“The door,” she whispered. “Shut…the door.”
“No, Meg.”
She froze. “What?”
She saw the effort it took him to pull his hand from her body. “I should go.”
Go? Now? “Why?”
“It’s late. You’ve had a long day.” He took a step back, separating them by much more than a few inches. The way he held his body told her they were miles apart. “Plus, we just met.”
Oh, God, he thought she was a floozy. She, Meg O’Rourke, whose simple white underwear had served as an effective chastity belt for the past five years. Meg, who’d never initiated a kiss with a man in her life, had gone from nun to tramp in thirty seconds. Must be a record.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to, uh…you must think I…”
He shook his head hard, then cupped her chin to force her to meet his stare. “No, I don’t. What I think is you’ve had a long, emotional day. As much as I want what you’re offering, I’m not the kind of guy to take advantage of a very vulnerable woman.”
Just her luck. She’d decided to go for it with a man who had a conscience.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Meg. And I’ll see you tomorrow night. You can count on it. Okay?”
He was gone before she could agree, hurrying down the hall as if afraid that if he didn’t leave right then and there, he might not leave until morning. That was some small consolation, she supposed. There was no way he could have faked his response. The evidence had been, uh, impressive. Meg stood in the doorway, listening to his steps on the stairs and the closing of the building’s front door. Then she leaned forward, thunking her forehead on the door frame.
“Well, you certainly blew that one, didn’t you, missy?”
Oh, please. Not this. Not now. She looked up and saw her neighbor scowling at her from the doorway across the hall. “Mrs. Mahoney. You’re up late.”
“Indigestion.” The woman dropped a hand to her pendulous stomach and rubbed at it absentmindedly. “Rico at the deli put hot peppers on my hoagie. He knows my stomach can’t take them. I think he did it on purpose because I didn’t give him a big enough tip last time.”
“Why didn’t you pick them off?”
“Because I love the blasted things,” the woman confessed. “Don’t change the subject. How’d that hottie slip off the hook?”
Meg shook her head. “It’s late. I really need to turn in.”
The elderly woman, who was actually rather nice when she wasn’t doing her imitation of Mrs. Kravitz from “Bewitched,” smirked. “Tell me what happened and I won’t tell your mother you went out with a blond-haired man in a sports car, and came home with a dark-haired man in a truck.”
And to think she’d just believed the woman could be nice. Knowing the old battle-ax with the steely blue eyes would make good on her threat, Meg briefly explained how she’d switched dates. She never mentioned where she’d met Joe, though.
“He was being noble. So when you kissed him, he ran off.” She crossed her arms. “Darlin’, you really need to learn, men have to build up to these things. He looked upon you as someone he’d saved from a wicked man. The last thing he needed was to feel like he was a wicked man himself.”
She almost laughed. Joe was one of the most decent guys she’d ever met. That, she realized, was probably Mrs. Mahoney’s point. “Maybe you’re right.”
“You should have seduced him slowly, not jumped on him like a needy virgin.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the nosy old lady she wasn’t a virgin. Not wanting such a juicy bit of news floating over the phone lines to her mother, however, she swallowed the comment. Mrs. Mahoney looked disappointed because her fishing lure had gone unnibbled.
“So,” the woman said. “Do you know about seduction?”
“Seduction?”
The woman stepped into the hall, leaving her door open. “Look at you. You’ve got a beautiful shape under all that wool. Loosen up your hair.” Mrs. Mahoney pulled her own blue robe tightly around her ample waist. “Wear some tighter clothes, and lower necklines.” She tugged the edges of the robe apart until Meg could see a large expanse of flowered nightdress beneath. “Get a little sleazy and he won’t be able to resist you.”
Sleazy? Like the Meg she’d seen on the screen at The Red Doors? “I don’t think so.”
“Honey, men don’t make moves on women who look like their maiden aunt Bertha. Believe me, I know something about sex. Haven’t I buried three husbands?”
It made Meg wonder just how they’d died.
“I really need to go to bed now,” she said softly.
“All right,” the woman replied. “And, don’t worry, I won’t pass this on to your mother. If she thinks you can’t even get the sex part right, she’ll convince herself you’ll never catch a man. I don’t want to be responsible for her heart palpitations.”
It took some serious self-control not to slam the door.
JOE SAT IN HIS TRUCK for a few minutes after leaving Meg’s place. He watched her window, waiting for her light to flip on inside. When it finally did, he leaned forward in his seat, resting his crossed arms on the padded steering wheel. Then he saw her silhouette in front of the window, and sucked in a breath.
As the curtains separated, her face appeared. She spotted him instantly. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as they stared at each other.
He remained in the truck through sheer force of will.
After she mouthed, “Good night,” and dropped the curtains, he started the ignition and slowly drove out of the parking lot.
Walking away from her, leaving her standing in the doorway after that kiss, had been one of the toughest things he’d ever done. It had been a pure case of mind over body, intellect over instinct. He’d been dying to stay, but he knew he had to leave.
Joe had only been partially honest with her. No, he truly couldn’t take advantage of a woman he’d just met, who’d had such a bad day. There was more to it, though.
First, Meg was nothing like the more experienced women he usually dated. She wasn’t an easygoing, free-spirited, single twenty-something who liked to play around as much as any guy. As a matter of fact, she was an awful lot like the kind of woman his mother had been trying to foist on him for the past year or two. A warmhearted, natural, delightful female. A woman with a genuine smile, a ready laugh, an open, honest personality.
Hell, that realization should have sent him running in the opposite direction.
It hadn’t, of course. Because he’d been half gone on Meg O’Rourke before he’d ever met her, when she was an image on a computer screen. Now he knew she was so much more. As hokey as it seemed, he had a feeling she might be “the one.”
Joe had never been a believer in love at first sight, nor did he fool himself into thinking that was what had happened here. Sure, he’d fallen madly in lust with her on Christmas Eve. Today, though, during the hours they’d spent together, the lust had smoothly transformed into desire, by way of genuine liking.
The minute she’d raised her head and walked through The Red Doors on his arm, he’d started to fall. He’d slid farther down the slippery slope of emotion with every shared laugh, every flash of her dimple or glimpse of her temper.
It was for that reason he couldn’t allow himself any more than one heated kiss in her doorway. He still hadn’t figured out a way to admit he’d been one of the lousy creeps ogling her on-screen for weeks. If he got sexually involved with her, and then she somehow found out, she’d never forgive him. He’d lose his shot at anything more permanent.
Yeah, he wanted to go to bed with her…now. But he had the strangest feeling he was going to want to wake up with her…forever.
“You’re losing it,” he told himself in the dark confines of the truck as he drove home.
Actually, he thought, he might already have lost it—his head, and a little chunk of his heart. How crazy was that?
Maybe crazy, but true. So he had to come clean before
things went much further. Judging by how quickly things were progressing between them, it would have to be soon.
She’ll slam the door in your face.
She just might, which was why he had to make sure she knew he had a lot more at stake than his libido. He had to take time to reinforce the emotions already building between them.
Most of all, he had to figure out a way to make her believe what had started out as an infatuation with a computer image had evolved into much more than a case of lust at first byte.
SEDUCTION was still very much on Meg’s mind the next afternoon. Not that she’d actually decided to try it…but she couldn’t deny she was thinking about it. Mainly because of her dreams. Her entire night had been fitful and restless, with erotic dreams about Joe, interspersed with nightmares of her cousin Georgie hanging her underwear from the balcony of the mezzanine inside The Red Doors.
“Georgie,” she whispered as she sat in her apartment Tuesday after school, “you’d better watch your back.”
She hadn’t confronted Georgie yet, not wanting to tip him off before she was ready with some pay-back. She hadn’t figured out a way to even the score with her cousin, but she would.
Maybe she’d out him to his mother about why Georgie had really missed Christmas with the family. He’d lied and said he had a big out-of-town job to do. Her aunt Lulu had been heartbroken because her baby boy had missed the holiday. Meg had found out later it was because he’d wanted to go to a Star Trek convention in Miami. “Knowing you, I bet there’s a photo of you in a Ferengi costume on some Trekker’s Web site,” she muttered out loud, determined to do a Web search the next time she was online.
Not adequate revenge, but it was a start, anyway.
Though she still hadn’t completely decided how to handle the Georgie situation, she had, at least, made a first step toward resolving the problem with The Red Doors. A phone call to one of the owners, Jamie Ruskin, had proven very productive. The woman had sounded truly horrified when Meg told her the situation, and had asked her to come in and meet with her and the other owner, a woman she called Faith, the following day.
Getting back to work on her lesson plans, Meg kept shifting her gaze between the clock and the phone. Despite his promise, Joe hadn’t yet called. She told herself he’d just been busy today. But, deep down, she feared he’d merely been playing Mr. Nice Guy the night before, and she’d never see him again.
When the phone rang, she snatched it up so quickly she knocked the base off the coffee table. “Hello?”
“Hey, how about a picnic?” Warm relief flowed through her at the sound of his voice.
She chuckled. “It’s thirty-five degrees outside. I think you’re about four months early for a picnic.”
“I might surprise you,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MEG DEBATED over what to wear for their second date for more than an hour. “Sleazy?” No. Meg didn’t own anything remotely sleazy. From her long sweaters and loose skirts to her pretty but plain underwear, her closet contained absolutely nothing that screamed seduction. Nothing that even whispered it.
Finally, figuring if Joe really did mean they were going on a picnic she ought to dress warmly, she settled on a pair of black cords and a sweater. The slacks were tighter than she usually wore—she’d bought them back in college—and she almost changed. “This is not a seduction, Meg,” she told herself as she studied her reflection in her bedroom mirror. “These pants have nothing to do with what Mrs. Mahoney said. They’re just warm.”
Yeah. Sure. Right. It didn’t matter a bit that they did really nice things for her legs, making them look longer and shapelier than anything she usually wore. Not to mention the way they accentuated her waist and the curve of her hips. And it certainly wasn’t by design that she chose a cropped sweater to go with them, rather than one of her hip-length ones.
When Joe arrived to pick her up, his eyes widened in appreciation. She lowered her lashes to disguise the sudden rush of feminine pleasure. Maybe he was a nice guy, and he wasn’t going to try anything. That didn’t mean she didn’t want him to want to try something!
He looked even better tonight than he had the night before. He’d obviously shaved before picking her up, and when he leaned close to help her don her jacket, she couldn’t stop a tiny sigh of appreciation at the clean, masculine scent of his skin. His hair was still damp from a shower, and nearly touched the collar of his leather jacket. She wanted to run her fingers through it, wanted to open his jacket and to slide her arms around his lean body, to feel him against her the way she had the night before.
But Meg had made enough first moves for one week. Kissing the lips off him last night hadn’t exactly inspired a madly passionate reaction. Drooling over him now probably wouldn’t either. “So, where exactly is this picnic?” she asked as they exited her building toward his truck.
“It’s a surprise.”
He wasn’t kidding. When they pulled up in front of a high-rise apartment building under construction a few blocks from Michigan Avenue a short time later, Meg definitely felt surprised. “Is there a park or something near here?”
“Or something,” he said, a secretive twinkle in his eyes.
Waiting while Joe walked around to open the door for her, Meg watched in the side mirror as he stopped to remove some items from the back of the truck. A folded blanket. A picnic basket. And…“Hard hats?” she asked as he opened the door.
He handed her one. “Come on, I know you’re not afraid it’ll mess up your hair.”
Grinning because he was right, she plopped the bright yellow hat onto her head. “Lead on.”
Meg had never been in a high-rise before it was open to the public, but she immediately saw that this one soon would be. The outside of the building looked ready for occupancy, but when they entered the lobby, she noted the absence of carpeting and fixtures. “This is one of your projects?”
Joe nodded as he led her to a service elevator. “My company is one of a group of contractors who went in together on this building. All of the units are already sold out.”
She whistled, knowing the price of real estate in Chicago. “Nice. So your mother is entitled to do a little bragging.”
“Just a little. I’m only a minor part of the whole thing. But it’ll definitely keep us in the black for a while.”
They rode up the elevator to the very top of the building. “Good thing the power’s on. Otherwise, we would have had a long walk up,” Meg said with a laugh as they stepped out in front of a door marked Penthouse.
“Ready?”
She nodded while he unlocked the door. Flipping on a light, he led her inside. “Watch your step. This is almost done, but it’s possible somebody left something lying on the floor.”
“Wow,” was all she could say, looking around at the huge luxury apartment. Though it wasn’t finished, with bare floors and a few spackle marks on some drywall, it was easy to envision the final product. “This is amazing.”
“Wait’ll you see the view.”
He walked across the penthouse to a sliding-glass door that took up most of one wall. When she followed, she saw what he meant. The penthouse overlooked some of the downtown area. Twinkling lights of buildings, some higher, some shorter, mingled with the stars emerging in the night sky. “Unbelievable.”
He looked as pleased as a kid who’d done well on a test. “You like it? It’s okay for a picnic?” he asked as he spread a large blanket out on the floor in front of the door.
“Absolutely.” She sat, still staring outside.
“Nothing fancy, just good Italian bread and cheese, and some fruit.” He began to unload the basketful of food. “Oh, and this.” He removed a bottle of wine, uncorked it and poured them each a glass. Taking off his hard hat, he scooped some ice into it, and put the bottle inside.
“Can I take mine off, too?” she asked with a laugh.
He reached for her hat and gently pulled it off. “I think I can pr
omise nothing’s going to fall on you up here.”
Not even you? She couldn’t blame the wicked thought on the wine, which she hadn’t even sipped yet. She looked away, not wanting him to see the needy look in her eyes.
Aside from the food, he’d thought of lighting and music. Candles and a battery-operated CD player set the right tone for their penthouse date. “This is a very romantic thing to do.”
He shrugged. “Probably sappy. But, hey, Friday’s Valentine’s Day. Every guy ought to dig down and discover a little bit of romance in his soul for Valentine’s Day. Even if it’s just delivering something sweet wrapped up in a red satin bow.”
“You obviously didn’t have to dig too far. Thank you, Joe. No man ever went to this much trouble for me before. My typical Valentine’s Day involves sticky little fingers stuck to red construction paper hearts, not red satin.”
He chuckled, then met her eye steadily. “And I bet you keep every one of them, don’t you?”
She answered with a slow nod. “In a box in my closet.”
He seemed to like her answer. She held her breath as he reached out to touch her cheek, scraping the back of his finger from her hairline to her jaw in a caress so tender it made her sigh. She somehow resisted the urge to turn her face, to taste the tip of his finger, to press a hot kiss in his palm.
“You’re so special, Meg.”
She shrugged, reaching for her glass and sipping from it, trying to busy herself so she wouldn’t throw her arms around his neck. “No, just sentimental.”
“I like that about you.”
“I warn you,” she returned, “I cry buckets at movies.”
He nodded and earnestly replied, “I cried when Dumbo’s mother got locked up.”
She rolled her eyes. “Everybody cried when Dumbo’s mother got locked up. Besides, when did you see it? Twenty years ago?”
“Last Christmas,” he replied, deadpan.
She lightly smacked his shoulder. “Smarty-pants.”
Behind the Red Doors Page 23