“I remember reading something about you,” he recalled. “Last year, wasn’t it, when you were the new sensational discovery? You were raised in the logging country up north. Your parents died when you were a kid, but you kept the old forest going. You’d never been in a city or bought a ready-made dress or worn a pair of shoes, but tough lumberjacks worshipped the ground you walked on and worked like slaves for you. You’d never seen a lipstick or a powder puff. You were the unspoiled glamor girl of the wilderness, the untamed virgin queen of the Big Trees—”
“Nuts,” she said. “My father was a drunken longshoreman who got his skull cracked in a strikers’ riot. I was dealing them off the arm in a truck-drivers’ hash house outside Seattle when Jack Groom stopped in for a cup of coffee and offered me a trial contract at twenty-five a week. I’d just about settled on another offer to be a B-girl in San Francisco, but this looked better. And that’s more than I’d tell another soul in this village. I guess I must have a feeling about you.”
“That’s nice,” said the Saint, and meant it.
Suddenly her hand slid over his fingers, and her smile was really intoxicating.
“Darling,” she said softly.
He looked at her in a quite unreasonable stillness.
A flash bulb popped.
Simon turned in time to see the photographer backing away. April Quest giggled, and let go his hand.
“Sorry,” she said. “I only just saw the bastard coming in time.”
“Try to warn me next time, will you?” said the Saint gently. “My heart’s liable to blow a gasket when you put so much soul into your work.”