Penelope Birch parked her small car beside the mud-spattered four-wheeler that was hidden from the two-lane mountain road by a dense stand of cedar trees. It was right where Hal Jacobs said it would be in the detailed directions he'd drawn. With an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she read the sign that marked a narrow foot trail into the woods.

Spruce Pine Camp
Development and Research Dept.
Jacobs Camping Supplies Co.
KEEP OUT - Private Property

Well, she was convinced that she wasn't wanted!

The effect of the white letters stenciled onto the dull camouflage-green wood was alarmingly official. She knew it was the elusive vice-president of Jacobs Camping Supplies Company who had constructed the sign, the camp, and--to hear Hal tell it--the mountain-man persona that went with it. She had the feeling one more step would put her in danger of facing someone menacing and authoritative.

The drive north of Asheville into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina had been experience enough to make Penny think seriously about turning her Mazda around and heading back - not only to Asheville, but all the way to Atlanta. This was a long way from the more friendly confines of her office at Southern Images, Inc. This assignment was certainly shaping up to be one she would rather pass on -- or give to her partner Shelby Haines.

Shelby, however, had her hands full trying to talk her father into extending them a little more money to pay the bills for yet another month.

Penny gritted her teeth and kicked off the flat-heeled shoes she wore when she drove. On the floor of the passenger side of the car were two pairs of shoes-- her favorite navy spike heels and a pair of atrocious boots which looked like a lumpy combination of children's storm rubbers and a clown's saddle oxfords. Their only redeeming feature was that they were navy blue and buff--if you could call it that.

Hal Jacobs had insisted his wife Lucinda rummage through his office closet to find the stupid shoes, saying Penny would need them to cope with the trail into Spruce Pine Camp. Lucinda also loaned her a pair of thick wool socks to cushion the shoes to her feet, considering they were probably a size too large.

She certainly would cut a fine figure back in Atlanta, Penny thought ruefully, as she got out of her car attired in her navy business suit, carrying her cordovan briefcase, and wearing the ridiculous hiking shoes.

Hal estimated it would be a quarter-mile trek from the road to the campsite. Along the highway Penny had noticed signs that stated distances to side roads or roadside stalls and figured a quarter of a mile wouldn't be too far to walk. But she hadn't counted on the rough terrain, as the faintly marked path led around rocks and between ominous looking bushes. The hike to the clearing where she would find Miles Jacobs gave her time to reflect on the assignment ahead.

According to all the background material she'd been able to find through the usual business-reference channels, the Jacobs Camping Supplies Company appeared to be a small but growing firm. Most of their mail-order business was devoted to outfitting people who actually enjoyed living more than an hour at a time away from air conditioners and indoor plumbing.

Penny shivered at the thought. She would, however, do anything to keep Southern Images from closing the door of their office forever.

Hal Jacobs had been thrown from his horse Saturday afternoon and was now reposing in traction in an Asheville hospital, with one large problem--his brother Miles would have to represent the firm in a series of three camping trade shows over the next three weekends.

According to his older brother, Miles was the man responsible for testing every item the company sold. With great single-mindedness, he devoted most of his time to engineering new products, habitually holed up in these rugged North Carolina woods somewhere. He looked upon intrusions as capital offenses.

Miles would not be pleased, Penny had been warned, that he'd have to be cleaned up, dressed suitably and toted off to the trade shows right when he claimed to be on the verge of developing the perfect backpacker's stove.

The midmorning sun warmed Penny's back. She was tempted to take off her jacket, but it had just come back from the cleaners and she didn't relish the idea of pressing out wrinkles herself.

The breeze that bent the tops of the pines on either side of the grassy path threatened to unsettle her hair from its businesslike arrangement of a loose braid that circled her crown. She warily eyed the birds flying over her head and hoped they wouldn't mistake her hair for their nest.

The path dipped suddenly and Penny felt her foot slip. But in the instant she thought she was going to fall, the tread of her shoe caught, and she was afraid she would fall in the other direction.

Darn. This outdoor stuff was enough to send her over the edge! A short, simple picnic she could handle, maybe even an evening at the annual Art Show in Ponce De Leon Park, but this unscheduled trek into absolute wilderness was asking too much of a city girl.

She took a deep breath and persevered, even though her lungs protested and her legs felt as though they were burning beneath her pantyhose. The heavy socks she wore had picked up their share of stick-tights and shepherd's purse, fortuitously holding them away from the sheer nylons. Maybe the hose would survive--even if Penny didn't.

The path led into a clearing that sloped gently downward to a fairly broad stream. There in an area of tall weeds was a rough plank shack in the shade of a lone oak tree, and half a dozen tents of strange colors, shapes and sizes, looking like a fairy ring of mushrooms with attitudes. The place appeared to be deserted.

All I need, she reflected as she caught her breath, is to be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere alone.

Hal had warned her his brother was not above capriciously taking off into the hills with a backpack for days on end. If that were the situation she confronted, he'd advised her to turn around and go back to Asheville immediately, and they would retrench and rethink.

That prospect was the most attractive she'd faced since she'd driven from Atlanta to Asheville the day before to visit Hal in his hospital room.

She took a few more steps through the tall grasses and decided she had to do something. Planting her feet firmly where she was, she gathered her strength.

"Yoo-hoo," she called, the way she'd heard an old housekeeper on her block call the neighbor children in to dinner. "Mr. Jacobs? Are you here?"

She listened for a long moment, but all she heard was the wind sighing through the pines and the slight murmuring of the stream. Between searching for the nerve to holler again or the energy to turn and tramp back through the trees to her car and some trace of civilization, Penny stared at the collection of tents, feeling alone, very alone.

"Who wants to know?" a deep voice challenged, roaring from somewhere and filling the clearing with an echo.

A mountain of a man appeared from just beyond the farthest tent, the sun gleaming off his sun-bleached hair and beard. Miles Jacobs' shoulders strained the tan shirt he wore, and his legs, beneath hiking shorts, were sturdily muscled and covered with a nebulous glinting of hair.

"Ah--your brother Hal sent me to--find you," Penny stammered, still winded from her walk.

"Yeah?" he asked, skeptically, closing the space between them with long strides.

Penny gripped her briefcase with both hands in front of her and braced herself against the anger she felt radiating from him. Hal had warned her Miles' reaction to being interrupted would not be pretty. She just hoped he'd had his distemper shots.

"Your brother Hal--ah--fell from a horse Saturday and is in a hospital in Asheville," Penny explained quickly, before Miles could get too close. "He's going to be fine, but it means you'll have to take his place at the trade shows for the next three weeks, and he hired me to--help you get ready."

"He did, did he?" Miles asked, stopping in front of her and clamping his broad hands on his lean hips. "And what is it he thinks you have to do to get me ready to go to the...trade shows?"

"Hal discussed your...ah...clothing and appearance, your manner of...ah...speaking and your familiarity with soliciting and writing up orders from clients," Penny said, trying valiantly to remember the important points of the long conversation she'd had with Hal the day before. All the while, the dark hazel eyes of the man in front of her bored into her with palpable intimidation.

It was hard to realize Hal and Miles Jacobs were of the same parentage. Hal, in physical pain in the hospital had nonetheless been every inch the Southern gentleman, cultured and articulate in his speaking, and acutely organized in his mental processes. Miles, on the other hand, seemed to barely retain his grasp on civility.

Miles snorted and turned away from her to stare at the stream below them. "Why doesn't he send Lucinda to the shows? She's in charge of Marketing and Distribution."

"I imagine she doesn't want to leave him while he's in such difficulty," Penny supplied.

Miles grunted and grabbed the long, light brown hair at the back of his neck. With his rough fist, he flicked it into a shaggy mane that settled back down along the lower edge of his shirt collar. Then his blunt fingers scratched his bushy beard at the corner of his jaw.

He swore softly, perhaps not even knowing what he was saying.

Slightly braver, Penny moved toward him so she could see his face again. Now that his attention was off her and he had become introspective, she gathered her wits about her and tried to decide exactly what she could do with him to shape him up for public appearances.

At least he had no visible tattoos. He didn't reek of tobacco or alcohol.

He opened his mouth, showing strong white teeth, then closed it again. "Yuh!"

"Hm?" she asked, afraid he had said something to her while she was speculating on how he would look without the bushy beard.

"I ought to at least go into town and see how he is," Miles said.

Penny agreed silently that that was, indeed, the least he should do. At least he was being reasonable. He hadn't slain the messenger for delivering the message, unwelcome as it was. She could work with a rational man, and if he were the engineer of the firm, he no doubt had a logical mind. It was all a matter of finding the right approach.

"I'll stow the gear I'm working with in the shed. Then we'll drive down to Burnsville to call him," Miles proposed, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

"The very least you could do," Penny said under her breath, feeling the full strength of the autumn sun, the exertion and the discomfort of being with this unbearable man overpowering her carefully constructed politeness.

She straightened her shoulders and loosened her grip on her briefcase.

"Well, I'm not about to chase back to Asheville if Hal's going to be out of the hospital by the time I get there and decides he can handle the shows on crutches!" Miles argued. "He's done things like that to me before."

"Hal's in traction," Penny told him. "The doctor isn't planning to release him until Friday, and then he'll probably be laid up a couple more weeks at home. There's simply no way for him to make the air flights--stand for long hours at the display stall--"

"All right! All right!" Miles growled with a wave of his hand. "Let me get the site cleared up and we'll leave. Nice shoes..."

Penny looked down at her feet and was about to tell him what she thought of the shoes when his dusty hiking boots disappeared from her field of vision.

"Come help me with some of this stuff," Miles ordered in a bellow that echoed against the trees.

This is not part of the agreement, she groused mentally, following him to the furthest tent.

Penny hadn't had much time to assess the conglomeration of apparatus he quickly gathered up and stashed in his shed. He locked it away with his cache of food and whatever else was in the windowless plank building, scarcely bigger than a respectable closet.

Penny trudged back toward her car, carrying her own briefcase and another Miles Jacobs had thrust into her hand just before he'd strapped on his backpack and picked up his laptop computer.

The trail was mostly uphill, and Penny grimaced at the subtle allegory of the situation. In no mood to talk, and having even less breath for it, Penny found herself hard-pressed to keep up with Miles. Just about the time she decided to drop back and rest for a moment, Miles stopped dead still in the middle of the trail and scanned the treetops.

"Hear that?" he asked in an excited whisper.

Penny just stared at him, afraid to move a muscle.

He grinned down at her as though he was sharing some great secret with her.

Penny was about to ask him what he was so excited about when Miles turned and started out again at the same pace he'd set before.

Then Penny realized the mistake she'd made. She'd been literally putting her best face on a difficult situation. Chameleon-like, she had adopted a protective coloration, smiling to avoid the reputed temper of Miles Jacobs, the monumental wrath Hal had warned her about. Miles thought she'd observed and enjoyed whatever it was he'd noticed.

At least he relaxed a part of his surly attitude.

As she approached the place where she'd almost fallen earlier, she paused and studied the spot, finding a better approach. But the grass was still wet and the footing remained treacherous.

When he heard her stop, Miles turned around to see what she was doing. He wiped his free hand on the flank of his hiking shorts as though he were preparing to extend it to her. But when she handled the situation on her own, he took another stride toward their objective.

"You like those shoes, don't you?" he asked.

Having enough to do just to keep walking and breathing, Penny didn't say anything. All she cared about was that the ungainly looking shoes kept her in an upright posture.

But she had established a tenuous rapport with Miles, no matter how accidentally, and she would need it for the ordeal of the next few days. She would have to be careful not to destroy it by some false, ill-advised move.

"Follow me into town," Miles ordered, wrenching the tailgate of his four-by-four open with a powerful display of upper body development. Effortlessly, he tossed his possessions into the back of the mud-covered vehicle.

He was disgustingly fresh from the hike, not even breathing hard.

Penny sagged into the driver's seat of her car and gulped restoring air into her burning lungs before she removed the awful hiking shoes and shoved her feet into the blessed cool comfort of her flat driving shoes.

Miles glanced over at her as he slammed the back of the four-by-four, but she could not get a good look at the expression on his face.

Not that she particularly cared at this point. She didn't like this assignment, but she was going to have to put personal feelings aside and do the best she could. Southern Images hung in the balance; a failure on this project would mean the failure of the whole venture, and Shelby would never forgive her.

* * *

"What is this--person you sent out here?" Miles demanded of Hal over the pay phone, leaning against the plank wall in the barbecue restaurant on the highway outside Burnsville.

"She's an image consultant," Hal told him, in his familiar beleaguered-patience tone.

"Image consultant? What the hell's that?"

"She's going to help you get ready to represent us at the trade shows."

Hal was talking to him as though he were a backward child again, and Miles resented it.

Miles let loose with a string of expletives that, had they been said at any volume above a mumble, would have melted telephone relays between Burnsville and Asheville, if not beyond.

"--And that too," Hal said. "Are you aware utterances like that are viewed as unacceptable in polite society?"

"The bears out here don't mind!" Miles spouted. He looked across the empty dining room at the young woman who hunched over a cup of coffee and glanced at her watch every few minutes. "Do I have to do this?" he asked.

"Yes," Hal answered flatly.

Miles ran his rough-knuckled hand over his beard and took a deep breath. "All right," he conceded with a sigh. "We'll get an early lunch here and come straight to see you."

"Miles, is that such a good idea?" Hal asked.

"I had a bath this morning, for Pete's sake!" Miles said and hung up without bothering to say good-bye to his brother.

On the drive from Spruce Pine, he'd told himself this turn of events would just have to be dealt with as well as possible. But he was so close to working the bugs out of his latest project, he was loath to abandon it for even a moment, let alone three weeks.

He studied the young woman--Penelope Birch--as he crossed the room toward her. Lord, they probably looked like a prize pair! He in his saddlebag shorts and she in a business suit and high heels.

So. She was supposed to turn him into a gentleman in three days, was she? There wasn't a lot he couldn't do for himself. If he wanted to, he could talk for hours without using his colorful language. And back in his college days, he'd been known to rent a tux for a dance. The girls didn't think he was so terribly ugly, either. In fact, that might have been the problem, occasionally. Many were the times he'd been distracted from his studies by a pretty girl, and suffered for it.

Well, if she thought he was a total boor, he might as well let her do her stuff and make him over in the image of his older brother. He could always shuck the trappings of civilization and head for the hills when the job was over.

He sat down across the table from her and picked up the steaming mug of coffee waiting for him there.

"How is Mr. Jacobs today?" she asked, probably unaware what her gray eyes did to him when she looked up from under her lashes.

"In a lot of pain," Miles said. But he deserves it.

"I'm sorry."

"I told him we'd get some lunch and head into the city to see him."

She frowned. "Well, if you want to stay here," she said, "I could go ahead and-- "

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

Her glance darted around the room. So it was roughly paneled, smudged with fingerprints and decorated in tacky beer logos. She could be forgiven for not knowing how good the food was. The scent of years of wood fires hung over the place like last year's Christmas garlands.

"I just have a lot to do--in Asheville," she said, her delicate hand covering the top of her half-empty coffee mug when the waitress in a stained apron waved a coffeepot in her direction.

"You're not one of these dames who doesn't eat, are you?" he asked.

In that suit, she could be a lot skinnier than she looked, which would be a shame because her face was really pretty, despite the makeup.

"No," she said, then the corner of her mouth turned up just a little.

"Well, the health department hasn't closed this place down yet," Miles said.

"They've probably never found it," she quipped ruefully.

He laughed.

And just when he thought her smile might take over her face, it shut down into an introspective mask.

"There's so much to do," she said softly. "Your wardrobe, and getting you familiarized with the display stall and the catalog. You'll have to memorize the prices on all the items Hal wants to push--"

"How did you get into this?" he demanded.

Her chin came up and her glare cut him short. "I am not the issue here," she said. "You are. We have to concentrate on getting you ready for these trade shows. I am merely here to facilitate your preparation. Do you understand?"

He frowned. She might not have seen his displeasure as it was concealed by his beard, but it was a ferocious frown. He didn't want to be made over. Especially by some snooty city gal who strung together carefully pronounced four-syllable words that only self-important twits used.

But if it had to be, it had to be.

Miles drank the coffee and dropped a few bills on the table.

"If you don't want to eat here, then we might as well get going," he said, getting to his feet. "We'll go to the farm first. Hal can wait a little while."

She looked up at him, then stood up gracefully, as though she had a copy of Gone With the Wind on her head. There was a line of her chin and a set to her shoulders that told him she had a stubborn streak a mile wide. It won his respect, grudgingly.

* * *

Penny was not surprised that Miles expected her to follow him to the farm where Hal and Lucinda lived. She was oddly comforted by the knowledge she would be less likely to get lost, and may actually get there a lot more easily than she would have without a guide. Somehow she knew Miles tended to take the shortest routes wherever he went.

In the noonday sun, the farm glowed with early autumn colors. The grasses were dying to a light gold, and rampant wildflowers bent in the breeze. Four horses browsed in the pasture, unconcerned when two cars rolled past them into the barnyard.

Before Penny had even switched off her motor, Miles had leaped from his four- by-four and was conversing with the Irish setter. He hauled his gear from the back of his car while she was struggling with her briefcase and her shoes.

With long strides, he hurried into the house through the back door and dumped his backpack in the utility room. Penny had to wait for him to move out of her way before she could enter the room off the kitchen to leave the hiking shoes on a newspaper beside boots and galoshes.

Miles immediately dumped the contents of his laundry bag into the washer and set it to whir and slosh softly. The refrigerator was his next stop. With a broad hand, he grabbed two cans of beer from the shelf in the door and extended one toward Penny.

"No, thank you," she said politely.

He put the extra can on the table in the middle of the spacious kitchen, probably to save the energy of putting it back in the refrigerator and taking it out again if he decided he wanted it for himself.

"Lunch?" he asked. "We can probably find something for sandwiches."

"I--ah--think I'll go to my room and freshen up," she said stiffly, knowing how prissy she sounded but not able to do anything about it.

"You're staying here?" Miles asked.

"Lucinda invited me to. She's uncomfortable with Hal being in the hospital, and I would have to submit my motel bills as part of the cost of my service, so..." She shrugged and hurried from the kitchen to the main stairway.

Lucinda Jacobs had taken her into the Jacobs home for the night and tried to make her comfortable, but old farmhouses in the midst of fields and forests were not Penny's favored milieu. Those horses nickering in the night made her nervous and the muffled hoot of an owl struck fear into her heart.

Why does he make me so nervous? Penny asked herself, tossing her briefcase onto the bed in her room. She had to gain some objectivity. He was merely a project, the raw materials to shape into--into what?--a salesman. Yes, that was the appropriate focus for all of this.

But she sensed, under all that hair and beard, under the rough language and free-floating anger, there was a man who was worth making over.

She wondered if she was equal to the challenge.

Miles pulled everything he deemed edible from the refrigerator and piled it onto the broad kitchen table. He then grabbed a long, sharp knife from the cutlery drawer and surveyed the table for the most likely combination.

Spreading a paper napkin in front of him on which to construct his sandwich, he began his engineering project. Rye bread. Slice of ham. Slice of corned beef. Another slice of corned beef. Slice of Swiss cheese. Hot, brown mustard spread thick if not efficiently with the sharp knife.

The sandwich still needed something. Returning to the refrigerator to grab a jar of sauerkraut, he reached two fingers into the jar to remove a clump of the contents and spread it over the Swiss cheese. Miles topped it with another slice of rye bread.

Perfect!

He wiped the brine off his fingers with a paper napkin and threw it in the direction of the wastebasket at the end of the counter.

Miles was about to wash the third bite of his sandwich down with a swallow of beer when Penelope Birch appeared in the doorway, still looking much too businesslike.

"Come on," he said with a lift of his beer can. "Help yourself."

"I--ah--think I'll make myself a cup of tea."

"Hey, I'll get you a plate -- your own knife --" he offered, trying to be hospitable.

"That won't be necessary," Penelope said with politely clipped tones.

"As soon as we're done here, we'll go check on Hal," Miles said around another healthy bite of his sandwich. Then he shook his head. "Serves him right. I've always told him there's no sense in riding a horse when you have a Volvo."

Penelope made some kind of sound but it was masked by the cascade of water into the empty metal tea kettle.

"I suppose Lucinda is in her glory," he went on. "There's a born worrier for you. Detail person, she calls herself. She'll have that hospital whipped into shape by the time Hal gets out!"

"She seems very nice to me," Penelope said, leaving the kettle on the stove and looking for a cup in the cupboard.

"Yeah, nice," Miles conceded.

"She's been very helpful to me," she said in a very defensive tone.

Yeah, that's probably because you're just like her, Miles thought. Business woman, tied to a desk and a paycheck. Too inhibited to spend much time out in the woods. He snorted and reached for the jar of kosher dills.

Miles noticed that Birch was eyeing the apples and bananas in the wooden fruit bowl as though she wanted something but was afraid to take it. With a sigh, he picked up the bunch of bananas, wrenched two off, and handed them to her.

"That's not going to be much of a lunch," he jeered, although, of course, it wasn't a bad start.

Birch separated the bananas and returned one to the bowl. Then she delicately removed the peel and took it to the wastebasket, also picking up a wadded napkin from the floor.

Not eating in the barbecue restaurant in Burnsville suddenly appeared to have been a good decision, Miles reflected. If she had been as picky at eating a rib as she was with the banana, they'd have been laughed out of the place by the regular patrons.

When the kettle had boiled, he told her where she could find the tea bags and watched as she dunked one up and down in her cup a few times, carefully squeezed a few drops from the bag and discarded it. Miles didn't like hot tea anyway, and watching someone fuss over making a cup of it was excruciating. Then she drank it without sugar or lemon or anything!

He had no idea why he watched her put the cup to her lips. Watching her exquisite pink lips adjust to the rim of the cup did strange things to him. He scratched his beard and frowned.

Occasionally looking over at him as though he were some aboriginal beast she was deathly afraid of, Birch sat primly at the table with her mug of tea and banana and made it all last as long as his two sandwiches, beer, three kosher dill pickles and apple.

"I suppose I'd best put on a pair of slacks to go see Hal," he said, wiping his beard with a napkin.

Then he discovered there had been a strand of sauerkraut stuck in his beard beside his mouth. No wonder she'd been glaring at him.

Maybe he was being too hard on her, Miles thought, pushing his chair back with a loud scraping noise. He didn't like being called away from his work when he was so close to a breakthrough, but nonetheless, it wasn't her fault. Hal had chosen to ride a horse and was as much at fault for this situation as he'd been for many other instances of awkwardness in the past.

"Excuse me," he grumbled and headed for the downstairs bedroom which had been his since Hal and Lucinda married.

He only sensed Penelope Birch's disdainful attitude when he left the kitchen, but two loud slams of the refrigerator door conveyed a lot more to him. He had gotten to her!

As he changed into tan slacks and a shirt he wouldn't be afraid to wear to Hal's office, he thought it might be fun to see just how much patience the woman had. It wasn't necessarily fair of him to take advantage of the situation for his own amusement, but Hal was paying her to make him perform like a trained monkey at the trade shows, so he might as well get some entertainment out of the experience.

When he finished combing his hair and his beard, she was standing in the kitchen with her briefcase in her hand, calmly waiting for him to make the first move.

The kitchen had been straightened up, and he could imagine how efficiently she'd moved around, putting things back into the refrigerator and rinsing cups to put them into the dishwasher.

"I'll drive!" he said, snatching the keys to his four-by-four from his pocket and jangling them authoritatively.

She followed him to the car.

* * *

Penny never liked hospitals. Her mother was a nursing supervisor and had wanted Penny to follow in her utility-shoed footsteps, but Penny had never been able to handle--well, yucky things. Babysitting had even been too messy for her, so she'd made extra money for her education by tutoring high school students in French and Spanish.

Therefore, she cringed at walking through the corridor of the hospital where Hal Jacobs was being treated, and would not have gone there at all had not Miles been such a hard case. She felt she would be looking after her own interests to know exactly what Hal had to say to Miles about the project ahead of them.

Miles seemed to tense when they neared the private room at the end of the corridor on the top floor. It had a magnificent view of the North Carolina hills and the rooftops of Asheville.

"Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Miles said, stopping at the foot of the bed to study the traction equipment with the interest of a mechanical mind. "Don't tell me you're testing this thing to market it."

"That would be your job," Hal said, smiling as he put a file folder on the table that stretched across the bed. He reached his hand out to his brother, but Miles ignored it by glancing at the headlines of a newspaper strewn across the bed. "I'm glad you saw fit to honor us with your presence. We need to talk over what you're going to do at the trade shows."

"Look, I'm here because you're hurt, not because I've agreed to do the--" he took a deep breath and looked over at Penny, "disgusting trade shows."

Penny realized that removing the bite from Miles' spicy language was going to be a major undertaking, but he was trying manfully to accomplish that on his own. Was it because he liked her, she wondered, or just because she was a woman who maintained somewhat of a proper demeanor? Men, however, tended to save up all their dirty words and string them together at one time when they lost their tempers. Miles seemed a prime candidate to join the classification.

"Those trade shows have always been responsible for a large share of our revenues, little brother," Hal reminded him. "Without the contracts we get from all the department stores, the sporting goods chains and the catalog suppliers, we're dead in the water. And there goes your little stove project, your search for the perfect backpack frame, and your other pet projects, many of which are probably still figments of your demented brain."

"You know I hate trade shows," Miles said through gritted teeth.

"I'm not crazy about them myself," Hal confessed.

"I thought you and Lucinda enjoyed them," Miles argued. "You sure seem to spend a lot of the company's advertising budget on them."

"As I said, they're a necessary part of our business. We've found it to be a very efficient tool for marketing, dollar-for-dollar." Hal shifted uncomfortably in his bed. "Damn. I could use a bourbon neat," he sighed, then took a swallow of ice water.

"I'll see if I can get something past the nurses," Miles said sincerely with a lowered voice.

"Don't bother," Hal said. "They've got me so full of painkillers, I won't dare go near the booze for a year. Now, before you give me any more grief about these shows, I'd like you to take a look at the sales figures for the last fiscal year--and what we've got so far this year--here, in this file."

"They don't look so bad," Miles said.

"Look at the next page--the monthly breakdowns--"

Miles turned pages then threw the folder back down on the pile Hal had taken it from and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration.

"All right!" he conceded, his expression more sullen than it had been before. "What do I have to do?"

"You're going to have to learn everything about every product we sell, whether we make it ourselves or handle it for someone else," Hal said.

"That shouldn't be too hard," Miles said. "I've tried everything we sell, within reason."

"But your opinions of some of the products might color your sales pitches," Hal cautioned. "You've got to treat every single item we sell as though it was the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"Don't I always?" Miles said, mockingly.

"No, you don't always!" Hal said, echoing his tone. Then he turned serious. "I haven't been able to show Lucinda your files on certain products you field tested due to the language you sometimes use! Items which we have had some success selling, by the way."

"Well, sorry," Miles mocked.

"I wouldn't put it past you to back off selling one of our products if someone had a better one," Hal said. "And we can't have that."

Miles spread his hands in a gesture of acquiescence.

"You'll have to learn who buys for whom and what they can use," Hal pointed out. "Lucinda has lots of material on file, and you're going to have to memorize it. Not just what we have sold before, or to whom we have sold it, but you're going to have to go after new clients. We're desperate to get into certain chains with as many of our own products as possible. There are a couple of catalogs I was hoping to get into. And then there are some products we might want to consider for our own catalog."

"Wait! Wait a minute! I'm having a hard time keeping up with you," Miles bellowed.

He was so loud that a passing nurse poked her head into the room and hissed at them.

Miles's face colored beneath his beard. "Sorry," he apologized to the nurse's retreating back.

"And you should do something about the way you look," Hal went on.

"Come on!" he said, trying to contain his feelings. "I live out in the woods, Hal. I've got a reputation for trying everything we sell. Anyone who knows anything will understand that I dress this way and look this way because it's who I am."

"Not necessarily," Hal said. "The serious buyers will look at it as a gimmick. Believe me, I've observed people at these shows who think they can come in dressed like a grizzly bear and attract a lot of attention. But that's generally the hallmark of someone who doesn't know what he's doing. As a firm, we're too well established to resort to a trick like that, and we need too many serious orders to play these little games."

"All right," Miles conceded. "I've got a shooting jacket and khaki pants..."

"Blazer, dress shirt, slacks and tie," Hal said firmly. "If you weren't a size larger than I am, I'd let you borrow my trade-show duds, but you're going to have to come up with your own. Ben and Pete will be starting for Oklahoma City tomorrow morning with the truck carrying the stall and the merchandise, so if you want to be sure that the airline doesn't send your clothing to Bangkok or Rio, I'd suggest you take care of that matter right away."

Penny had been taking notes on just about everything Hal had said. Now, when Hal had seemed to cover everything that was on his mind, she put the cap back on her pen.

"Perhaps we can do that on the way back to the farm," she suggested.

The nurse came back into the room carrying a tray of medication. She shooed Miles and Penny out the door, telling them that Hal needed his rest.

"I don't know why he needs any more rest," Miles complained, striding down the hall to the elevator. "He's got us doing all the work."

"I'm sure just healing is putting a strain on his metabolism," Penny said.

"Oh, of course you'd be on his side. He's paying you."

She gave him a look, but he was ogling a passing nurse, and the attention was being reciprocated.

* * *

"Have you ever been to Asheville before?" Miles asked her, obviously trying to make conversation as he maneuvered the four-by-four out of the hospital parking lot into the afternoon traffic.

"I can't say that I have," Penny answered, clamping her hand firmly around the door handle. Her hand had barely recovered circulation from the ride in from the farm. Luckily, she was left-handed, so she had been able to take notes without any problem. Her left hand clutched her briefcase in a similar death grip.

"Where do you generally buy your clothes?" she asked Miles.

"I don't buy many clothes," Miles said, scanning the street ahead of him. "Companies send me samples of their outdoor clothes to try out, just like we send them our products. Or I order them through catalogs."

"You don't go into stores?" Penny asked, wondering why she wasn't surprised.

"There's one place in this town where I can get a few things--probably what you and Hal have in mind," Miles said, and Penny could hear in the tone of his voice that he thought going into a store was a waste of time. But they'd run out of options.

He seemed to work his temper out in his driving, leaving Penny to grit her teeth and say nothing as they careened through Asheville's twisted streets, up and down hills and past blind intersections. The Bluegrass music which came from the tape deck Miles belatedly switched on seemed to calm his nerves but the strains of screeching fiddles and other strange stringed instruments did nothing for Penny's.

The store in a shopping center catered to men of larger than normal size, and Penny felt relief at seeing suits and jackets hanging in neat racks along the walls. Even the smell of the place made her feel she was once more in a world where she knew what she was doing.

Oblivious to the conversation between Miles and the young salesman, she headed for the rack of jackets. She was comparing the colors of blazers when Miles moved past her to another part of the rack and began pushing hangers back and forth. She overheard enough of Miles's conversation to know what sizes he was looking for, so she blithely chose what she thought would fit in with Hal's expectations of suitable trade-show garb.

She moved on to other displays to select shirts and ties and two pair of slacks, then carried them to where Miles was still looking for a jacket.

"Here," she said, "try these on."

Miles, not pleased to be interrupted while doing something he viewed as distasteful in the first place, looked at her selections and said something ungentlemanly.

"A simple 'No, thank you,' would have sufficed," Penny admonished softly, pushing the clothing at him.

"A blazer?" Miles asked, fire in his eyes. "The last blazer I wore had a duck on the pocket. And I don't wear neckties."

"Mister Jacobs--"

"If I'm going to buy clothes, it's not going to be something that will spend the next fifty years in a closet and go to Goodwill when I die," he argued. "I'll buy something I'll get some use out of. And I think this sportscoat is what I want."

Penny shook her head at the sportscoat, then handed her selections to the clerk to be replaced where they belonged. She decided to take another tack in dealing with Miles. If she was going to accomplish anything with this man, she had better start from where he was and show him that what he wanted was all wrong. Then she would lead him to what he really needed.

"All right," she said, trying to neutralize her own opinions, "try it on."

She had to admit that the tan and brown herringbone wool was probably a better choice of color for Miles than the gray blazer she had chosen, but the suede leather patches on the sleeves were rather--rustic. The way the fabric stretched across his broad shoulders was very--interesting.

"It's a bit large in the waist," the salesman said. "Perhaps a size smaller? But, no, the shoulders would be too tight. I could have it altered for you by the end of the week."

"We need it Thursday afternoon at the latest," Penny said, crisply, hoping their stringent time schedule would make it necessary to go back and look at the blazers.

"I'll have to ask the tailor," the salesman said. "One moment please."

Miles slipped away from Penny to study himself in the floor-length, three- sectioned mirror and by the time Penny caught up to him, he was sauntering away to another area of the store. He sorted through piles of shirts in plastic bags, his blunt fingers bunching them together then moving on, leaving the little bins in chaos.

He grunted and handed several samples to her and she realized to her horror that they were knit turtlenecks.

"Really, Miles! These are out of style!" she protested.

"Then why are they in this store?" Miles asked. "Look, this color goes nicely. If I'm going to stand around for hours on end, I don't want to be fidgeting with a tie and a shirt that's going to be all wrinkled at the end of the day."

"All right, you have a point," she agreed reluctantly. "But take the one that blends in with the jacket. Once you shave your beard--"

"Who said anything about shaving the beard?" Miles demanded.

"Psychological surveys of attitudes which people have about men with beards state--"

"They didn't ask me," Miles argued, moving off again toward a rack of slacks.

"Miles--"

"Penelope! God, what a name," he mumbled to himself with a shake of his head. He chose a pair of slacks and held them to his waist, then shoved them toward Penny. "I guess this is it."

"What about shoes?" Penny asked.

"I've got shoes," Miles said. "These."

Penny looked down at his feet and saw the same hiking shoes he had worn in the

mountains. She swallowed what she had thought to say.

"Don't you have a nice pair of oxfords?" she asked.

"Oxfords aren't for standing around in," Miles said. "They're for sitting behind a desk so you can take them off."

She turned away. I need this job, she thought to herself. Without this fee, Southern Images goes down the drain.

"I have a pair of sneakers--" Miles said.

"The tailor says he can have the jacket ready by Thursday at four," the salesman said, hurrying from someplace in the back of the store.

"That will be fine," Miles said. "What kind of shoes do you suggest with this outfit."

"We have a nice soft loafer--" the salesman said, already leading the way and from the grin on his face, Penny could guess he had visions of a healthy commission dancing in his head.

Penny took a deep breath and followed.

She had to admit that the finished product was pretty impressive as she watched Miles pose in front of the mirror, sportscoat, slacks, and turtleneck with pricetags still hanging. Not what she envisioned in the first place, but she could live with what she saw.

The salesman didn't miss a beat as he rang up the sale and asked Miles if he needed any underwear or socks.

Penny closed her eyes.

"I'll take care of that when I come back for the jacket," Miles said, taking his credit card from his wallet.

Penny stifled the sigh of relief that almost escaped her.

"You'll have to go to a barber," Penny said as they crossed the parking lot.

"The beard stays," Miles restated.

"It's too straggly," Penny argued.

"I can trim it myself," Miles said.

"It would look so much better if you'd have a professional trim it, and your hair."

"No!"

"Miles!"

He growled something under his breath and climbed into the car. He drove silently to a barber shop, taking a little more care with his corners than he had before. When he pulled into a plaza which had a barber shop, the white-smocked man inside was just changing the sign from open to closed.

"You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?" Penny accused.

"Yes!" Miles said proudly.

"We can go somewhere else," Penny said.

"No," Miles countered. "It's my hair and my beard and I don't trust it to anyone else."

"You are one of the most exasperating men I have ever met," Penny said glumly.

Miles turned the steering wheel and scooted the four-by-four back out into the traffic and headed for the farm. "I'm hungry," he said.

Somehow, Penny was not surprised. Making her so aggravated must have taken a lot out of him.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Miles heard his grandmother telling him that a gentleman should never provoke a lady.

Humphf!

He'd never had much interest in being a gentleman, at least one by his grandmother's definition. As for provoking, he'd never given that much thought, either. But Penelope Birch was trying to be a lady, and whether she was one or not, he thought it might be fun to see just how much provoking she could handle.

He had no interest in being a gentleman, or being in style. Shucks, if he was going to be at a camping equipment trade show, he ought to look as though he knew what he was talking about, not like some gussied-up salesman.

Penelope Birch would have had him dressed up like some dandy who did his most serious camping in a forty-foot Winnebago with a glass of Scotch in his hand.

Not Miles Jacobs!

"I need to stop for gas," Miles said, and pulled into the lot of a convenience store.

While he was paying for the gas, he noticed the cans of chewing tobacco, and told the clerk to give him one. He had a friend up in the hills who tied some of the prettiest fishing flies he'd ever seen. Maybe if Miles gave him a full can of chew, he'd give Miles an empty can to keep some flies in. The can he was using now was so full of flies that every time he tried to take one out, he scratched his finger on a fish hook.

Nonchalantly, Miles put the can of chewing tobacco on the dashboard of the car so he'd remember it the next time he went up to Burnsville.

In the reflection of the windshield he saw that Penny looked at the can and turned her eyes heavenward.

Miles tried not to make a sound, but he couldn't help it. Maybe she thought he was humming to the music on the CD player.

It was clear that if a gentleman never provoked a lady, he was missing out on a lot of fun.

Ignoring Hal's setter, Bones, who yapped at his heels, Miles couldn't get into the house quickly enough when they returned to the farm. The clothes he was wearing were beginning to chafe in the close places, and he thought he and Penny had taken about enough of each other for the afternoon.

He grabbed one of the big red apples from the fruit bowl in the center of the kitchen table and excused himself to change into jeans.

Much as he expected, Penny didn't object. She looked like she was itching to get at the notes she'd taken during their conversation with Hal. It would be just as well if she holed up in her room or the den and left him alone. He had a lot of thinking to do.

He dropped the bag that contained his purchases from the clothing store on a cushioned rocking chair he never sat in and promptly and intentionally forgot they were there.

It was more important, he decided as he clamped his teeth into the apple and took a large bite of it, that he get comfortable, and that meant shucking the slacks and shirt he was wearing.

Stripped to his skivvies, he caught a glimpse of himself in the cheval mirror Lucinda insisted on storing in his room. His tan had not yet begun to fade; there was still a definite line between his briefs and where the top of his jeans rode when he took off his shirt.

But damned if he didn't look scary enough to send little kids screaming to their mommas with his thick, scraggly beard and long unruly hair. Maybe he should trim the beard. Just a little.

No. He needed the beard.

He headed for the bathroom as he was, hurrying when he remembered that if Penny had not gone upstairs--if she was in the den and should happen to look up-- he'd be profoundly embarrassed. They'd both be embarrassed. He couldn't think that Penelope Birch had ever seen a man in his drawers.

She'd probably go screaming back to her momma!

But he felt vaguely relieved when he heard footfalls somewhere upstairs. When he reached the bathroom, he locked the door behind him.

Damn! His robe wasn't hanging on the back of the bathroom door where he usually left it. Lucinda must have taken it down and washed it. Darn that woman.

Darn all women. Especially little blond ones with prissy attitudes and flawless faces. They'd be the death of him.

* * *

Penny had been looking out the window of the upstairs hallway, sitting on a windowseat, when Lucinda drove into the farmyard in the family's Volvo. Putting her notes together and closing them in her folder, Penny hurried downstairs.

Her arms filled with grocery bags, Lucinda was already trying to open the back door when Penny reached her to help. She was hampered by the dog Bones who was torn between welcoming his mistress and investigating a stranger in the house.

"I understand you and Miles looked in on Hal," Lucinda said, blowing a strand of her blond hair out of her eyes as she placed the bags on the kitchen table.

"Hal was very encouraging," Penny said. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Your duties here don't include scullery maid," Lucinda said with a laugh.

"Really, I'd like to get my hands on something that I can control," Penny said, reaching for a head of lettuce and a bunch of celery Lucinda had removed from the bag and laid on the table.

"Miles has been that much of a beast, eh?" Lucinda asked under her breath, as though she expected Miles to materialize at her elbow.

"I can understand that he doesn't like to have his plans interrupted, even to help his brother," Penny said. "But, after all...I swear he has an attitude that would peel paint."

Lucinda laughed suddenly. "I'll try to tame him down with a thick steak. Then maybe he'll be a little more docile when I hand him the files Hal wants him to study tonight."

Penny recounted the visit to the haberdashery and accepted Lucinda's sympathetic smile and amused giggles as recompense for her discomfort.

"None of this is going to be easy," Lucinda said, shooing Bones to his corner of the kitchen where he sprawled on a floppy bed but kept a watchful eye on the activities.

Lucinda looked up at the clock. "Actually, I'm glad you offered to help with dinner," she said. "I have to get over to the hospital and take Hal some papers to sign. So if you don't mind making us a tossed salad, I'll put some rice on to boil, and we'll muddle on from there."

"Nothing like taking a few whacks at a carrot to work out the aggressions," Penny sighed then laughed. She didn't think there could possibly be enough carrots in the world to work out all her frustrations tied to Miles.

"What is Miles doing?" Lucinda asked, taking a pot down from a crown of pegs over the stove.

"I heard the shower going when I was upstairs," Penny said. "But that was a long time ago. Maybe he's taking a nap."

"Miles? Take a nap?" Lucinda snorted. "That'll be the day. I don't think he ever sleeps! Either he's in his room making funny little drawings of camping stoves or he's out in the barn tinkering with who-knows-what."

"I don't think I heard him go out," Penny said. "Then again, I was going over my notes."

Lucinda put the pot on the stove to boil then went along the hallway to Miles' room. She knocked softly and called his name.

There was a muffled noise in response.

"Miles, could you go out to my car and bring in Hal's briefcase?" Lucinda asked. "He wants you to look over the files on our clients."

Penny didn't hear what Miles said for the rush of water over the head of lettuce she was washing, but a few minutes later he came through the kitchen, wearing faded jeans and a threadbare flannel shirt. Bones bolted from the corner of the kitchen floor and followed him out the back door.

He returned carrying the briefcase and let it settle heavily on a bench by the hall door. "Need me for anything else?" he asked Lucinda, pausing to see what the women were doing.

"I just wanted to warn you Hal told your mother that you're home, so she'll probably call tonight," Lucinda said, pouring rice into the pot of boiling water.

"That's all I need," Miles muttered and returned to his room.

"Dinner in twenty minutes!" Lucinda called after him, turning to the table to unwrap the steak. "Moodier than usual," she muttered to Penny. "I never would have gotten you into this if we hadn't been desperate. And at that, it was Hal's idea. I went to college with Shelby's older sister and when she told me what Shelby was doing, I was intrigued and told Hal. Well, Hal never forgets anything, and he thought, when he got hurt, that an image consultant would be the perfect solution to our problem."

Penny decided to reserve judgment on that.

Lucinda was arranging the steak on a broiler pan when she tilted her head back and called Miles again.

"Miles, could you go call the horses into the barnyard and feed them?" she asked, then lowered her voice. "If I stop to do that, I'll be late getting to the hospital to see Hal and he'll be a nervous wreck."

Miles once again trudged through the kitchen and the dog Bones once again got up from his corner and followed him out the door.

"I swear he's had a bee in his bonnet ever since I came to Asheville to marry Hal," Lucinda sighed. "I don't know whether it would take a flyswatter to get rid of it, or an exterminator."

Penny kept her opinion to herself and straightened a fork at one of the three places on the kitchen table.

* * *

Miles didn't particularly like the horses, especially since one of them was responsible for Hal's being in the hospital. He didn't trust any species that didn't understand him. That was probably why he didn't get along with women either, he reflected.

But it was no great problem to coerce the horses into the barnyard, with Bones to yip at their heels and nudge them in the right direction. Miles filled the grain basins and water trough.

From the safety of the other side of the fence, he looked the four of them over closely to see if they had caught anything dangerous in their coats. Hal wouldn't like it if something happened to these strange animals.

Deciding he didn't need to do any more to them, like currying them or checking their hooves, Miles leaned against the fence post and watched them chomp on their grain for a while.

Frankly, he preferred his horsepower with four-wheel drive and heavy-duty suspension.

It was a pleasant evening, getting nippy but with a clear blue sky. Soon the clocks would be set back to real time, and not long after that, he'd have to come back to town for the winter.

Maybe it was time to start looking for a place of his own. Hal and Lucinda had always told him he was welcome to use the first-floor bedroom in the wintertime, and any other time he was in town the rest of the year. He preferred living out at the campsite, though.

The thought of building a house for himself out there would defeat the whole purpose of having the wilderness camp. It wasn't a true test of a tent if you could run into a house when the rain got too heavy. You didn't have good data if you just observed after the fact.

"Miles! Dinner!" Lucinda called from the house.

Without turning to look at her, he raised his hand to signal that he'd heard her.

Damn! He didn't want to look at her. She'd be standing there on the porch, looking like an earth mother, the superwoman who could do everything-- ride horses, run her husband's company, bake bread and look beautiful.

Not that he was now or had ever been in love with his brother's wife. That wasn't it at all. It was just that Hal and Lucinda loved each other completely and quite visibly, and seeing them together made him jealous of their happiness.

He felt a twinge in his gut when he thought about it, having at last identified what his uneasiness was all about. Jealousy. It was an unworthy emotion, beneath him. Somehow it was obscene to be jealous of their happiness.

Miles would never do anything to hurt them, or to let them know how he felt about what they had. It was easier to stay away from the farmhouse, and the office, and everywhere else they might be if he could avoid them.

But avoiding them wasn't always possible. Nor was avoiding seeing lovers anywhere.

It would be wonderful to love someone, to trust someone, but he'd never met anyone who didn't know he was Hal Jacobs's brother. And Horace P. Jacobs's son, and that Horace P. had challenged each of his sons to be successful in their own right by their thirty-fifth birthdays.

Hal, it seemed, would succeed. Miles had grave doubts about himself.

Oh, he'd make the stove he wanted to make, just as Hal had created a business. But Miles had also made some other camping trinkets that had done very well for the company, and he knew it wasn't enough. His father could very well deem him a success, but it wasn't going to mean anything, because Miles didn't feel like a success.

And what was more depressing was that he didn't know what it would take to get that feeling--and he wanted it more than anything else in the world.

He kicked the base of the fence post with his booted foot and, judging the post to be solidly imbedded in the earth by the stinging sensation in his toes, he turned and started back to the house.

* * *

"I know the usual rule at this table is to avoid talking business," Lucinda said, passing the bowl of salad to Penny, "but since I have to go see Hal tonight, I'm going to break the rule--"

"It's yours to break," Miles said, unfolding his napkin and placing it in his lap.

Penny took the salad bowl and served herself, not without noticing Miles's demeanor at the table had changed from lunch and wondering if it was for her benefit.

"Touche'," Lucinda said. "The files I brought home are those of our clients whom you might run into either in Oklahoma City or Portland."

"Wouldn't they be grouped one way or the other, regionally?" Penny asked.

"No," Lucinda said. "These are people who travel on expense accounts. They choose the show which fits into their schedule, rather than the one that's closest."

Miles shook his head grimly, making his attitude very clear.

"You must learn who buys what and how many we can expect them to contract for," Lucinda told him.

Penny was making mental notes as she ate. There were ways of accomplishing tasks like this that she was very good at; all she had to do was convince Miles she knew what she was doing. She looked across the table at him and found his hard eyes leveled at her in challenge.

She watched him defiantly as he turned to his steak and cut precise bites from it. Perhaps the large lunch he'd eaten had taken the edge off his appetite and he could now approach a meal with less urgency and therefore better manners. If she had to teach him how to eat properly, she would be in for a battle she didn't want to tackle.

The telephone rang. Miles pushed his chair back and stood up, rather than standing up and pulling one foot across the chair, as he had done at lunch. More and more, Penny was seeing the episode at lunch as a defiant show to provoke her into abandoning her assignment--something she was not prepared to do.

Penny observed Miles as he leaned his broad shoulders against the wall where the telephone hung and handled the receiver with his large, tanned hand. It seemed that the instrument was almost too small for him to use.

Miles didn't seem happy with the conversation, but Penny paid no attention to what he was saying, fascinated with the way he stood, the power that seemed barely contained by his temperament.

Miles returned to the table, less concerned with his plate than he had been before. Obviously what he'd heard in the conversation was bothering him.

"That was my mother," he said, picking up his napkin and repositioning it on his lap. He turned to Lucinda. "She'll be arriving later in the week to help you take care of Hal when he comes home from the hospital."

"Well, that will be some relief," Lucinda said, seeming to be more amenable to the idea than Miles was. "Running the office and taking care of Hal is certainly a challenge, and after two days of it, I'm about ready to throw in the towel."

Miles's lower lip flexed, and Penny wondered what his expression would have been if his beard had not shielded it from her sight. But she sensed a bit of sympathy extending toward Lucinda that had not been there before.

Lucinda touched her napkin to her mouth, then put it down on the table. Wearily, she got to her feet. "I'm sorry to leave you like this, but I have a lot to go over with Hal, and the nurses on his floor are very strict with visiting hours. I guess they've been warned that he's a workaholic and are trying to keep him from jeopardizing his recovery by doing too much."

"Don't worry," Penny told her. "I'll clean up the kitchen."

"I'd appreciate that," Lucinda said. "There's half an apple pie in the refrigerator if you want dessert. Help yourselves."

Miles nodded and went back to what was left of his steak. Then he helped himself to another portion of the rice and the rest of the salad.

Penny tried not to study him, but she'd about finished her meal and there was not much she could do, politely, but to sit there across the table from him and try to think of conversational openings that wouldn't offend him.

"You don't have to stare at me that way." he said testily.

"I'm trying not to," Penny said.

"I suppose you're trying to think up some way to make life more miserable than it already is," he said.

Penny thought for a moment, then got to her feet and started to clear her place and Lucinda's. It was not the way she had been taught at home. Her mother would have been appalled if anyone had started to clear the table when someone was still eating, but the sooner this chore was accomplished, the sooner she could start the evening's study session.

Scraping dishes and rinsing them in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher made an unashamed statement of her need for activity and gave her a chance to ignore the man sitting at the table. When she turned from filling the detergent cup in the dishwasher, though, she nearly bumped into him as he rinsed his own plate. When she looked up, he surveyed her levelly.

"You'll see that I do have some concept of leaving the campsite the way I found it," he said, placing his dirty silverware in the rack just as she had.

"I thought we could get right to work here at the table," Penny said. "We'd have some space to spread everything out."

"No," Miles said firmly.

"Miles--"

"I'll build a fire in the den and we'll work in there," he said. "I have no intention of sitting on a hard wooden chair all evening." He headed, not toward the den, but out the back door, Bones following him.

Penny was just as glad to be alone in the kitchen. She made decisions about the leftovers that erred on the side of conservation, although she slipped the last scrap of steak into the dog's dish and hoped he'd be happy with it.

Miles had not yet returned to the house when she was finished, so she went upstairs to change out of her high heels into a pair of knitted slippers she carried in her travel bag. Glancing in the mirror over the dresser in the guestroom, she noticed that her hair was fraying from its arrangement and pulled the hairpins from it, allowing the loose braid to fall down over her shoulder. It was going to be a long evening, so she might as well be comfortable.

When Penny went back down the stairs to the den, Miles was already puttering with the fire, one eye on the news on the television in the corner of the room.

Sitting down on a couch, Penny noticed a wedding picture of Hal and Lucinda across the room and got to her feet again to take a closer look at it.

"Have Hal and Lucinda been married very long?" Penny asked.

"Four years," Miles said, putting a small log on the fire, then closing the screen.

"She seems very devoted to him," Penny observed.

Miles made a noise and dusted his hands on the thighs of his jeans. He turned away from her and opened Hal's briefcase on the coffee table. There was something in his attitude that closed her off more than usual.

"Did I say something wrong?" Penny asked. "I--thought--"

"Yes, they are very much in love with each other," Miles said, tightly. "Now, can we get to work?"

"Whatever you say," Penny agreed.

"Maybe I should start with the companies we sell to," Miles said, lifting files out of the briefcase with a large, raw-knuckled hand. "What kind of organization is this? He's got them by people's names rather than the companies!"

"He's probably cross-referenced them in his office," Penny said. "The first thing you notice when someone comes up to you at a trade show is probably the person's name."

"That's a stupid way of doing it," Miles appraised, sorting through the files with some consternation in his expression.

"I imagine Hal isn't too keen on letting his company files out of his office," Penny went on.

Miles swore softly. "How am I supposed to learn all this?"

"Have you ever learned things by association?" Penny asked, moving to sit beside him on a couch. "You pick out a few important facts that are interrelated."

Sitting down beside Miles was a mistake. His position on the couch with its slick surface conspired to make her slide into him as she tried to read the file he was holding. The contact of their bodies had the effect of flame to dried grass, stinging and singeing, an explosion of heat that took her breath away.

Penny quickly drew away, afraid he'd felt the same intense sensation she had. She dared not look at him, because whenever their eyes met, it was as though he could see into her soul, into her very being--and that she kept hidden from everyone. With a quick breath, she focused her attention on her task.

She pointed to facts he could relate to the man whose name was on the file, but Miles resisted any help. Perhaps he had felt the same sensation she had and was withdrawing behind the wall she was working so hard to tear down. She would not let him. Resolutely, she forged on.

After going through a few files with Miles, Penny gave up. She took a copy of Jacobs' catalog from the briefcase and went to the comfortable chair to study it.

Miles sprawled on the couch and occasionally read aloud to himself, or got up and paced the floor as he tackled this task his own way, so Penny studied camping stoves and cooking utensils, hiking boots and things her life had no use for.

"All right!" Miles's angry voice cut into her concentration. "Help me with this! I haven't had to memorize anything since college. I had no idea this would be so hard."

"Why don't you take a break and get into a better frame of mind?" Penny suggested.

"Go get a piece of that pie Lucinda offered. Come back to this with a fresh outlook."

Miles looked at her skeptically. Before he left the room, he put another log on the fire. He returned, balancing two plates of pie topped with thick slabs of cheddar cheese, and two large glasses of milk.

"I think better when I'm not hungry," he explained, handing her a plate and a glass.

Penny decided that establishing a rapport with Miles precluded making any reference to a diet she might try to stay on. She ate the pie and cheese and drank the milk, enjoying it.

"Now, there are a few tricks to memorization," Penny started to instruct Miles.

He seemed to be in a more receptive mood when they went back to the work. Perhaps he'd decided he needed her help.

Lucinda returned home and entered the den, prepared to watch them rather than to jump into their work session. She looked tired, Penny thought.

"How's Hal tonight?" Miles asked, straightening up one file and replacing it in Hal's briefcase.

"He must be getting better," Lucinda said with a sigh. "He's beginning to get unbearable."

"That sounds like Hal," Miles said.

"He wants you to see some of his other files, so I think you should go into the office tomorrow and work there," Lucinda said, a bit tentatively, as though she knew she was going to reap an argument. "He keeps some pretty sensitive material on people he doesn't want to sell to because of their credit records, people he wants to make some sort of contact with, and what products he's anxious to place--sensitive information he doesn't want to let out of his own filing cabinet."

Miles ran a hand through his hair and scowled. "Considering how much trouble I'm having with these files, it's going to take forever to get a handle on all that."

"At least I'll be there to help you," Lucinda said, as though she were comforting a child she was leading to a dentist's office. "Between Penny and me, you'll get the hang of it."

Lucinda excused herself, and Penny listened to her footsteps going slowly up the stairs.

"She seems very fatigued," Penny observed.

Miles shrugged. "Of course, she is," he said, preparing to get back to work.

"Has she been ill or something?"

"How should I know?" Miles demanded. "I've been gone for three weeks."

Penny decided that it was none of her business.

"I just wonder if this is going to do any good at all," Miles said, pausing to stare into the fire.

"You saw the figures Hal showed you," Penny said. "You know the success of the firm over the next year depends on the sales you come up with on this series of trade shows. Even your own research depends on--"

"You're beginning to sound like one of them," Miles complained. "This isn't really your problem."

"Yes, it is," Penny sighed. "Southern Images--my company -- is just starting out. We haven't had many clients and we've had to borrow heavily from my partner Shelby's family to get going at all. I need you to be a success as much as Hal and Lucinda do."

"Well, that's just part of the risk you take when you strike out on your own," Miles said. "I've always told Hal I could get a job working for someone else and be just as happy, maybe even more so. But he keeps saying our best course lies in staying together, working together. There are times when I'd rather just forget about this whole business and all the problems that are wrapped up in it."

"I know exactly how you feel," Penny said, not so much as practiced sympathy as real empathy.

"Anyone who goes into business for himself has the rest of the world bossing him," Miles said. "Frankly, I don't have a lot of concern for your problems. I'd rather be up at Spruce Pine working on my stove."

"The matter at hand, however, is that you learn who your customers are," Penny said, picking up a handful of folders and opening the first one. "If you see a name tag that says Bob Grierson, what is going to come to your mind?"

"A total blank!"

"No! Think! Your stove project depends on your getting him to take a larger order this year than last. What are you going to sell him?"

Miles ran both hands through his hair and set his jaw. "Last year he bought five hundred units of the 310 stove and two hundred units of the 202 utensil kits."

"No, it was the other way around."

"Damn!"

"No, that's good!" she encouraged him, perhaps with more enthusiasm than she felt--as though she was cajoling a puppy who'd gotten a little closer to the newspaper. "You got the products right -- which would be acceptable so far as making a good impression on him. What is the next thing you say to him?"

"Watch for our new stove..."

"No! Ask him how his sales of those items were," she suggested. "Never try to sell something that isn't ready to ship as soon as the order hits the sales department."

Miles spouted something Penny tried to ignore.

"I'd recommend you try to sell him the next higher product of whichever category he had the strongest response on," Penny advised. "Or, if he doesn't move on that, show him your small backpack frame and point out that it's one of the items you're having the most reorders on."

Miles crumpled back on the couch and stared at her. "You should take this job," he growled.

"I have a job," Penny reminded him. "Right now it's getting you to learn all of this. Now, if you see a tag that says--Woody Kennery?"

Miles groaned and got to his feet. "He represents a firm like ours--makes some things, has a catalog of their own products and some other manufacturers. Made those shoes you wore today."

"So?"

Miles stared at her. "Isn't that enough?"

"You're there to sell to him, not to buy from him, at least for the purposes of this exercise."

"Then I'll ask him which of our products he got the most orders for."

"Right. That's a start," Penny said, then yawned. She would have to force herself to keep going through all these files. Maybe by midnight, Miles would get the hang of this. And maybe not.