The Colors of Love (22 page)

No.

He didn't want her here, couldn't handle memories of dining with her in his home, waking to the sight of her in his bed. If she woke in his bed even once, he might never rid himself of her ghost when it was over. He'd have to move, because her ghost wouldn't leave.

Crazy thinking. They'd be lovers for a while, a few weeks perhaps. Then he would say good-bye, or she would.

The article, he had to finish that damned article.

He crossed the living room to his small study, switched on the computer, picked up a stack of reference papers, and began shuffling through them. No time to waste. The article was due at the end of the month.

When the phone rang at his elbow, he jumped, grabbed the receiver, and snapped a greeting.

"Alex, you sound very odd. Are you all right?"

Diana. He gripped the receiver. "I'm fine. Of course I'm—I was just working on that research article."

"The juvenile diabetes piece?" Her voice sounded hollow, probably distortion from the overseas satellite.

"Yes, that one." He felt stilted, awkward.

"Is someone there?"

An image of Jamila tangled in his arms shot into his mind, his face buried in her hair, her throat emitting that sound almost like a purr as he stroked her skin so slowly...

"Ah—I—no, of course I'm alone." With Jamila hot in his mind, he felt like a liar. "Sorry if I sound distracted."

"You need a rest, Alex. You're working too hard."

Or not hard enough. A whole weekend of Jamila. He should stay away from her if she had this effect on him, couldn't afford to be daydreaming when he had work to do.

"What's up, Diana? Did you enjoy your country weekend?"

"Actually, it was business, an elderly associate of Grandfather's who's considering a large contribution to the Foundation. He wanted me to come out to his villa, to meet his wife and talk dollars."

A week ago he could have spoken easily when she called, would have known what to say without hesitation. Now he struggled to remember the flow of their past conversations.

"Something
is
wrong, isn't it, Alex?"

"I have a cold coming on." He'd always prided himself his honesty, but one night with Jamila had turned him into a liar.

"I thought you sounded odd. Why don't you go to bed, work on the article later?"

Bed was the last thing he needed. "Did you get my email? I attached the pro formas."

"Actually, that's why I called. When I started looking the statements over, I realized the five-year projection was missing. I got eleven pages. Can you check the document at your end"

"I'll check it and get back to you right away."

"Anytime today is good. Why don't I call you back tomorrow morning, about seven your time?"

"Okay. Good-bye, Diana. Take care."

He felt like an unfaithful husband. Not that he'd promised Diana anything, or she him. No promises, but he'd had intentions, and he knew she had also.

At his computer, he opened the email he'd sent her. When he opened the attachment, he realized he'd sent an earlier, incomplete version of the statements.

He sent her a new email, and this time he double-checked the date of the file before attaching it, and then opened the attachment from inside his new email to make absolutely certain everything was there.

Finally, he clicked send.

He should never have gone out with Jamila yesterday, should never have made love with her. He'd never dreamed she would be a virgin. The fact that she was—that she
had been
—a virgin until last night changed everything.

No, damn it! It changed nothing.

He was thirty-eight years old, and without knowing it, he must have stumbled into one of those life passages the self-help books were always talking about. He'd become entangled—no,
obsessed
with this woman who was so different from anything he'd ever dreamed of.

Perhaps because of her difference—yes, that was it. Jamila fascinated him simply
because
she was so unsuitable. Diana was right, he'd been working too hard. He didn't feel burned out, but that had to be it. Burnout had made him vulnerable, and just at that moment Jamila Ferguson had swept into his life with her hot red hair and her challenging green eyes.

He needed to get away from her, away from everything.

Nonsense! He wasn't tired, wasn't burned out. He'd made a mistake, that's all, had come too close to a very dangerous woman. Virgin or not, she exuded risk. If he wasn't careful, she'd turn his life to chaos.

Dinner tonight.

Right, he'd go to dinner, and during the meal he'd tell her it was over, that he had commitments, a life that didn't have room for a woman like her. Maybe he'd said all this before, but tonight would be different. Tonight he'd keep his hands off her.

He picked up the research papers and shuffled through them again, then forced himself to concentrate completely on the article.

* * *

Again, she found herself working in oils. The slow-drying medium forced her to be disciplined as she worked. With oils, she could layer color on color, blending, creating effects she could never create with acrylics. With oils, impatience must be leashed.

His eyes held golden lights in the deep brown, as if lit from a fire inside. His mouth, lips parted... hand outstretched. Her own hand began to tremble and she forced herself to stop, to step back.

Don't rush this,
she told herself. She mustn't rush it, must perfect that line of shoulder and arm. Tonight she must study him carefully, because she daren't ask him to pose for her.

She needed him, right here, his eyes alive for her.

She'd never had a lover before, hadn't understood how love could change her world.

She would finish this piece very slowly. Liz would never see this one; it would be for Jamie herself for afterward. She shivered as she turned away from Alex's covered image, frightened by her sudden certainty that when she finished this painting, the affair would be over.

All right, then.

When it was over, she would paint the pain, and she would give
those
paintings to Liz. She would sell her pain. After all, that was what artists did.

Tonight, she needed to be beautiful for him so that, if tonight was the last time, he would remember her as beautiful. He would remember dinner, too. There would be nothing, not one thing he'd remember about tonight without yearning, wishing to have her back.

She cleaned her brushes and pulled the easels to one side to give more room to her tiny living area. She arranged her two basket chairs more spaciously, so both had a view of the ocean through the patio door.

Then she opened the patio door and swept her balcony, and washed down the outside table and the two lawn chairs. Then she dashed out in her car for chicken, herbs, and fresh vegetables from the grocery store.

Alex didn't strike her as a man for
chocolate and sweets
—
certainly he hadn't ordered dessert either of the two times she'd been out to dinner with him—so she picked up a selection of fruit, planning fruit salad as a dessert.

At home, she washed the chicken breasts and gently patted them dry, laying them in her mother's best Wedgwood serving bowl. Then she mixed a marinade of red wine, extra virgin olive oil, rosemary, tarragon, and parsley, and poured it over the chicken. If nothing else, by the time the affair ended, Alex would know she could cook!

Squiggles rubbed against her ankles as she opened the refrigerator, so she gave him a small treat of canned salmon.

If she bathed now, there would be time for her hair to dry while she prepared dinner. She went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub, sprinkling in some of the deliciously perfumed bath salts Liz had given her for her birthday.

She was amazingly lucky, Jamie decided as she sank into the aromatic bath. Right now, in this minute, she had everything she could wish for. She had Liz, a loving friend who had been her mainstay ever since Jamie was a twelve-year-old girl grieving the loss of her mother. She'd become successful as an artist, could devote all the time she wished to painting, knowing that while the magic lasted, she'd sell those paintings. Even her father approved now that she'd become a success; they'd become friends again after all those years of uncomfortable arguments over Jamie's career choice.

Best of all, she had Alex: a wonderful lover who made her feel weak and restless both at once, who'd shown her that she could want much more than she'd ever dreamed. While it lasted... while it lasted, she would revel in her good fortune.

She sank down in the tub and felt the water surge up and take her hair. As she massaged her scalp, she dreamed of
his
hands in her hair, on her breasts. She shuddered and the earth seemed to crash around her.

What—?

Her eardrums still vibrating, she shot erect, water streaming from her hair and her face. What was that? A crash, something shattering with cosmic force? The water would have amplified the sound, but—

She heard a small sound from the kitchen.

Squiggles!

She stood and grabbed a towel, wrapped it around herself as she scrambled out of the bath. China—that smashing sound, something breaking. The chicken!

Had she put it in the fridge? She'd meant to, but couldn't remember actually placing the bowl in the refrigerator.

She ran out of the bathroom, into the kitchen, spotted fragments of china beside a chair.

"Squiggles!"

The kitten crouched on the floor under the table, a pale chicken breast trapped between his front paws. He bared his sharp teeth and glared at her, eyes wild, as he ripped into the raw flesh.

"Get away from that chicken!" As she stepped closer to grasp the chicken, she felt a sharp pain in the sole of her foot.

She gasped and hopped away from the mess on one foot. Her mother's china serving bowl, shattered. Red wine, olive oil, and herbs splattered everywhere.

She leaned against the counter and twisted her throbbing foot up to examine it. She spotted the sharp shard at once, bit her lip, and grasped, forcing herself to pull it out. The shard made a light sound as it hit the floor, but when she probed the sole of her foot with one finger, the pain told her she hadn't got it all.

God, she hated this. Childhood adventures gone wrong had given her more than enough experience with imbedded slivers and glass fragments, but hadn't taught her to bear them philosophically.

She hobbled into the bathroom, walking on the outside edge of her sore foot. She turned on the tap in the sink and lifted her foot up to rinse under the water. How the hell was she supposed to get this bloody sliver of china out? She couldn't see it, although every painful touch of her finger told her it was there.

Maybe it would work itself out.

What was she going to do for dinner now?

She hobbled into the bedroom and pulled thick wool socks onto her feet, hoping the padding would cushion the painful but invisible fragment. She'd better have shoes, too, she decided, before she tackled that kitchen. Otherwise, she'd end up crippled in both feet.

Naked except for shoes and socks, she returned to the kitchen and grabbed a broom from the closet. When she swept a piece of chicken into the dustpan, Squiggles protested with a yelp.

"You're lucky you're alive," she muttered.

He lowered his feline head and began licking the floor.

She found the second piece of chicken in the sink. With resignation, she tossed it into the garbage with the first. She supposed she should have cooked them both for Squiggles, but her anger with the cat wouldn't allow her to.

By the time she mopped up the mess in the kitchen, Squiggles was rubbing against her ankles again, as if he'd forgotten that he'd just had a succulent chicken treat.

"You rascal," she muttered, picking him up. He allowed himself to be draped over her arm, purring contentedly. "You've ruined my dinner, you beast, and I've got a sliver in my foot. And here you are, sleeping your binge off while I try to figure out what to have for dinner."

She carried him into the living room and set him on one of the chairs, where he immediately seemed to fall asleep. That left her to figure out what to make for dinner.

Too late for gourmet. With only a couple of hours left, she would have to opt for something simple and fast. Spaghetti, she decided, and set about collecting the ingredients. When the sauce was simmering on her stove, she limped back into the bathroom, stripped off shoes and socks, and washed her hair in the shower. So much for the leisurely perfumed bath she'd planned, the slow pampering of her body with cream.

Afterward, she sat on the bed with a pair of tweezers and tried again to dig the painful sliver out of her foot. She could see a dark shadow, but couldn't grasp anything with tweezers. She went to her sewing basket and tried prodding painfully with a needle, finally gave up because it hurt too much and she wasn't getting anywhere.

Alex would be there in less than an hour, and she didn't want to be fussing in the kitchen after he arrived. She wanted to be—well, elegant and relaxed, of course, but most of all she wanted to be tempting.

She slipped on a cotton duster and quickly tended to the spaghetti sauce in the kitchen, adding spices until the smell and taste were exactly right. She hoped he liked spaghetti. Then she set the table, made the fruit salad, and set a pot of water on the stove, ready to boil for the noodles when he arrived.

What kind of wine went with spaghetti, red or white? She opened the fridge, decided it had better be red because she had half a bottle in the fridge, leftover from last week when she and Liz celebrated the fact that they'd managed to get everything ready in time for Jamie's showing.

Maybe he didn't drink wine? He'd ordered champagne the first night they dined together, and she couldn't remember what he drank the second time. She'd been spinning, drowning in his eyes, telling herself they wouldn't make love yet and wanting desperately to be in his arms. No wonder she had no idea what he'd ordered to drink.

She should have picked up something else—like champagne. If she wanted him to remember her as a sophisticated woman, she needed a liquor cabinet.