Heart of Ice by Diana Palmer Page A

she managed.
    “On what? The air?”
    “Now, Egan, honey,” Jennie crooned, glaring past him at Kati. “You just relax, and later I’ll take you back to my place and soothe you.”
    Kati bit almost through her lip to keep from howling. She didn’t dare look at Egan—it would have been the very end.
    “Jennie, look at the menu,” Egan said curtly.
    “Whatever you say, sugar.”
    “I want the beef Wellington,” Ada said. “How about you, Kati?”
    “Do they serve goose here?” Egan asked under his breath.
    “If they do,” Kati replied with a venomous smile, “yours is probably sizzling on the grill right now, sugar.”
    He glared at her and she glared back at him. Sensing disaster, Jack quickly intervened.
    “Kati, didn’t you want to try that duckling in orange sauce?”
    She tore her eyes away from Egan’s and smiled across the table. “Yes, I did.”
    By then the waiter was back, elegant in his white jacket, to take their order. By and large, Kati loved New York waiters. They had a certain flair and grace of manner that set them apart, and they were unfailingly polite and kind.
    “I want prime rib,” Jennie said nonchalantly. “Rare, honey.”
    “A woman after my own heart,” Egan murmured. “I’ll have the same.”
    Kati wanted to mutter something about barbarism, but she kept her mouth shut with an effort. And when the food came, she was far too involved in savoring every morsel to waste time on Egan Winthrop.
    But the coffee and dessert came, eventually, and while Kati toyed with her superb English trifle, Egan leaned back and eyed Jack.
    “I read your column on the Washington scandal,” he told the younger man.
    “Did you?” Jack asked with a polite smile.
    “Interesting, about the deficit in the agency’s budget,” he continued. “Apparently your man was allocating funds on paper that never reached the recipients. The audacity of politicians constantly amazes me, and so does the apathy of the public.”
    Jack perked up. “Yes. What I can’t understand is how he expected to get away with it,” he said, forgetting his dessert as he went into the subject.
    Egan matched him, thought for thought, and the ensuing conversation fascinated Kati. She listened raptly, along with everyone else at the table except Jennie—who looked frankly bored to death.
    “You know a hell of a lot about politics for a rancher, Mr. Winthrop,” Jack said finally, on a laugh.
    “I took my degree in political science” came the cool reply. “Ranching pretty much chose me, rather than the other way around. When my father died,there was Ada and my mother to look after, and no one else to assume control of the property. There was a lot of it.” He shrugged. “The challenge is still there,” he added with a smile. “Cattle are a lot like politics, Mr. Asher. Unpredictable, hard to manage and sometimes just plain damned frustrating.”
    Jack laughed. “I imagine so.”
    “Oh, can’t we stop talking about such boring things?” Jennie asked in a long-suffering tone. “I want to go to the theater, and we’ve got tickets to that hit musical on Broadway. We’ll be late if you talk all night.”
    Egan gave her a look that would have stopped traffic.
    Jennie flushed and cleared her throat. “I mean, whenever you’re ready, sugar,” she said placatingly.
    Kati lifted her chin with faint animosity. She’d have told him where to go, instead of pleading with him like that. He knew it, too. Because he glanced at her and caught the belligerent gleam in her eye, and something wild and heady flashed between them when he smiled at her.
    Her lips trembled, and she grabbed her coffee cup like a shield.
    “See you later,” Egan told them, picking up the tabs. “My treat. I enjoyed the discussion,” he told Jack.
    Before anyone could thank him, he and Jennie were gone and Jack was shaking his head.
    “And I thought he hated me. My God, what a mind. He’s wasted out West.”
    Ada beamed. “He was offered an