Risky Business. Jane Sullivan
the titles were fiction, mainly mysteries and romance.
Yes. This was more like it. He had the distinct impression that the books in the living room with the unbroken spines were the ones she showed to the world, while these tattered ones lived in her heart. Then he turned and got another surprise.
That day in San Antonio, they’d browsed through the Alamo gift shop, where he’d bought her a poster of an 1830s map of Texas. Here it was, matted, framed and hanging on the wall.
He remembered so clearly the time they’d spent there, perusing every document, every artifact. To find a woman with that kind of knowledge of the historical periods that fascinated him had pleased him to no end. That he was attracted to her in every other way possible made him feel as if he’d found the perfect woman. A soul mate, and he didn’t even believe in such things.
And then she’d disappeared.
“What are you doing in here?”
He spun around. Rachel was standing behind him, wearing a blue terry-cloth robe that gave a new meaning to the word frumpy. He knew a really hot body lurked under there somewhere, but he sure as hell couldn’t see it right now.
He shrugged. “Just looking around.”
“Well, don’t.”
There it was again. That crimson flush on her ivory cheeks, as if somehow he’d embarrassed her.
“The poster,” he said. “It looks good.”
She turned instantly and left the room. He followed. She started to go into her bedroom, but he caught her arm and pulled her back around.
“Hey, hold on. What’s the matter?”
She looked up at him, her pale blue eyes brimming with annoyance. “It’s bad enough for me to look up and find you standing in my office this afternoon. Then you beg your way into my house. And now you’re snooping around.”
“I wasn’t snooping.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“The door was open.”
“That room is private!”
She looked genuinely angry. “Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in there.”
“That’s right. You shouldn’t have.”
“But I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want me to. The rest of this place isn’t you. That room is.”
She ducked her head, the color still hot on her cheeks. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He inched closer to her and placed his palm on the wall beside her head, dropping his voice. “Yes, I do. Maybe a whole lot more than most people do. That day in San Antonio, and then that night, I found out all kinds of things about you.”
“You have to stop this.”
“What?”
She closed her eyes. “Reminding me.”
“You don’t want to be reminded?”
“I did a very dumb thing that night, something I’d just as soon forget.”
“So that’s the way you remember it? As something you want to forget?”
“Yes.”
“You even want to forget how we met? The time we spent together that afternoon?”
He saw the indecision on her face. Was she going to acknowledge the truth, or continue to act as if their entire encounter had been the biggest mistake of her life?
“No,” she said finally. “That was nice.”
“Ah. Finally something we agree on.”
“But I wasn’t looking for a relationship then, and I’m still not looking.”
“I didn’t know we were talking about lifetime commitments here.”
“I don’t even want a four-day commitment from you. I don’t want anything from you. In fact, if you’d just go back to San Antonio and leave me alone, I’d be the happiest woman alive.”
“No, Rachel. I know what would make you the happiest woman alive, and it has nothing to do with me going back to San Antonio.” Slowly he dropped his head and placed a gentle kiss against her neck, then brought his lips up to brush against her ear. She was tense—so tense—and he wanted nothing more than to kiss all that tension away, for her to melt in his arms again.
“Let her out,” he whispered. “Right now. Show me that woman I knew in San Antonio.”
“Jack—”
“She’s in there,” he said. “I know she is. A beautiful, sexy woman I can’t wait to touch. We can be together again the way we were before, just the two of us, for hours on end—”
“No!”
She twisted to the left, then ducked beneath his arm and strode back down the hall.
Damn.
He thought about stopping her, then thought again. More than anything, he wanted to follow her into her bedroom, slip that frumpy robe off her shoulders, kick it aside, then make love to her until daybreak. But even if he managed to accomplish that tonight, he had the feeling she’d only wake up tomorrow morning as wary as she’d been in San Antonio, and he definitely didn’t want that. If he pushed her too hard right now, he could end up odd man out for the next four days, and there was no way he was going to let that happen.
As she reached her bedroom door, he called out to her. “Don’t you want to know what I was doing in Denver?”
She stopped, then slowly turned, eyeing him suspiciously.
“There’s a hotel not too far from where you work,” he said. “The Fairfax. They’re tearing it down.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “They’re what?”
“Tearing it down. Every brick, every chandelier, every doorknob, every strip of oak flooring—”
“But I love that hotel! I have lunch there at least once a week. Why don’t they just renovate it?”
“Because a new high-rise is going up in its place.”
She stepped back toward him. “But how can they tear down such a wonderful old building?”
“With a few well-placed explosives.”
“But all that history will be gone!”
“Not all of it. I’m bidding for the right to salvage the interior of the hotel.”
Rachel’s eyes lit up. “Oh! That’s right! You do restoration! Can you use all those fixtures somewhere else?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got one project I’m working on now in San Antonio of the same vintage, and another one is coming up. I’ll do something with all of the salvaged items eventually, or piece them out to other renovators who can put them to good use.”
“I guess it’s not the same as leaving the hotel standing, but at least you’ll be saving parts of it, right?”
There it was. That smile. That animated expression. That look of sheer radiance when she talked about anything connected to history. For the first time since he’d walked into her office this afternoon, he saw a glimmer of the woman he’d met that warm, sunny afternoon in San Antonio.
“That’s better,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re smiling. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten how.”
She looked flustered and turned away.
“Don’t stop now,” he said.
“Jack—”