Page 7 of Smoky Lake
What the hell?
Gil McGowan was an experienced, tested agent in the Diplomatic Security Service who’d been sent to various international postings during his career. He’d met, gotten to know, and slept with women of various ages, ethnicities, professions, races, and personalities. But none of them had affected him like this.
Out of all the possible ways to react to a beautiful woman showing up on your doorstep, surely a frown and a hostile question were the worst. Hey, what are you doing here? But he couldn’t seem to come up with anything else.
“This is private property.”
Yeah, that wasn’t any better.
She stepped down from the porch. Great, now he’d chased away this goddess before he even knew her name or what she was doing here.
“Are you Gil McGowan?”
His very ordinary name sounded sumptuous when spoken by those full lips.
“Yeah.” God, this was pathetic. Get ahold of yourself. “Who’s asking?”
Her eyebrows drew together in perplexed confusion.
He hadn’t had his coffee yet, that was the problem. “Want some coffee?”
His abrupt change of tone didn’t seem to faze her. “I would absolutely love some coffee, so long as you aren’t planning to slip poison in it to get me off your property.”
He blinked at her, saw she was joking, and laughed. An awkward laugh, no doubt, but better than most of the other sounds he’d made so far. “Sorry, it’s been a strange morning and you caught me by surprise. Please excuse my pre-coffee rudeness.”
She threw up a hand. “Say no more. I completely understand. Pop-ins are never comfortable, are they? I would have asked if it was okay to swing by, but Sam didn’t know your phone number.”
“Sam?”
“Sam Coburn, the pilot. He told me how to find you, I hope that’s okay.”
He might have to buy Sam several rounds at The Fang after this. “Come in. Watch your step, that threshold is loose. My brother’s been after me to fix it. If you’ll hang on a minute?—”
“No need for that,” she assured him as she stepped gracefully over the threshold. “How about that coffee instead?”
It wasn’t until she walked across the living room toward the kitchen island where the coffee maker sat, that he noticed her fairly pronounced limp.
Somehow it only made her more graceful.
She caught his glance. “No, it wasn’t from your loose threshold,” she said dryly. “It’s from years ago.”
He pulled two mugs from the cupboard and filled them with coffee. His brother liked to collect mugs from the nearest public radio station during their pledge drives.
“KRTL,” she read aloud. “Are you a listener?”
“I don’t have much time for the radio.”
She stood up straighter, as if he’d prodded her to attention. “Right. You must be very busy. I don’t need to take up much of your time.”
“No no, it’s fine.” He silently cursed himself. At some point, surely, he’d stop putting his foot in his mouth with this woman. “Gotta drink coffee anyway.”
As he heard his own words, his eyes closed in resigned dismay. Definitely still doomed to the foot-in-mouth thing.
“Perfect timing, then,” she said in a matter-of-fact way that relieved his embarrassment immediately. “Do you happen to have any milk and sugar?”
Silently, he retrieved a carton of milk from the refrigerator and prayed it hadn’t gone bad since the last time he’d used it—to pour a saucer of milk for a stray tabby cat that liked to come around. Lachlan tended to forget about things like groceries, so Gil usually stocked up when he was visiting.
“So you’re probably wondering why a strange woman showed up on your doorstep,” she said as she stirred her coffee. “My name is Ani Devi.”