Her Man Friday(33)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

And then she was overcome once again by the feeling that Mr. Freiberger had been trying to hide something during his brief sojourn at Ashling.

What? She couldn’t imagine. But her instincts had cautioned her to beware.

Before leaving, she quickly checked her e-mail on the state-of-the-art laptop that perched on her writing desk, to make sure there was nothing pressing that needed her attention. Not that she’d expected anything, seeing as how it was Saturday and Schuyler was home, but there was always a chance for the odd development that might require her input. Satisfied, however, that there was nothing she needed to attend to for the rest of the day, Lily donned a knit cap the same color as her heavy sweater, grabbed her backpack and a new romance novel she’d been looking forward to reading, and headed down to the kitchen to pack herself a lunch to take with her. Might as well make a day of it, she thought.

Today was hers, she told herself further, as she reached for the keys to what she’d always considered, not the SUV—the sport utility vehicle—but the SAV—the suburban assault vehicle. Jingling the keys merrily in her hand, she headed toward the four-car garage behind Ashling. She wasn’t going to worry about anything today, she promised herself. Not Schuyler. Not Mrs. Beecham. Not Chloe. She wasn’t even going to worry about Lily.

And she certainly wouldn’t worry about Mr. Leonard Freiberger and what he had been up to during his time at Ashling. Not for all the money in the world.

Funny how life worked out sometimes, Leo thought as he lay beneath a big pile of large, sweaty men. He had just been thinking about Lily Rigby—not so surprising, really, seeing as how he’d been thinking about little else lately—when, lo and behold, a woman should appear who looked exactly like her.

Well, not exactly like her, he amended as he grunted and tried to push himself up on his elbows, only to be thwarted by the most massive of the large, sweaty men. With a muffled oof, he fell back to the ground, tasting dirt, and eyed the woman again. No, this woman wasn’t wearing a no-nonsense business suit and striding purposefully through a huge estate as if she were the queen of all she surveyed, the way he’d come to think about Lily Rigby. Instead, this woman was clad in faded jeans and a sweater made of some soft, fuzzy… stuff… and she was lying on her stomach in the grass with her legs bent backward and upward. She was reading a book—and was really, really involved in it, too, if the look on her face was any indication—beneath a tree not fifty feet away from where Leo had just been soundly sacked in his role as weekend quarterback.

Call him crazy, but there was just something incredibly sexy about a woman wearing big ol’ hiking boots. Maybe it was because hiking boots were traditionally something he’d always viewed as utterly masculine, and seeing them on a woman who was anything but masculine just made her seem that much more feminine. Then again, he thought further, Lily Rigby could be wearing waders and have a duck sitting on her head, and Leo would still think she was sexy as hell. Especially if that was all she was wearing. Hmmm…

With one final shove, he pushed upward, freeing himself from the last of the large, sweaty men. "Get offa me," he grumbled to his buddy Nelson as the two men struggled to stand. He arced his gaze around at the five other men who met weekly for a game of football in Fairmont Park. "Jeez, you idiots, I thought this was just supposed to be a friendly game. College rules, not prison rules."

"Sorry," Nelson said without an ounce of apology. As always, however, anything the man said came out sounding like a death sentence.

Nelson stood eye to eye with Leo, but outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. With his dark skin and shaved head, and eyes as black as thunder, he was a menacing-looking sonofabitch. He’d been drafted to the Eagles once upon a time, but an injury had forced him into extremely early retirement. Which was just as well, because he was doubtless making a lot more now as a stockbroker than he would have made playing second-string ball.

He cracked each one of his knuckles in turn—slowly—and smiled evilly. "Felt like we were losing you there, man. Needed to bring you back around. You been awfully… distracted lately."

Well, no shit, Leo thought. A woman like Lily Rigby living in your brain and taunting your libido night and day sorta left a man preoccupied. But he didn’t offer any explanation. Instead, he turned to gaze at the source of that preoccupation, became even more preoccupied than usual, and smiled with much preoccupation.

Yep, that was definitely Lily Rigby. She was definitely wearing some incredibly sexy denim and sweater stuff—not to mention those haunting hiking boots—and she was definitely so wrapped up in her book that she wasn’t paying any attention at all to her surroundings. He could sit there all day watching her, he thought, and she’d never even know it. But hey, where was the fun in that?

He glanced down at his Georgetown sweatshirt and jeans and noted they were only a little bit muddy and grass-stained. Likewise, he was only marginally fragrant from his athletic endeavors of the last hour. So he bent to retrieve the driving cap he’d been wearing to ward off the day’s chill and settled it on his head backward, where it had been before Nelson had tried to turn him into a bag of mulch. Damn. If only he’d had the foresight to wear his glasses instead of his contacts, he might just be able to pass himself off as lame Leonard Freiberger.

"I need a pair of glasses," he said, so focused was he on that one thought.

"What for?" Nelson asked.

Only then did Leo realize he’d spoken aloud. He didn’t want to have to explain his reasons to a bunch of guys who would hound him relentlessly about his double life and his attraction to the delectable Miss Rigby. Nor could he offer an honest explanation anyway, even if he wanted to, seeing as how he had taken a blood oath for the sake of Kimball’s board of directors.

So all he said was, "Long story. It’s not that big a deal."

"Here," Mike, one of the other men, piped up. He pulled off his own tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles and held them out toward Leo. "Take mine. They’re not real. They’re mood glasses."

Leo scowled at his friend. "Oh, God. Not you, too." But he reached for the glasses anyway. "What is it with this stuff?" he asked as he donned them. "I can’t believe anybody who doesn’t have to wear these things would actually choose to wear them."

All the men gaped at him. "Chicks dig ’em," they said as one.

Leo rolled his eyes. "Just pretend you don’t know me, okay?"

Nelson chuckled. "Like we don’t do that all the time."