He still remembered how she’d looked that night. Her white knit dress had shown off subtle curves he hadn’t noticed before. He’d loved watching her enjoy herself and become adorably snockered. But when her green eyes had started glowing with excitement over her new idea, she’d gone from cute to beautiful. He was attracted, all right.
If only she weren’t so damned smart. Although he had an instinct for the stock market that had made him a decent living, he’d slid through Northwestern’s business college without distinction. Jamie’s grades had earned her an academic scholarship four years in a row. Her computer skills had saved Faith from flunking a class, which was when they’d become friends. Jamie had graduated magna cum something-or-other.
Dev figured she saw him as a frat guy and a party animal, which he’d been, no doubt about it. In those days he hadn’t expected that he’d ever want to impress a smart cookie like Jamie. And he couldn’t hide a single flaw from her, because she was best friends with his sister, who had probably cataloged every one of Dev’s failings for Jamie over the years.
By the time Dev left his Lakeshore Drive apartment in a taxi bound for Jamie’s place, he’d convinced himself that he’d be a fool to let her know he was attracted to her. She’d shoot him down, and then where would he be? The morning coffee sessions he’d come to relish would be ruined. He’d have to avoid her, which would be next to impossible considering her personal and business connection to Faith.
To add to the complications, he wasn’t completely convinced that tonight wasn’t a scheme to get vital info out of him. Faith could be in league with his mother, no matter what she claimed to the contrary. Jamie might be in on it or she might only be the messenger.
Therefore he’d not only play it cool with Jamie, he’d fake his answers to her questions. Then if some woman came onto him while wearing some overwhelming perfume, he’d know she’d been primed by his answers to the questionnaire.
The cab heater blasted him from the moment he’d climbed inside, so he unzipped his black leather jacket. He’d spent way too much time deciding what to wear tonight and had finally chosen his favorite ivory sweater and black cords. From listening to Jamie over the last several months, he’d figured out that looks didn’t count for nearly as much with her as character and smarts.
That was another thing he liked about her. He’d grown tired of the parade of designer dresses on the women he dated. Even sex couldn’t be spontaneous when a woman was zipped into something worth thousands that could not, under any circumstances, end up on the floor. He’d broken up with his last girlfriend over that very issue. He’d accidentally spilled something on her Vera Wang, and she’d screeched and hollered as if he’d murdered a close relative.
After paying the cab fare, Dev climbed out onto the icy sidewalk and headed toward the four-story brick apartment complex where Jamie lived. His loafers crunched against the hard-packed snow accumulated during the Chicago winter and he quickly got chilled again. He wondered if Jamie would have some hot coffee made. Maybe he should have brought something, such as cookies from the deli.
Oh, to hell with it. This wasn’t a date. It wasn’t even something Jamie particularly wanted to do. He’d answer the questions just to get Faith off his back and to test the conspiracy theory. Then he was outta here.
He’d been to Jamie’s apartment once, when Faith had asked him to come over to help them haul a gigantic bookcase up the stairs. The place had looked functional, like Jamie, without a lot of extraneous stuff lying around. Also, it had smelled great, like pies baking, although she’d said nothing was in the oven.
He hoped she had coffee. It would give him something to do with his hands. And his mouth.
Inside the vestibule with its row of mailboxes and doorbells, he buzzed her apartment.
“Yes?” Her voice on the intercom sounded as though she’d been running.
“It’s me.”
“Right.”
Another buzz and he was admitted inside the building, but her curt little “Right” hadn’t made him feel exactly welcome. It wouldn’t have killed her to say a friendly hi or glad-you-made-it. With a sigh, he started up the carpeted stairs. If only Faith hadn’t made this sound like the critical ingredient to saving The Red Doors.
He had to agree that the business needed a kick in the pants if it was going to survive this first year, and Dixie’s idea to get the women into the computer kiosks had merit. But he felt like a damned guinea pig. That was probably exactly how Jamie saw him, too.
Shoving a thumb against her doorbell, he stood back, hands in the pockets of his jacket, and waited for her to open the door. Maybe she hated giving up her evening. For all he knew, she was missing a favorite TV show. He pictured her glued to a documentary on the life of Einstein.
The door opened and she stood there in jeans and a well-worn N.U. sweatshirt. Although she’d put on lipstick, which surprised him, she didn’t have on any other makeup that he could tell. Between her freckles and the college sweatshirt, she looked more like twenty-two than thirty-two.
He had a sudden attack of lust. Her outfit emphasized the slender, wholesome look that made him salivate. Maybe, too, her outfit reminded him of his college days when sex had happened in the back seat of cars and on blankets in the grass. Now it took place in civilized spots such as bedrooms or hot tubs. He’d thought the thrill had disappeared because he was older and more jaded, but maybe it had more to do with who he’d been with.
“Come in.” She didn’t smile, which was probably a good thing.
“I’m sure this is a real pain in the patoot for you,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. The idea’s a good one. Here, let me take your jacket.”
“Thanks.” Shrugging out of it, he handed it to her. At the same moment, he registered the aroma of coffee and that scent of baking pie from the last time.
She turned and hung his jacket on the antlers of a fake moose head mounted on the wall.
“I like your moose.” He couldn’t think of a single woman he’d dated who would hang a grinning moose head on the wall as a coat tree. Jamie really fascinated him. He sure wished that he fascinated her, too.
“That’s Gerald.” A hint of a smile flitted over her mouth.
He looked away from that potential smile, which could have a lethal effect on his restraint. “What’s that I smell?”
“Coffee?”
“No, the other thing.”
“Must be the blend of cinnamon and cloves in the diffuser. Does it bother you?”
Even without the smile, it makes me want to strip you naked and make love until we’re cross-eyed, even if there is a moose watching. “No, I like it. I just remembered the last time I was here your apartment smelled the same way, and I thought you were baking something.”
“Oh, yeah—the bookcase-moving caper.” She swept a hand toward her small living room. “See? All filled up.”
He glanced at the bookcase that took up most of one wall and, sure enough, it was jammed with books—hardbacks and paperbacks, thick volumes and thin, some scuffed and ragged, others shiny and new.
He turned to her. “What now? You stop buying books?”
“Oh, no.” She remained serious. “I have a smaller bookcase in my bedroom, but it’s almost full, too. Unless I can figure out where to put another bookcase, I might have to move into a two bedroom.”
“You’d move just to have more space for books?”
She gave him a puzzled glance. “What else can I do?”
“Get rid of some.” From her look of horror he quickly figured out that wasn’t an option. “Okay, so I don’t get it. Obviously I’m not big on reading like you are.” Obviously I’m also forty points below you on the IQ scale.
“It’s not only the reading.” She seemed eager to have him understand. “It’s the way they look on the shelves, marching along side by side, all that delicious knowledge captured inside those colorful covers. And I love the way books smell. I don’t know if it’s the glue, the pap
er or the ink, or the combination, but I’ve been thinking that the aromatherapy folks should look into creating a book-lover’s blend.”
She had that glow going on in her eyes again, and her cheeks were flushed with enthusiasm. Her topic didn’t matter to him, and she could have been speaking in Portuguese for all he cared. When she got enthusiastic about something, he began to heat up. Maybe her smile wasn’t required for him to combust, after all.
“Coffee!” She snapped her fingers. “Here I am blabbing away and I haven’t even offered you a cup. Some hostess I am. Have a seat anywhere and I’ll be right back.”
Before he could say anything, she’d darted out of the room and through an archway on the left into the kitchen.
ONCE INSIDE THE KITCHEN, Jamie slapped her forehead in frustration. Had she just stood there and given him a minilecture on the appeal of books? Yes, she had. Her Royal Nerdiness had done exactly that. Wow, talk about putting the moves on a guy. Stand there and rave about the scent of book bindings, and he’ll be all over you.
As if Dev would ever have such an impulse under the best of conditions. No, that would be her projecting her lust on him. The minute he’d stepped into her apartment, her body had started to hum. That pheromone situation had gone straight through her, activating all her special places.
Apparently intense arousal made her go insane and babble about the spines of books. Who knew? At least Dev wouldn’t recognize her reaction for a passionate response. No normal woman would go into lecture mode when she really craved a permanent liplock.
And she’d had something positive going with the moose head, too. The moose head had surprised him and might have even made him think she had a wild-and-crazy side. But then she’d had to turn into Professor Bookworm. Gee, he must have been thrilled down to his toes.
Well, she’d probably killed the evening dead, but at least she had the cherry-bark coffee he loved so much, so she’d serve him that, just as soon as she found a tray. Dev came from the land of household help and serving trays. She couldn’t just march in there with two bare cups. She had a tray around somewhere. Yes, it was metal and had the Chicago skyline on it, but it was better than nothing.
She was determined to find it, even if it meant emptying out every damned cupboard. Of course, the longer she left him in there alone, the more time he had to dwell on her eggheaded behavior. She’d known tonight would be a disaster and, sure enough, the disaster was proceeding right on schedule.
CHAPTER THREE
DEV WANTED TO FOLLOW HER into the kitchen. He wanted to follow her everywhere, most especially into her bedroom. This was bad. She had no interest in him and he was fast becoming loony over her.
Wandering over to the bookcase, he listened to her bang and clatter around in the kitchen while he looked at the wall of knowledge. To think it was so much a part of Jamie that she’d pay more rent instead of giving up any of it. He tried to think of whether he had any books in his apartment.
He had magazines and newspapers, a whole collection of movies on DVD, but books…oh, yeah. Faith had given him that Tom Wolfe book, Bonfire of the Vanities. Dev had watched the video instead. No wonder Jamie wasn’t interested in him, an intellectual bottom-feeder.
The racket in the kitchen continued, and he wondered if she was stalling. It sounded as if she was building a set of steel shelves instead of making coffee.
He turned, looking for a place to sit. Against the wall opposite the bookcase was a love seat flanked by two overstuffed chairs, all of them covered in some beige slipcover thing that looked very ecofriendly. He picked out a chair and discovered it was very body-friendly, too. The chair seemed to give him a hug.
Shoving himself out of the chair, he started to pace. A chair that cozy made him think of how else it could be used. If a woman happened to be small, like Jamie, and athletic, like Jamie, then the possibilities were endless.
Damn, Jamie sounded as though she was doing metal sculpture in the next room. He’d never heard a person make so much noise brewing coffee. And if he didn’t stop staring at that comfy chair of hers, he’d be erecting his own personal sculpture.
He scanned the room, desperate for a distraction from thoughts of sex. There, that picture over the love seat might work if he could forget about the love seat and concentrate on the picture. Two little kids, a boy and a girl, skated on a pond. Jamie liked to skate. Faith had told him Jamie kept a pair of skates in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet at work. Sometimes on her lunch hour she’d go over to the McCormick Tribune rink right down the street.
He’d love to watch her skate, love to watch her lithe body glide across the ice. Maybe she wore a short little skating skirt. He licked dry lips and forced himself to concentrate on the kids in the picture instead of his mental image of Jamie flitting around the rink in a short skirt.
The little girl had red hair. The little boy had brown, like his used to be as a toddler. He caught himself wondering whether Jamie planned to have kids someday and turned away from the picture. As if it made any difference to him what her marriage and family plans were. He might have sexual fantasies about her, but he sure as hell wasn’t dreaming of white picket fences. Not this boy. He wasn’t ready for that.
Continuing his inventory of the room, he saw a little cranny beside the bookcase where she’d squeezed in a small computer table. The monitor was on, and a screen-saver graphic of time-lapse blooming flowers entertained him while he waited for Jamie to come in with the coffee. The flowers were about as neutral as he was going to get, so he focused on them.
“Here’s the coffee.” She finally came in holding two oversize pottery cups, one yellow and one blue. “I couldn’t find my tray. I know I had one, but I don’t use it much, make that never, so maybe in a weak moment I gave it to one of my brothers.” She handed him the blue cup. “This is how the other half lives. No trays.”
“Who needs trays?” But as he took the cup in both hands, he realized a tray would have provided a buffer and he wouldn’t have touched her when he accepted the drink.
Could it be that he’d never touched her before? That seemed impossible, given how long he’d known her, but this contact felt new. The warmth of her skin zipped right through his fingers, up his arms, down his chest and across the Mason-Dixon line to rebel territory. He was not going to get an erection from touching a woman’s fingers. He was not.
Okay, he was, but he would control it. “Thanks for the coffee.” He cradled the large cup in both hands. He associated her with coffee, maybe because they’d spent so many mornings surrounded by the scent of it.
“It’s cherry bark.”
His glance flew to hers. She’d brought home his special preference on purpose. Nah, probably not. But if she had…
“I happened to have some on hand.”
She hadn’t done it on purpose. His tiny spark of hope died. She hadn’t asked him about cream and sugar, either. He figured she’d noticed he took it black, not because she cared about him, but because she was so smart and observant.
“Okay.” She stood in front of him, her cup clutched like a shield in front of her. “If you’d like to sit in that chair, I’ll bring up the questionnaire on the computer. I created it today and it’s probably not perfect because I had to rush a little, but it’s a start.”
Back to the hugging chair. He could do this. He settled into it without spilling his coffee and vowed to keep his chair-sex fantasies under control while he gave fake answers to her questions.
She looked so earnest that he felt guilty about misleading her, but he had to, for self-preservation. “Did Faith help you with the questions?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“I hope not.”
“Look, Dev, if you want to forget the whole thing, then—”
“No, I don’t. Let’s do it.” Now there was a loaded suggestion.
“Right.” Obviously her thoughts were miles away from his, because she became all business, turning away and slipp
ing quickly into her secretary chair in front of the computer. “I’m sure you’d like to get this over with.”
That was up for debate. Although he had to fight his attraction to her, she was unknowingly demonstrating the qualities he found so sexy. He’d been dating the wrong kind of women for years without realizing what the right kind was. He wanted someone unaffected, someone who entertained guests in jeans and an old sweatshirt, someone who picked out furniture for the way it felt when you sat on it instead of how it looked, someone who didn’t take an hour to put on makeup and fix her hair.
Good thing she’d directed him to this chair. He could see her profile from this position, but he wouldn’t seem to be watching her. From the love seat or the opposite chair, her back would have been to him. Of course, with this woman, a view of her straight spine and the tender nape of her neck would send him into overdrive.
“Are you ready for the first question?” she asked.
“Shoot.”
“Who would you rather take to bed, Cleopatra or Joan of Arc?”
He barely kept from choking on his coffee. Neither. You. “Aren’t they both dead?”
She swiveled the chair to look at him. “Yes, but I picked them out as archetypes. One is all about glamour and seduction, whereas the other one didn’t care about that, but she had charisma and sacrificed herself for a noble cause.”
He wondered what she wore under the sweatshirt. With her perky breasts, she really wouldn’t need a bra. Then he realized she was waiting for his response. “I’m pretty sure they both sacrificed themselves. Didn’t Cleo get way too chummy with a snake?”
Jamie frowned. “Yes, but forget about that. Just think of the image of Cleopatra floating down the Nile on her barge. Does that excite you?”
“No.” Or she might be wearing one of those stretchy sports bras, the kind that displayed a woman’s nipples when she was excited.
“Then you’d pick Joan of Arc?”
“No.” He tried to tell from the drape of her worn sweatshirt if she had on a bra or not. He couldn’t.
Behind the Red Doors Page 3