One Touch of Moondust

by Sherryl Woods

  It was an unexpected plus. There would be no arguments when the time came for her to move back out.

  “And we’re strictly roommates? You have your own room. I have mine. We share the kitchen. Right?” An image of the tub popped into mind. “We have a schedule for the kitchen,” she amended.

  Apparently the same provocative image lurked in his mind, too, because he grinned. “If you say so.”

  She took another look around the garden, then held out her hand. “Then I guess we understand each other Mr.…?”

  He enfolded her hand in his much larger one and held it just long enough for the calluses and warmth to register against the chilled softness of her own flesh.

  “Reed,” he said in a slow, deliberately provocative way meant to emblazon the name on her memory. “Paul Reed.”

  She swallowed hard. “And I’m Gabrielle Clayton.” It came out sounding disgustingly breathless.

  “Gabrielle, huh? Quite a mouthful for such a little bit of a thing. Why don’t I call you Gaby?”

  She felt her control slipping away and inserted the haughty edge back into her voice. “Gabrielle will do just fine. Ms. Clayton would be even better.”

  “So, Gaby, when do you want to move in?”

  She gave him an icy stare. It was going to be a very long month. Or two. “As soon as possible.”

  “Will Friday be okay? I should be able to get the basics taken care of by then.”

  She supposed if she was about to walk straight into danger, it was better to get it over with. “Perfect,” she said without the slightest tremor.

  “One last thing,” she said as she went to the foyer. “For as long as we’re sharing the place, we split the rent fifty-fifty.”

  “That’s really not fair. I’m inconveniencing you. I’ll take care of the first month. After that you pay the full rate.”

  She toyed with the temptation, then dismissed it. Being in this man’s debt could lead to all sorts of potentially explosive misunderstandings. “Fifty-fifty.”

  He shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

  “And the same with the utilities.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you call me Gabrielle.”

  He grinned. “We’ll have to work on that one.”

  He followed her onto the front stoop and watched as she started down the steps. She felt his gaze burning into her.

  “Have a nice week,” he said just then. The husky note in his voice sent a delicious shiver down her spine before he deliberately taunted, “Gaby.”

  Paul Reed, she decided as she marched off to the subway station, was a very irritating man. Since that was the only real certainty to come out of the morning, she was stunned that she’d put up so little fuss about living with him even on such a temporary basis. She was not an impetuous woman. While working on Wall Street had demanded a certain amount of risk-taking, her decisions were always well-informed, not reckless. So why on earth had she agreed to move in with a man like Paul Reed, a man who made her usually sensible head spin? During the subway ride back to Manhattan, she told herself he’d caught her in a weak moment, with little money and a lease that was about to expire. She even blamed it on the zinnias.

  Now, after a blast of cool air and a little distance, she was thinking more clearly. That knot of uncertainty in her stomach was sending a message. She ought to listen to it. She would call and cancel their agreement. No, forget calling. His voice would sizzle across the phone lines and she’d agree to something else ridiculous. It was far more sensible not to show up. It would teach him a valuable lesson about good business. He should have insisted on a lease. He should have asked for references, a deposit. Quite possibly he’d considered the fox coat adequate. If only he knew. It was the last thing of value she owned and she could very well be forced to hock it if things didn’t turn around soon.

  Pleased with her decision to forget all about the apartment in Brooklyn and about Paul Reed, she pulled the classified ads out of her purse and began to search for another, more suitable apartment, one with a tub where it belonged and no overwhelmingly masculine roommate. But before the subway even crossed into Manhattan, her spirits sank. She could not bear the thought of looking at another dump. The brownstone which, like her, was at a turning point in its life seemed increasingly attractive. And Paul Reed, she decided, she could manage.

  “How bad could it be?” she murmured under her breath, hoping for a stronger sense of conviction. It was only for a month after all. Four weeks. She’d handled stock portfolios worth millions. She’d dealt with avaricious, rakish men. She could handle anything for four weeks, even a man like Paul Reed. Starting Monday she’d double her efforts to find a new job. Within a month or two at the outside, she’d be back on her feet and back in Manhattan.

  An image of Paul Reed’s bold, impudent smile danced across her mind. The subway suddenly seemed much warmer. Doubts flooded back more vividly than ever.

  It was the balance in her checkbook that took the decision out of her hands. When it came right down to it, there was no choice at all. It looked as though Friday would be moving day. She’d just buy a very sturdy lock for the bedroom door.

  * * *

  Now why did you go and do a stupid thing like that? Paul asked himself repeatedly after Gabrielle had left. Oh, sure, he needed the money if he was to keep this restoration on schedule and make the monthly payments on the brownstone, but he could have insisted that she wait another month before moving in. He could even have volunteered to move downstairs with his sleeping bag. He’d lived like a vagrant amid the rubble up here for weeks now anyway. Instead he’d managed to manipulate her into sharing the place with him. Was he suffering from some need to torment himself? Hadn’t he learned anything about the unbreachable differences between the classes while he’d been growing up on Long Island? He’d been the housekeeper’s son on an estate the size of a country club. It had kept him on the fringes of high society all of his life. The women he’d met had been vain, shallow and spoiled. He’d learned the hard way that they were unsuited to anything but the most pampered way of life.

  He slammed a nail so hard it shook the door. Gabrielle Clayton belonged in a place like this the way diamonds belonged in the Bowery. She probably wouldn’t last half as long as diamonds did in that neighborhood, either. It would give him a certain perverse satisfaction to watch her try to adapt to a life-style she quite obviously considered beneath her.

  He’d seen the way she looked at him, too, as if he were no better than a lazy, unambitious handyman. Too many people had looked at him just that way. It was about time he taught one of them a lesson about quick judgments and superficial values.

  But why Gabrielle Clayton? a voice in his head nagged. He grinned ruefully. That answer was obvious to anyone who took a good, hard look at her. With her honey-blond hair, delicate bone structure and slight Southern accent, she was a sexy bundle of contradictions wrapped in fur. Scarlett O’Hara and the ice Maiden all rolled into one. She had the kind of wide, dangerous eyes that could tempt a man to the edge of hell. There wasn’t a healthy, competitive male alive who wouldn’t want to explore the possibilities, to try to ignite a flame that would warm that cool exterior, that would put laughter on those sensuous lips.

  All he had to do now was make sure he wasn’t the one who got burned.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Her parents!

  What on earth was she going to tell her parents about this move? Gabrielle thought with a dawning sense of horror as she listened to her mother cheerfully rattling on about the tea party she’d attended the previous afternoon in one of the gracious old houses overlooking Charleston Harbor.

  “I do so love that part of town. I don’t know why your father won’t consider moving. I suppose it’s because this old house has been in his family for generations. I’m all for preserving family history, but is it necessary to live in it? Oh, well, if he won’t, he won’t. Did I mention that Townsend was there?”

  When Gabrielle didn
’t respond, her mother prodded, “Gabrielle, dear, are you there?”

  “What?”

  “Is something wrong, dear?”

  “No, of course not, Mother.” She injected a note of cheery bravado into her voice. “Everything’s just fine. What were you saying about Mrs. Lane’s tea party?”

  “I was telling you that Townsend stopped in. He asked how you were,” she said pointedly.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Don’t you want to know how he is, dear?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Gabrielle!”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry. Of course, I want to know how he is.”

  “He misses you, dear. I’m sure of it, even though…”

  “Even though what, Mother?” she responded on cue.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you, but since you ask, he’s been seeing Patricia Henley.”

  “That’s nice. I’m sure she’s much more suited for life with Townsend than I ever was. She actually likes those awful horses of his.”

  There was an audible gasp on the other end of the line. “Gabrielle, what is the matter with you? It’s not like you to be so sarcastic.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic. Townsend is happiest on the polo field, as you perfectly well know. Patricia adores horses. She’s been riding since she was five.”

  “We gave you riding lessons,” Elizabeth Clayton said stiffly, her voice filled with hurt.

  “And I hated them. You didn’t fail me, Mother,” she said more gently. “You and Father offered me an opportunity to learn all of the social graces. Can I help it if I preferred the Wall Street Journal?”

  It was a tedious and all-too-familiar conversation. It did, however, serve as an excellent delaying tactic. Any minute now her mother would hang up in a huff.

  Coward! The accusation nagged at her. “Mother,” she began, interrupting further news of Townsend. “Mother, I really do have to go. I’m busy packing.”

  “Packing? Where are you going, dear? You haven’t mentioned a trip. Are you coming home?” she inquired, her voice suddenly excited. “Oh, it will be so good to see you. Your father and I miss you terribly. We worry about you up there in that awful, dangerous city.”

  Guilt was now added to cowardice. “Actually, no, I’m not coming home. I’m…” Blurt it out, Gabrielle! “I’m moving.”

  “Oh, are you? It’s about time.” Whatever disappointment her mother was feeling that Gabrielle was not coming home was now tempered by swift and obvious relief. “I’ve always thought that apartment of yours was much too small. Whoever heard of living in a single room? I don’t care if it is on Park Avenue, that apartment doesn’t suit someone of your background. Why, the closet in my bedroom is bigger than that.”

  That was certainly true enough. It had been specially built to accommodate Elizabeth Clayton’s designer wardrobe, which included enough hats to supply every woman who turned out for the annual Fifth Avenue Easter Parade. It was not that her mother was a frivolous woman. She simply needed the trappings to feel secure in Charleston’s more elite social circles, from which she’d once been excluded. Gabrielle had learned long ago to tolerate the excesses, since her father actually enjoyed them. It gave him frequent opportunities to indulge his still-beautiful and adoring wife. He’d learned to his chagrin that similar gifts were wasted on his daughter. She preferred lessons in financial management and subscriptions to business magazines.

  “The new apartment is larger,” Gabrielle said cautiously, hoping that would be enough information to appease her mother’s curiosity. If her mother even suspected the existence of a man like Paul Reed, she’d be on the next flight to New York, clucking over her endangered chick.

  “Two bedrooms in fact,” Gabrielle added.

  “How wonderful! Your father and I will come for a visit soon, now that you have room for us. Tell me all about it. Where is it? Is it a new building, one of those skyscrapers? I’m sure the view must be quite spectacular.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Gabrielle hedged, already regretting the impulsive disclosure. She couldn’t very well explain that the second bedroom was going to be very much occupied or that the building predated her birth and quite possibly her mother’s. Mentioning that it was in Brooklyn would definitely arouse more discussion than she could possibly cope with.

  “It will take me a while to get settled and do some decorating.” Talk about understatements. “I have to go now, Mother. Give my love to Dad. I’ll call you soon.”

  “But, dear, you haven’t given me the new address or phone number.”

  “I’ll call you with it later. The phone’s not even installed yet. Bye, Mother. I love you.”

  She hung up quickly, before her mother could force her to divulge any more details. Her mother could have been used by the military. She had ways of extracting the most personal disclosures when you least expected it. Once, right in the middle of a conversation about Gabrielle’s high school geometry homework, she’d gotten her to confess that there had been boys at Melinda Sue Wainwright’s slumber party. She still didn’t know how her mother had done it. She’d learned, though, that it was best not to prolong a conversation with her mother when she was trying to protect any intimate secret.

  She wondered if she could avoid talking to her at all until after this sojourn in Brooklyn ended.

  * * *

  On Friday morning Gabrielle took a last look around her elegantly furnished studio apartment on Park Avenue. She was going to miss the thick gray carpeting, the glass-topped dining-room table, the outrageously expensive leather convertible sofa, the mahogany wall unit that hid stereo, television, VCR and compact disc player. She was even going to miss the dreadful modern print that hung in the tiny foyer.

  She had rented the apartment at the height of her all-too-brief success on Wall Street, at a time when she’d been thumbing her nose at her protective family. After seeing her very first Manhattan apartment, another studio with a less pricey address, they’d begged her to come back to Charleston. They’d reminded her that she could live there in style as a member of high society. She would not have to eat her dinner perched on a sofa, her plate on a coffee table that barely came up to her kneecaps. She definitely would not have to sleep on that very same sofa. There were nights when she couldn’t find one single comfortable spot on that two-inch mattress that she was tempted to do as they asked.

  However, had she returned they also would have expected her to marry stuffy, rigid Townsend Lane, who was destined for greatness, according to her father. Her refusal to set a wedding date had disappointed them. She doubted if it had had any effect on Townsend at all. He’d barely noticed her when she was there. He’d taken her breaking off of the engagement with his usual cool disinterest and gone off to Palm Beach to play polo with Prince Charles.

  If her parents had considered her breaking up with Townsend foolish, they found her business ambitions unladylike in the extreme. Women in the Clayton clan were supposed to inherit wealth—as her father’s sweet, but mindless sisters had—or marry it, as her mother had. They weren’t supposed to set out to attain it for themselves. She had disgraced them by doing just that, first with a Charleston brokerage house, then by moving to New York where she could avoid their disapproving, bewildered looks.

  After the fuss they’d raised about her leaving home, she had sworn to make it on her own. Even at the outset in New York, she’d refused all their offers of money. She had weathered one stock market crash, only to lose her job a few weeks ago in a subsequent belt-tightening. Unfortunately there were plenty of other stockbrokers and analysts in similar straits, all fighting over the same few openings. Her savings had dipped precariously low. Even so, she knew she couldn’t go home again. She would suffocate under all that well-meaning interference. Ten minutes at home and she would revert to being six again, instead of a cool and competent twenty-six.

  She pressed the button on the intercom that connected her to the lobby and requested a
taxi. It was an extravagance she could ill afford, but she refused to tote her belongings all the way to Brooklyn on the subway. Besides, it would take at least five trips just to get them downstairs. She refused to make twice that many trips back and forth to Brooklyn. She convinced herself that in the end, the taxi would be more cost-effective.

  In the lobby she said goodbye to the aging doorman, who’d taken to watching out for her. He had the manners of a well-trained butler, all icy propriety, with a glimmer of affection that dared to show itself in little kindnesses.

  “Now you be careful, miss,” he said when he’d tucked her into the front seat of the cab after helping the driver to load the trunk and back seat with luggage and boxes. “Stop by now and then.”

  “Thank you, Robert. I will. You stay inside on rainy days now. You don’t want your arthritis acting up. Next time I get over this way, I expect to see pictures of that new grandson of yours.”

  The washed-out blue of his eyes lit up. “You can be sure I’ll have a whole collection of them by then,” he said. “Goodbye, miss.”

  “Goodbye, Robert.”

  As the cab pulled away, she was surprised to discover a tear rolling down her cheek. She brushed it away and watched until Robert went back inside and the building disappeared from view.

  Thankfully the cabdriver, a burly man about her father’s age, wasn’t the talkative kind. He left her to think about endings and beginnings and all that went on in between. She was feeling gut-wrenchingly nostalgic all of a sudden. The driver, Mort Feinstein according to the ID tag located on the glove compartment door, glanced over occasionally. Gabrielle caught the growing concern in his expression and avoided meeting his gaze directly.

  As they drove into the neighborhood of the new apartment, the driver’s concern turned to alarm. He pulled to the curb in front of number six-blank-two and stared around disapprovingly.

  “It’s not safe,” he decreed.

  “No place in this city is safe. I’ll use locks.”

  “And stay inside? You shouldn’t walk down the streets. Take a look around.”