by Jo Leigh
“I do,” he said. “One deal in particular is very important to me, but I refuse to let it interfere with my weekend.”
She paused, as though this were sinking in. “I see. So today and tomorrow are a deal-free zone? The subject won’t come up, even in passing?”
“Will you push me into the fountain by the food court if it does?”
“I don’t think there is a fountain, but probably.” The laughter bubbled closer to the surface now, and his whole being seemed to warm with it.
“I’ll take the risk. So how about you put the garden off until tomorrow, and we hit the mall today? Do the script this morning, and I’ll pick you up after lunch.”
“What about breakfast?”
“I’ll get some here. If we bag our ’saur, we can celebrate with a victory drink.”
She was laughing openly now. “Deal. Pick me up around two. I’ll be done with the script by then if I concentrate.”
He agreed and rang off, her laughter still tickling his mind, giving him as much pleasure as her fingers might on his skin.
She might be able to find some powers of concentration. But the prospect of spending the afternoon with her had shot his straight to hell.
6
PROMPTLY AT TWO, the doorbell rang and Eve opened the door to find Mitch hunched awkwardly on the porch under the heavy cover of the rambling roses.
“You might consider trimming these things,” he suggested by way of greeting. “I think one of them just bit me.”
Eve waved him inside. “They don’t have thorns. And I keep them that way to remind myself not to let my head swell. You know, with success. They remind me to stay humble.”
Her house wasn’t that big-a dining room and kitchen on the left of the hall, and a parlor and family room on the right, the latter of which had become her office over the past three years. The bathroom and two bedrooms were at the back, but weren’t visible from where he stood.
“I can’t imagine you having problems with that,” he said. “Nice place.”
“Thanks.” She waved him into the parlor. “The furniture is from my aunt and uncle’s attic, mostly. The coffee table was my mom’s. My grandmother in Florida died a year and a half ago, and I got some of her pieces, too, like that sideboard.”
“So you have pieces of your family with you.” His tone was abstract, as if his situation were completely the opposite. “And the piano?” He opened the lid and touched a key with one long finger.
Eve looked away. “My dad’s. He was a big fan of Pinetop Perkins and the old boogie-woogie piano players. My mom used to keep plants on top of it and he could really make them dance once he got going.”
Sure enough, ancient water rings were etched into the finish. Mitch pulled out the bench and sat. “Do you mind?”
“Not a bit. It’s probably out of tune, though.”
“Boogie, huh? I wonder if anyone remembers where that word came from.” He rolled out a walking bass with his left hand.
She laughed, a huff of amazement. “I thought you said you were a trumpet player.”
He began to pick out notes with the right hand. “I started on the piano when I was a kid. Mom was a music teacher. I haven’t done this in a while. I think I’ve lost my knack.”
“Here, shove over.” Eve sat down on the other half of the piano bench and glanced at his bass notes to see the key. The rhythms her dad had pounded out on this very spinet seemed to be embedded in it still-or maybe they were just in her memory. She found a melody she’d learned as a kid and began to embellish it.
Mitch’s bass was as steady as a rock, if you didn’t count the flourishes of syncopation that made her shoulders sway with the rhythm, and suggested skipped beats and notes of her own.
Eve had had years of piano lessons when she’d lived with Nana, who had believed firmly that her dad’s talent slept inside her somewhere, all evidence to the contrary. In about her fifth year, she’d got the hang of it and the piano became pleasure, not work. She’d never played in a band, though, or any kind of ensemble that would prepare her for the sheer organic sensuality of making music with another person.
Melody and bass, rhythm and counterpoint. Line building on line, notes forming chords forming song. Two people bringing their experience together to create something entirely new and different.
The way they might when they made love.
Eve lost her concentration and a straightforward diminished A fumbled into discord. Mitch’s rhythm faltered and stopped.
“Whoa,” she said, summoning a grin and sliding off the bench. “Lost it. I guess I need more practice.”
“Sounded pretty good to me.” He slid off the bench, too, and closed the lid carefully over the ivories. “But then, I imagine there isn’t much you don’t do well.”
Eve mumbled something appropriately self-deprecating and headed down the hall to get her handbag. It wasn’t fair. The relationship gods must hate her. Here she was in a career that depended on the whole world of relationships for its bread and butter. She’d met a gorgeous man who seemed to be as attracted to her as she was to him, and who had voluntarily suggested going to a mall without being threatened with blackmail first.
Why did he have to be the one man she had to hold at arm’s length? In the practical light of common day, she reflected from the safety of her bedroom, she’d been insane to behave the way she had last night. Nana would be so-not shocked, because Eve couldn’t imagine much shocking her-but disappointed. And she’d always hated disappointing Nana. That sad look, that biting of the lip that meant she could be giving the young Eve an earful but was holding it back so as not to hurt…oh, yeah. Very effective. She could have used a shot of Nana last night.
Eve glanced at her tank top and jeans in the mirror, and pulled a gauze tunic off its hanger and slipped it on overtop. There. Much better. Some comfortable sandals in matching green, a green wallet-on-a-string, and she was ready to go.
If only Mitch wasn’t such good company.
As they cruised toy stores, movie tie-in stores and educational stores in search of the perfect dinosaur for four-year-old Christopher, she kept things deliberately on a friendly business-lunch footing. But by the time they’d begun triangulating the mall’s second level for a renewed attack, she’d given up the pretense. How was a girl supposed to keep her distance when he insisted on cracking jokes about passersby or things in the windows? How was she supposed to put last night out of her head when every time she turned suddenly, she caught him watching her? Which wasn’t a problem-lots of people watched her. So far three women had come up and asked for her autograph, in fact.
This was the gaze of a man silently undressing a woman in his mind. Not just undressing, either. He was making love to her behind that innocent, bland gaze, she was sure of it.
Luckily they found the perfect dinosaur in a nature store, and she led the way out of the mall with a sense of relief. She needed to go home and back to reality, and forget he was even in Atlanta, wanting her.
Just the way she wanted him.
No, no. She couldn’t let her thoughts wander that way. It wasn’t good for her peace of mind-and it certainly wasn’t good for Just Between Us.
“It’s four o’clock.” Mitch shook his sleeve down over his watch. “I vote for lunch.”
Eve arranged her face in a regretful expression-which didn’t take much. “I can’t. I really need to get home and get ready to go to dinner. And I should look at that script one more time.”
“Creativity never came on an empty stomach.” He grinned, and her resolve wavered, then straightened up.
“Then where do all the starving artists come from?” she quipped. “I appreciate your helping me out, Mitch. I now know as much about toy dinosaurs as I’ll need to know for the rest of my life. It was good of you to take the time.”
“Come on.” His long stride kept pace with hers effortlessly as they headed back to
his car. “My hotel’s across the parking lot. Let me treat you to lunch. Or at least a snack before your dinner. Remember, you agreed.”
“I agreed to breakfast. Maybe it’s just as well we’re out of time.”
He put a hand on her arm to slow her down. “What does that mean?”
“Let’s talk about it somewhere less public, okay?”
She could tell he was holding back what he wanted to say with an effort that lasted through the parking garage, down the street and all the way back to her house. But as soon as she got out and retrieved her package from the backseat, he closed his door with the sound of finality.
“This is less public, wouldn’t you say?”
She opened the front door and dropped the package and her green bag in the hall, then turned in the doorway to face him. Even hunched under the roses, he looked completely masculine and, if not comfortable, then at least in command of himself.
Words failed her. How could she tell him she didn’t want to see him socially when she’d only be lying to herself-and him?
“May I come in?”
“No. If I had any sense, I’d ask you to go back to your hotel and book an earlier flight home to New York.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“You should. There’s no reason to stay here.”
“I can think of one. And I’d like to talk about it somewhere other than on your doorstep. A beetle just dropped down the back of my neck.”
How could she chase away a guy who made her smile every five minutes? She turned her head so he wouldn’t see it flickering at the corners of her lips, and stepped back. “Fine. But only for a few minutes.”
He closed the door behind him and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. Her mouth dropped open.
One button. Two. Three.
What was this? Did he think an invitation to talk for a few minutes was some kind of thinly disguised come-on? Not that she was complaining about the view, but a girl had her principles.
Four, five. Was he-was he-
Oh, my.
He peeled off the shirt and her jaw felt as though it had become unhinged. Along with her mind.
Because, naked to the waist, Mitchell Hayes was just about the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Muscle flexed and moved under smooth, tanned skin as he shook out his shirt. There wasn’t an ounce of extra fat anywhere. A broad chest narrowed to a finely honed set of abs, and dark, curly hair arrowed down and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.
“There you are, you little rascal.” He knelt and scooped up the black beetle skittering across the tile of the entryway, then opened the door and tossed it back into the thicket of roses.
Breathe. Take a breath. Good. Now, close your mouth and behave as if everything is normal.
Turning, he buttoned up his shirt and tucked the tails into his jeans as though nothing had happened.
Look away from the jeans.
“Eve, you okay?” He bent sideways to look into her face.
“Yes.” She reached for something sensible to say. Should she apologize? “It’s not often that my visitors strip when they walk in, that’s all.”
“If I’m going to have someone walking on my back, I’d rather she didn’t have six legs.” He paused. “And I find that very hard to believe. I bet any boyfriend of yours strips when he hits the door.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” she batted back. “Or at least, if he existed, he wouldn’t. I’m sorry about the banzai attack. Usually my insect life is better behaved.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. Once in a while the moths come in if I leave the porch light on, and the june bugs are awful, but-”
“I didn’t mean the bugs, I meant the boyfriend.”
The refrigerator door made a very effective shield. The last thing she needed was for him to see the color wash into her face. “I have a chunk of Brie and some grapes here. If you were hungry before, you’re probably starving now.”
Oops. Hadn’t she just said he’d get a few minutes and then he had to go? Now, see, that’s what you get for gawking at his abs. He’s completely scrambled your brain.
“And you’re avoiding a really interesting topic.”
She pulled out some celery and a plastic tub of guacamole. She had chips in the pantry, and half a salami. Would that be enough? All that muscle was probably the result of downing slabs of roast beef. “Are you kidding? You just took off your clothes in my foyer. It’s impossible to avoid you.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re the relationship guru, the most desirable woman in Atlanta, the subject of several fan sites-I do my homework, don’t look at me like that-and you don’t think your man would be racing to get naked for you?”
“Maybe,” she said as coolly as she could. She had fan sites? “But I don’t have time for a relationship, as I think I made clear.”
“That’s plain wrong,” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s reality.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a hip on the end of the breakfast bar. “Leaving time out of it, do you want one?”
Her knife sliced into the salami with precision. “Of course. But it’s pretty hard to ask a man to play second fiddle to the show. I mean, he’d have to. I work sixteen hours a day.”
“You’ve just never met anyone who could make you rearrange your priorities, that’s all.”
Was that a glint of challenge in his eyes? “Oh, and you think you’re the man who can do it?”
Certainly he could. If a man like Mitch were waiting at the studio door, she’d say damn the calendar and hit the stairs at a run. Not that she’d ever say that to him.
“Why not? Hypothetically speaking.” The challenge was now complicated by humor. And-face it-temptation.
“I don’t even have to speak hypothetically.” She put the Brie on a plate and slipped it into the oven to warm, then picked up the knife again. “I’m afraid you’ve been bumped off the candidate list because of who you are.”
“Didn’t we agree that I was simply an honest guy from New Mexico?”
“That was last night.” A subject she did not want to bring up. “The simple fact is that even seeing you like this compromises me professionally. I don’t even know why I’m making you a snack.”
“Because you’re a well-brought-up Southern girl?”
“That wouldn’t cut it with Dan Phillips. He owns CATL-TV and our production company. Mitch, I owe him a lot, including my loyalty. If it wasn’t for him and Cole having so much faith in me, I’d still be talking about overnight lows and how the rain is affecting the commute for four and a half minutes every hour.”
“That’s right. You used to be the weathergirl. I saw a picture on one of those fan sites I mentioned. You looked to be fresh out of college.”
“I was. So you can see that every minute we spend together makes it look like I’m consorting with the enemy. So to speak.”
“You can consort with whomever you like on your time off,” he pointed out.
“Most business consorting would happen in a meeting with you in my office, where everything is aboveboard. Not in my kitchen or-” my bedroom “-or anywhere else. I feel like I’m sneaking around on Dan behind his back.”
“Okay, I can see that. But you have to admit, this way of consorting is more fun.”
“Sure it is. But I’m a realist, and the reality is that CWB wants to take me away from CATL-TV. The station’s done a lot for me. I can’t just run out on them the moment the going gets good.”
“CWB can do a lot more for you,” Mitch said. “Take you national. Give the show a wider scope. Bigger production values. More audience reach.”
“Yes, so you said in our meeting. Which, I might point out, this is not.”
It was a sight better than talking about honest bodies and relationships, though. At least when they ta
lked business, she had open-and-shut answers. When it came to Mitch and anything personal, she was very much afraid she didn’t have answers of any kind.
“Are you done torturing that salami?” He leaned over the counter and grimaced. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some Freudian prejudice against the subject of relationships.”
“Or symbols of male power,” she said sweetly. “But I wouldn’t read anything into it. It’s a snack. A short one. Because I still have my to-do list waiting for me.”
Hands on hips, he looked over her kitchen, taking in the white tile, the skylight, the basket of onions and garlic on the granite counter. Her answering machine sat next to it.
“You have a message.”
She licked salami flavor off her index finger and punched the button. The man had strummed pleasure from her body the night before. He’d helped her find a dinosaur. It was a little late to worry about whether he should listen to her personal messages.
“Eve, honey, this is Grandmother Charlotte,” her dad’s mother said. If the Queen Mother had been brought up in the fields of Georgia, she would have looked and sounded like Charlotte Best. Eve straightened at the sound of her soft vowels, as if she’d reminded her about her posture. “I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight at Roy’s. Do bring along an escort if you’d like to.” Her grandmother laughed, and Eve’s stomach sank. “I know it’s hard, but choose one of your collection to introduce to your family. Bye-bye.”
Eve resisted the urge to bang her head against the nearest cupboard door. Could there be anything more intimidating than a Southern lady determined to get her eldest, most successful granddaughter married off?
When Eve glanced at Mitch, his eyes were dancing. “I take it your grandmother is deluded about your social life?”
She picked up the knife again and held the salami down as if it were going to escape. “In her day, the aim of a girl’s life was to get married. She knows I’m not like that. She knows how busy I am.”
“I don’t think it’s about being busy. I think you’re just afraid. Of getting involved. Of me. Of what could happen if we really got together.”