out loudly enough to be heard.

"I love you, too," he responded. "I didn't think I could, but I'll confess -- I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw you."

Penny reached to wipe lipstick from his smiling mouth and laughed. "Oh yes, so did I!" she said, turning toward the stairs. "We'd better...get going..."

Miles groaned and followed her, and she smiled to herself. She'd done her job just about right, she figured. Miles was acceptable, but still had his independent spirit.

Miles watched as Penny went down the stairs in front of him. She looked so much better in blue jeans and plaid flannel shirt, her braid swinging free to her waist instead of wrapped like a bird's nest on top of her head.

Someday maybe he would teach her how to clean a fish!

~The End~

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