Playing With Fire

“My ego is fine.” His teeth gritted. Never in his life had he given up so easily, and Tamar surely knew that. She was merely trying to get a rise out of him.

“Perhaps you’re losing your skill?”

He didn’t consider himself a ladies’ man. If he’d had success in the field, it was because women couldn’t seem to resist a man who could resist them. His sights had always been set on other goals.

“I’m skilled enough for both of us,” was what he told Tamar. “There’s a guy at the bar. A trader with a hair weave and a platinum Rolex. He’s been eyeing you all evening—”

“Say no more,” she interrupted, withering with disdain. “I’m gone.” With a saucy flick of a smile, she tucked her purse under her arm and wended her way toward the industrial steel doors at the front of the restaurant. Daniel watched, curious if she’d leave alone—several men had approached her—but she appeared on the street unescorted, signaling for the car.

Daniel moved closer to the wide front window, keeping a protective eye on Tamar until the sleek midnight-blue town car glided up to the curb. The woman was an enigma, even to him. Although in some ways she was his closest friend, he knew her a fraction as well as she knew him. She was adamant about keeping her personal life out of the office. Tamar Brand’s vision was clear but narrowly focused. From the start, she’d made it clear that she did not care for questions or complications.

Perhaps that was why they got along so well—Daniel had been accused of the very same thing.

But not tonight, he thought. Tonight, he’d been struck blind. Tonight, he wanted to plunge headlong into a messy, unplanned, completely indulgent affair.

He thought of the lioness who’d refused to be his prize for the evening. And he smiled, a renewed anticipation spiraling through his bloodstream. He would have her.

A hand touched his shoulder. “You were supposed to come after me,” she said huskily into his ear, the action causing her breasts to brush lightly across his back. As if he needed the invitation.

“In another minute, I planned to.”

She made a small sound in her throat. Sexy—it shot tiny splinters of sensation under his skin. “I was always too forward for my own good.”

He didn’t turn. “There’s something to be said for cutting to the chase rather than cutting out the chase.”

“Yes, I could tell you were that type.” She leaned a little closer, resting her chin on his shoulder. He felt her breasts solidly this time, round and firm, pressed just below his shoulder blades. “All right, I’ll let you chase me,” she purred, her lips so close to his ear that his lobe vibrated. “And perhaps I’ll even let you catch me.” Perhaps she’d let him? He managed a dry chuckle.

Her hands closed around his upper arms. Long fingers, a strong grip. “Should we make it a dare?”

He was incited to a profligate degree, in mind as well as body. The latter was potentially embarrassing in such a public venue. “By all means,” he said, turning fractionally away from the banquettes beneath the front windows. The large stained glass piece she’d been looking at earlier hung directly over their heads, its myriad colors illuminated by several carefully placed spotlights. Their warmth was getting to him. A sheen of perspiration had risen on his forehead.

“I wouldn’t want to be just another of your popsies.”

He still hadn’t looked at her, but the black window reflected a pale image of her face, tilted beside his. “Popsies?” he asked, watching the dark shadows formed by the hollows of her eyes. Frustrating—he couldn’t gauge her reactions except in her voice. But she was holding on to him, forestalling his pivot.

“Lollipops.” The husky contralto hummed in his ear. “Sweet little suckers that last an hour, tops.”

“What makes you think I have a sweet tooth?”

Her grip tightened in concert with her voice. “Men like you…” She didn’t finish.

He let that one go. For now. Even though she was dead wrong. “And what is it you want?”

“Is this a negotiation instead of a dare?” She smoothed her right hand along his shoulder, switched her head over and said silkily in his other ear, “Shall we set up a list of rules, then? Would that suit your nature?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed when she reached past his shoulder and tugged playfully at his tie. Her fingertip followed the motion, flicking the bump above his collar as if chiding him for his hesitation. If only she knew. He was getting hard—so hard he had to shove a hand into his pocket and make a little room so his arousal wasn’t readily apparent. He swallowed again.

She said, drawing away, “I suppose you always follow the rules.”

“Not always.” He couldn’t turn.

“No?” She became playful. “By day, a by-the-books businessman. By night—” in the window, her head cocked “—a lawless scalawag.”

His lips compressed, withholding a laugh. “Scalawag?”

“Scoundrel, then.”

He chuckled.

“Libertine?” she suggested, stepping to his side, her eyes searching for his. “Lady-killer?”

“You’re way off base.”

She pretended to pout. “How disappointing. I was counting on your lawless streak to show me a good time.”

He turned quickly and took her by the elbows. A fleeting look of alarm passed over her face before her expression settled into an unblinking, wide-eyed stare. “You have no idea,” he said, startled by his own ferocity. His desire for her was quickly becoming rapacious. “What do you know about me? Not even my name.”

“It’s Daniel.” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, another small signal of uncertainty. “I heard your wife say it.”

“Tamar is my executive assistant.”

“Your assistant?” A spark lit the feline eyes. “Aha. A substitute wife. Of course. I get it now.” She placed her palms on his chest and pressed lightly as her upper body swayed toward his. “You’re one of those driven Wall Street types. No time for a family, but you’ve been with your secretary for ages. She knows your likes and dislikes better than you do. She manages both your professional and personal life with an efficiency that’s frightening. She fusses over you like a wife.”

“Tamar doesn’t fuss.” He moved his thumbs against the soft skin of her inner elbows. “Otherwise, your assessment is accurate enough to be unsettling. I wasn’t aware that I’d become such a cliché.”

She studied his face, her lips puckering ever so slightly. A half smile. “There’s more to you?”

He said “Yes” with some intensity.

Her eyes were wide, bright; they reached into his, asking a question he couldn’t decipher. Suddenly she turned away, disengaging their linked arms with a shudder so small he might have missed it if they weren’t so attuned.

“What do you think of the restaurant’s decor?” she asked in a social make-nice voice. Pressing her knuckles to the hollow of her throat, she tilted her head to study the panel of stained glass that hung above them like a misplaced church window.

Distracted by the loose tendrils that coiled against her neck, he barely glanced at the piece. He wanted to blow aside her hair and run his fingertips over the bumps of her vertebrae until he reached the hollow of her back. Her dress was so open, so provocative, he might reach inside and cup—

“Daniel?”

“Belongs in a church, not a restaurant,” he said without thought.

Her chin lowered. “Really.”

Damn. He’d said the wrong thing. Aside from a casual interest in photography, understanding Art-with-a-capital-A was a challenge he hadn’t yet set his sights on. Probably he was supposed to have used words like stunning agony or fascinating dichotomy.

But it was only a piece of stained glass.

He looked up at it. Yeah, sure, it was a nice piece of stained glass. The wood-framed panel was large, roughly five feet by three. It contained thousands of tiny pieces of glass—green, gold, orangy-brown and red predominately, with flecks of white, silvery blue and a stark, clear lapis lazuli. No rhyme or reason to the placement, that he could tell. Thinking modern art with a certain derision, he stepped back to better view the piece. The shards of colored glass coalesced into a whole.

“A forest,” he said, surprisingly moved by its beauty. “Sunlight shining through the leaves. Autumn leaves.”

It wasn’t Art Speak, but the lioness seemed pleased. “You like?”

She’d been testing him, he thought, not sure why. Although, he remembered belatedly, she had been at the center of a group of people who’d studied the piece like connoiseurs, all of them narrowing their eyes and nodding sagely. Except her. She’d looked highly skeptical.

“Yes, I do like it,” he said, his curiosity renewed.

She spoke directly in his ear once more, the sultry resonance of her voice overriding his newfound appreciation of art. “Let’s go.”

He stared into her face. “By all means.”

She threw back her head, her eyes slitted. “Perhaps not all means. Can we start with the usual one?”

Missionary? he wondered, then tried to banish the mental picture he’d conjured when it made heat surge lavishly toward his lower body.

“Walking,” she said, smiling just enough to further tease his senses.

He nodded and gestured for her to proceed. They’d negotiated the crowd and were nearly out the door when a tall man of indeterminate age broke away from a cluster of guests and hurried over to stop them. “A moment, my dear,” he called, and Daniel’s companion winced as if she’d touched a fingertip to a red-hot stove burner. By the time she turned, a pleasant expression had been plastered across her features. But he saw the grit of her teeth.

“You mustn’t leave so soon.” The other man was several inches taller than Daniel’s six feet, suited in double-breasted charcoal-black with a glossy onyx tie. His face was patrician and immobile, except for the eyes, which were avid. Freshly clipped platinum hair lay close to his skull.

“The Peytons have arrived,” he continued, with the faintest trace of exasperation. He reached for her elbow. “They are important.”

She brushed away his hand. “Another time.”

Daniel opened the door, drawing the other man’s assessment. And puzzled dismissal. He tried for her elbow again, eager to tow her back inside. “I know this sort of thing isn’t your cup of tea. However—” he drew out the word, laying it on thick as a dollop of too-sweet jam “—you did agree—”

The lioness kissed the man soundly on both cheeks, effectively shutting him up long enough for her and Daniel to slip out the door. “Hurry, hurry,” she said, taking his hand and moving swiftly along the sidewalk in a race-walk step that had to be doing interesting things to her slitted dress. Sure enough, from somewhere behind them a wolf whistle pierced the brisk night air.

“He’s not after us.” Daniel slowed, using their clasped hands to draw her in closer.

She glanced back. “I guess we’re safely away.”

“Who was he?”

“Kensington Webb.” She gave no other explanation.

“And you are?” Daniel asked.

She did not hesitate. “Camille.”

“Camille…?”

Her profile was unwavering; her eyes stared straight ahead, avoiding his. “Let’s keep it to first names for now.”

“Fine.” For now.

He was strangely enthralled by her reluctance. Nothing like a good chase, he thought as he slid his arm around her waist. Except, of course, the capture and the sweet surrender that would follow.

2

SOHO ON A FRIDAY NIGHT was familiar, but as far from home as Lara Gladstone could imagine. There had been rain earlier in the evening, enough to freshen the air and make the elaborate facades of the cast-iron warehouses gleam. An abundance of lights, pedestrians and traffic blurred together into a melange of city life, an animated stream that flowed continually along the narrow street. Its cobbled Belgian bricks glistened like fish scales, reflecting and refracting the carnival of color.

Lara looked up, forgetting that the stars weren’t visible the way they were at home; the glow of city lights hung like gauze across a patch of charcoal sky. Remembering the deep night skies and woody wet cedar smells of her home in the Adirondack Mountains made her shiver.

“You’re cold.” Daniel took his hot palm off the small of her back—he’d placed it where the open vee narrowed—and shrugged out of his suit jacket. Standing close behind her, he dropped the jacket over her shoulders. She shuddered into its warmth. His fingers brushed across her nape to gather up the loose strands of her hair. A small tug at her scalp, and he’d pulled her straggling hair free of the collar. Her head rolled to one side, like the blossom of a tulip grown too heavy for its stem. She was touched by his chivalry.

“Better?” he asked huskily, shooting sparks along her spine.

She straightened, nodding. “I had a wrap. I left it inside.”

“Should I go back?”

“No!” She gripped the jacket’s lapels, thrilled to have avoided a second round of meet-and-greet with her dealer Kensington Webb and his well-curried art collector clients. Kensington would be disappointed in her, no doubt, but she couldn’t take another minute of explaining her “vision” to the uptown elite.

There had been a time when she’d sworn to conquer that scene. No longer. If she’d had her choice, she’d have skipped tonight’s event altogether and stayed at Bianca’s to laugh and gab and eat with her real friends. But Kensington, in his subtle slinky octopus way, had worked hard to convince her to attend. And he was trying to push her work beyond craft, into the realm of museum-quality collectible art. Too many people believed stained glass belonged only in craft fairs and church windows.

In no hurry to move along, Daniel put his hands on her waist. She leaned even closer, remembering the expression in his eyes when he’d stepped back and really looked at her stained-glass panel. He’d gotten it, without her having to explain in complicated, pretentious jargon. His reaction was the kind of simple reward she cherished, more precious than the prestige of having her work selected for display at SoHo’s newest chichi eatery.

She slid her palms along his shoulders, down his arms. Her fingertips fluttered toward his. His eyes were locked on her face as he took her hands. A heated awareness of every magnificent inch of him flushed across her cheeks. He threaded their fingers, giving her a small half smile. Enchanted by the moment—the man—she looked her fill, staring like a greedy child until it felt as if her skin had grown plump and glossy with satisfaction. He was uniquely her match. She knew it instinctively.

Pedestrians continued to flow around them. Finally someone muttered, “Get a room,” and they widened their eyes and laughed, breaking apart, then coming together again. They walked to the corner with their hands linked. “We’ll go for a drink first,” he said, and she thought, Daniel, so chock-full of pleasure at the sound of his name in her head that she only belatedly wondered what came “second.” They crossed the intersection among a flurry of traffic and turned toward Mercer Street, their footsteps ringing on the metal vault covers of the loading bays.

Lara’s head was catching up to her impulses. She was astonished at her daring, but intrigued by the direction it had taken her. How far would she let it go?

Earlier, Daniel had drawn her attention as soon as she’d shed Kensington’s fawning attentions and taken a good look around the restaurant. There were other business types mixed in with the artsy uptown crowd, but only Daniel had exuded such a distinctive aura. Already feeling unlike herself in the costumey dress and out-of-use social mask, she’d decided right then to play a little game with him. At first the relationship she’d sensed between him and the pale woman with a casque of ebony hair had been disconcerting, but that had turned out all right.

She and Daniel were free, young and single—there was no reason not to follow her impulses. True, the strength of the attraction was alarming. She wasn’t sure how to curb it.

Or even if she wanted to.

He held her hand tightly as they plunged through a milling crowd of revelers who’d just emerged from one of the upscale loft buildings. She shot him an oblique glance. Chemistry like this was rare. Why not play it out?

They entered a trendy bar—was there any other kind in SoHo?—through vast glass doors, a place known for its funky pseudo-Adirondack style. It was packed with club crawlers, the black-and-white cowhide couch lined with preening fashionistas. Lara lifted her face toward the heavy log beams that spanned the ceiling, seeking a gulp of untainted oxygen. The air was thick with smoke and a constant buzz of gossip.

It was strange to think that she’d once belonged to a similar crowd, though hers had put less emphasis on designer labels and more on individuality. After a few years of struggle by day—she’d tried everything from waitressing to window dressing before her art had become self-supporting—and partying by night, she’d burned out on both and had taken herself to the country. It was there she’d found her best inspiration.

Daniel tugged on her hand. “Follow me.”

They’d been granted a tiny table for two, where they shared a brocade padded bench tucked away in a dark corner beneath a set of antlers. Two icy cold green-apple martinis arrived at the table and she downed a third of hers in one big gulp, hoping the liquor would cut through her otherworldliness. The animated stream of Manhattan nightlife was now wavering like a dream sequence; she blinked and watched the colors weave in and out.

I am light-headed. A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her chest and she swallowed it down again.

It was because she’d been alone so much, she decided. But she hadn’t felt out of place at Bianca’s with all her old friends, even though she’d lost touch with many of their current references. What was truly odd was returning, older and wiser, to play dress-up among the glitterati of SoHo. The liquor wasn’t helping in that regard.

No, that’s not all, Lara amended in the next instant. The blame was mostly Daniel’s.

Each time he turned his sharp gray eyes upon her face, she lost touch with the principles that guided her hard-won sense of self. Her intentions—to say nothing of her caution—tumbled into the chasm his eyes blasted into her concentration and when, after several minutes, she came back to herself, she was…unrestrained. Loose all over, like butter in the sun. Oiled like a hinge. The harsh lights and vivid colors burned her eyes. She found herself saying the most provocative things.

Helpless to resist, she leaned toward Daniel, drawn by his compelling masculinity. He was as magnetic as the great Broadway actor she’d met years ago at her father’s stone farmhouse in Umbria. In a swoony Welsh accent, the notorious old goat had told Lara that he wanted to take her to his homeland, that she must see Aberystwyth and the Vale of Glamorgan. His spell was so potent she’d been all but ready to hop a boat…until he’d stuck his hand up her skirt.

Daniel was less inclined.

Thus far.

Lara laughed freely at nothing in particular, except perhaps the heady whirlwind of an attraction that was so deeply sexual it had to be more than sexual. She sensed a possibility of long-term desire…if she played her cards right, remembered her limitations and kept her cool. The latter didn’t seem likely. She crossed her legs, widening the gap in her skirt.

Daniel put his hand on her kneecap. Her nerve endings hummed with pleasure.

She buried her nose in the mahogany-brown hair that curled behind his ear. He had the ears of a satyr; she wanted to nibble on the tip, suckle at the lobe.

“Mmm, Camille,” he murmured when she licked at his ear.

The name was part of her game. It provided the mask that was her safety net. Having grown up as the daughter of a legendary Man of Arts, watching the sycophants, dealers and scholars that revolved around him, hungrily snatching at his soul, she understood the value of simple anonymity.

“Tell me about yourself.” Daniel caught her chin in his big hot hand. She wanted to feel those hands all over her, blasting their heat into every hidden crevice like a relentless Mediterranean sun. “Let me guess. You’re…an artist?”

To avoid his intense gaze, she ducked under the tumbledown mess of her hair. “Some might say so.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well. You know.” She shrugged. “It’s a man’s world. Women’s work isn’t taken as seriously.”

“It’s the twenty-first century,” he said.

She laughingly overrode him, insisting, “No, no, in the art world it’s still 1900.”

“What do you do?”

She swallowed a private smile. “I sculpt.”

“Were you one of the artists with a piece on display at the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

When he frowned, two lines intersected in a vee an inch above the bridge of his nose. His brows were luxuriously thick, but as well-groomed as the rest of him. His nose was a strong beak, matched by a granite jaw. “I’m sorry. There was a lot of art there, but I don’t remember seeing any sculpture. Did I overlook it?”

“Probably. But that’s to be expected. Auguste gets all the credit.” She puffed wisps of hair out of her eyes, amused at Daniel’s confusion.

“I’m lost,” he said, absently stroking her collarbone, sending the tempo of her pulse sky-high.

“As am I.”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

She ducked under his arm and snuggled against him. “That’s the fun of it.”

“All right. I’ll play along.” He said this with such a weightiness she laughed again.

“It’s the weekend, Daniel. Forget about Nasdaq and Alan Greenspan and all the bulls and bears and other nasty beasties. Take a few hours off. Have some fun.” She crinkled her nose at him. “Do you know how to do that?”

“Oh, yes.” His baritone went right through her. “I know how.”

“I’ll just bet you do.” She gave her response equal weight, teasing him.

They skipped briefly over his career at a stuffy old brokerage house and how the world would spin off its axis if ever the market were to crash. She said that he could prop it up on his shoulders. He chuckled and nudged his untouched glass toward her empty one. She liked it that he could laugh at himself, though it was clear that he took his position as a Bairstow & Boone financial analyst—and newly minted partner—very, very seriously. There was an ambition in him that matched her own. Not a naked, greedy, soulless ambition, but the driven, meaningful, solid-as-bedrock sort.

“Harvard Business School,” she guessed, even though he didn’t seem Ivy League.

He nodded and narrowed his eyes, looking her over. “Cooper Union?”

She’d gone to Rhode Island School of Design. “I apprenticed to a sculptor in Paris,” she said, spinning her tale. “He was older, famous, domineering. He’d seduced me by the time I was twenty-one. Abandoned me some years thereafter.”

Daniel scowled, carving out another vee. “This Auguste guy?”

“That would be the one.”

“Never heard of him.”

She waved a hand. “He’s dead. But you can see his stuff in museums across all continents.”

“This is a joke?”

“It’s a universal truth.”

He looked lost again, but he was catching on. “Poor little artist,” he said. “You need a patron.”

“Oh, no. I prefer my Bohemian existence. Living day by day, scrounging in flea markets, peddling drawings for pennies, having fabulous affairs with rich, important men who grovel after every twitch of my skirt…” His opening.

The man was not slow on the uptake. “In this particular skirt,” he said, running his fingertips along her bare right leg, making her glad she’d skipped the hose, “a twitch is a mind-bending experience.”

Little did he know. Her recent garb was anything loose and sloppy—oversize shirts and elastic-waist shorts, long knit tunics paired with pajama bottoms. A by-product of having no one around to impress. Being fashionable was rather nice, for a change.