The Rana Look

by Sandra Brown

  As to the size and shape of… everything… he now had no secrets from her. He was ample and perfect.

  Rana felt her throat closing after the hasty glance downward her eyes took, despite her instructions for them to stay well above his waist.

  “Good morning,” she said with a wheeze. She told herself to look anywhere but at him.

  His running shoes and a damp, limp pair of athletic socks had been piled in the doorway of his apartment. Through the open door, she could see that the room was a mess. Clothing as yet unpacked spilled out of suitcases. Boxes were stacked on top of each other.

  “You’ve been exercising?” she asked for lack of anything else to say.

  “Yeah, running on the beach. It was great.”

  He was sweaty. Quarts of liquid must have poured out of that impressive masculine body. Droplets of perspiration beaded on his skin and collected strands of dark, curly chest hair into sodden clumps. It trickled through a silky strip of ebony hair that halved his midriff and arrowed down toward his navel. He raised his forearm to wipe the moisture off his brow. Looking into the shadowy hollow of his armpit was like committing an intimate act with him. Rana averted her eyes guiltily.

  “Is your… Does your shoulder… I mean, are pushups good for your shoulder?” Her own palms were perspiring. She tried as unobtrusively as possible to blot them against her baggy gray gabardine pants.

  “They don’t hurt it. Different muscles.”

  “I see.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, I mean, push-ups are for arms and… and chest, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The pecs. Do you ever work out?”

  “Not my… my… uh, pecs.” His mouth fashioned a wide grin. “I jog sometimes,” she rushed to say.

  “Why don’t you jog with me tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, edging around him. “Well, ‘bye.”

  “Pardon me for using the hallway, but I didn’t have room in my apartment. I haven’t unpacked yet.”

  “I was on my way down to the kitchen. Excuse me.” When she was beside him, he said, “Miss Ramsey?”

  “Hm?” Politely, albeit unwisely, she turned to face him. They were now close enough for her to catch the tangy, salty, sea-scented fragrance he had carried in from the beach. It wasn’t at all unpleasant.

  “Do you know how push-ups should really be done?”

  “I’ve never… no, I don’t.”

  “To really maximize benefits of the exercise, it’s best to do push-ups with someone lying on your back.”

  She swallowed. “Lying on your back?”

  He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. She wished he hadn’t, because that casual stance only served to make the hard muscles of his chest bulge. He was cooling off his nipples were erect. Again Rana felt that she had seen something forbidden and lowered her eyes. A foolhardy decision as it turned out. His bare ankles were crossed, too, and something else bulged between his thighs.

  “Yeah. Someone to add weight.”

  “To make the muscles work harder?” she guessed.

  “That’s the idea. Now, I was thinking, I don’t suppose you. ..“ He cocked his head to one side and let his incomplete suggestion dangle while his brown eyes twinkled with a thousand devilish lights. “No, I guess not,” he finished briskly. “Never mind.”

  Her cheeks were suffused with vivid color. At first the blush was caused by embarrassment, then by anger, as she saw an insinuating smile break across his sensual mouth.

  “As I said, I was on my way to the kitchen.” She turned her back on him and hurried away.

  Arrogant idiot! she fumed to herself when she heard his chuckle following her down the stairs. What did it matter to her if he wanted to run around as naked as a savage and sweat like a pig? She scoffed at him, but her hands were trembling as she took a glass from the cabinet and poured a soda over ice.

  Rather than return to her apartment, where she might risk meeting him again, she sat down at the small table in Ruby’s homey kitchen. Taking up the pad and pencil always left beneath the telephone, Rana idly sketched out some ideas she’d been toying with. Birds of paradise painted over a wash of pale lavender? A scarlet hibiscus filling the entire back of a bodice? Or how about a bold abstract design with orange and black and turquoise?

  “Brainstorming?”

  She dropped the pencil clumsily and, in her attempt to retrieve it, almost knocked over her glass of soda. “I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that,” she told Trent crossly.

  “Sorry. I thought you heard me. Guess you were lost in thought.”

  She directed an accusing stare down at his bare feet. “If you would wear shoes, maybe I could hear you.”

  “I rubbed a blister on my little toe this morning. Hurts like hell.”

  If he was expecting sympathy, he was in for a disappointment.

  She wanted to ask why he found it necessary to run around half dressed, but she lacked the nerve. Besides, she didn’t want him to know that she had noticed his cutoffs. The denim shorts gloved his thighs, hips, and manhood with a heart-stopping, breath-suspending fit. He now wore a sleeveless Houston Mustangs T-shirt that had been cut off just below his breast, leaving his midriff bare. His torso was so squarely symmetrical it could have been mathematically designed with a ruler. Her eyes were involuntarily drawn to his navel. Could navels be considered beautiful? Or was his merely mysterious in a sexy way? In either case, she wanted to investigate it.

  “Is Auntie around?”

  Rana yanked her eyes, attention, and imagination away from his lower abdomen and gestured toward a note secured to the refrigerator by a magnet shaped like a head of cabbage. “She went out for a while.”

  “Hm.” His brow wrinkled. “She said she had stocked some fruit juice for me. Any idea where?”

  “Check the refrigerator.”

  He opened the door and surveyed the contents. “Milk, a bottle of Chablis, diet sodas,” he said, giving her a glance over his shoulder, “and something in a little brown crock marked by masking tape with ‘Do not throw out’ written on it.”

  “That’s bacon grease.”

  “I don’t think that’ll quench my thirst.”

  Realizing her private interlude had come to an end the moment he entered the kitchen, she got out of her chair and, with a long-suffering sigh she made certain he heard, said, “Sometimes she keeps extra supplies on the sleeping porch.” She went through the doorway leading to the screened back porch.

  “Believe it or not, I’ve actually slept out here,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Lots of summer nights when I was a kid and my mom and I would come visiting.”

  She feigned disinterest, though the picture of a tough little boy with dark hair and skinned knees came to her mind. “What about your father?”

  “He was killed in an airplane crash overseas before I was old enough to remember him. Mom never remarried. She died two years ago.”

  He was as alone in the world as she, but she couldn’t let herself feel sympathy for him. She couldn’t let herself feel anything for him, especially now that the scent of the beach had been replaced by that of clean skin, shaving soap, and citrus cologne.

  She checked the pantry, where Ruby stored everything from toilet tissue and dishwashing soap to homemade jam. On one shelf Rana found a variety of canned fruit juices. “Apple, grapefruit, or orange?”

  “Orange.”

  He filled up the doorway between her and the kitchen. His legs were long and lean, but as hard as tree trunks. His biceps were lined with blue veins that her eyes followed all the way down his tanned forearms to the backs of his hands. A surgical scar was visible around his right elbow. Two of the fingers on his right hand were crooked from having been broken. Battle scars of his profession, she supposed.

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled when she reached the door. He moved aside to let her pass, and she carried the can of orange juice into
the kitchen. “Watch me so you’ll know where everything is next time.”

  “You have my undivided attention, Miss Ramsey.”

  Ignoring his teasing inflection, she opened the can with the opener she had located in a drawer and repeated the motions she’d gone through only minutes before in preparing her own drink. “There.” She handed the glass to him.

  “Thanks.” He winked at her. Raising the glass to his lips and tilting his head back, he drank every drop of the juice. Rana watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down only three times as he drained the glass.

  “More, please.” He extended the glass to her, and, dumbfounded that he could consume so much so quickly, she refilled it automatically. He gulped that glassful down the same way, smacking his lips with satisfaction when he was done. “Ahh. Now, this glass, I can drink more slowly.”

  “You mean you want more?” she asked incredulously as he motioned to her to fill the glass again.

  His eyes seemed to want to bore through her eyeglasses. “That’s only one of the unquenchable thirsts I have, Miss Ramsey.” Then his gaze slid down to her mouth.

  “Hello, Ruby!”

  Rana jumped as if she’d been shot. She recognized the postman’s cheerful voice. It was his custom to visit with Ruby every day when he delivered the mail. Had Ruby been twenty years younger, Rana would have said they were flirting. Perhaps that was exactly what it was, despite Ruby’s age.

  She set the can of juice on the countertop. “Serve yourself from now on, Mr. Gamblin. In here, Mr. Felton,” she called out to the postman, hurrying to the back porch. “Ruby’s not here. Mercy, we have quite a lot today, don’t we?”

  “Bills, mostly. A few magazines. Got everything? Tell Ruby I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  Rana returned to the kitchen with the mail and dumped it on the table. As she sorted through it, checking to see if anything was addressed to her, Trent moved up behind her.

  It had almost become second nature to him to study and analyze Miss Ramsey. She was so different from the women he knew. He’d never seen uglier clothes than the ones she was wearing today. Her slacks, which she had gathered at the waist with a wide, functional leather belt, would have fit a woman twice her size. And they would have been right at home on a battleship. They were that drab, that utilitarian, that ugly.

  If she had a fanny, he couldn’t begin to guess its proportions. The shape of her legs, too, remained a mystery. Goodwill would have rejected the paint-splattered man’s shirt she was wearing. The sleeves had been rolled back to reveal her forearms, but the shapeless vest she wore over the shirt hung straight to her hips. She couldn’t have much bosom, but in spite of himself he was curious to know just how much. He was almost crazy with curiosity about her breasts.

  He stared down at the center part of her hair. She hadn’t gone to any trouble to style it. It hung heavy and straight down her back, well brushed, but otherwise uncared for. It sure as hell smelled good, though. He liked the floral fragrance of her shampoo. Or was that bubble bath he smelled?

  The thought of Miss Ramsey languishing in a bubble bath was ludicrous. But all women, no matter how homely, enjoyed feminine indulgences like that, didn’t they? he wondered. Sure, she took bubble baths. Of course she did.

  And what did she put on afterward? Scanty, lacy underthings that were as delicate as spider webs? Somehow he couldn’t picture her in anything frivolous or fantasy-inspiring. She probably wore opaque cotton that covered and contained completely.

  Why the hell was he wondering about her lingerie anyway? Was he actually standing here speculating on Miss Ramsey’s underthings? Dear Lord, maybe he needed a woman worse than he’d thought. Maybe his body was desperately sex-starved and just hadn’t telegraphed the message to his brain yet. Maybe he should call Tom and have him send some willing woman to him. Without delay. Federal Express.

  No, no, he thought, rejecting the idea almost immediately. Hell. That was why he’d left Houston, wasn’t it? To get away from all that carousing? He’d been partying too hard. The closest he’d get to a woman for the next few weeks was through his fantasies. And Miss Ramsey was the only one around who was near his age. His choices were limited, so why not let a few fantasies about her play around in his mind? They were harmless.

  He had no doubt that she was feminine to some extent, even if she was no more approachable than a barbed-wire fence. Confusion had been written all over her face when she’d stepped into the hallway and accidentally encountered him doing his calisthenics.

  He could have made room to do the push-ups in his own apartment, but he had perversely hoped she might stumble across him in the hallway. The poor dear had probably never seen a man that close to naked before. Did she know what male sweat looked and smelled like? Probably not until this morning. Certainly she had seemed flustered. Trent had to suppress a chuckle even now at the memory of her shocked face. But she had liked what she saw. He’d stake his reputation as a Casanova on that.

  “Anything for me?”

  His breath struck the top of her head. Only then did Rana realize how close to her he was standing. “No,” she said, hurriedly sorting through the rest of the envelopes. She tossed the mail back down on the table. When she did, the cover of one of Ruby’s fashion magazines fell open.

  Rana gasped.

  There she was, svelte and sexy, reclining on a white sheet. Her mahogany hair was spread like a fan behind her head. It had taken the hairdresser and photographer a full hour to get it just right. Her cheekbones stood out prominently, and above them her eyes were sultry. Her lips glistened, sulky and suggestive, in a half smile.

  She was wearing her trademark white. That was Morey’s stipulation; he would agree to let her do the underwear ad only if it was met. “Rana only wears white, you know,” he had told the advertising men. They had wanted her, and they had been willing to meet any condition and pay the exorbitant price she demanded.

  In the ad, one of her knees was provocatively raised. She had had a bruise on her thigh from banging it on a taxi door the day before. It had been a challenge for the makeup artist to cover it up, but eventually he’d made her skin look like it had been polished with oil, then buffed. Looking at the photograph, one could almost feel the silky texture of her olive skin.

  The bikini panties she wore sliced well below her prominent hipbones. In the photograph her tank top was being pushed up to the undercurve of her breast by a man’s hand. The man, lying beside her but out of the camera’s range, had had a face like a potato, but the hands of a poet. He made his living doing everything from patting babies’ be- hinds in disposable-diaper commercials to opening cans of beer so they would foam over the top.

  The ad was captioned, “Softness has never felt this soft.”

  It had been chilly in the studio. Her nipples had contracted and were plainly defined against the cotton-knit tank top. The ad-agency rep had been ecstatic over the effect. His client had asked for sex without lewdness. The photographer was interested only in the focus and lighting. His assistant joked that the hand model was taking secret gropes of Rana’s breast while no one was looking. Susan Ramsey took offense and began to virulently protest his “lecherous” humor. Since the assistant was also the photographer’s lover, he took offense at her name-calling and threatened to have her evicted from the studio if she didn’t shut up.

  Through it all Rana had lain there, bored, tired, her back aching from holding the pose so long and her stomach growling from perpetual hunger.

  “Nice.”

  The deep male voice rumbled close to her ear, bringing her back into the present. She slapped the magazine cover closed.

  “What’s the matter? Didn’t you like it?” Trent asked, obviously amused by her prudish reaction to the erotic ad.

  “Yes… no… I-I’ve got to get back to work.”

  She shoved her way past him and virtually ran up the stairs. After shutting herself in her apartment, she slumped against the door, gulping for breath, expe
ctantly waiting for him to come chasing after her, waving the magazine, his mouth agape now that he recognized her.

  Then she realized that her fear of discovery was ridiculous. Neither Trent nor anyone else would recognize her from that ad. Miss Ramsey matched the woman in the picture about as much as the hand model’s face matched his beautiful hands. There was no apparent connection between the two.

  Eventually she pushed herself away from the door and went back to work on the wrap skirt she’d been painting when she’d decided to take a break. It seemed like centuries ago.

  She had had two shocks. First, seeing Trent Gamblin during his workout, and then seeing herself in that magazine. For six months she had lived her reclusive life without any real threat of discovery. Even when she had notified Morey and her mother of her new address, she had warned them that if they badgered her into returning to New York, she would disappear again and never let them know where she was.

  Now, with Trent living in the house, detection suddenly seemed imminent. Her private sphere had been invaded. Ruby’s vanity prevented her from wearing eyeglasses, even though her vision wasn’t too keen. So despite the fact that she read her fashion magazines faithfully, she had never connected her dowdy boarder with the dazzling Rana.

  Would her nephew be more astute?

  Rana’s contemplation of her problem was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Out of habit, she wiped her hands with a cloth before answering her extension.

  “Hi, Barry,” she said happily when the caller identified himself.

  “I hope you’re hard at work. You’re in demand.”

  “I am?” She was pleased; their arrangement was proving to be as lucrative for him as it was for her. Rana had met Barry Golden in New York, where he worked as a fashion coordinator for a major department store. He loved the fashion industry, but hated the city. When he’d come into a small fortune left to him by his grandfather, he had returned to his hometown of Houston and opened an exquisite store that catered to wealthy socialites.