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She stepped back. “We’re on a tour. We’ll have dinner together every night.”
“What I had in mind was something a little more intimate. Just the two of us.” He closed the gap between them and toyed with her hair again. “Joe said he’d baby-sit your kids for you.”
“Shouldn’t you have checked with me first?” She batted his hand aside, setting her temper loose to bubble to the surface. Right now, anger seemed a good way to keep him at a safe distance.
He threw up his hands. “What do I have to do to stay out of trouble with you?”
“What makes you think I want you to do anything at all?”
“Look, Sydney,” he said as he paced the room, “we’re going to be living in each other’s pockets for another week and a half. Sharing the same dining rooms and hotels, the same buses, boats and tours. It would certainly make things more relaxed—more enjoyable—to know that I was on good terms with all the adults in this group.”
“All the adults? Are you planning a series of intimate dinners for two?” She marched to the dresser and grabbed a comb to tug through her hair. “Oh, except for Joe, of course. He’ll be doing all the babysitting.”
She watched in the mirror as Nick rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor. Slowly his eyes lifted. She could observe their progress, feel their touch, as they traveled over the curves outlined by the drape of her dress.
His gaze met hers in the glass. “You know,” he murmured, “it’s awfully hard to argue with a woman who looks the way you do right now.”
Her stomach did a quick jackknife on its way to her knees. She dropped the comb, wincing as it clattered across the dresser’s surface. In her hurry to grab it, she knocked over the little bottle of scent and scattered her faux sapphire earrings.
Smooth move, Gordon.
In the mirror, she watched that familiar, wry amusement flicker in Nick’s eyes before they darkened and smoldered. Dang, he could do a great smolder. Things were definitely heating up in here. She held her breath, afraid of fanning a stray flame.
He shifted his stance. “Time to start from scratch.”
“Okay.” She turned and exhaled, smoothing her hands over her dress. Saved from spontaneous combustion—for the time being. “Good idea.”
He stalked to the door. “As I recall, I entered, peace offering in hand—the finest light beverage I could find in the neighborhood.” He strolled to the table, improvising the little scene. “I even helped you with your zipper—more of that chivalry stuff.”
He paused for her reaction. When she rolled her eyes, he shot her a lopsided grin.
“I made a heartfelt apology, which you accepted,” he reminded her. “Encouraged by my apparent success at smoothing things between us, I asked you out to dinner.”
He slumped, the image of dejection, onto the foot of Gracie’s bed. “I can’t tell if I’m making any progress here, but at least you’re listening.” He glanced up. “You are listening, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She stifled a smile. “Go on.”
“I must really be slipping.” He shook his head. “Usually when I ask a woman out to dinner and add a little flattery, she at least considers, instead of looking for ulterior motives.” He shot her a dangerous look. “The ulterior motives part is supposed to come after dinner.”
“Nick, I already—”
“Let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I’ve tried flattery. I’ve tried the Boy Scout good deed approach. I’ve used up about a month’s worth of charm. I’m running out of ideas here, Sydney.” He focused on the floor. “Maybe a play for pity will work. I’ll throw myself at Gracie’s feet and beg her to intercede on my behalf.”
“You’d probably have a better chance with her, anyway. For some God-knows-why reason, she likes you.”
Nick’s head snapped up, his smile dazzling. “You two have been talking about me, huh?”
Sydney laughed, charmed in spite of her resolve against it, and pointed to the door. “Out.”
He rose and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re not still mad at me?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“Let’s stick with friendly acquaintances for now,” she said, opening the door for him.
He strolled through it and turned to face her. “Dinner?”
“Not that friendly.” She shut him out, leaned back against the door and stared at the two sodas sitting side by side on the table across the room. There was no mistaking the mush-like quality in the sag of her spine.
CHAPTER FIVE
HARLEY MAXWELL arrived home from her day job dealing blackjack along Lake Tahoe’s north shore to find trouble in her usual parking spot and more of it across the street, sprawled on Norma and Syd’s front porch. Much more of it. Six feet, three inches of it, to be exact. Trouble in a three-piece navy-blue suit, striped navy-blue tie and serious navy-blue eyes.
She yanked the steering wheel of her tin-can car hard left and tickled the clutch through the familiar cough-and-shudder routine. Her car tried to roll over and play dead, but she stomped on the brakes before it could shimmy off the steep edge of the road. Big mistake. The little engine that usually could up and died.
She climbed out and slammed the compact’s door, hard, so it would stick. Had to stay on top of things, show that car who was boss. It might not last long enough to get her to Vegas, once she’d saved enough to make her move, but she was counting on it to get her to her second job that night. Tomorrow she’d have a heart-to-heart with the carburetor. Maybe threaten it with a tune-up from Dusty, the oversize mechanic with the sledgehammer hands and the scary-looking tools. It wasn’t much of a threat, really. Dusty was a pushover for down-on-their-luck autos and Harley’s apple tarts.
She took a deep breath and prepared to deal with the man lounging near the stairway leading to Syd’s attic apartment: Henry Barlow, the oversize attorney with the manicured nails and the nifty leather briefcase. It wasn’t going to be easy; Henry wasn’t a pushover for anything she could think of. It would take a hell of a lot more than an apple tart to ease her way around him.
She stilled a moment and waited for her heart to do that odd flippy thing it did whenever she saw him. She had no idea why the sight of the terminally repressed businessman with an undertaker’s fashion sense and a constipated outlook on life could make her heart stutter. Maybe her heart needed a tune-up, too.
Henry sure looked like he could use one. Someone had mussed his hair and loosened his tie. Not too much, or she might not have recognized him, though the sedate silver sedan parked in front of her house was a pretty big clue. The mussing couldn’t be Henry’s doing. He never mussed—er, messed up. Especially not his appearance. Razor-sharp, that was his personal style. Every tie knotted, every crease pressed, every hair perfectly—and predictably—in place.
She ambled across the narrow, rutted mountain road. “Hey, Hank, what’s up?”
“How many times do I have to tell you my name’s not Hank?” He struggled upright. “It’s Henry.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She dropped her canvas tote on the step below his feet. “Several hundred more, at least. It’s not that I forget your name, you know. It’s just that ‘Henry’ doesn’t go down as smooth as ‘Hank.’”
“That’s ridiculous.” He belched, and a whiff of whiskey-soaked misery floated her way. “Henry is meluf…meliful…it’s poetic. Hank is a truck driver in North Dakota.”
Hank Barlow drunk? In the middle of the afternoon? What was the world coming to? “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Checking to see if Norma needs any…” He waved a long-fingered hand in the air. “Anything. While Sydney’s gone.”
Anyone who knew Norma, Syd’s retired landlady who lived in the ground level of the Victorian-era house, knew she could take care of herself. Hank’s reason for being here was as flimsy as his hold on his dignity.
He dribbled an expensive single malt into the faceted crystal glass in his hand and took a loud, slurping sip.
“For cryin’ out loud.” Harley shook her head. “Ditch the Waterford and put the booze in the bag. You’re embarrassing me here.”
He stared at the glass. “I rang Norma’s doorbell to ask about Sydney’s plants, but she didn’t answer.”
“Today’s Wednesday. Norma’s bridge group meets on Wednesdays.” She settled beside him on the sun-warmed porch. “Why don’t you come over to my place? I can fix you some coffee while you wait for her. We can have a nice talk. About what’s bothering you, for instance.”
A jay swooped past with an annoyed squawk to fill the empty spot where Hank’s response belonged.
“Syd playing hard to get again?” asked Harley.
“It’s only a temporary setback. I’ll talk to her and straighten this out when she gets back.” He stared into his glass. “I have to marry her. It’s an investment in the future.”
Harley frowned. “That’s one way of putting it, I guess.”
“There are a number of important factors to consider. And I’ve considered them all, very carefully. It’s the logical thing to do.”
Harley noticed he hadn’t mentioned love. But she’d try to be supportive. He was a nice guy, even if he was a little stiff. “Being logical is important in a relationship, I suppose.”
“It’s good to have someone understand. You’re a nice woman, Harley.” He tossed back the last drops of whiskey in his glass and set it on the step. “Except when you call me Hank.”
“And you’re a nice man, Hank.” She patted him on the knee. There were some nice, lean muscles under those sharply pleated slacks. Who’d have guessed?
There was a nice, steady heart beating beneath that neatly pressed jacket, too. Hank Barlow was one of the nicest men she’d ever met. That wasn’t saying much, because most of the men she’d met were jerks. Even so, Hank wasn’t the kind of guy who deserved to get dumped just when he was closing the deal on getting Syd to the altar.
But Syd was a nice woman, too, and she didn’t deserve to be shackled to a guy she didn’t really love.
Why couldn’t life just work out sometimes? And why did Harley have to get stuck in the middle of this mess?
“Come on, big guy.” She reached out a hand, waited for Hank to take it, and then struggled to get him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Hank belched again and mumbled an apology. “I don’t usually do things like this.”
“I kind of figured.”
“I’m usually more shir—more circumzz—”
“Circumspect?” Harley shook her head. It was a pretty sad state of affairs when a man’s drinking vocabulary sounded like something from a public affairs network.
“Circumspect,” he said. “It means—”
“I know what it means, Hank.”
He wobbled a bit and glanced down at her. “You don’t look like the kind of woman who would know what that means.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What kind of woman do I look like?”
“I can’t say.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t want to insult you.”
“Any more than you already have, you mean.”
“I do?” He swayed a bit, and she shoved him upright. “I did?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You don’t like me very much, do you?”
She took him by the arm and led him down the porch steps. “I like you fine.”
“Meredith likes me,” he mumbled to himself, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Sydney’s mother. That’s the kind of woman who finds me attractive. Middle-aged battle-axes.”
He stumbled over some loose gravel, and Harley slipped an arm around his waist. He leaned against her, big and solid and warm. “I’ve been hitting on the wrong demographic,” he said. “Young women in singles bars or on the slopes. From now on, I’m looking for my dates at bingo parlors.”
“It’s not as bad as all that, is it?”
“Just about.” He stopped and lifted his hands to her shoulders. “Do you find me attractive?”
Oh, God, yes. She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think I should answer that question.”
“See? That proves my point.” He closed his eyes, wobbled a bit and leaned his forehead against hers. “You’re not an elderly battle-ax.”
Her heart was flipping and flopping so fast she thought she’d pass out, right there on the street. “No, I’m not,” she whispered.
“You smell good.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t.”
“It’s the whiskey.”
She closed her eyes. “I know.”
“Harley?”
“Hmm?”
“This is probably the whiskey, too,” he said, and then his mouth pressed against hers.
She froze for a moment, while his lips skimmed a teasing line along hers and his hands drifted down to settle at her waist. She tried—she really tried—to remember that Hank was feeling a little unsteady, that technically he was still Syd’s boyfriend and that they were standing in the middle of the street where the neighbors could watch the show. But then his tongue swept inside her mouth, and he pulled her tight against him, and a moan rumbled up from his chest, and she was lost in the delicious, delightful surprise of his kiss.
The surprise had nothing to do with the fact that she’d never imagined this kiss could happen. A girl was entitled to her fantasies, after all. No, the surprise was that there was nothing repressed, or sedate, or stiff, or predictable, or nice about this kiss. This kiss was the opposite of nice. It was a take-no-prisoners assault, a seductive and sensual plummet into something dark and deep.
Her heart flipped and flopped one last time, and then it fell into Hank’s oversize hands with a thud.
NICK’S FINGERS danced over his laptop’s keyboard the morning after the play as he roughed out a scene for his mystery novel. The clack of the keys was faint competition for the whoosh and whir of the traffic noise rising like vapor from the rain-moistened pavement below. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled the aroma of early-morning London wafting through his open hotel window. Cooking oil and diesel fuel blended in a cheap scent: Big City.
He clicked the save command and slumped in the chair to read through his draft. Jack Brogan, the star of most of his stories, was moving up in the world, and London would make a classy background for his latest exploits. This could be the start of an entire European series, a project that would require plenty of research. Writing books set in exotic locales could be an exhausting business, but if someone had to do it, it might as well be Nick Martelli.
His thoughts drifted again to the uptight teacher from California. A major mystery there, and his own sleuthing hadn’t yet revealed what it was about her—other than her looks and her attitude—that was striking sparks.
Story sparks, among other kinds. He was starting to believe his own theory about her being some kind of muse. And thinking about her the way he usually did—with his cranial blood supply taking a trip south—wasn’t the proper way to think about a muse.
Not that he was aware of proper behavior when it came to muses. But he’d bet seducing them wasn’t on the program.
Behind him, Joe groaned again, struggling toward complete consciousness. Nick stalked across the room and yanked the pillow out from under his brother’s head. “Rise and shine, Mr. Martelli. Breakfast in thirty minutes.”
Joe rolled with a yawn and swiped a hand over his morning stubble. “Maybe I’ll grow a beard this week.”
Joe’s wife would kill him if he came home scraggly, and she’d probably have Nick tortured as an accomplice. Connie Martelli was one scary lady.
