Sam stood up quickly and pushed her chair back.
Brooksie stood up, too, blocking her way. “I need the money. I’m going to be broke as hell if you don’t give this story to me,” she cried. “You know what broke is in Paris? You can’t move in with your friends, you can’t bum a meal from your brother who’s got a steady job, you can’t go to live with your girlfriend, they’re not here!”
“Please,” Sam said, trying to step around her. Poor. Hungry. Need the money. They were words out of her own past and they sickened her. She stopped, and turned to face Brooksie. All the things she’d planned to say at lunch suddenly fell into place.
“I’m going to give you the story you want,” she said slowly. “I just have to work out some of the details, that’s all.” She saw Brooksie’s eyes widen. “The whole thing, Brooksie, I promise—better than you would believe!”
Chapter Twelve
“Get out of here, I mean it!” Samantha quickly shifted the large package from the quincaillerie, the hardware store in the avenue de l’Opera, behind her back to hide it. “Nobody is allowed in the building on weekends!”
Chip lay with his long, muscular body stretched down the first few steps of the Maison Louvel staircase, his elbows propped on the fourth-floor landing. Faded, skintight jeans strained over his thighs and the well-defined, masculine bulge in his crotch, and a leather motorcycle jacket gaped open to show the impressive muscles of his chest and the long sweep of his flat belly. Two helmets, one in shiny metallic gold plastic, one in silver swung carelessly from the fingers of a big hand. He blocked the way completely, sprawling across the steps.
“Move your damned feet.” Sam faced him squarely, one arm bent behind her to hide the paper-wrapped package. “I have to get around you.”
“Thought you might like to go for a ride, love,” he said huskily. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting on these bloody stairs for the better part of an hour.” His bold black stare slid down her tailored shirt and jeans with considerable warmth. “A good day to get out of the house, breathe fresh air. You like motorcycles?”
Sam cautiously gauged Chip’s powerful body. She’d rushed from the lunch with Brooksie in Les Halles to the hardware store near the Opera and then down the rue des Capucines at a fast lope and she was still out of breath. Now here was Chip, lying in wait for her inside the Maison Louvel, just when she was beginning to think she’d finally got rid of him.
“What’s the matter, your other women turn you down?” The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. But Chip wasn’t going to start anything with her, no matter what had happened before. The thought brought a telltale flush to her cheeks. Good lord, was that one mistake going to dog her forever? “Get up off the stairs,” she snapped, “I need to get by.”
“Mmmmm,” he said without budging. He crossed his legs, and looked up at her from under a tangle of thick black lashes. “You know, love, I’d like to see you in a skirt, something soft and feminine, just for once. The pants are lovely, you’ve got the figure for it with those stunning great long legs, but a dress would be quite charming. What’re you hiding behind your back?” he went on silkily. “Give us a look.”
“I want you to get out of my way,” she said between gritted teeth. The arm that held her package awkwardly behind her back was beginning to feel the strain. “I’m not hiding anything, and it’s none of your business, anyway.”
She stepped over his booted leg and started up the stair, squeezing close to the wall. But his hand snaked out quickly and caught her at the knee. He sat up.
“Samantha,” he said in a different tone of voice, “come go for a ride. I want to talk to you.”
“Let go of me, dammit!” She faced him, chin up, her eyes level with his as she stood several steps lower on the stair. She brought the package down to her side in full view. “I’m not afraid of you. If you manhandle me, you muscle-bound clown, believe me, I’ll make you regret it!”
He only stared at her, his hand still gripping her knee. “Is that what you think I’ll do? Manhandle you?” His voice dropped softly. “I spent most of one night in your bed, love, and I didn’t hear any complaints.” Without moving his black eyes he said, “What’s in the parcel?”
Before she could pull back, he had reached out and grabbed the package from her hand. Sam struggled for a moment, trying to hold on to it, but he was much stronger. “Give it back,” she yelled, “I mean it! I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing in this building, if it’s the last damned thing I do!”
He let her go, using both hands to peel back the paper wrapping. He held up the implement from the quincaillerie, two wooden handles with a formidable steel beak at their juncture. The black wings of his eyebrows arched up mockingly. “What are you planning to use it on, ducks? You going into business stealing bicycles?”
“Damn you, did you hear me?” She grabbed one of the handles. He held on to the other while she tugged at it vainly. “I said give it back! It belongs to the hardware store!”
Chip unrolled his long length from the stairs and pried her fingers loose from the handle of the chain cutter. “Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to use it yourself. You haven’t got the strength to break that padlock. All you’ll do is crack a bone in your wrist, you silly twit, or throw out your shoulder.”
“Give it back!” She started toward him uncertainly, her hands clenched, not sure what she was going to do. “It’s only rented, I didn’t buy it! Give it back!”
He held the cutter up out of her reach. “Temper, temper, don’t do anything foolish, love. What do you think’s inside the storeroom, Samantha? What do you want that’s in there?”
“Listen you—” she began and then stopped. He had the chain cutter. He was right about it taking a lot of strength to break a padlock. But Chip could probably open it, if he wanted to.
In the next instant she knew she was crazy to have anything to do with him. What he wanted, showing up here with the excuse of inviting her for a ride on his stupid motorcycle, was what he wanted from any woman who’d let him hang around—what he got from Solange Doumer and her daughter.
“There are clothes in there,” she said. “The ones the mannequins wore, that weren’t sold. I’ve seen the sketches. I want to get a look at them. I—I think they might be valuable.”
He still held the cutter out of her reach. “Valuable?”
“To me, you jerk,” she hissed. “I’m a designer! There’s—there might be years of clothes in there that are important!”
“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “You won’t give up on it, will you?”
“You haven’t got anything to say about it!” Sam burst out. “The Maison Louvel belongs to Jackson Storm Enterprises now, and I’m damned well going to look in the storeroom. That’s what I’m here for!”
He studied her enigmatically for a long moment. “Come along, satisfy your bloody curiosity then,” he said abruptly. He turned and started up the last few steps.
“Wait!” Sam called. She scampered across the landing after him. He was headed for the steps that led to the storeroom door. “Wait! I don’t know if I want you to do this!” After all, she couldn’t count on him not to say anything to Solange Doumer. He wasn’t really going to use the chain cutter on the padlock himself, was he? But he had already bounded up the last steps to the door and was standing there, his back to her.
Sam came up the last steps in a rush. Chip had already maneuvered the pincers in between the loop of the padlock. He looked up at her briefly before he brought his arms together. Sam reached the door just as she heard the snick! of the clippers breaking metal. The lock broke open and dropped into his outstretched hand.
Chip bent his head to examine it. “It’s a clean cut. You can slip the loop back in place afterward and leave it on the door.” He put the lock back on the flange again to show her and then closed it. “From down there on the landing no one can tell it’s been tampered with.”
Sam leaned up agai
nst the wall, staring at him. “How often do you do things like this?”
He gave her a sardonic look. “You’ve a suspicious mind, love. Now, are you going to take a look inside?”
Sam looked down at the doorknob. After a moment’s hesitation she put her hand on it. The knob turned easily enough, but the door was stuck tight.
“Give it here.” Chip put his big hand against the metal and gave it a shove. The door resisted for a moment, then swung inward. “Light switch,” he said, stepping forward and brushing his hand up and down the wall just inside. They heard a click. “Bulb’s burned out. You want me to get my torch? It’s downstairs on the bike.”
Sam didn’t answer him. She stepped over the doorsill.
Late afternoon sun streamed from the skylight just over their heads and penetrated the first few feet of the storeroom. She could make out iron pipes hung horizontally from the low ceiling that were filled with rows on rows of clothing on hangers. The air smelled of fur and wool and cotton, but there was no dank odor of mildew. She let out her breath slowly. The Maison Louvel clothes were there. She felt like she’d just found buried treasure.
Chip leaned his shoulder up against the doorjamb, watching her. “This what you wanted?”
It was hard to be short even with sleazy Chip right at that moment. “Yes, oh yes—it’s all here!” she breathed. “At least what I can see of it.”
Sam whirled in the narrow spaces between the hanging clothes, her long hair whipping around her face as she ran her hands down the various fabrics in what was almost a suppressed, ecstatic little dance. She tried to pull the hems of some of the longer dresses out to the light.
“Years and years of beautiful clothes. There must be hundreds of dresses!” She stuck her head into the first layer, her voice muffled. “I can’t see some of these fabrics but I can feel them. Satin, silk crepe, bead work, sequins, and I think appliqué of lots of little seed pearls. These must be wedding dresses or ball gowns.”
Her disheveled head popped out again, catching on what felt like a gown of sequin net. She stood still while she tried to unwind a long strand of her hair caught in the sparkling fabric, a sudden rapturous grin on her face. “You don’t know what this means, you haven’t seen the sketches, but Claude Louvel was as good as Balmain or Schiaparelli, I swear it. I just had to find—the—uh, ow!” she yelped, leaving part of her hair behind, “originals.”
Her voice trailed away. She could see Chip in the doorway staring at her with such an odd expression that she stopped, her fingers still holding the piece of glittering blue net. She didn’t have to ask him what was the matter. It was there on his face and in those thickly lashed black eyes studying her somberly.
“You look lovely like that, surrounded by sparklers,” he said in a low voice. “First time I’ve seen you happy.”
If he just weren’t so damned good-looking, she thought suddenly. All the things she’d wanted to forget came crashing back—what his big, hard body felt like when he put his arms around her, his hungry, burning kisses, even the growling animal sounds he made deep in his throat when he was making love to her. Chip had spent most of one night in her bed. And she had responded in a blaze of frenzied desire that she didn’t want to think about. When she did, she would tremble, her hands suddenly wet with perspiration, just as they were now.
“Samantha—” he said.
At the sound of his husky voice, Sam dropped the sequined net and started for the door. She tried to brush past him, but he caught her arm. “Wait, love,” he said quickly. “Samantha, I need to talk to you.”
“Forget it!” she yelled. How could she go crazy like this with sleazy Chip? She was aching just thinking about him! “Just leave me alone!”
She jerked away from him and bolted for the stairs. She heard him pull the door behind her and the rattle of the padlock being slipped back into place. Sam hit the landing running and he was right behind her, his boots loud on the marble floor. “Samantha, stop it,” she heard him growl.
She stumbled around the helmets he had left at the top of the staircase and ran for the apartment door, fumbling in her purse for the keys. “Keep your hands off me! I don’t need anything from you. Go back to your other women. But don’t touch me!”
She was humiliated that she was responding to this good-looking, available animal. Chip was a sensuous trap with his fantastic body, his smoldering eyes, the crazy feelings of desire he aroused in her. She had to find some way to keep him out of the building.
But she cringed when he reached out, grabbed her wrist and pried the key out of her hand. He unlocked the apartment door and pushed it open.
“I’m not going in there with you!” When she whirled, starting for the stairs, he caught her arm.
“Get inside,” he said, jerking his head. “I want to talk to you.”
“Like hell!” She rushed past him and tried to slam the door, but he quickly stuck a booted foot out to keep it from closing.
“Samantha,” he said, pushing the door back open and stepping inside, “calm down.”
Calm down? she thought wildly. How could she calm down when being in the same room with him did this to her? She backed away, her fists held up defiantly. “Don’t you dare touch me! You’re trash, do you hear me? You’re low-down, common trash just like the people I was—”
Raised with, she started to say. Her mouth clamped shut. She’d spoken the truth, she knew, her heart pounding wildly. Big, good-looking sleazy Chip was just like the men she’d grown up with—saddlebums, drifters, down-and-outers like her father and her brothers. Men who drank, who didn’t provide for their women or their families; men she’d spent most of her life running away from.
He shut the door and leaned against it, folding his arms over his chest. “Trash?” His black eyes gleamed. “Is that what you think I am? If I told you,” he said softly, “that I’m not sleeping with Sophie or her mother, would you believe me?”
“No!” she shouted.
He shrugged. “Well, that takes care of that, doesn’t it?” He stepped away from the door. “Samantha, when are you going back to New York?”
She whirled on him. “What?”
“How long are you going to stay here?”
“That’s none of your damned business!” She backed away from him. “You’re not even supposed to be here on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t want you hanging around me! You just turn over that key to me, and clear out!”
“No.”
She looked around the sitting room frantically. She was alone with him in the building. The way he was looking at her, sexy and attentive, carried a clear message. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she cried. “I haven’t got time to ride motorcycles. It’s a stupid idea!”
“I want you, Samantha,” he said quietly. When she opened her mouth in protest, he growled, “Oh come, love, let’s not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, not the way you looked me over a few moments ago with those hot, silvery eyes.”
Sam backed across the room. “Why you,” she spluttered, “are you telling me I’m coming on to you?”
“And don’t say you don’t remember,” he said, following her, “what it was like when I made love to you. I see that lovely head churning with the thoughts of it every time you look at me. I’m glad you can’t forget it.” He moved closer with his pantherish glide. “Because I’m here to tell you I return the feeling. I want you as much as you want me.”
“No.” She backed up, bumped the sofa and moved around it. “Are you crazy? You’re a total lunatic, your—your body’s not all that great!”
“Is that all you like? My body?” He was openly stalking her. Samantha backed toward the hall and the bedroom. “Don’t you like what I do to you, what I make you feel?”
“You don’t make me feel anything,” she squeaked. She hit the door of the bedroom with her shoulder and winced. “You’re the last person I’d want to go to bed with, you sorry, low-down, trashy—” She ran out of words, glaring at him.
He stopped, looking down at her. “How many men have made love to you, Samantha?” he said in a different voice. “One, two? There can’t have been too damned many—it’s obvious that none of them have made you very happy.”
He towered over her, his overpowering physical presence so close she felt dizzy. Very slowly, Chip slid out of the leather jacket and let it drop to the floor. “There’s trash and there’s trash, love.” He lifted a big hand to touch the side of her face and push the disheveled pale hair back from it, and she flinched. “But I haven’t called you nasty names, have I?”
Samantha stood rigid, barely breathing as his hand moved to cup the back of her head. “Believe me, I’m just as reluctant as you, love. You come along at a”—he lowered his mouth to hers—”damned inconvenient time. But I don’t seem to be able to help myself.”
She moaned at the touch of his lips. His firm warm kiss rubbed, feather-light, against hers, opening her to the touch of his tongue and his taste, dark and mysterious. He deepened it slowly, feeling her body shudder against him. Then he dragged her to him abruptly, his mouth turning savage with sudden need. The kiss exploded in a passionate blaze, his hands deep in her hair, holding her, his dark face flushed.
His raw desire left her shaken. Sam, struggling, pushed him away. “The other night,” she said breathlessly, “was all a big mistake.”
“Yes, I know.” His hands pulled her back against him.
She squirmed, only managing as she did so to put his muscular thigh between hers, feeling the hard pressure of his arousal in the front of his jeans. “I don’t really want to go to bed with you!”
“Yes, I know, love.” He kissed her hair, his warm hands sliding around her shoulders and down her back. He put his hand over her bottom and pulled her closer into the V of his legs.
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