So he was on the road for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. No wonder she saw him so seldom here at Good Sam. But those tall, lean good looks had intrigued her every time she had glimpsed him. In fact, he made her maidenly juices flow a little each time she saw him. She tried to think cooler thoughts as she pushed open the door to the coffee room.

Jack of the sick mind was in a huddle with Juanita Peron and Isabel Marcy, the two goof-offs of the current crop of nurse's aides. But his smart mouth, Pal noticed, was devoted to the type of talk he always used around the more impressionable females of the staff. As long as he was busy trying to maneuver someone into his bed, he wouldn't be likely to reopen the subject of Paul Harshman.

Pal lit a cigarette, took three puffs, and put it out. Then she left the room before anyone could get her into a conversation.

For the rest of the day, whenever she had some time for her own thoughts, she pondered on the strange complexity of Paul's personality. By the end of the day, she had solved nothing, but she had determined to use her feminine wiles to probe this masculine mystery when she met him in the evening.

Of all the things about him – at least all of the few things she knew or could guess – the one which bothered her most was that indescribable quality which seemed to magnetize her whenever he was around her.

She began to think that maybe it was a case of the bird hypnotized by the serpent. But she shrugged that off as prejudice which must have been caused by the intern she was comma to think of as Sick Jack.

After all, even if she was a virgin, and still lacked experience in some phases of the male-female relationship, she had managed to take care of herself pretty well so far. Paul Harshman couldn't be a danger to her. No matter who or what he was, she was only going to "repay" him for his lunch-time courtesy by acceding to his wish for her company during a single evening.