She was absolutely certain that she was furious with her neighbor.
Leigh had left her car near Ryan’s parking spot. As Daniel strolled with Greer up the walk, she could hear the other woman’s car door being closed, the engine starting over low, throaty laughter between Leigh and Ryan. Before Daniel had even pushed open the outside door, Ryan’s heels were clicking on the pavement behind them.
“I’ll dig out that study I told you about, if you think it would be any help,” Ryan told Daniel as he fished his apartment key out of his pocket.
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble…”
“No trouble. And no hurry either,” Ryan assured him, and winked.
He promptly disappeared, quietly closing his door to leave Daniel and Greer in privacy. Greer, for no reason at all, felt doubly furious. Actually, she knew the reason. It was that wink. That condescending wink. As if inviting Daniel to try out a passionate clinch with Greer.
She couldn’t think of anything else the whole time Daniel worked up to his good-night kiss. While he methodically slipped off his glasses and started clearing his throat, Greer debated whether or not to ask him in. They’d been out several times in the past few months. One of these nights she’d planned to…well, at least see. Daniel’s kisses were warm, undemanding, lovely. He obviously wanted more. She really wouldn’t know how she felt about him until she tested it out. To hell with her neighbor. Daniel’s shyness was thawing; he might just be a very good man if she could coax him out of his shell.
Ryan had evidently already coaxed him halfway out of his shell. Greer was still mulling over the problem when Daniel startled her with his kiss. There was a tiny trace of aggression in the way he swung his arms around Greer…though she could taste the breath mint he’d popped into his mouth as they left the restaurant.
Her head tilted back, and she closed her eyes and felt Daniel’s moist lips touch hers. The taste was interesting, kind of like a peppermint-soaked sponge. She’d have given up her life savings to feel some kind of wild response to his kiss, but it was like that small problem of silk purses and sows’ ears. Dammit. Daniel’s touch was…clumsy. His tongue flickered out like a tiny serpent and, thank God, almost instantly withdrew. “You’re so beautiful, Greer,” he whispered. “Don’t worry; I’m not about to press you. I know you’re not the kind of woman who wants to rush things.”
A moment later, he left. Behind the locked door of her apartment, Greer tossed down her purse, tugged off her shoes and flopped into the couch. Truce instantly soared to her lap and settled in with approving purrs for her return. She patted the cat absently, then stood up, letting Truce drape himself around her neck, and paced.
Through thin walls, she heard a door opening, Ryan’s voice. Then Daniel’s.
She paced some more. That man. He wasn’t just tricky; he was becoming seriously dangerous. Whatever happened to rules? When a man was coming on to you, he was supposed to play by a certain set of rules. On a chessboard, there were few aggressive moves Greer couldn’t counter. In life, the same.
Ryan wasn’t playing fair.
***
Monday night, she didn’t arrive home from work until ten after seven. Love Lace had abruptly decided to gear up for the coming trade show. Greer had figured out a long time ago that people in the garment industry thrived on seasonal frenzies rather than advance preparations-actually, so did she.
Except that the air conditioning had been off all day; she was hot, irritable and tired after nine hours at her desk. Dropping her purse on the counter, she headed directly for the shower, peeling off clothes en route.
Underneath a deluge of soothing tepid water, she felt at least four of two dozen tense muscles begin to relax. Dinner and a few hours with her feet up would do the rest. She was rinsing her hair when the telephone rang.
Afraid it was her crank caller, she tensed instantly…and calmed down just as instantly, knowing it was her mother. She always called her mother at seven o’clock on Mondays, and when the ritual varied by even a few minutes, Greer’s mother worried. Hurriedly flicking off the faucet as the phone rang again, Greer stepped out of the shower, groping blindly for a towel.
Her eyes blinked open. She had shoved the towels in the washer at six o’clock that morning; she hadn’t thought to replace them. The phone rang again. Shivering, she raced out to the living room stark naked, Truce standing guard by the phone with his tail switching, limpid eyes interestedly following Greer’s drips all over the carpet.
“Hello. Mom?” Some days her breather called three times, sometimes none. Although she was sure it was her mother, she didn’t feel the surge of apprehension disappear until she heard the familiar voice. Greer relaxed, pushing back her damp hair with a grin, shivering. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call on time; I hadn’t forgotten. I was going to call within another-”
The apartment door flew open. Greer’s jaw dropped in shock.
Ryan barreled in on a clear beeline for her telephone. He was wearing suit pants and an unbuttoned shirt that waved around his thighs; his feet were bare. Nothing on him, though, was quite as bare as she was, and the look in his eyes was nothing’s-going-to-stop-me determined.
Their eyes met, clashed, collided. He couldn’t possibly not have noticed her dripping bare skin, but his hand was still firmly extended, demanding the receiver. Greer’s mother was chatting about gardening.
Greer dropped promptly behind the couch, the phone to her ear, furiously waving him away. Her fingers were weaving on the right side of the couch; his face appeared over the top on the left side.
“You’re not talking to anyone. Is it him?” he demanded.
Amazing. Her breasts could blush. So could her navel. Would you get out of here, she mouthed frantically, and finally managed to interject a comment into her mother’s monologue. “That’s wonderful, Mom. Really. I…”
Ryan disappeared. Within seconds, the door to her apartment closed again. Cautiously, she peeked over the back of the couch. “Of course I’ve been listening,” she told her mother indignantly. “You were telling me about Mrs. Inger’s arthritis-”
He was gone.
Later, when she was fully dressed and fed, and the dishes washed and the cat petted, and the clock had long ago ticked past her bedtime hour, Greer was still sitting on the couch, thinking.
Around one, she finally figured out that the sole reason Ryan had come over was to protect her from her breather. She went to bed, yawning with overtired exasperation. She hadn’t expected him to come over for any other reason, of course.
Except that he’d come on like a freight train when they were dancing. He’d packed kisses like explosives, and in more subtle ways showed a very definite interest. For three days after that, they hadn’t seen each other, and when they did she was naked.
But then, he hadn’t even blinked twice when he saw her naked.
Half her life, Greer would have given gold for men who didn’t look at her figure.
She plumped up the pillow for the fourth time, pushed Truce off the bed for the third time, and stared at a night-black ceiling with her eyes wide open. Don’t you fall in love with him, lady. Stick to the kind of men you can handle.
Her conscience was always good for a pep talk. Greer was too honest to kid herself. Ryan…she couldn’t handle him. And her feelings around him…she wasn’t very good at handling those, either. Moorings shifted; landmarks disappeared; mental fogs rolled in when he was around.
Greer was safe just as she was. In time, perhaps, she’d want marriage again, but to a man she felt comfortable with. Ryan didn’t make her feel comfortable; she felt perfectly miserable around him. Those blue eyes of his invited wanton, deliciously decadent behavior, but Greer wasn’t playmate material. She’d never played, not where her sexual feelings were concerned. Sex was a serious business. And if she hadn’t taken it seriously, she would have been used more than once in her life.
Only Ryan made her feel as if it were…fun. As if touch had to do
with laughter. As if kisses had to do with mischief. As if fooling an entire crowded restaurant had been…exciting. As if she were a different kind of woman, a woman who enjoyed enticing, and low-voiced laughter, and private, intimate teasing…
Goose. If you ever tried to play that role, they’d laugh you off the stage, Greer. Go to sleep.
She did.
Chapter Six
“Stop,” Greer whispered into the telephone. “Would you just stop? Leave me alone!”
She put down the phone and promptly burst into tears. Her breather had called incessantly this week. Dragging a hand through her hair, she paced the living room in her bare feet, her eyes blinded by tears. She was still dressed for work, in a tan-and-white skirt and tan blouse. She had kicked off her shoes and tossed her white jacket on the couch hours before. She’d worked like a slave ever since she’d come home.
She didn’t normally work on Friday nights, much less schedule a follow-up meeting with Ray for a Saturday morning. Only because it was Ray had she agreed. The man had been so damned impossible to work with this past week. She’d snatched at the chance to establish some kind of decent professional relationship with him.
After fifteen straight hours of work, her nerves were on the tensile edge of exhaustion. Her breather calling at this late hour had been the last straw after an impossibly long day. The tears kept dripping, and fear filled the weary corners of her mind. Most Friday nights she went out. How could he have known she was home on this one?
Unless he was watching. Heart pounding, Greer whirled around to face the living-room windows, but the draperies were closed. Or nearly. There was a thin strip of darkness where they didn’t quite meet, and she rushed over to pull those ends together.
Fresh moisture brimmed in her eyes. Grabbing Truce and a bag of knitting, she let herself out of the apartment, leaned against the bare white wall in the hall and took one calming breath after another. Why do you persist in believing you’re safer out here?
Because safety wasn’t the issue. This was a matter of putting distance between herself and that white wall phone, that man. And the caller was a man. She knew the sound of a man’s deep breathing.
With a loud, emphatic sigh, she sat on the hall carpet with her legs tucked under her and grabbed her knitting needles and a long strand of pale green yarn from her tapestry bag. Click, click. She sniffed. More click-clicks, until an entire row of Robin’s sweater was finished, that row a little tear-blotched but basically straight.
When the hall door opened at the bottom of the steps, she jumped three feet, still sniffing.
“Greer?”
Before she could blink, Ryan’s work boots had bounded up the steps and settled in front of her. She did not want to see him. The man had run her through an emotional maze all week, darting in and out of her life as if he belonged there. Depending on him was asking for trouble. And that was half the darn problem anyway. He was incredibly easy to depend on.
“Hey.”
He was also difficult to ignore. “Hi,” she said brightly.
His long legs bent at the knees, jeans straining to accommodate the muscles in his thighs. Apart from jeans and work boots and a blue work shirt, he was wearing impatience like an outer garment. She couldn’t see his face, since she was busy click-clicking with her knitting needles, but she could smell his mood, the way a fawn could sniff a hunter’s closeness. “You wear jeans more often than any engineer I ever heard of,” she remarked casually, and refrained from sniffing one last time. Furiously, she blinked away the last hint of tears. “And don’t you ever keep regular hours? You realize it’s nearly midnight?”
He didn’t move toward her. He didn’t touch her, but he didn’t move so much as an inch away, either. “You’re all right?”
“You told me one time that mechanical engineers are high-class grease monkeys. How did you put it? ‘A mechanical engineer plays with a drawing board half the time. The other half he has to figure out why,’ I quote, ‘his half-assed designs didn’t work.’” Knit-purl, knit-purl. “Is that why you’re so late?”
“Because of a half-assed design? In a way.” He paused, and then his voice continued, as soothing as butter, calming, reassuring. For a moment. “They can teach you a great deal in school about mathematical precision. Nothing about the human factor of blending man and machine. Efficiency, safety, timing-those problems can’t be solved on the most brilliant man’s drawing board. Exactly why I opted for the mechanical end of engineering. And you’re excellent at doing that,” he added abruptly.
“Doing what?”
“Getting a man to talk about his favorite subjects. But you can stow it with me, Greer; I’m no Daniel. Now what the hell are you doing out here? As if I didn’t know.”
“It was hot in the apartment. Something’s wrong with that air conditioner again.”
“You’ve been crying.”
“You’d cry, too, if you’d just dropped four stitches.”
“How many times has he called today?”
“No one has called,” Greer assured him, salvaging another straggly length of yarn that Truce was trying to paw.
“Would you stop that?” he said irritably. “Look at me.”
“Nope.”
He almost smiled at the stubborn tilt to her chin. He’d seen her when she left for work that morning, all crisp efficiency in her white blazer and white pumps, her hips swinging briskly in the tan-and-white A-line skirt on the way to her car. Her outfit hadn’t changed so drastically since then, only her expression. Now, she looked crisp, efficient, and stubborn.
He’d seen that look a lot this week. In terms of attire, he’d seen her in her bag-lady gear, dressed alluringly for a date, in the pastel business suits that showed off her legs, and that once he wasn’t likely to forget, naked. Greer was a lot of women in one, but the image that was undoubtedly going to drive him over the edge was the slightly irrational woman with the big brown eyes and the stubborn streak.
If he’d been a less obstinate man, he might have given up over the past seven days. As if he could have stopped himself from falling in love with her. Her quick humor, her compassion, her keen mind, her love-every-day spirit…she gave so much to him, without half trying.
That Greer was his, he already knew. Convincing her of that was proving a battle of wits, only Ryan was just beginning to realize that the harder she fought, the more success he was having. It had been tough understanding that. His engineer’s rational brain rejected the off-the-wall premise as illogical, but then he’d had to try to think a little like Greer.
Silently rising to his feet with a frown, he disappeared inside his apartment and returned moments later with a small box. He hunched over and started setting up a marble chessboard.
Greer flicked the yarn over her needle, only mildly shaking her head when she saw what he was doing. “First of all, that’s not necessary. It’s past midnight and you must be tired. Second, contrary to outward appearances, I do not require a babysitter. And last, you really don’t want to play chess.”
“Why not?” Ryan had won tournament after tournament in college. He might be a little rusty, but he was good enough so she’d never know when he let her beat him.
In the first game, Greer beat him in fifteen minutes. In the second game it took her nearly twenty minutes. And when Ryan set up the board a third time, he had that distinctly sour look that men get when they’ve been bested in any competitive sport-by a woman.
“You don’t play rationally,” he told her.
“I’ll try to improve-that is, if you’re not giving up?”
“Your move,” he said flatly. His eyes met hers, and her lashes quickly lowered. She understood that he wasn’t giving up. Not in chess, and not in the fancy little game of neighbor-friend they’d been playing for almost two weeks.
Ryan waited, carefully. In the process of concentrating on the game, her tears had dried, and the pinched look had left her features. She was getting a disgustingly innocent little spark of tri
umph in her eyes. He’d sat cross-legged for the game. Greer, after fidgeting with her skirt, had gradually given in to comfort and was lying on her stomach, her legs swinging in the air behind her, her chin cupped in her hands between moves.
A half hour into the third game, he saw the rare opportunity to steal her rook and did.
Greer glanced up. “How could I have been so stupid?” she asked mournfully.
“You aren’t. You’re trying-most insultingly-to throw the game. Probably out of pity.”
“I was not. I’ve never thrown a game in my life.”
“Fine.” He whisked one of her bishops off the board with his next move. “Did you call the police?”
She tensed up like a taut rubber band. “Ryan, there is nothing else I can do. There is nothing else anyone can do. I’ve had my phone number changed twice now, and I refuse to have the line tapped for the rest of my life. Now I have no choice except to ignore him.”
“You have to find out who’s doing it.”
“I’ve tried figuring that out, dammit.” She slipped his queen off the board with her knight and then looked up guiltily. “Sorry.”
“That queen was wide open. Don’t apologize.” Ryan wasn’t even looking at the board. “Someone is making those calls, Greer. Some man. Maybe a neighbor, maybe one of the men upstairs, maybe someone you work with. You must have some idea-”
“Well, I don’t. And we’ve been through this.”
“On the surface. We never got down to the nitty-gritty.” He leaned over the board and touched her chin to make her look up at him. “Cards on the table now, and don’t fuss. Maybe a man you refused to sleep with? A man you turned down who’s trying to get back at you?”
She pushed his hand away from her chin and pulled herself up to her knees, concentrating fiercely on the chessboard. “For heaven’s sake,” she said in a low voice, “if every man that I’d refused to sleep with called me up to harass me… I’ve dated my share of men, for heaven’s sake. Was I supposed to say yes every time I was asked?”
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