The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid (4 page)

He had given her a B minus and told her that she'd be stuck doing architectural grunt work her whole career unless she learned to open up to her creative side, to stop being afraid of her own ideas.

She supposed he'd intended the comment to wake her up and inspire her, but all it had done was undercut her confidence, not knowing how to make herself more courageously creative. She'd thought she
was
being creative, and didn't know where this hidden genius was supposed to be residing or how to force it out of its hidey-hole.

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The phone rang, jolting her out of her dark thoughts. She lunged for it, then held it in her hand without answering, dreading the conversation to come.

She swallowed her cowardice and flipped open the phone. "Hello?"

"Emma?" a male voice asked, voice cracking in the middle of her name.

"Yes?"

Throat clearing." 'Scuse me. This is Kevin," he went on, voice warbling somewhere around normality.

"We met today at Russ's house?"

"Yes, hello. He told me that you might be calling."

"And here I am!" He laughed and then coughed.

Her last bits of hope for a potential match were fading fast. A silence stretched between them, in which she could almost hear the nervous tension thrumming through his wiry body. "How's your car?" she asked, for lack of anything better to say. "Get any scratches or dings this afternoon?"

"A rock chip in my windshield as I was driving home. Can you believe it!"

"Ooh, bad luck, there. I hope it wont be too expensive to fix."

He took the topic and ran with it for the next five minutes, apparently taking Emma's
mmms
and
ahs
and polite questions as signs of interest. Her mind began to wander to one of her favorite mental escapes: designing her dream bathroom.
What were the codes for placement of electrical outlets near water,
again?
She eyed the binder, her fingers itching to flip it open and check.

"So I was thinking," Kevin said, "maybe you'd like to go for a drive out to Snoqualmie Falls, and we can have dinner at the lodge there."

"Dinner?" she said, snapping back to the present, a wall of cobalt blue glass tiles fading from her vision.

"I thought it would be a pretty drive."

"I'm sure it would be—"

"Great! How about Friday?"

She hadn't meant to say yes; she hadn't meant to imply an answer one way or the other! "This week isn't good," she fibbed.

"The Friday after, then. Or the Saturday—we could make a day of it! Maybe drive all the way to Ellensburg—"

"No!" Emma interrupted in a panic. "No, no, dinner would be better."

"Okay," he said, sounding disappointed.

"Friday after next, dinner, Snoqualmie Falls," Emma repeated, trying to sound cheerful and wondering
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how she'd managed to get locked into a date she didn't want. Too late to back out now, though.

Kevin quickly wrapped up the call, seeming to sense his perilous hold on her, and Emma snapped her phone shut. "Well, that sucks," she said aloud, and went out to the kitchen to get a bowl of ice cream.

Daphne had left a newspaper on the table, and Emma sat down with her ice cream and unfolded the front section. She skimmed the headlines and her gaze caught on the one at the bottom of the page: King Street Station on Track for Design Contest

She dropped her spoon back into her bowl, her eyes eagerly taking in the details of the article.

The City of Seattle, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight company that owned the tracks, the federal government, and private investors were coming together to fund a complete teardown and reconstruction of the King Street train station. The new design would be decided by a panel of judges, chosen from the pool of entries in a contest. The winning designer or design team would be offered a contract to work on the new station.

The King Street Station was the only train station in Seattle, there being no subway. Emma had been to it once or twice to pick up friends who had taken Amtrak, and the place was a dump. Not only was it in serious disrepair, with plywood nailed over crumbling walls and two-thirds of the building off limits to all but the rats, but the only access was from a dead-end street with nowhere to turn around, making for chaos between taxis, buses, and hapless passenger cars all trying to get in and out.

Emma abandoned her ice cream and dashed back to her room with newspaper in hand, her heart thumping with excitement. At her computer, she typed in the URL to the website with the contest details.

Professors in grad school had frequently used design contests from all over the country as assignments, but none of her work had ever been judged good enough by a professor to be sent in.

But that didn't mean she couldn't succeed this time, in her own city. She understood Seattle and its Zeitgeist; she could create something that spoke to its people. She could
do
this!

The contest site said that preliminary judging would be of a two-dimensional poster board. Ten finalists would present their ideas in front of the judges, the press, the project backers, and any of the interested public.

If she could make it to the finals, it might be the break she'd been looking for. Big professional design teams would surely be entering. Being a finalist alongside them would be a fabulous opportunity to network and schmooze! And if nothing else, it would be a big fat star on her resume\

This could be it. If she really set herself free, if she really dug down and unearthed that inner creative genius, maybe things would finally take a turn for the better. Maya Lin, the woman who won the contest to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, had also been graded average by her professors, and now her name was one of the few that Joe Public recognized in contemporary architecture.

What worked for Maya Lin might work for Emma Mayson, too.

Russ turned on the shower and tilted the nozzle so it hit the tiles he'd just scrubbed, rinsing away the cleanser. He cursed as water dripped down his arm and into the sleeve of his shirt.

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This was ridiculous. He'd spent the last two hours cleaning his house in preparation for Emma's arrival
to
dean his house.
He'd only meant to clean up any embarrassing bits of personal dirt, but suddenly it had seemed that such bits were everywhere. He didn't want her finding a stray toenail clipping on the carpet or a body hair on a sheet; didn't want her finding gunk around his shower drain or a crusty dish on the counter, or coffee grounds under the sink where they'd missed the trash can. The thought of her cleaning up after him
bothered
him.

If she were older, or married, or unattractive either physically or emotionally, then he wouldn't care. But she was none of those things. She was
hot.

A guy doesn't want a hot girl scrubbing his toilet and muttering to herself what a filthy pig he is. Even if the guy didn't have a chance in hell with her, even if one of his friends has managed to get a
date
with her—a friggin' date!—he still doesn't want that.

He shut off the shower and perked his ears at a distant sound. Did he hear something? She wasn't here already, was she? He cursed again and went to check on his laundry, anxious to get the next load into the wash and safely out of her reach. He could not have her touching his Jockeys; he just couldn't.

He also couldn't go through this frantic cleaning every Wednesday, in anticipation of her arrival.

As he loaded his hockey Puck Skins and other darks into the dryer, he imagined what his brother, James, would have said about all this. "Jump her, you idiot! Or at least make a move on her. Kevin has a date, not a legal claim. Since you don't want her cleaning your house anyway, what have you got to lose?"

James had been a bit of a cad with women, but always managed to find plenty who were willing to put up with his shenanigans. James said they had their eyes on the prize: marriage in a community property state.

Russ had his doubts. Despite his joking comments to Kevin about gold diggers, his impression was that women had better ways to earn money these days than marry for it. He hadn't met many who were willing to put up with an asshole for the sake of a bigger house.

No, women had put up with James because he was fun and clearly loved them. To James, all women were beautiful and witty and worthy of attention. He would have made a pass at Emma within five seconds of meeting her, and would have done so in a light, flirtatious manner that would make her smile even if she wasn't interested.

His ear caught the distant sound of a female voice, talking as if on a cell phone. She
was
here.

And he didn't have either James's talent for seduction or his willingness to compete with a friend for a woman's affections.

Damn.

He got the next load of laundry running and went to find Emma to say hello. The talking had stopped and the house was silent as he walked through it. He saw her cleaning supplies in the foyer but no Emma.

Where was she?

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He was making his second round of the house when a small sound directed his attention to his recliner in the great room. She was flopped in it, staring blankly out the window, her cell phone lying in her hand.

She looked on the verge of tears. As he watched, her mouth turned down at a painful angle, eyes squeezing shut, face reddening as tears rolled out her lids and down her cheeks. Her lips parted and a soft wheeze of pain whistled out.

Ah, hell! Now what was he supposed to do? He looked frantically around for a Kleenex or an escape route. She couldn't want him to see this. God knew
he
didn't want to see this.

Before he could make a move either way, her eyes opened and she saw him. He froze like an animal in a hunter's spotlight. Her eyes widened, and then the crying seemed to take on a new, more violent force.

"Great! Oh, just great!" she said, wiping her face with her bare hands as her tears and nose ran freely.

"This just tops it." She dropped her hands to glare at him. "What are you
doing
here? Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

"I, uh... Excuse me!" He bolted for the kitchen, grabbed a clean dish towel, then jogged back to her holding it out. "Here."

She snorted noisily and reached for it. "Thanks," she mumbled, and wiped at her face. She dabbed discreetly at her nose, then looked up at him over the red and blue cloth, red-rimmed eyes tinged with accusation.

Was she expecting something more from him?
What,
for God's sake? He scrambled back through memory to his last serious relationship, in which he'd had to deal with frequent female tears. With great reluctance he offered, "Do you, er... need a hug?"

She dropped the cloth from her face and scowled. "No!" Then her lips started to quiver, the sides dipping downward again.

Oh God.

He gritted his teeth and inched toward her, arms open, hoping she wouldn't hurt him. Emotional women were like grumpy bears, in his experience. They were ready to disembowel you at the first wrong move.

She jumped up out of the chair and batted his arm away. "I said I don't need a hug! I'm just having a very bad day."

"Okaaay." Easy there, she-bear. If he could back away quietly...

She glared at him, looked away, then flew at him in a sudden rush. He stepped back in alarm, but not quickly enough to keep her from attaching herself to his chest in a hug, arms going around his rib cage and squeezing the breath out of him as she burrowed her face into his shirt.

When his mind cleared of its adrenaline fog, he remembered to put his arms around her. He patted her back as she sobbed and shook, then as she started to settle down, he changed to a gentle rub. He felt the band of her bra beneath her tight T-shirt, and the soft firmness of warm skin over muscle and bone. He became aware of her breasts pressed against his chest.

Her breathing eased and her grip loosened as she relaxed against him. "That feels nice," she said softly.

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Her whispered words went straight from his ear down to his groin, stirring an erection to life. He gently disentangled himself and stepped back. "Are you okay now?"

Her eyes were puffy, but she managed a rueful smile. "Yeah. Sorry about that." She pulled out a chair from the big dining table and sat down. "It's been one of those days where things all pile up at once and something inside you just gives, you know?"

He pulled out another chair and sat, grateful for the chance to hide his arousal. He didn't want to hear a litany of woes, but neither did he want to be callous and leave her.

She shook her head. "It's all small stuff, in the scheme of things. I shouldn't have let it get to me." She smiled again. "Thanks for the hug, and for putting up with me. I'm okay now; you can go to work."

With the prospect of a litany of woes swept away from him, he was suddenly curious about what had set her off. "Something didn't happen to someone in your family, did it?" he asked.

"Oh, no! Nothing like that. No, it's all petty stuff, like I said. Someone broke a window out of my car last night and stole the radio. I got two rejection letters in the mail today from firms where I'd interviewed.

My student loan, car insurance, health insurance, and quarterly taxes are all due, and my roommate just called and told me that she's moving in with her boyfriend next week, which means my rent just doubled."

She laughed, but it sounded tinged with hysteria. "That's all. Nothing serious!"

"No, nothing serious, but I remember those days myself. Everything hung together as long as nothing went wrong, but when something did go wrong, I was screwed."