Nauman had made it sound as if the affair with Leyden were of no importance, yet even drunk and passed out, Doris Quinn had been stunning. Or wasn’t Oscar Nauman impressed by bosomy blondes?
Sigrid turned back to his photograph and idly wondered what type of woman he did prefer. Silver hair notwithstanding, she rather doubted if there had been a lessening of his vitality in that particular area any more than in his art. Those hands, for instance . . .sturdy, square-shaped workman’s hands, powerful enough to shape and mold yet capable of delicacy and precision. Of gentle, lyrical touch. . . .
Sigrid sat bolt upright and slammed the folder shut, her cheeks suddenly stained by a blush more crimson than her exotic robe. Oscar Nauman was old enough to be her father!
Dismayed at herself, she went into the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate; and while the milk heated, she spilled the little squares of red paper onto her white countertop and began sorting the tones. The milk boiled over, was turned off and grew cold as she struggled with the problem of arranging the squares in nine equal steps. The girl student had been right: twelve steps were rather easy. But nine evaded her.
She poured the curdled milk down the drain and washed the pan, then switched off all the lights and went to bed.
And found herself right back at square one, wondering if Oscar Nauman slept alone tonight.
What the devil had got into her?
She buried her head under a pillow, blocked out every undisciplined thought and put herself firmly to sleep by a concentrated listing of all fifty states in alphabetical order.
CHAPTER 12
Although not a morning person, Sigrid usually awoke before her alarm went off, so when a ringing penetrated her sleep next morning, her first response as she fumbled for the cutoff button was a drowsy surprise that she’d overslept.
The ringing continued. Was cataloged as doorbell, not clock.
Sigrid groped for her robe and stumbled barefooted through her apartment to the door, then after a startled glance through the peephole, undid the latch.
Upon her threshold stood Oscar Nauman, indecently wide awake and as bright as the dawn sunlight edging in through her east windows. Thick white hair still damp from his morning shower, freshly shaven and smelling of a good German cologne, he wore dark chinos and a pale blue turtleneck shirt; he also looked disgustingly like a man who’d just played two vigorous sets of tennis or jogged five miles. Sigrid’s first impulse was to close the door again immediately and go back to bed.
“Do you know what time it is?” she asked crossly.
He consulted a thin gold watch. “Five-thirtyeight. I assume you have to be at work by seven, so that leaves us an hour for a nice leisurely breakfast.” He waved a small grocery bag. “I brought jam and eggs for a strawberry omelet.”
The idea of eggs that early in the morning—to say nothing of eggs with jam on them—was so repulsive that Sigrid stepped back involuntarily.
Nauman interpreted that as an invitation and breezed past her toward the kitchen. Sigrid followed, protesting, “I don’t have to check in till eight, and I never eat breakfast.”
“That I can believe,” he said, rummaging in her refrigerator. He’d never seen one so bare in a woman’s kitchen. The top shelf held orange juice, a pound can of coffee and a quart of milk that would be sour by tomorrow. There were a couple of cheeses, a stick of butter, a loaf of whole-wheat bread, peanut butter, mayonnaise, three brown bananas and a head of wilted lettuce turning brown at the stalk. Nothing more.
Incredulously he opened cupboard doors and found a toaster, two saucepans, one skillet, a half dozen cans of soup, cocoa mix, three cans of tuna and a box of crackers. Salt, pepper and sugar completed her staples.
“Soup’s all you ever cook?”
“And grilled cheese. That’s a balanced enough meal. I suppose you fix yourself a four-course dinner every night?”
“What happens when someone drops in for a meal?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“No one with any manners ‘drops in,’” Sigrid said acidly. “They wait for an invitation, and then I take them to a proper restaurant.” She picked up a percolator from the counter behind him, rinsed it and filled it with cold water, then measured coffee into the basket. Morning sunlight caught the shiny beads and mirrors of her robe so that with every movement of her slender arms and hands, tiny rainbows of prismed sunlight flashed and coruscated on the surfaces all around her.
Nauman was enchanted. His artist’s eyes moved from the fugitive, darting colors to their source, then widened as he really saw her: narrow feet bare on the tile floor, the boy-slim body made graceful by the clinging red robe, the tilt of her head that sent long dark hair swinging as she plugged in the percolator.
In an exuberance of delight at the picture she made, he turned her to him, lifted her chin with his strong fingers and placed an impromptu kiss on her startled lips.
He’d meant nothing more serious than his usual homage to unexpected beauty; but as she tried to pull away, something made him tighten his hold and kiss her again. She wrenched herself from his arms, gray eyes blazing with anger as she searched for the cutting insult.
“You—You must be at least sixty!”
“Which still makes me thirty years younger than you!” he retorted. The thought made him grin unrepentantly. “Never kissed an older woman before, but it’s an experience worth repeating.”
She glared at him, speechless as he moved toward her purposefully, then fled from the sunlit kitchen, taking all the rainbows with her. A moment later and her bedroom door banged shut. Thoughtfully Nauman broke eggs into a bowl and began beating them with a fork.
She doesn’t know she’s a woman, he decided at last, and found that the thought both disturbed and intrigued him.
Sigrid, leaned against her closed door and drew a deep steadying breath as the clink of metal upon glass reached her ears. Mind and reason warred with unfamiliar, muddled emotions as she stripped and headed for her bath. She turned the shower on full, and jets of water streamed down upon her body until the convulsive turmoil was sluiced away and her equanimity was almost restored. Then the bathroom door opened, and she heard Nauman’s voice above the water.
“Your coffee, Lieutenant.”
“Will you get the hell out of here?” she cried angrily.
He was gone when she turned off the water and peered around the curtain, but she snapped the door bolt anyhow before toweling herself dry.
The coffee that he’d left on the lavatory was more welcome than she wanted to admit, and she took a big swallow, then tackled her damp hair. A few minutes sufficed to plait it into a thick braid and secure it at the nape of her neck, and usually she didn’t bother to wipe off the steam-fogged mirror. Today she polished it clear and examined herself closely to make sure every hair was pinned in place. She noticed that her cheeks were flushed an unaccustomed pink and splashed cold water on them until the color subsided.
Another prudent look from the doorway revealed that her bedroom was also empty, so Sigrid crossed the fern green carpet to her open closet. Normally she would have worn the next dark pantsuit in line, a dull gray with another white silk shirt like yesterday’s; but nothing was normal this morning, and she flipped past it, finding nothing in her closet to fit her unsettled mood until she reached the far end of the rack where she kept what she called her Carolina wardrobe.
From time out of mind all Lattimore females (if one could believe her grandmother) had been captivating fillies who left a trail of broken hearts behind them on their single-minded trek to the altar. All had made brilliant matches to the most eligible bachelors of their seasons, and it was bad taste for Sigrid to remark on the ones that had ended in divorce. After all, what sort of marriage did she expect to make? Such an unfeminine career, police work. Interesting, no doubt, but didn’t one have to guard against becoming coarsened? Thus, Grandmother Lattimore.
Over the years Sigrid had found it easier to wear clothes of Anne’s choosing for her annual
duty visit south than to listen to her Grandmother Lattimore’s complaints that she really wasn’t trying.
Most of the clothes were too bright or too fussy for Sigrid’s taste; but she paused at one that wasn’t completely objectionable: a brushed cotton suit of soft moss green and a cowl-necked silk shell in rich jewel tones of purples and blues. Even Grandmother Lattimore had approved of the way she looked in that one. But the only shoes that went with the outfit were frivolous green sling-back heels, and the matching bag could barely accommodate a wallet and lace handkerchief. There was certainly no room in it for a regulation pistol, badge and note pad.
All of which brought her to her senses with a grim smile. Dithering over clothes as if Oscar Nauman were Rhett Butler and she Scarlett O’Hara instead of a New York cop! As if ugly ducklings really could become swans. What had got into her?
Without pausing to analyze the question, Sigrid flipped back to the shapeless gray pantsuit and dressed with rapid efficiency. Her chin was high, and all her defenses were in place when she emerged from her bedroom.
To find him gone.
Only dirty dishes in her sink, and a note on the counter to advise that he’d eaten his breakfast with relish, thank you, and hers was in the oven. She opened the oven door and took out a tender omelet and buttered toast, still warm on a plate.
Toast, yes, she thought, but the eggs are going down the garbage disposal.
Curiosity made her try a bite.
It was delicious.
Bemused, she poured herself another cup of coffee and perched on a step stool to eat the whole thing. Anchovies on her steak last night. And now jam with eggs.
To cap it all, the little squares of red that she’d been trying to puzzle out last night lay in perfect alignment on the counter—from the darkest red to the lightest pink in nine even steps.
Damn the man!
CHAPTER 13
Across town Andrea Ross was—like Sigrid—deliberating carefully over her choice of clothes but with a difference. Impractical shoes were very much a part of the picture she wanted to create. She was going to stage a deliberate and full-fledged retreat into femininity, and the morning sunlight was an innocent co-conspirator. It promised a spring day warm enough for shoes that were nothing more than delicate straps of braided straw and matched a straw-colored gathered skirt that fluttered softly around her legs. She topped the cotton skirt with a heavily embroidered Mexican peon shirt and studied the total effect in her mirror.
Getting there.
Next she skillfully manipulated a styling wand to transform her sensible short brown hair into a crown of ringlets, then made up her eyes to look as wide and appealing as a fawn’s. A faint touch of blusher to her cheeks and another critical examination of her reflection.
Perfect!
She looked cool and poised enough to deliver scholarly lectures yet soft and womanly. Not helpless exactly but with no hard career edges showing. No single-minded ambitions, either, and certainly no vengeful thoughts.
Must watch the lips though, she decided, knowing that her lips looked too determined in repose, her eyes too shrewd.
Think soft, she told herself.
But her thoughts kept slipping away to the raise a promotion would mean. The grueling debts of her postgraduate years were almost repaid. There was beginning to be enough money for clothes, a decent apartment, books. The promotion she had expected—had earned, damn it—would have meant enough at last to spend a summer in France. As a true art lover, not a penny-pinching student. A summer to lie in fields of red poppies if she wished and drink in the soaring lines of Chartres Cathedral until that abiding thirst for perfection, unsatisfied since childhood, was finally slaked. She wanted to experience at last a direct response to what she saw with no worries of dates, theories or the pressures of a doctoral dissertation to come between herself and the art.
She had yearned for such a summer with an almost physical ache, and Riley Quinn had nearly cheated her of it for another few years by passing her over for Jake Saxer. As she remembered the blind fury she’d felt last week when she’d heard that Saxer had been recommended for promotion, Andrea Ross caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and was chilled by its granite grimness.
Think soft, she warned herself and tried to remember how innocence smiled.
In the two-family brick house he owned within walking distance of the university, Professor Albert Simpson’s tea and toast grew cold as he contemplated promotion to deputy chairman. Although he did not possess Riley Quinn’s outside reputation, he was the most senior art historian, and no one questioned his command of his subject.
No one respected it, either, he told himself wryly.
No one except young Wade. On the other hand, he had no enemies; no one disliked him strongly enough to vote against him, so the balloting should be a mere formality. The younger historians would probably look upon his tenure in the chair as a caretaker regime, soon to be ended by his retirement. It would give them time to square off at each other for a real battle when he stepped down.
The last time that chair had been vacant, they’d offered it to him first; but he’d turned it down, not wanting the encumbrances of administrative duties that would take him away from the classroom and eat into his precious research time. His refusal had opened up a scramble among the other younger historians, and Riley Quinn had emerged victorious—Quinn, who’d begun by using the title to further his extracurricular career; who had never neglected an opportunity to sneer at the man whose stepping aside had made it possible for him to hold that title; and who had over the years finally grown so arrogant that he’d actually commandeered a classroom teacher, Jake Saxer, to be his personal researcher for the latest of those books he churned out. Catchpenny, simplified popularizations of the passing art scene. As if what passed for art today needed further simplification!
Professor Simpson added another spoonful of sugar to his tea and sipped meditatively. It was stone-cold now, but that was so usual he barely noticed.
At most he was only four years from retirement, and in all the previous years he’d truly never desired a titled position or rank over his peers; but Quinn had shown an advantage to the title that had not occurred to him before; and now that it was to be offered to him again, he would take it this time. Not that he would abuse it as Riley Quinn had. David Wade had too much character to be used as Quinn had used that fawning toad Saxer. But as a colleague—a collaborator—as the son he’d never had. Somehow he would use his newly acquired power to keep Wade here. At last his book would be finished.
He reached for the telephone and dialed Wade’s number from memory. When there was no answer, he consulted the directory for a different number, then smiled indulgently at the appetites of youth as Sandy Keppler’s lilting voice said, “It’s for you, darling.”
Sandy closed the bathroom door with an indulgent smile of her own. She’d never seen David so embarrassed before.
And it’s rather sweet when you think about it, she told herself, that he cares enough for your reputation to stammer out some corny explanation about coming over here for breakfast. (“She makes terrific French toast, sir,” she’d heard him say as she was leaving the room.)
As if Professor Simpson, who knew all about the dissipations of classical Rome, would be shocked by a simple bedding down before marriage. David was such an innocent about some things.
She brushed her long yellow hair vigorously, touched her lips with pink lipstick and added a hint of blue shadow to her eyelids.
The murmur of David’s voice still sounded, so she rinsed the sink, straightened towels, capped the toothpaste and uncapped his after-shave lotion for a quick whiff of spicy fragrance. So bound up in memories of their most intimate moments was that aroma that she’d once gone weak-kneed when she smelled it on a stranger on a crowded bus.
Tenderly she tucked the little bottle back into the medicine cabinet and went out to rejoin her now pensive lover.
“What did he want?” she asked
as she passed him maple syrup and stirred cream into his coffee.
“I’m not really sure,” said David. His eyes were puzzled behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He lifted a forkful of French toast, then returned it to his plate. “You know how he always goes off on tangents?”
Sandy nodded.
“He said the apartment on the top floor of his house has an extra bedroom that could be used as a study. He also said his present tenant doesn’t have a lease.”
“He’s offering you an apartment?” she asked, perplexed.
“Us. You and me. Cheap.”
“Just how cheap?” Sandy asked, knowing to a penny how far her salary would stretch. Her mouth dropped when he told her. “That’s practically free, David! And it’s only two blocks from school. No bus or subway fare!” She jumped up and hugged him exuberantly.
“It’s charity,” David said ominously, pulling away.
“No, it isn’t! Don’t you see? It’s worth it to him to have your help organizing that mountain of notes for his book. It would be an equal exchange. Free rent instead of salary. Isn’t that what quid pro quo means? And best of all, we wouldn’t have to go to Idaho while you’re finishing your dissertation.”
Her voice had hit a strident tone he’d never heard.
“You really don’t want to leave New York, do you?” he asked, frowning as he finally realized that her foot-dragging was more than a comic reluctance to trade city for country.
“Not me darling; it’s you I don’t want to leave the city. Oh, David, I couldn’t bear it if you got stuck in some backwater college! You’re too brilliant for that. New York’s the art center of this country, not Idaho! I’d do anything,” she said, “to help you stay here!”
Strange, thought David, that he’d never before noticed how strongly determined the line of her chin could be, how resolute her eyes. He’d always thought of her as a silky blue kitten, and it made him vaguely uneasy to realize she might have a fiercer nature than he’d suspected.
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