Pink Satin (4 page)

They passed. They
definitely
passed. The loaf was tall and golden brown, and smelled…irresistible. And the cake—if she said so herself—would tempt the most determined weight watcher. Satisfied, Greer glanced at the clock, noted it was just after nine o’clock, and realized absently that her crank caller had actually left her alone for an entire evening. It seemed a good omen. Resolutely, she balanced the cake plate in one hand and the bread in the other.

Truce didn’t make the juggling act any easier by trying to wind around her legs at the door. “I’ll be right back. Promise,” Greer told him.

Turning the knob was a precarious business, but she managed, and padded barefoot across the hall. Using her elbow as a knocker, she thumped on her new neighbor’s door and waited.

No answer. Earlier Greer had heard various thumps and rattles through their shared apartment wall; she was certain Ryan was home. Chewing her lip indecisively, she tried her elbow on the bell and threatened the bread with a dire future if it toppled.

“Just open it,” Ryan’s voice finally yelled impatiently from within.

“I can’t.”

“You’ll have to.”

Hmm. Pasting an innocuously cheerful smile on her face, Greer managed to turn the knob with her wrist and push it open. “Ryan?”

Boxes and packing crates greeted her. Of course he’d only moved in a few days before, but Greer still couldn’t help smiling. He had obviously unpacked assorted tools and books as a first priority, whereas he hadn’t bothered with anything so mundane as putting up his bed—a queen-sized mattress was lying plop center on the living room carpet.
Men.

“I heard that.”

“I never said a thing.” Greer swung around to face him—as well as she could with her arms full.

Like Greer, Ryan had tousled hair and bare feet; he was wearing jeans so old they were a soft gray-blue. But whereas Greer wore a scarf and a holey sweatshirt, Ryan was bare from the waist up.

Very bare. Strikingly bare. His chest was sun-browned, his shoulders sleek and muscular, and his jeans hung low over lean hips. Crisp, curling hair grew in an intimate line from his throat to his navel.

For an instant, Greer felt a strong, unfamiliar emotional rush, making her palms feel oddly slippery, her world tilt slightly off-balance. She tried to banish it. Certainly the rest of Ryan’s appearance was enough to bring back her natural humor. He was covered with paint. Speckles of white dotted his mustache, his chest hair and his jeans, and both hands glistened with them…partly because he was still holding a paintbrush.

Greer took a breath and then chuckled. “I can see why you couldn’t answer your door,” she said lightly. “Don’t tell me you don’t share Mrs. Wissler’s love for purple?”

“I’m glad you came over,” he said quietly. “If I’d known it was you—”

“Just bringing welcome-to-the-neighborhood offerings.” Greer rushed past him, her arms beginning to give out even before she reached his kitchen counter. Sensibly, she plopped down her peace offerings, while most unreasonably her pulse was throbbing a mile a minute. She’d heard his low, vibrant baritone, the obvious glad-to-see-you-here in his voice. “I didn’t come to stay, just to cart over the cake and bread,” she called back brightly. “I have this terrible problem when I come home from a tough day; I can’t sit still and inevitably find myself in the kitchen. Then, though, there’s this problem with calories—which I figured I could shift on to you, being the nearest unfortunate neighbor. No hurry returning the plates—”

You can stop jabbering any time, Greer.
She hadn’t meant to stay, and she now found herself in a great hurry to leave once she’d deposited her gifts in his kitchen.

Wiping her palms on the seat of her jeans, she whirled for the doorway, and found Ryan’s dark shadow blocking it. Her best company smile immediately curved her lips. “Honest, I’m not staying,” she repeated.

“Did you get another phone call tonight?”

“Nope. He must be taking a vacation. Hardly ever misses a Wednesday.” It was
still
easy to talk to him. The only difference was the memory of a thirty-second kiss, and a feeling of sexual awareness Greer hadn’t had the day before.

She tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t that simple with Ryan standing there half-naked, a silent apartment behind him, and his soft, luminous eyes on hers. Had she really thought him ordinary-looking yesterday?

He wasn’t at all. He had the sleek, lean look of an animal in the wild, the body of a man who used his muscles to do far more than push paper around a desk. His maleness assaulted her in the suddenly intimate silence, and Greer felt totally irritated with herself. It was one thing to be unnerved by a man who threatened her, but another thing altogether to get uptight when the man had done nothing but be friendly…give or take one kiss. “I’ll be going…”

“Stay a minute and see what I’m doing.”

She shook her head, “Really, I still have a ton of things to do.”

“Just for a minute,” Ryan coaxed.

“You’re busy,” she informed him firmly.

“And if I have to face one more purple room alone, I think I’ll suffer apoplexy. Have you ever tried to outstare a dead purple wall?”

“Actually, no.” Greer took a breath, and another step closer to the door. Ryan didn’t move. She smiled engagingly at him. “Something told me you wouldn’t keep the purple walls. Honestly, though, I don’t want to get in your way.”

“You don’t have to pick up a paintbrush, I promise. Just spare me a few minutes of conversation.”

“Really, I…” She’d only come to set things straight, and in Frank Sinatra fashion, her way. If she made an act of pure uncomplicated friendship, he would have to react in kind. And since she was dressed like a bag lady, she figured he’d get the rest of the message.

Maybe he was getting the rest of the message, Greer thought dismally, but for some unknown reason she seemed to be headed toward his bedroom a few seconds later.

Forty-five minutes later, Greer was perched on the fourth rung of a ladder with a paintbrush in her hand, doing her darnedest to work up a sweat. As fast as she slathered white latex on the purple corner, she was dipping the brush back into the coffee can Ryan had given her.

“I really didn’t ask you in to put you to work.” From behind her, Ryan’s tone was laced with amusement. “Do you always paint as though you’re attacking your worst enemy?”

Greer’s bare toes curled on the ladder rung, but she didn’t turn her head. “When it’s the purple villain, yes,” she said blithely. “If I had to eat scrambled eggs in the morning staring at dark purple walls, I believe I’d be able to give up breakfast.” Without turning, she added, “What are you planning on doing with the room after this, or have you decided yet?”

Ryan paused, as he dipped his roller into the paint. “Beyond getting rid of the purple, I haven’t worried about it much, knowing I’ll build my own place as soon as possible. I don’t know… At home, I had a corner fireplace in the bedroom—but this climate hardly calls for it. The stereo has to go in here; I almost always listen to music before sleeping…”

Or seducing, Greer thought darkly. Fireplaces, firm mattresses and music at midnight…it all suited him. Her paintbrush swish-swished over the wall at the speed of sound.
Why
couldn’t he have needed his
kitchen
painted instead of the bedroom? Why did these silly images keep popping into her head?

Oh, well. In a half hour, the room would be done. He’d already finished three walls and the ceiling before she came in. A little molding and one windowsill were all that remained, except for the wall Ryan was painting now. She climbed down from the ladder and started working on the windowsill.

Truthfully, she didn’t mind helping him. Facing house projects after a long day’s work was never any fun alone. And even though he was only a short-term resident, she wasn’t surprised that he wanted a fresh coat of paint on the place—not simply because he couldn’t live with Mrs. Wissler’s purple, but also because he was clearly a man who’d want to put his own stamp on a place.

Her eyes darted to Ryan. His forehead was dotted with moisture, and damp brown hair curled on his brow. An evening beard darkened his chin, and Greer found herself staring at it, then letting her eyes wander deliberately down to his bare, muscled chest.

She relaxed. No dreadful rush of sexual emotions assaulted her. These little fantasies that kept cropping up in her head were absolutely ridiculous. Ryan had done little but tease her and make her laugh. There’d been nothing to make her believe he was even seriously interested. “I should have brought Truce,” she said absently as she picked up the paintbrush again. “He’ll be howling up a storm next door. He doesn’t seem to mind if I’m gone all day, but if I leave at night I always come home to those pitiful wails.”

“A cat that needs a babysitter,” muttered Ryan.

“I take it you’re a dog man.”

“Was that meant as an insult?”

She shook her head, laughing. “No, but people always seem to go one way or the other. German shepherd?” she guessed.

“Great Pyrenees. I left her with my brother in Maine. I knew there’d be no place for her to run here.”

“I thought the Pyrenees were mountains.”

“They’re also big white dogs. Would you
stop
working like a Roman slave, please? You’re hitting my masculine ego where it hurts. I can’t keep up with you.”

“You poor thing,” Greer began, and dropped her paintbrush on the tarp at her feet when she heard the faint but unmistakable ring of a telephone through the paper-thin walls.

Behind her, she heard Ryan setting down his paint roller. “Your apartment’s unlocked?”

“Yes, but don’t. Really. I—”

He paused only long enough to grab a rag for his hands before he disappeared. Greer gnawed on her lip, then picked up her brush and dipped it in the paint can again. Dip and stroke, dip and stroke. Her heart was trying to condense into a tight, hard beating ball in her chest, yet Ryan couldn’t have been gone five minutes.

“A man named Michael,” he said briskly. “I told him you had your hands full of paint and you’d call him back when you could.”

Greer took a huge breath. “Thanks. For a minute, I was afraid it was my favorite crank call—”

“So who’s Michael?” Ryan interrupted conversationally. “Another potential heavy breather?”

Expecting him to pick up his roller again, Greer was startled when he blocked her from behind. He stole her paintbrush from one hand and a small rag from the other. For one very small moment, the backs of her thighs were cradled against the fronts of his, and Greer stood immobile as a statue. “No. Just someone I occasionally go out wi—what on earth are you doing?”

“Break time,” Ryan announced, moving away from her.

“But we could have the whole room finished in just a few minutes…” Her voice trailed off. He’d already disappeared into the hall.

“I brought Truce with me,” Ryan called over his shoulder, “so he wouldn’t start howling if you stayed a few more minutes.”

“Oh. Well, that was nice of you, but…” Greer let her voice trail off again, so he wouldn’t hear the hint of doubt. Not that saving the cat wasn’t kind, but somehow the man kept making it difficult for her to leave.

Truce sat on the kitchen counter watching both of them wash the paint from their hands, occasionally flicking his tail in disdain when water threatened to splash his way. “We’d be better off in the shower,” Ryan said.

Greer’s head jerked up. Was it only in her head that he’d just added “together”? “Yes. So I’ll just go next door, and—”

“But we’ll make do.” He tilted her chin before she’d realized he was going to, and took a small damp cloth to a white splotch on her nose and another on her cheek. She lowered her eyes the instant he touched her, and kept them lowered, her soft, dark lashes shadowing her cheeks like tufts of velvet.

Since she obviously had fifty million men in her life, Ryan couldn’t figure out why she was skittish with him. Particularly since her cheeks just faintly warmed with color when he touched her. She wasn’t indifferent.

“Let’s have a glass of wine before we call it a night,” he suggested.

Greer dried her hands, debating. Go home, she told herself. Her heart was thundering again, but that was just plain silly. He hadn’t made a pass or implied one; they’d shared a neighborly couple of hours and both of them looked like derelicts. Enough of this overreacting to him. So his touch had been infinitely gentle on her cheek. What had she expected him to do? Attack her face with a scouring pad?

She accepted a full wineglass from him, and then he poured his own. Unfortunately, there was no place to sit, between packing crates and a distinct lack of furniture. Ryan solved that by setting a candle in the middle of the hall carpet, and Greer chuckled, flopping down cross-legged next to him.

“To good neighbors.” Ryan raised his glass.

She clinked crystal to crystal. “Absolutely.” The barren hall had thick carpet and a ceiling light fixture. That was it. After the first two sips Ryan leaned back against the wall and stretched out his legs. Greer leaned against the opposite wall with an equally weary sigh.

“An hour of physical work and I probably won’t be able to move tomorrow. I think I’m getting old,” she complained ruefully.

Ryan peered at her critically. “I see three freckles but no wrinkles.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Good Lord.
That
old?”

She couldn’t help but stretch out one bare foot to kick him. Only Ryan grabbed her ankle, and before she could pull away he ran his forefinger up and down the sole of her foot. She jerked back with a startled giggle. “Hey,” she objected.

“Hey nothing. You’re ticklish, all right.”

She took a sip of wine, studying him warily over the rim of her glass. “A little,” she admitted.

“You said you weren’t.”

“Fib.” Greer hesitated. “I learned to fib a long time ago around men I don’t know very well,” she said casually. “Actually, that’s partly why I came over here tonight.”

“To admit you fibbed about being ticklish?” he said gravely.

Greer smiled. “No. Because I…” Her finger slowly traced the rim of the wineglass. Facing the goblins was always the best way. The kiss was still bothering her, and so was her emotional reaction to him. “Friendships are hard to come by. Know that?” she said abruptly.

“Are they?”

“Friendships with members of the opposite sex. Relationships are easy to fall into, friendships less so.” Greer paused again. “I value friendships a great deal,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t help but get the message. Ryan swallowed the last of his wine and set down the glass, his eyes enigmatically dark in the shadowed hall. “You have a man in your life you’re serious about?”

“No. I just don’t…rush into any kind of involvement. Ever.”

“Still feeling burned from your ex-husband?”

“It’s not that.” At
all,
Greer thought fleetingly. She would never again be so naive as to fall for a man who wanted a mother. Over the past year, though, she’d been increasingly aware of the itsy-bitsy paradox she’d made of her life. On the one hand, she’d tried a relationship in which she was the main caretaker, and it had failed miserably. On the other hand, she never allowed men close unless she exerted exactly those same controls. The old resentment over being treated like
prey
and used like a sex object refused to disappear. Yet only occasionally, she felt this restless loneliness…a foolish thing. She had plenty of male friends. “How on earth did we get talking about this?” she asked abruptly. “Of all the silly subjects…”

Ryan leaned over to refill her glass before she could get up. “One more,” he coaxed.

“Well…”

She was smiling sleepily by the time he poured the third glass. She was smiling like a woman who badly needed a pillow and a soft mattress…and a man to cuddle against. Ryan mentally groaned. The lady was beginning to drive him bananas.

She hadn’t told him so, but he had the definite impression she was wary of physical relationships and he couldn’t fathom it—unless her ex-husband had been an insensitive jerk in bed. The vibrations didn’t feel that way to him, though. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a woman who’d been hurt sexually; he saw a woman who hadn’t been sexually awakened at all.

He suspected that was sheer male wishful thinking on his part. He couldn’t get one thought out of his head: he wished he’d been her first lover. Her only lover. He’d even been jealous of the wall, the way she’d stroked the paint on it. Every damn movement she made was sensual, graceful. The way she pushed back her hair, the way she curled her bare toes; she had small hands that waved expressively when she was talking.

The old sweatshirt and baggy jeans were supposed to conceal the most alluring figure he’d ever laid eyes on. They failed. Her breasts were firm and full, her long legs sleek and feminine, her hips delectably curved, her tummy flat. And no, dammit, it really wasn’t just her looks that were driving him nuts. It was Greer. The inside-lady Greer. The sensual woman who was hiding for some unknown reason behind bread-baking sprees.

And from the number of men calling her, she could probably open a successful bakery.

“Ryan.”

She was suddenly wearing an exasperated frown. He’d been expecting it, and smiled to himself at the groggy look in her eyes.

“I hate to have to confess this, but I’m not absolutely sure I can get up. Do you know how very rarely I drink three glasses of wine in a row?” Greer asked.

“But then, home’s right next door,” Ryan observed. “And thanks to the wine, you’re going to sleep terrifically tonight.” He stood up and offered his hands to her.

She took them and let him pull her up. The wine hadn’t made her dizzy, just sleepy. Her eyelids were having a dreadful problem staying open. “We really should finish painting your room,” she mentioned idly.

“Tomorrow.”

“The cat—”

“I’ll get him, Greer.”

“This is embarrassing.” Her feet just didn’t want to get into synchrony, and one hip bumped Ryan’s.

“What’s embarrassing? You’re not trying to impress a bunch of high-class company. We’re neighbors.”

Greer obediently slumped her head against his shoulder as he steered her toward the door. “That’s right.” She yawned. “Just neighbors.”

She sounded ridiculously happy at the thought. Thoroughly irritated, Ryan paused at her door and had a short internal debate with his conscience. His conscience lost. He didn’t really intend to take advantage of her, anyway, but they had to clear up this little difference of opinion on neighbors and…neighbors.

“Thank you,” she murmured when he pushed open the door for her. “I think I could sleep for a year.”

“Greer?”

“Hmm?” she smiled sleepily up at him.

“I owe you a thank-you for helping.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes,” he insisted. “And since you offered me a neighborly hug last night as a thank-you, I know you won’t mind if I offer you a simple neighborly kiss—” He waited for an imperceptible second. Long enough to appease his grumbling conscience.

Greer’s eyes flew wide open, but a second wasn’t enough time to gather her scattered wits. Long arms slid under hers, drawing her close to a warm, bare chest with dried paint speckles on it. For some reason, she was staring at those paint speckles when he tilted up her chin.

A warm mouth molded itself over her lips. A light was suddenly too bright somewhere. Greer’s eyes closed. Her head tilted helplessly back. His lips wooed hers gently, a tease of lightness and then pressure, a trace of wine tasted between them that could have been hers…or his.

Her hands rose and then seemed to hover in midair until his claimed them and gave them a home on his shoulders. It was a mistake, touching his skin. A who-cares kind of mistake. He had wonderful skin, warm and resilient, smooth on his shoulders, muscled on his arms.

She felt as though she’d stepped into a different world. She’d only stepped into the man, moved closer…or he had. He wasn’t like John. He wasn’t anything like the dozens of men she’d kissed in the past few years, who offered kisses with a tentative smile, prepared for with cleared throats and organized settings and shy expectations. She’d freely returned those kinds of kisses, for all those men.