Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,2
to decide immediately. I don’t exactly have a score of suitors pounding down my door. You’d have to be a rich man to contemplate marriage to a struggling thirtyish widow with three children age six and under. Come to think of it, you’d have to be a lunatic as well.”
“I’d marry you, Sloan,” Jim said softly.
Sloan chuckled softly and stretched slender fingers across the table to envelop his hand. “You are a lunatic,” she told him with warm affection. “And I do believe you mean it.” Jim was aware that her life was rough—finances were low, and her job schedule, while trying to be a good mother to three young children, was grueling. “But I love you as a very dear friend, as you love me—and like I said, I don’t want to get married. I’m a very independent lady—I run my own life.”
Jim shook his head sadly. “You’re a beautiful woman, Sloan. Someday some man is going to come along and crumble that shell of yours—and I hope I’m around to see the day.”
“Only if he has a fortune!” Sloan teased. “Come on, boss,” she added, rising. “Walk me to my car. I don’t like to keep Cassie waiting. She expects me home no later than ten.”
Sloan’s sister kept her children on Friday nights so that Sloan could have an evening out. Usually, it was dinner and dancing with Jim or the occasional date that intrigued her. Friday nights were her only fling. She needed them to remind herself that she was still shy of thirty, still young. She enjoyed her evenings with Jim and the few “real” dates she accepted, but that was as far as she would venture from the wall she had carefully built around herself after Terry’s death. Life was too serious a thing for her to take the time to really unscramble her feelings on love, sex, and affairs. It was—at this point—a fight for survival.
“Okay, gorgeous,” Jim said amicably, signaling for the check. “We’ll get you in for curfew. It’s supposed to be twelve, though—not ten,” he teased, dropping a few bills on the table and rising to assist her from her chair. “But I guess it’s about the same. ‘Beautiful, sexy, seductive dancer goes home and turns back into household drudge!’”
“Thanks,” Sloan said dryly, grinning as she accepted his arm. “Just what every woman needs. A boss with a sense of humor.”
Jim guided her from the still-thriving lounge to the parking lot. Since they could shower and change in the dance department, they went out straight from work, and both had their own cars. Courteous as always, Jim saw her into her Cutlass and closed and locked the door for her.
“Beautiful night,” he mused, sticking his well-kept frame, nicely suited in a double-breasted jacket, through her window. “You should be enjoying it with some nice knight in white armor.”
“I had my knight!” Sloan said with a wistful smile. “They don’t come charging through a life twice—there is a shortage of white horses!”
“You’re a cynic, Sloan,” Jim said with a shake of his head. “Grown hard as nails.”
“Oh, Jim!” Sloan protested, smiling. “I’m not a complete cynic! I know the games people play, and I merely prefer to play them by my own rules. I set them down squarely first. And if I’m hard—” she shrugged, but straightened in her seat, her chin tilting a shade, her eyes glittering like blue crystals in the night—“it’s because I have to be.”
“Lost cause!” Jim muttered, pecking her forehead with a brotherly kiss before pulling his torso from the car. “Have a nice weekend. Give the kids a kiss for me, and I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Thanks, Jim,” Sloan replied, twisting her key in the ignition. “Have a nice weekend yourself!”
Waving, she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway, breathing deeply of the crisp air. It was a beautiful night—the type that made her happy she had left Boston after Terry’s death and returned home to Gettysburg. Stars dotted the sky like a spray of glittering rhinestones against a sea of black velvet. She passed the gently rolling landscape of the national park and smiled to herself wryly. It was the type of night when lovers should stroll together across fields of green in the tingling, crisp coolness.
But, she wondered briefly, would she ever really love again? Sloan hadn’t lied to Jim. She had dated. Nice men, good-looking men, men she had even found attractive, at first...she had kissed them, felt their arms