Spring flowers covered a nearby patch of ground and he stooped to pluck a yellow primrose. Then he turned toward her and stepped close enough to kiss her.
“How beautiful,” she whispered.
But it was his mouth rather than the sunrise at which she now stared. Yes, indeed, quite a beautiful mouth, she thought, recognizing the sensuality that she had only guessed at the day before in her store. More than anything, Annie wanted to feel those lips against hers.
“Yes, beautiful.” Nate set the flower in her hair, tucking it in the band holding her ponytail in place. “Flowers suit you.” He brushed stray wisps of hair from her cheek and straightened her glasses.
And then he kissed her.
The helmet slipped from her suddenly lifeless fingers.
Mouth covering hers, Nate moved in closer, caught her low under her buttocks and pulled her up and into him. Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he opened her mouth and explored the sensitive flesh inside with a soft, sexy tongue. Unable to help herself, she slipped one leg up his and wrapped it around his thigh. Still invading her mouth, he hiked her up again and nudged her other thigh higher until both of her legs were wrapped around him.
Holding her weight, he spun around in circles until the world seemed to whirl past them in a rush, until Annie was giddy with the sensation.
Then the kiss ended and the world toppled and she found herself flat on her back in the grass, Nate stretched half over her, his weight making her catch her breath even as the sunrise had. Even through the leather, she felt the length and breadth of his desire for her and couldn’t help but respond. Heat flushed along her nerves, a pulsing sensation that she couldn’t ignore. But even though his eyes were heavy-lidded—sexy bedroom eyes, she mused—Nate didn’t press her to go further. Which surprised her.
As Nate stared down at her, a smile suddenly quirked his lips, deepening the cleft in his chin and making him even better looking, if that were possible. Her heart began to thud.
Squirming inwardly, she murmured, “What?”
“What?” he echoed.
“The smile.”
“A reason? Do I need one?”
“It makes you seem so…I don’t know…”
“Relaxed?”
Annie couldn’t help herself. His smile was contagious, and suddenly she was grinning back at him. “Okay, that’s a good word.”
A safe word.
“Why shouldn’t I be relaxed? I’m with you.”
And with that, Nate rolled over on his back, reached out and found her hand and possessively threaded his fingers through hers. They lay there in silence as morning touched Annie in a way it never had before. Gazing out at Lake Michigan, she lost herself in the golden blush that hung over the horizon as the sun blossomed and tinged everything in its reach with a glow as soft and sparkling as fairy dust.
A voice in her head suddenly intruded, suggesting that maybe the illusion of fairy dust was brought about by smudges on her glasses.
Annie shook away the cynical thought. He was with her and that made him smile.
She’d never heard that line before, her negative side thought.
If it was a line, her more positive self countered.
But, as usual, the cynic won, and Annie quickly grew restless, anxious to be alone where she could think things through. She extricated her hand and sat straight up and, through eyes that weren’t filled with stardust, realized that morning had broken and it was just another day. She removed her glasses and, using the edge of her jacket, cleared the smudges made by his cheek.
“Maybe we should be getting back,” Annie said matter-of-factly, making a mental list of the things she needed to tackle. “I have that exterminator to contact.”
“Right.”
She started to rise, but Nate beat her to it and held out his hand. Reluctantly, she let him help her to her feet, and was relieved that he didn’t try to get closer. Bad enough that she’d have to hang on to him on the cycle.
During the ride back, she blanked her mind. No need to replay a perfect morning and torture herself with what probably had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. After all, “Nate” might never appear in her life again.
It wasn’t until they were approaching the six corners that she realized he was taking her to Annie’s Attic rather than home. No problem. Rock was fed and she did have that paperwork to finish. Besides, he could get those numbers for her. Finding an exterminator was definitely a priority. No way was she going to willingly share her new digs with uninvited rodents.
Preoccupied, she was startled when Nate stiffened and said, “Damn!” and brought the cycle to an abrupt stop.
“What’s wrong?”
They were in front of Annie’s Attic, and the source of his anger was immediately apparent. Her stomach twisted.
Someone had painted TRASH in big red letters across her display window.
3
“WHAT A SWELL WAY to start my morning. What the heck is your security guard doing, anyway?” a frustrated Annie lashed out. “Sleeping on the job?”
“Harry Burdock makes the rounds at four different buildings in this area twice a night,” Nate said, keeping his tone reasonable. “And he only works until 6:00 a.m., so this could have happened after he was off duty.”
He was right, of course. Annie sighed. What a mess. The last time it had been eggs smeared all over her display window. Now it was paint.
“Maybe I should’ve trained as a cleanup expert,” she muttered.
“With two of us at it—”
“No! This is my problem. I will fix it.”
“I don’t mind. It is my building.”
“But it’s my business,” she stubbornly insisted.
Nate stared at her. Then, as if realizing she wasn’t going to budge, he nodded. For a moment she thought he might come closer, might kiss her again, but then probably thought better of the impulse, because he backed off, spine stiff and expression oddly neutral. The pulse that jagged through her for a few seconds settled right down.
He was looking a lot more like Nathaniel than Nate, she thought with surprise and a vague sense of disappointment.
He said, “I’ll talk to you later, then.”
“No, wait, Nate.” What some jerk had done wasn’t his fault, and she shouldn’t take it out on him. “Thanks, again. Really. For everything.”
He softened back into Nate. “Anytime.”
Annie watched him mount the Harley and ride off, and a part of her wished that she could go with him. But a bigger part of her was highly ticked when she looked back at the scarlet letters.
Morality was in the mind of the beholder, Annie thought. She found lots of things immoral—poverty, abuse, violence…desecrating other people’s property! But there was nothing immoral about the fantasies she sold. Fantasies were a natural inclination, a part of human nature, just as were the sexual encounters that might be prompted by those very fantasies.
Well, sex was part of most people’s lives, anyway.
Disgusted, she unlocked the shop and went inside, where she took off her bike helmet.
A quick glance into the mirror reminded her of the flower Nate had tucked into her hair. Now it was woefully crushed. Saddened, she removed it, but she just couldn’t throw it away. Instead, she got a glass, filled it with water and tucked the flower inside.
Leaving it on her desk as a reminder of the good part of the morning, she headed into the storage area to get what she needed to clean up the mess. Since she did her own displays and ads, she was well armed to deal with paint. She grabbed a small can of paint thinner and a handful of old rags and marched back outside.
No doubt the culprit thought she was some kind of sexpert, she groused to herself as, with a fury, she attacked the latest desecration of her establishment. Well, if that was the problem, the joke was on whoever had done this.
Quickly, she obliterated the damning letters, if not the brilliant color. The faster she wiped, the faster the
bright red smear spread across the glass.
And to her horror, people on their way to the rapid transit station stopped to watch and whisper.
Head buzzing a bit from the fumes, she wiped harder and faster, turning the rags to use every inch of cloth. The red began to disappear from the window, but she could still see a faint outline where the letters had been. And, she was certain, so could the small crowd that had formed behind her back.
A row of business suits reflected in the plate glass, as did a long, black car that pulled up and stopped at the curb. Annie glanced over her shoulder as an electric window whined and lowered. Alderman Vincent Zavadinski glared out at her, his silver-shot beetle brows pulling into a straight line.
Annie remembered seeing him outside the window the evening before. Red-streaked rags in equally red-streaked hands, she went straight for the car, the crowd parting around her like the Red Sea. The look of satisfaction settling on the man’s face made her see red, too.
“Alderman, interested in spicing up your personal life?” she asked sweetly.
Color flushed Zavadinski’s full cheeks and clashed with the silver-threaded blond hair slicked back from a high forehead. “Hardly.”
“Then you approve of what happened here.”
“What’s not to approve? Someone pinned you and your business, Miss Wilder. Someone had the guts to speak up with the truth.”
“Truth?” she echoed. “Guts? Sneaking around in the middle of the night with a can of paint takes guts? Whoever did this is a coward. And you can tell him I said so.”
“M-me?” he sputtered. “You think I had something to do with defacing private property?”
Annie narrowed her gaze on his increasingly ruddy face. “No, of course not. You just happened along. You stopped to join the other gawkers.”
“I was concerned that someone was hurt.”
Hurt….
A shudder ran through Annie. Paint was a pretty impotent weapon. But she hadn’t forgotten the fear that had frozen her insides when she’d thought she was being followed the night before.
What if she had been? What if it hadn’t been her imagination, after all?
Renewed fear, added to anger, fired her up. Annie could hardly keep from shaking as she asked, “That wasn’t some kind of threat, was it, Alderman Zavadinski?” in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “You wouldn’t physically threaten a woman—a woman running a legal business—in front of witnesses, would you?”
If looks could kill… The alderman withdrew and the electric window whined upward, effectively shutting her out.
“Show’s over, folks,” Annie told the spectators as she straightened. Her insides were tumbling, but she was determined not to show it. “Come on back when we open at ten.” They were already moving off, probably never to return, but she continued her spiel. “Annie’s Attic is open for business six days a week, ten until seven, except for Sundays, when we’re open noon to five. We’re closed on Mondays.”
Realizing she was alone once more, Annie suddenly felt deflated. She glanced back at her handiwork. A ghostly TRASH still mocked her.
Determined to eradicate the reminder of mean-spiritedness, she went inside and found a roll of paper towels and window cleaner, plus a razor blade that she could use to scrape away the remains of the paint.
Around nine-thirty, Gloria Delgado reported for work, early as usual, as Annie was polishing the now-clean window to a luster.
Today the Hispanic woman wore her mass of hair up, though several glossy, blue-black curls dangled over the shoulders of her bright orange jacket. A skimpy purple top, lime-green miniskirt and purple platform shoes and shoulder bag completed the eye-popping outfit. The store’s assistant manager certainly had her own style, the reason Annie had hired her. She’d never been sorry—Gloria related well to the trend-conscious younger neighborhood women who came into Annie’s Attic to shop.
“What’s going on, boss? The window washers on strike or something?”
“More like the neighborhood,” Annie muttered. As she went back into the store, Gloria following closely, she explained what had happened.
Outraged, Gloria stuck a fist on one full hip and waved her other index finger in the air as she said, “You know, I’m gonna tell my cousin Julio to have his boys keep an eye on the place at night.”
As usual, Gloria acted as if she had a vested interest in the business, which in a way she did, Annie supposed, since the other woman had been by her side since day one. But knowing Julio and his boys were part of a local gang, Annie figured she didn’t need them involved.
“Don’t tell your cousin anything!” Realizing she sounded too harsh, Annie muttered, “I mean, it was only paint.” She was trying not to think of it as a warning.
“They’re okay, you know, Julio and his boys,” Gloria argued. “They’re just regular guys.” Then, as if realizing that argument wouldn’t convince anyone, she shrugged her shoulders. “Well, you change your mind, you say the word.”
“Thanks for the thought, Gloria. I know you mean well.”
“We gotta stick together, you and me. You gave me a chance to make something of myself here, and not at no minimum wage job, neither. I don’t want this business run outta the neighborhood because some jerks with no cajones have nothing better to do than make trouble.”
Who needed Julio and his pals? If those cajoneless jerks had any brains, they would stay out of dark alleys when Gloria Delgado was around. She was the toughest woman Annie had ever known.
“Annie’s Attic won’t be run out of anywhere, Gloria. I promise I won’t cave.”
A little false bravado made Annie feel better. She left her assistant in the shop with its colors and scents and fabrics meant to bring nothing but joy to people’s lives, while she went back into the janitor’s closet behind all the stores to trash the rags and empty thinner can and clean the paint from her hands. She was just about through when she felt a presence behind her.
Heart hammering, Annie whipped around to find Nate—correction, Nathaniel, because he was wearing one of his expensive suits, custom white shirts and blah ties—standing in the doorway.
NATE WATCHED ANNIE’S FACE flood with sensuous color, and fought the urge to pull her into his arms, pin her at the sink and take her right there. Not that she looked as if she wanted to be taken. She simply seemed…uncomfortable.
“What are you doing here?”
And not exactly happy to see him, Nate thought. “My offices are here, remember.”
“Upstairs.”
“I can’t check on my own building?”
Though it was the tenant who held his interest at the moment. And now that he’d found a way to get to her, he wasn’t about to do a disappearing act.
Her discomfort growing before his eyes, Annie shrugged. “I—I guess you can do whatever you want in your own building. You just startled me.”
He wondered. She seemed uneasy with him.
“I thought you would want this.” He held out a card. “The exterminator’s number.” When she looked blank, he said, “The rat?”
“Oh. Right. I can think of more than one rat I’d like exterminated!”
Avoiding his fingers, she took the card from him gingerly, glanced at it and tucked it into a back pocket of her jeans.
An awkward silence hung between them as Nate waited for her to follow up. A thank-you might be in order, though he would prefer a “nice to see you again.” Which he obviously wasn’t going to hear.
“I had a great time with you this morning,” Nate said, trying to keep it casual. Trying to keep from scaring her. He could see the pulse flutter in her throat. He could almost taste it. Being this close to her and not being able to touch her was driving him crazy. “I mean…considering the reason you called.”
“You were something of a distraction,” she admitted, averting her eyes.
Her sudden shyness made him want her. Here. Now. On the damn janitor’s sink. Thinking about it tightened his groin so that
he had to shift his stance.
“I’d like to distract you some more,” Nate admitted. He knew he had to be careful how he handled her. She was like a butterfly ready to spring from her cocoon, and he meant to be there when it happened—but he knew that he would be only if he was very, very careful. “How about over dinner? You close shop at seven, and that’s about the time I get out of a late meeting with some investors. I could make reservations at Chic for seven-thirty.”
“Chic?”
Her distressed expression surprised him. “You don’t like French food?”
“It’s not that. Chic is, um, kind of upscale.”
Annie indicated her outfit, the same jeans and silk shirt she’d had on when he’d picked her up that morning. She looked good to him—good enough to eat—but he supposed she would feel as if she were too casually dressed.
“I can make it later,” he said, not caring about the hour, just as long as he could spend some time with her. “Give you time to change. I’ll pick you up at home.”
“To tell you the truth,” Annie said with a forced smile, “Chic really isn’t my style.”
He gazed into her eyes, but she kept herself closed off from him.
“Then you pick the restaurant.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night….”
This was becoming painful. How many ways did she have to say no before he got it through his thick head that she wasn’t going to have dinner with him?
So he would have to put his plans on hold, look for a different, more enticing opening. He tamped down his frustration.
“Some other night then,” he promised, keeping his voice even.
“Sure. Maybe.”
Okay, so she didn’t want to go out with him again ever. But why not? Determined to change her mind, Nate smiled at Annie through clenched teeth. She’d seemed immune to his charms for months, but now he knew that she wasn’t truly impervious to him. The kiss had proved that. So what was the problem?
Trying to pick up that connection they’d made earlier, he said, “And about the security guard—Burdock said everything was fine when he checked the building at five. So someone messed with your window after that. I’m going to have him spend less time at the other buildings and more here. I’ll tell him to keep an eye on Annie’s Attic specifically.”
Sheer Pleasure Page 3