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He glanced around as he heard Callahan yawn. “He wants to deal tomorrow night.”
“We’ll cover you.”
“Okay. See you.”
“Wait a second, J.D. Did you give it to her?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to bring her in on it? If she’d go out with him—”
Creative Spanish epithets peppered the air within the phone booth.
“Lighten up, pal. I was kidding.”
“Don’t kid with me about Magnolia.”
“You’ll relax after you give it to her.”
“I don’t trust it,” J.D. said.
“Hey, it’s state of the art.”
“Yeah. Experimental state of the art.”
“So, figure out a backup.”
He glanced at his watch. Too much time had passed. “Already got it covered.”
“I figured as much. Relax already.”
“When this is over. Maybe.”
Two
Maggie eyed her mantel clock when it chimed once, a delicate ping that pierced her anticipation. Twelve-thirty. He should have been at her apartment twenty minutes ago.
She leaned forward on the sofa, resting her elbows on her thighs as she stared at the crystal bowl mounded with shimmering Christmas ornaments that sat on her coffee table. She had to face facts. He wasn’t coming.
She wasn’t surprised. Not really. He’d changed his mind. Probably decided it wasn’t worth spending time with someone who goaded him into an argument whenever he got close. They were so different, she knew they’d never have a serious relationship. What they really needed was to sleep together, to satisfy their curiosity, then the source of antagonism that hovered constantly would be wiped out forever.
Not here, though. They should go to his place. Better yet, to a hotel. Some neutral location where memories wouldn’t linger and taunt.
Spoken like a woman of experience, Magnolia Jean. She pushed her hair away from her face, then let it fall again. The sum total of her experience with the opposite sex wouldn’t constitute three pages in her autobiography, if she included her fourth-grade crush on Bobby Don Morgan. But she’d imagined making love with Diego so many times, she had choreographed the experience detail by detail. At least, what she would do to him.
Before he’d come into her life. she’d dated at least, hoping to meet her lifetime partner. But in the past year, she’d hardly gone out at all, finding flaws in every man who invited her, even though the word thirty seemed lit in neon across her forehead each time she looked in her bathroom mirror.
Thirty. Where had the time gone? She couldn’t wait much longer, didn’t have the luxury to deal with the attraction to Diego and still get started on a family before she was any older—as old as her mother had been.
The quiet tapping on her front door sent an avalanche of reaction tumbling over her. Boulders of relief, followed by pebbles of annoyance. She counted to ten, then opened the door. Desire rebuilt the mountain instantly. She resented it as much as she welcomed it.
“I figured you changed your mind.” Maggie feigned a yawn as she turned away, letting him close the door himself.
“I’m sorry. I was detained by a...by a—Did you decorate this, Magnolia?”
She turned around. Diego stood, his hands in his pockets, surveying her living room.
“Every bit of lit.” Was that a look of shock or wonder? She knew her voice held an edge of defensiveness, as if daring him to comment unfavorably. She glanced around the room with its framed counted cross-stitch samplers and groupings of baskets and candles and photographs. Pristine eyelet fabric draped small round tables on which Tiffany lamps glowed, the yellow and blue glass reflecting the dominant colors of the room, even competing with the Christmas free lights as they were.
“It’s a little crowded with all the holiday decorations,” she said as he moved around the room, inspecting without commenting. He picked up a heart-shaped pillow and it struck her how utterly feminine it—everything—was. Frilly, romantic, old-fashioned. Or maybe it was just that he was so very masculine.
“What color do you call this?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Robin’s egg blue.” She watched him replace the pillow slightly askew, resisted the temptation to march over and straighten it.
“It matches your eyes.”
J.D. tried to align the overall impression of her home with his deep-seated image of her. He’d always thought of her as a contemporary woman, a feminist. Certainly, her sassy mouth was pure nineties. If he’d even once tried to picture the environment she lived in, he would have imagined white and chrome and glass, something modern and sleek, certainly nothing close to this... this Suzy Homemaker vision.
Except, of course, he’d known about the fund she’d been adding to for years, saving for the wedding gown of her dreams. Everyone at the Carola knew about it. But no one knew why the gown or the age-thirty goal was so important, except probably her sister, Jasmine.
“Would you like some wine, Diego? And I’ve got cheese and crackers, as well.” She didn’t wait for his reply but headed toward the kitchen. “Take off your jacket. Get comfortable.”
“Magnolia.”
She turned around, her brows lifted in inquiry.
“Come here, please.”
“Why?”
He chuckled. “You are so suspicious.”
“Well, honey, you’re behavin’ awfully different tonight.”
“Am I?” He ignored her Southern belle routine, and took the necessary steps to bridge the gap. “I’m trying to find a way to communicate with you without arguing.”
From his pocket he pulled out the gold-foil-wrapped box and pressed it into her right hand. She hefted it lightly.
“Hmm. Smaller than last year’s oh-so-personal engraved pen and pencil set.”
“Haven’t you forgiven me for that yet?”
She tossed it once, caught it cleanly. “Heavy for its size, though. Professionally wrapped.”
“You’re worth it.”
“Probably offered free gift wrapping with purchase,” she said, casting him a quick glance before holding the package at eye level and examining it further. “Could be a key chain.”
“Monogrammed,” he offered.
“I’d accept nothing less.” She shook it, holding it close to her ear. “A box within a box.”
“You’re good at this.”
“When I was growing up I guessed all of my Christmas presents before I opened them.”
“You were never surprised?”
She made a sound of disgust. “My mother was predictable.”
He leaned close. “Why don’t you just open it?”
“But then the anticipation ends.” Maggie held her breath as she savored his nearness and warmth, and the scent she’d recognize anywhere.
He dipped his head a little farther. His breath stirred her bangs. “Open it.”
He’d taken off his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt before he’d arrived. Maggie’s nose was an inch from the open vee of his pleated shirt. Her teenaged niece had once pronounced him a—
“Stud,” she sighed.
“What?”
She stepped back. “Uh, stud. Your stud’s loose.” She tucked the present under her chin and slid a hand behind his shirt to fiddle with the black onyx and gold stud. The backs of her fingers brushed chest hair. The moment froze in time until she felt his hands encircle her wrists and move her back. He pulled the gift from under her chin, placed it wordlessly in her hand.
Maggie swallowed. She peeled off the pretty wrappings and tipped a burgundy velvet container out of a box bearing the discreet emblem of Rappaport Jewelers. The hinge didn’t make even the tiniest creak as she pushed up the velvety lid. Her hand hovered over the contents. “Why, it’s beautiful!”
She sought Diego, confusion swamping her. The gift was personal and expensive—a sparkling chain bearing a heavy gold pendant shaped like a teardrop, perhaps an inch long and half an inch wide at the base.
“May I?” he asked, extending his hand. “Turn around. Tip your head forward.”
She waited what seemed like an hour before he lifted the cham over her head. As he fastened the clasp, his fingertips grazed her neck, enough to make her skin prickle, but not enough to call it seduction. The pendant itself rested at heart level. She turned around to thank him.
“I wish I’d changed into something nicer. Something silk to show it off,” she said, looking down, lifting a hand toward it.
He touched three fingers to the pendant as it nestled at a level just above the front clasp of her bra. His thumb and little finger grazed the inner curve of her breasts. Their gazes connected ; her hand fell away.
Where did he come from, this James Diego Duran, who admitted he desired her, yet resisted her so easily; who avoided touching her for a year and a half, then the first time he did, touched her intimately? Oh, she knew of his background, of his difficult childhood, but that didn’t explain the man, only some of the reasons why he behaved as he did sometimes.
“The necklace is all right?” he asked as he pulled his hand back.
“It’s incredible.”
“You won’t ever take it off?”
“Ever?”
“You won’t shove it in a drawer if you get angry at me?”
“It’d spend more time in my drawer than around my neck.” She smiled at him until he smiled back. “How about some wine now?”
He hesitated. “I should leave.”
They continued to stare at each other.
She inched closer. “Would you like to see what Misty designed for my birthday?”
“Probably not.”
She smiled. “It’s just a little something—”
“I’m sure it is. I’ve seen catalogs of her products.”
“Well, I love it, of course,” she drawled. “But I’d like a man’s opimon.”
Frozen, J.D. watched her stroll across the room and lift up a box lid. She withdrew a teddy fashioned of red satin and lace, and dangled it by the straps as she moseyed back to him.
Dios. He recognized the design of the garment, if not the garment itself. After he’d rescued Misty from those dirtbags the other night, he’d driven her home. She’d asked him what his ideal woman wore to entice him. “Just her skin,” he’d replied. When she hadn’t accepted that as an answer, he’d described the frothy bit of nothing Magnolia was holding in front of her as though she didn’t think he could imagine her clothes stripped away and the red see-through concoction molding her enticing curves.
“Misty’s quite a talented designer, isn’t she?” Maggie asked, stretching the bra cups at the sides until they settled provocatively over her.
“It suits you.”
“Does it? I tend to favor pastel colors in my lingerie. You think red is suitable with my coloring?”
“You think men think about things like that?”
She was quiet a moment, then said, “If you were going to buy this for...a woman, what would make you decide to purchase it?” Her voice had dropped an octave; her eyes took on a sleepy, sexy look.
He fingered the lace at the bodice. “I would wonder if it’s low enough to expose her breasts almost all the way, so there’s a danger of them spilling out if she breathes deep. I’d want her nipples visible through the lace. I’d wonder how easily it comes off. I’d want it not to be fragile, so that I don’t have to be too careful or too controlled when I take it off her.” He slid his hand down the fabric, down her, to toy with the snaps at the crotch. “I would want the fabric thin enough to feel how wet she gets when I touch her.”
“You want a lot,” she said, her voice catching breathlessly on her imagination.
“Oh, yes.”
“I could go slip this on...”
He held her gaze a few seconds, then he bent slowly toward her and brushed a fleeting kiss against her cheek.
Waves of sensation rolled through her. She forgot to breathe. When she did take in air again, he was gone, along with the unexpected pleasure he’d brought that suddenly burst like a birthday balloon when the door clicked shut, leaving her alone and bewildered.
Needing to analyze what had just happened, she paced her living room, walking off excess energy. She wasn’t completely sure of his intentions after tonight, but he seemed to be wanting a deeper relationship. When the phone rang a few minutes later, she snatched up the receiver and said hello.
“I forgot to say good-night.”
Diego. She dropped onto the sofa and tucked her legs under her. “Are you home already?”
“I’m in my car. I’ll be home in about ten minutes.”
