BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

by Ruth Wind

  He stood on the steps in the cold, his hands stuck in his pockets, and finally admitted to himself that there was only one person he really wanted to talk to. He thought of her standing on his porch—only this morning?—flustered and pretty and earnest, and it made him smile. She'd risked making a fool of herself. He guessed he could do the same.

  As he pulled the keys out of his pocket, he felt the rage ebb.

  Interesting.

  * * *

  Marissa was slightly giddy by the time she got home. Giddy with the wild pleasure she felt in flying low over the mountains in a little plane, with the champagne served at the reception; giddy with the unheralded power she'd commanded in her new dress. Laughing a little to herself, she put some water on to boil for a cup of tea, stripped off her shoes and stockings and turned on the stereo, programming a Celtic Bagpipes CD. The music rolled out, rhythmic and sad and joyful all at once. Dancing a little as she moved through the house, she relived the evening just past.

  She was dying to call Victoria and tell her what a splash she'd made tonight, but that would require confessing her weight loss, and the moment of surprise would be so great she couldn't bear to ruin it, so she contented herself with reliving it in her mind.

  Luck had just been with her. She walked into a department store in downtown Denver, waltzed over to the women's department, and plucked it off the rack. Size 12. Oh, yes, she loved that part. It was even a teeny bit too big in the shoulders, so she'd tried the ten but couldn't zip it.

  Smoothing her hands down the skirt, swaying to the slightly exotic flutes and drums filling the air, she called up her most triumphant moments. Men stared at her. Flirted with her outrageously. Waiters rushed to fill her glass—which was how she'd ended up drinking more than her usual limit of champagne—and when she gave her little speech, every eye in the room had been on her and she hadn't thought of her body once.

  The doorbell startled her. Very few of her friends ever just dropped by. Cautiously she looked through the peephole, then swung open the door. "Robert! Is everything okay?"

  He blinked, slow as a cat, at her dress, then looked at her with a small frown. "It's really late. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

  "Is it your turn to play the oh, shucks game?"

  He lifted his brows, a rueful smile turning up his mouth. "I guess it is. How about this instead? May I come in?"

  "Please do." She backed up, swung her arm to let him in, bowing a little like a game show girl. "I was making a cup of tea. Want some?"

  "That would be great." His gaze darted toward her body, flickered away, came back to the devastating neckline. "Some dress," he said roughly. "Been to a party?"

  "Thank you. It's brand-new and I spent a bloody fortune for it." She grinned, closing and locking the door out of habit, and led him into the living room. "A princess must have princess clothes to do princessly things, you know."

  He smiled. "Are you a little tipsy, maybe?"

  "Yes," she said firmly. "And enjoying it tremendously, so don't you dare winkle your nose. If you disapprove, you might as well just toodle on home."

  "Toodle?" This time it was a real grin, one that crinkled his eyes. "No way, babe. You in that dress, and tipsy to boot—I wouldn't miss this for the world." He seemed to notice the music for the first time. "I like the music, too."

  "Hmm." She narrowed her eyes a little. "You don't strike me as a bagpipes kind of guy."

  "I like music in general. I went to Scotland once, when I was overseas. There was this old guy with a red beard and a kilt playing the bagpipes on a very overcast, dark kind of day, and the sound just went right through me." He paused, listening. "Really moody stuff."

  She inclined her head, delighted in spite of herself. She couldn't think of any guy she'd met in the past who wouldn't have given her that slightly pained glance over this CD. "Well, Mr. Martinez, you do delight and surprise."

  A genuine grin broke the sober angles of his face. With one hand tucked over his belly, he gave a short, formal little bow. "My honor, ma'am."

  The teakettle started whistling shrilly. Moving by him, she said, "Let's sit in the kitchen."

  He followed. "This house is great, Marissa. Arts and Craft, right?"

  "Yes. Thank you."

  "Who did the restoration?"

  "Tyler, of course. He's an expert on woodwork like this." She pointed out the elaborately carved molding over the door. "There was a big section of this that had completely rotted out, and you can't even tell where he fit it together."

  He whistled appreciatively. "Excellent work."

  "There's more. Hang on." Marissa dashed into the kitchen, pulled the kettle off the burner and dashed back out. Pushing the authentic push-button fixture for the overhead light, she moved to the stairway. "This earned him an article in Old House Journal." She knelt and touched the tiny, intricate carving of leaves and flowers. "Some kids lived here for a while at one point, and there were a lot of parties from what I gather. He had to recarve about half of it."

  He bent close to examine it. Marissa settled on the third step up, bracing her elbows on her knees, and admired him as he admired the wood. A lively dance began to play and she tapped her foot in time to it, wondering if he liked dancing.

  She liked everything about the way he looked—the straightness of his limbs, the darkness of his glossy hair, the blade of his nose, which was almost too thin to be attractive. Idly she admired his mouth, thinking it would be lovely to kiss.

  As if he felt her examination, he looked up. It was as it had been this morning, their faces close enough that it wouldn't take much to close the gap, and she blinked slowly, letting him see that she wouldn't mind if somehow they found themselves in a nice hot kiss. He wanted to. A little movement of his mouth, a slight shift in her direction told her he was thinking about it. His lids flickered downward, eyes touching her face, her neck, her décolletage. Lingered.

  He stood up suddenly, backing away. "Your dress … uh…" He tapped his chest, pointed at her. "It's … uh … gaping a little."

  Marissa looked down and realized he'd probably had quite a view from above her. "Oops. Sorry about that. I knew it was a little big."

  "No apology necessary, trust me." He cleared his throat and stuck his hands in his pockets, looking anywhere but at her chest.

  She hooted with laughter. "No wonder all those men were being so nice to me tonight!" She stood, pulling the shoulders up and back a little. "You were the only one gentlemanly enough to tell me about it."

  His attention was snared by something across the room. "Holy sh-er-cow." He pointed. "Do you mind if I look at that?"

  Even in her giddy state, Marissa suddenly felt waxy. "Go ahead."

  Reverently Robert moved to a stained-glass screen. Light from the living room and kitchen struck it from both sides, setting the wisteria ablaze, not a simple purple and blue, but touches of rose and yellow, and colors she couldn't even name.

  She crossed her arms, eyes narrowing to see what he'd say. Everyone who came in the house admired it—thought it was beautiful, unusual. They admired it like a nice stand of roses, then went on.

  But by the way Robert bent, by the way he kept his hands behind him like a museum visitor, by the wonder in his face when he turned to her he knew that it was not just beautiful, but priceless. The long dark eyes were alight. Quietly he said, "It's not a copy, is it?"

  Marissa shook her head.

  "Good God," he said in a hushed voice. "A Tiffany screen. I've read about them, but I've never seen one."

  "Now you have."

  He moved around it, mesmerized by the shifting colors. "No one has ever come close to his work with glass. Nowhere close. It's my hobby, you know, stained glass. I've seen it all over the world, all the cathedral windows, all the museum collections." He moved again, narrowed his eyes, inclined his head. "Then you walk into the Metropolitan Museum in New York and there's that window, and you know." Very seriously he raised his eyes. "Nobody will ever touch him.
"

  Marissa had gone from wary to amazed during this long speech. First that he'd spent so much time abroad—it shamed her, that this fact had stunned her. And second that he'd just strung more words together in a string than he usually put together in an hour. "You like old glass?"

  He nodded, still a little distracted by the screen. "Stained glass is my big thing, and I'm not as well versed in some as others. Tiffany, I know. Chagall. A few others." He bent close, peering at a cluster of wisteria. "The colors, the grace of it…" He shook his head. "This is unbelievable."

  She grinned. What were the chances that Red Dog, the wild soldier who'd had a taste for bourbon and wilder women, would be the one person she'd met in years who could identify an original Tiffany? "If you think you can tear yourself away from the screen, I think you might like seeing some other things I have."

  "More?"

  "Glass is my hobby, too," she said. "Collecting, not doing."

  That bothered him, though Marissa wasn't sure why. His eyes narrowed slightly, and for a minute she thought he would make an excuse and leave. Instead, he followed her, his face serious.

  She led him into the den, a room she loved, which she'd exquisitely restored. Cherry wood shelves lined three walls, and she'd had lights and glass doors installed, in order to display her treasures in safety and beauty. On the fourth wall was a bay window with a seat covered in chintz, where her three-year-old black cat, Damien, slept all the time—thus the safety precautions. He blinked when they came in the room, his eyes bright green.

  "Hi, sweetie," she said, patting him distractedly, and clicked on a switch that turned on the lights in the cabinet.

  "A black cat," Robert said. He sounded disturbed.

  "Are you superstitious?"

  "No." But he frowned as he moved to look at the cabinets. His expression softened, grew nearly as iridescent as some of the glass within. He pointed to the perfume stopper she'd shown him earlier, now displayed on a small round of black wax. "That's the piece you found today. Is it valuable?"

  "Oh, yeah." She pulled open the doors to give them both access, and pulled it off the shelf. "Rene Lalique, who is by far my favorite. He did a series of perfume bottles for D'Orsay, Houbigant, Worth. I haven't looked this one up yet, but I gave the woman three thousand dollars for it, and it was probably a steal at that." Marissa drew one finger along the curve of it, smiling. "She was going to sell it to me for fifty cents."

  "Amazing." He leaned forward to look at a bowl. "Now, this one I know," he said. "Quezal, right? About 1919, 1920?"

  "I'm impressed," Marissa said honestly. "How did you learn so much about it?"

  He raised a hand, put it down and Marissa said, "You can touch them. This isn't a museum. A lot of these pieces aren't even particularly rare or valuable. I just like them."

  He picked up a glass-and-enameled metalwork dresser box. "It's such a frivolous art form," he said quietly, touching the piece with gentle awe, as if he could imprint the beauty on his fingertips, "and that's one of the things I like best about it. There is no reason for a window to be colored or a bottle to be anything but a container. Only for beauty."

  "Beauty matters," Marissa said. "It feeds our souls."

  "Yeah." Carefully he replaced the piece, a shadow blotting out the wonder on his face. "I guess."

  "You disagree?"

  "Not exactly." There was anger in his eyes. "It's just so much more available to some people than it is to others."

  "Is it?" she challenged. "Can we only find beauty in expensive things?"

  With a faint scowl he backed up. "Look, thanks for sharing your treasures, princess, but this was a mistake. I gotta go."

  She crossed her arms and lifted one eyebrow in imitation of him this afternoon. "Did I scare you, little boy?"

  "Don't," he said in a dangerous voice. "Don't play with me."

  "Is that what I'm doing?" Her voice, too, had dangerous registers.

  "Sure looks like it from here. Slumming. Isn't that it? Isn't that what you've always done? Dated bikers and bad boys?"

  How did he know that? And how did she answer it when it was essentially true? Instead she took the offensive. "You know, I thought you were different."

  "Different?"

  "Yeah, like maybe because you've been a victim of labels all your life, you might be a person who might be able to look past them with someone else."

  "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, princess? Brokenhearted that you didn't want for a damned thing your whole life?" Real anger sparked in his eyes. "The only walls you faced were the ones you put up yourself."

  That stung. Not because it was true, but because he was putting her in the same little box—a glass cage—that everyone else did, never seeing her, only what she represented. But she'd be damned if she let him know he had the power to wound her. Not tonight. Not ever again.

  Lifting her chin, she said in a low, hard voice, "Do you wear war paint, Red Dog? Do you have a breechcloth at home? Can you teach me about the Great Spirit? I know you guys are so much more spiritual than we are."

  The flesh across his cheekbones went tight, and his nostrils flared. Good, she thought darkly. One good box deserved another. She didn't back away, didn't look down, just met his furious gaze with her own fury.

  "I'm sorry," he said abruptly. "That wasn't fair."

  Now she did look away, afraid he would see the sudden brightness of tears. He took a step closer, but Marissa kept her arms crossed, her head down.

  He said, "I'm standing here, thinking about my imitation leather belt, you know?" He stepped into the room. "I'm thinking about my ten-year-old truck and the hole in my sock, and it makes me feel like I did when I was a kid. I hate that, feeling small and unimportant because I don't have money."

  She looked up. "And I hate that people think they have to worry about ten-year-old cars in my presence." Her arms were still tightly crossed, and she felt one hand in a fist. What was at stake here, to put her in such a defensive posture? "I get tired of apologizing for where I was born. I didn't pick it, any more than you picked."

  "Marissa," he began, taking another step.

  "Let me finish. I love what money can do. I'm not going to lie and say I wish I were poor, because that would be stupid. I love having that Tiffany screen in my living room, and I loved seeing your face when you looked at it and knew what it was—that you should see something you wouldn't see anywhere else, and you appreciate it. And it makes me happy you know glass, and I don't have anyone to share that with, and I liked it, feeling that for ten seconds I had something in common with someone."

  "Marissa," he said again, firmly. He put his hand out, his open palm landing half on the upper swell of her breasts, half on the fabric of the bodice itself. "It's really gaping."

  Electric light, not that soft ghost of blue that it had been, but a bright, sharp, white-blue of lightning, shot between them, almost audible, when his flesh touched hers. A tumble of blistering emotions bolted through her at once—humiliation and terror and desire—and she knew all of them burned in her eyes as she looked at him. Before he could take his hand away, she put hers on top of it. Holding it there, she stepped close and stood on her toes.

  He bent at the same moment she lifted up and their mouths met in a violent kiss. Not even a pretense of gentleness, only open mouths colliding, tongues thrusting deep. Marissa's head was bent backward under the force of it, and she heard herself make a little, hot noise when a tooth struck her lip.

  Deep thrusts of tongues that wanted a lot more, mouths wide open. No sweetness, no ease of greeting, just that fierce, pure expression of overwhelming sexual alignment.

  It stunned her, and she put a hand out to push him away at the same moment he broke away. Shocked, they stared at each other, both panting. There was a painful sense of recognition in it, a chemical reaction neither had expected.

  "We can't do this," Robert said hoarsely.

  "No. I know. Crystal—"

  "Oh." He backed up a step, co
vering his eyes. "That's why I came over here."

  "Why?" Instantly sober.

  "She's at the clinic tonight. She's okay now, I guess, but she went into labor early. They stopped it."

  "Oh, no." She put a hand on his sleeve. "I'm sorry. I was so selfish tonight, and you had this worry."

  He looked down at her. Closed his eyes. "Damn it, Marissa. You've got to do something about that dress." Suddenly he just turned on his heel. "I have to go."

  Marissa didn't even see him to the door. It seemed wiser not to somehow.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  He'd tried to be a gentleman. He really had. The dress was not just delectable, it was dangerously sexy. Made of some thin fabric that clung and moved around her body, the top was supposed to be fitted against her breasts. It was supposed to be sexy. It was low-cut in an elegant kind of way, designed to display generous swells of breasts, maybe a nice diamond necklace.

  But Marissa had worn no jewelry. She didn't need it. Her skin was flawless, poreless, perfect, the twin rise of breasts all the adornment necessary.

  He wasn't, strictly speaking, a breast man. He liked legs, hair, hands. He noticed lips, and had a thing for a pretty backside, which Marissa definitely had.

  Breasts in general were all pretty nice, in his opinion, the most female of attributes in whatever size or shape they took. He'd never been particularly attracted to a woman's body because of the size or shape of her breasts—it had even seemed odd to him that men would rate them. It was like rating a woman because she was a woman.

  Or something. He rubbed his face. Damn, she got to him.

  But when she sat there on the stairs, he'd had a long, electrifying look down her dress, and he'd been astonished to discover that he'd just never got it before, why men went so nuts. Her breasts were beautiful, that white, white, supple skin rising in such plushness. The bra she wore beneath the bodice was one of those wispy, barely there deals, a kind of glittery transparent blue, and the edges of her nipples showed through, a very dark color. The colors—dark blue on the dress, transparent blue shimmer, milk-white skin and dark nipples—had gone straight to his sex and burned there.