Moonlight and Shadows
Read Moonlight and Shadows Online
Authors: Tara Janzen
Tags: #romance, #professor, #colorado, #artist, #sculpture, #carpenter, #dyslexia, #remodel
Tara Janzen
To Patti—with love.
First published by Bantam/Loveswept, 1991
Copyright Glenna McReynolds, 1991
E-book Copyright Tara Janzen, 2012
E-book Published by Tara Janzen, 2012
Cover Design by
Hot Damn
Designs
, 2012
E-book Design by
A Thirsty
Mind
, 2012
Smashwords Edition, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Table of Contents
,
Welcome to the Tara Janzen line of classic
romances!
New York Times
Bestselling author,
Tara Janzen, is the creator of the lightning-fast paced and super
sexy CRAZY HOT and CRAZY COOL Steele Street series of romantic
suspense novels. But before she fell in love with the hot cars, bad
boys, big guns, and wild women of Steele Street, she wrote steamy
romances for the Loveswept line under the name Glenna McReynolds.
All thirteen of these much-loved classic romances are now available
as eBooks.
Writing as both Glenna McReynolds and Tara
Janzen, this national bestselling author has won numerous awards
for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America, and
nine 4 ½ TOP PICKS from
Romantic Times
magazine.
Two of her books are on the
Romantic Times
ALL-TIME FAVORITES list – RIVER OF EDEN, and SHAMELESS
.
LOOSE AND EASY, a Steele Street novel, is one of Amazon’s TOP TEN
ROMANCES for 2008.
She is also the author of an epic medieval
fantasy trilogy, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, DREAM STONE, and PRINCE
OF TIME.
Classic
Romances
Scout’s Honor
Thieves In The Night
Stevie Lee
Dateline: Kydd and Rios
Blue Dalton
Outlaw Carson
Moonlight and Shadows
A Piece of Heaven
Shameless
The Courting Cowboy
Avenging Angel
The Dragon and the Dove
Dragon’s Eden
Medieval Fantasy Trilogy
“A stunning epic of romantic fantasy.”
Affaire de Coeur
, five-star review
The Chalice and the Blade
Dream Stone
Prince of Time
River of Eden
–
“One of THE most breathtaking
and phenomenal adventure tales to come along in years!” Jill Smith
Romantic Times
4 ½ Gold Review
Steele Street Series
“Edgy, sexy, and
fast. Leaves you breathless!” Jayne Ann Krentz,
New York
Times
bestselling author //// “Bad boys are hot, and they don’t
come any hotter than the Steele Street gang.”
Romantic
Times
Crazy Hot
Crazy Cool
Crazy Wild
Crazy Kisses
Crazy Love
Crazy Sweet
On the Loose
Cutting Loose
Loose and Easy
Breaking Loose
Loose Ends
SEAL of My Dreams
Anthology
All proceeds from the sale of SEAL Of My
Dreams are pledged to Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit
foundation supporting veterans’ medical research.
Panama Jack
, by Tara Janzen
For more information about Tara Janzen, her
writing and her books please visit her on her website
www.tarajanzen.com
; on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/mSstpd
; and
Twitter @tara_janzen
http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen
.
The lady had more money than brains, Jack
Hudson thought, and from the figures she’d given him, she was
operating on a shoestring in the money department. He slowly shook
his head behind her back, watching her paint her imaginary desires
with hand gestures
.
“Windows are the key,” she said, “the very
heart of what I want. Space.” Lila Singer raised both arms to
encompass the moon and the stars, as if the very heavens could be
hers. “Lots and lots of space.”
In a ten by twenty addition? Jack asked
silently. She had to be kidding. Of course, at five foot two
and—what? A hundred and five pounds?—she probably thought anything
bigger than a breadbox had space.
A crisp September breeze blew through the
cottonwood trees, and he shoved his hands deeper into his jacket
pockets, hunching his shoulders against the chill. She had to be
cold in her flimsy cotton dress.
The breeze kicked up into a true prairie
wind, and he couldn’t help but notice how the cotton molded around
Lila Singer’s hips and legs. Okay, so the lady has a great body,
small but perfect, like one of those fairy queens he’d seen in a
storybook once.
He exhaled a deep breath. He didn’t have any
business thinking about Lila Singer’s body. She’d called him out to
her house to look at a job, not her legs. Besides, he had a date
that night, a blind date with a woman named Rachel. He didn’t know
what to expect, or why he’d let his supposedly best friend talk him
into the guaranteed disaster. His stomach was in knots, which was
the only reason he was standing in Lila Singer’s cornfield. He
didn’t have time to take on another job, but he’d needed something
to do besides pace his living room until eight o’clock. He shook
his head again.
He could have stayed home,
should
have stayed home. He had lots to do. There was always his front
porch to work on, or the back deck, and it was really time for him
to finish plastering the main hall. Or he could have done what he
usually did at night and worked in the garage until the wee hours.
He had a new project, the biggest thing he’d ever tackled, a dream
in his head he wanted to make happen.
“See those mountains over there?” The fairy
queen with the crazy ideas pointed to the west as she glanced at
him over her shoulder.
Jack nodded, returning his attention to the
project at hand. The Rockies, fourteen thousand feet of Mother
Earth’s granite, were kind of hard to miss.
“When I’m in my office,” she said, “I want
to feel like they’re sitting in my lap.” She turned to face him, a
serenely beautiful smile curving her mouth, and suddenly Jack saw
her—really saw her the first time. He’d been talking with her for
over a half an hour, inside the house and out, but he hadn’t truly
looked at her until that moment. She was gorgeous, her smile a gift
of sweetness he felt spreading all through his body. But with the
gift came a strong pang of guilt. She was trying so hard to explain
what she wanted, and he was barely listening. He felt like a jerk,
a jerk whose stomach was in knots.
Don’t do it, Jack, he warned himself. Don’t
fall for a pretty lady with a smile sweeter than honey. You’ve got
three other jobs lined up. Big jobs. Big houses. Big money. Inside
work, Jack, and winter’s coming on.
“Can you do it?” she asked. Even her voice
had an ethereal quality, soft and breathy. And he hadn’t noticed
before, but her hair was like a cloud, a storm cloud of tumbling
dark curls framing her face.
Her face
. . . He studied the
delicate, gamine-like curves; the wide, dark eyes; the little nose
and the full mouth. Too full for his tastes, he quickly decided,
recognizing the familiar sensation invading his mind. He wanted to
kiss this woman. Why? he wondered, shaken by the realization. She
wasn’t his type.
Right, Jack.
With a concentrated
effort he shrugged off the strange urge to kiss Lila Singer.
“Mr. Hudson?” She looked up at him with
those liquid brown eyes, drawing his gaze to her thick lashes and
the sable arch of her eyebrows, so in contrast with her blush-rose
cheeks and creamy skin. A very sensual contrast, he mused, a
mystery of genetics, a—“Will you take the job?”
“Yes,” he heard himself answer as if from a
long distance. Then he realized what he’d said and silently cursed.
How had that happened?
“Wonderful.” The bright warmth of her smile
and the excitement in her voice slowly drew him in again. “When can
you start?”
Jack struggled to organize dates, names,
supplies, all the while staring at her face, her eyes, her mouth.
Forcing a measure of clarity into his mind, he came up with only
one possible, lousy answer. “I won’t be doing the work myself. My
partner, Dale Smith, will be out this weekend to look things
over.”
Smitty should be able to build one small but
spacious addition without screwing it up, Jack assured himself. For
five years the man had been a rock of stability, helping Hudson and
Smith Construction grow into a reliable and lucrative company. But
he was in the middle of a divorce and had the current attention
span of a hyperactive seven-year-old, which Jack knew from personal
childhood experience wasn’t much.
“Well, you were recommended to me as the
best,” she said, “I’ll look forward to seeing Mr. Smith on
Saturday, then. Or will it be Sunday?”
“Saturday,” Jack said with a confidence he
hoped wasn’t misplaced. He’d have to make damn sure Smitty didn’t
tie one on Friday night. “He’ll look at the plans you bought, give
you a formal estimate and show you catalogues from our window
suppliers. Of course, if you already have windows picked out, we
can order from anybody. But the people we deal with regularly give
us a better price.” He rattled on, liking the feeling of control
conversation gave him. But he was running out of small talk. “And
he’ll bring the contracts for you to sign. Have you had anybody
else out to look at the job?”
“No. I know that sounds silly.” She laughed,
an enchanting sound reminiscent of bells and chimes blowing in the
wind. His brows drew together in confusion. What was it about this
woman? “But you came very highly recommended. You did some work for
my parents last year. Dad said you were more expensive than the
other people, but he also said I’d get better work and better value
dealing with you.”
“That’s always nice to hear.” Maybe that was
where the strange feeling was coming from, he mused. Maybe she
looked like her mother and he thought he knew her. But even as the
explanation crossed his mind, he discounted it. He wouldn’t have
forgotten this
woman.
She said something polite, something he
didn’t bother to catch. Lord, she was pretty, standing there
looking up at him with moonlight and shadows tangled in her hair.
Lots of moonlight, more than he ever remembered seeing. He glanced
at the glowing orange disk rising above the horizon. A full moon,
he thought. A harvest moon. Maybe that explained the strange
detachment he felt stealing over him, as if he were operating on
two different planes, one very normal with all its everyday
complications, and the other . . . different, peaceful, filled with
a promise he hadn’t known for many years.
His gaze drifted back from the heavens to
the stars in her eyes. Wind swirled around the two of them, picking
up the tawny fallen leaves and tossing them into the air. A few
landed in her hair, hanging for a fleeting moment in the sable
strands like a circlet of gold. How had he missed her beauty at
first? And was it his imagination, or was she getting prettier with
every passing moment? No answers came to his odd question until she
took a step toward him.
His normal half told him she was walking
back to the house. But the half of him mired in the moon’s magic
told him she was coming to him, and right then and there Jack
Hudson did the craziest thing he’d ever done.
With the barest touch of his hand on her
face, he stopped her, then bent forward from the waist, lower and
lower, pulled like the tides to her too-full mouth. His lips grazed
hers, softly at first, then with more pressure as her ripe
sweetness blossomed under his mouth. She smelled of flowers and
warm sunshine even in the cool darkness of the autumn night. Her
lips parted, and he followed the path into a kiss of mystery.