Very quietly Ryan said, “I don’t think you’ve said yes to any man since you divorced your husband.”
Greer sucked in a little air. Her lungs seemed to need it. “How many men I’ve slept with has nothing to do with-”
“It could have a great deal to do with it, Greer.”
“It doesn’t have to be a man anyway,” she said crossly.
“You believe it is, or you wouldn’t be scared out of your wits every time the phone rings.” When she didn’t answer, Ryan let out a mental sigh. He watched her fingers tremble as they moved a pawn, and said very gently, very firmly, “You’re staying at my place tonight.”
She dropped the pawn. “Don’t be silly.”
“All right. Then I’ll stay with you at your place.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Greer gave up trying to follow the game. “You caught me in a little crying jag, I admit that. That hardly means I’m falling apart. In fact, that cry was delightful.”
“Delightful?” The word clearly took him by surprise.
“It happens. Not often, but every once in a while. An occasional good cry can let out an awful lot of excess emotional baggage. This day was the pits. My breather’s been driving me nuts. Now, I don’t know what men do when they’ve just plain had enough-throw temper tantrums? Hurl things against the wall? Surely everyone’s entitled to a simple rotten mood?”
“We walk,” he snapped.
“Pardon?”
Ryan uncrossed his legs and surged to his feet, and then reached down to pull Greer to hers. “When a man’s just plain had enough, he walks. Or this one does. Where are your shoes?”
She opened her lips to remind him politely that it was now past one in the morning, then hesitated, felt a familiar sensation of being tied up in knots, and abruptly ducked into her apartment to fetch her shoes and put the cat inside. All right. They’d walk.
In some areas, she was discovering, Ryan could be just a tiny bit bullheaded. He made her laugh; he made her think; he made her feel any number of uncomfortable emotions; but when he got that certain look in his eyes, arguments bounced off him like marshmallows off a brick wall.
She’d been running into that side of him all week. On Wednesday, for instance, her niece, Robin, had come over. Andrew had naturally trailed after his runaway daughter, and they were exchanging their usual clipped dialogue when Ryan had appeared at the door with a measuring cup in his hand. She’d stared at him in total surprise. “I need a cup of salt,” he’d told her, all boyish neighbor. After shoving the cup into her hand, he’d settled in next to Andrew, and hadn’t left until he’d clearly established that her brother-in-law wasn’t the kind to make crank calls.
There’d been two other times that week when the phone had rung, and Ryan had appeared from nowhere. One of those calls had been The Breather, and Ryan had parked in her living room the rest of the evening, an immovable rock, that same stubborn angle to his chin.
Actually, that evening they’d had a wonderful time, talking until a ridiculously late hour. If he would just stop thinking she needed a keeper, all because of her foolish phone calls. She didn’t need a keeper; she’d never needed a keeper.
And worse, she was getting used to him being around when she was scared out of her wits. The last thing she wanted was to become attached to the man, and she was terribly afraid that was happening to her. Why else would she be tying her shoes at the speed of light, all because she knew he was upset with her?
She scowled down at the offending shoes, and then sprang to her feet.
She was so tired of being confused by the man she could scream. All week, he’d treated her like his best friend’s kid sister. No passes. No kisses. No touching. After that night at the restaurant, she’d expected…something. Anything. She’d have shut him down instantly if he’d pressed for an affair, but how could the man turn on like a deprived male animal on a dance floor and then not even try to hold her hand?
Had she suddenly developed the plague?
She viewed his stony face as she hurried out of her apartment wearing shoes and a sweater. A dozen turbulent emotions abruptly died. She hated the distant chill in his eyes and would have done cartwheels to erase it. “Where are we walking?” she asked peaceably.
“Anywhere.”
Frustration made his answer terse. Without a word, he opened the outside door. Greer stepped out first. Cool darkness immediately enveloped them. Yellow yard lights illuminated sidewalks and reflected off long sweeps of glistening dark lawn. Night flowers and grass smells infused the darkness with a faint, inescapable sweetness, and stars hung low, hovering near a crescent moon. There was no one in sight, not even a car passing. The air was sweet and the silence soothing, but for a time Ryan noticed none of it.
The damn woman wouldn’t let him help her. For an entire week, he hadn’t laid a single finger on her. A saint would have been moved at the sight of Greer naked, but he’d managed to force himself to walk right out the door. What did it take to make her trust him? Her phone calls were one thing; he already knew he was going to take direct action where those were concerned.
But taking direct action with Greer was what mattered, all that mattered, and there Ryan felt lost. Irritable. Fighting a brick wall. What he wanted to do was simple. Kiss her senseless. Gather her up, protect her, love her, make love to her…but if he did that, he would risk losing her, he knew damn well.
His hands were jammed in his pockets. A delicate arm suddenly lightly wound itself through his and stayed there. He glanced down.
“This way,” Greer said firmly. A germ of a rather insane idea had taken root in her mind.
They turned a corner and walked two more blocks. Greer again rugged slightly on Ryan’s arm at the parking lot of the small brick elementary school.
“What on earth are you-”
“Just let me take the lead for once, McCullough.”
His smile was half distracted, half exasperated, but it was still a smile. Greer grinned back, and then suddenly chuckled. Life wasn’t simple. Nothing was ever simple, but one could only toss problems around for so long. It was break time, and she was going to chase away Ryan’s brooding scowl if it killed her.
“You’re crazy!” he called after her.
“So? Race you, McCullough!”
The playground was deserted and the grass soaked with dew. The silver-painted swings, merry-go-round, slide and jungle gym caught the moonlight. The swing creaked when Greer settled into it. She pushed off and swung her legs in the air. Her crisp businesslike skirt immediately fluttered up to her thighs. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to push me?”
He pushed her, thinking dryly that it was at least one way of getting his hands on her fanny. He pushed her so high that she shrieked, and when the swing came back down she was wantonly leaning her head back, the breeze tossing her hair, her kissable mouth open with laughter. Now, how was he supposed to sustain his glum mood under those circumstances?
After that, she insisted on pushing him, and then she ran over to the slide, insisting he do the honors first. He did, but the slide was like glass, and the first time down he ended up on his seat in the sand.
Greer bent over him, shaking her head. “You need me to show you how it’s done?” She barely missed a swat on her backside as she hurried up the metal ladder. At the top, though, she balked. “I’ll wreck my skirt,” she complained.
Ryan, still dusting off his jeans, roared, “Hike it up. You started this.”
True. She, pulled her skirt up, closed her eyes and slid down on her slip. At the bottom, she gracefully sprang to her feet. “Nothing to it,” she announced.
He chased her in and around the jungle gym and swings. She could hear her own laughter ringing out in the darkness, then his. There was no possible harm. The night was wonderful, warm and sweet. Greer mimed a batter’s swing at home plate on the baseball diamond; Ryan mimed an imaginary pitcher on the mound. He was far better than she was. When he chewed an imaginary
wad of tobacco and scratched his crotch, she collapsed in laughter, knowing exactly which major league pitcher he was imitating. After that, Ryan hooked an arm around her shoulders as they left the diamond.
“Ready for home?” she said breathlessly.
“No way.” They were never leaving, if he had his choice. He’d never heard Greer laugh so freely, and there wasn’t another woman on earth he could have shared so much nonsense with.
“Well…the merry-go-round then. We haven’t done that.” She reached the merry-go-round and tugged off her shoes. “Can’t do this right unless you’re barefoot,” she called out to him.
“Can’t you?” He couldn’t stop looking at her. Her hair was wind-tossed, her eyes sparkling. A button had worked loose at the neckline of her blouse; she’d tossed off her sweater and pushed up the blouse sleeves. For once, she was unconscious of her body, and her movements were as free and spontaneous as they were sensual and natural. She was a seductress with a dirt spot on her seat. A Romany Gypsy, acting on impulse, the look and sound of her like magic.
She was Greer. The lady who’d started this madness to shake him from a bad mood, he knew. A lady he could play with as well as talk to. A lady he loved.
She bent over to start pushing the contraption around. He moved behind her, pushing in rhythm as she did until the merry-go-round picked up momentum. “Hop on,” he ordered.
She did, clinging to the metal rails for support. “Too fast,” she protested.
“I haven’t even gotten it going.”
They seemed to be spinning at the speed of sound. Her stomach was turning over at the same dizzying tempo. “You’re crazier than I am. Would you please-”
“Just lie down and close your eyes and enjoy.”
He vaulted up to her a second later. Flat on her back, holding on for dear life, Greer was conscious of the cold, hard metal beneath her, but not very. So fast…air rushed past, and darkness, and the silent houses in the distance. Exhilaration raised color in her cheeks, a smile that wouldn’t stop. She turned her head to look at him.
The mad whirl stopped, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it even accelerated, and then something changed. Ryan reached out a hand, and it seemed utterly natural for Greer to take it. She let go of the metal bars, and suddenly he was holding her. More than holding her.
His legs were braced for balance, but his arms were free to both claim and secure. He hadn’t planned that. He hadn’t planned anything, but when he found her face that close, his mouth couldn’t help but cover hers. Around and around and around…that rush of speed was hypnotic, as intoxicating as the rush of sensations that swamped him. The warmth and suppleness of her body, molding itself willingly to his. The crush of her breasts against his chest, the beat of her heart, the softness of her features in the whirling moonlight. His lips locked with hers, and he couldn’t let her go.
Greer closed her eyes and hung on. She felt crazy, vibrant, high. Maybe there was no other gravity but Ryan. For that instant, she didn’t know or care. With no one to push it, the merry-go-round gradually wound down, but her heart still spun with a kaleidoscope of sensations. The rush was so unexpected, so lush, so…easy. The feel of his warm, mobile flesh beneath her fingers. His thigh locked against hers. The sweet, intoxicating taste that was Ryan.
She wanted…something. So much. Something as exhilarating and delicious as their mad ride, something that Ryan’s mouth was promising her, something his hands were promising in their rough sweep over her soft curves. His palm claimed her breast, cupping it, kneading, and she felt her heart quicken, heat gush through her veins.
“Hey. You kids. I’ve told you a thousand times not to use this playground as a necking park. Skedaddle, hear me? And next time I see you here I’m taking you home to your parents myse-”
Ryan placed a hand over Greer’s mouth to muffle her startled cry. Disoriented, he raised his head. The police car was idling at the edge of the parking lot in the shadows, a window rolled down and a weary-looking gray-haired officer leaning out of it. Ryan’s voice was strangled, but he managed a reasonably adolescent “Yes, sir.”
“I mean it. You know what time it is? Gull dern kids.”
As soon as they made to move, the patrol car drove off. Mortified, Greer leaped to her feet. For a minute, she was so busy gathering up her shoes, fixing her blouse and pushing down her skirt that she couldn’t possibly find time to look Ryan in the eye.
He didn’t force it. For one thing, his body didn’t want to do all that fast a recovery from the potent emotions Greer had aroused. For another, he was having a hard time believing he’d damn near made love to her on a children’s playground. And for another, he wanted to savor that delicious uninhibited response he’d won from the violently flushing lady next to him.
And then, there was that policeman’s bored face.
By her choice, they walked at a killing pace for two blocks before Ryan stopped, threw both arms around her shoulders and bent his forehead to hers. His whole body was shaking with laughter. “You realize if he’d known we were adults we’d probably be en route to a mental hospital right now?”
“Do you realize we could have run into half the teenagers in the county? That was obviously his nightly patrolling spot.”
“You sure can pick the places, Greer.”
Her body told her to be tense, to worry about how he would interpret her moments of craziness. Her heart just wouldn’t listen to her body. She dissolved in laughter to match his. “Me? The walk was your idea.” She added, “Haven’t you ever gone down a slide, McCullough?”
“You’re not going to let me live that down, are you?”
“I really don’t think so.”
They chuckled the rest of the way back to the apartment, but Greer unconsciously winced when they entered the brightly lit hall. Like a shout of reality, her knitting was still strewn on the floor, and so was his chess set.
Ryan didn’t seem to feel the same effect. Yawning, he bent over to pick up her knitting and pile it in her hands, then stuffed his chess set back into its box and tucked it under his arm. “Pair of derelicts live here,” he commented.
“Messy. Irresponsible.”
“Tomorrow these irresponsible derelicts are going to spend a day on Cape Hatteras.” He pushed open her door, and then leaned across their loaded arms to lay a swift kiss on her mouth. “No arguments.”
She must have caught the determined note in his voice, because her eyes suddenly met his, as vulnerable as a cat’s. He shook his head. He wasn’t letting her shut herself up again in that independent world of hers. “We’re going.” And if she looked at him like that for one more minute he was going to toss both their stuff on the ground and swing her into a bedroom. Hers or his, it didn’t much matter.
“I can’t, Ryan. I have to meet with one of the men at work tomorrow,” she said hesitantly, and gave him an apologetic look. “You see, Ray and I are both committed to attending a trade show next Wednesday and Thursday, and I promised him tomorrow-”
“Overnight?”
“Pardon?”
“You’re going to a two-day trade show with this guy, you just said. Do you intend to stay overnight?”
She shook her head ruefully. “I’ll be as safe with him as I would be in church,” she said wryly, “so don’t start up on potential callers again. Ray’s specialty is coast-to-coast women; he wouldn’t have time to make idle calls. Anyway…” She frowned thoughtfully, and took a long uneven breath. “I believe we’ll be done by noon tomorrow. We’re meeting early.”
“Noon, then,” Ryan said firmly.
***
Actually, she was done by ten. Her meeting with Ray went so smoothly she could barely believe it was over.
You’ve misjudged Ray terribly, she thought absently as she drove home under a sweltering sun. There hadn’t been a soul at Love Lace that morning, no hum of sewing machines, no buzz of laughter and conversation. The downstairs offices had been cool, silent and shadowed, almost like eerie tombs, ghos
tly with only the one light in the back office where they’d been working.
She’d been apprehensive, maybe because of the mood of the place, maybe because any confrontation with Ray aroused apprehension. Instead, Ray had made jokes; he’d been supportive; he’d waxed enthusiastic over practically every idea she had. She felt as if she’d spent the morning with Jekyll instead of Hyde.
The trick, Greer decided, was to work alone with him, away from other people. And to ignore the way his eyes kept…pinning her with those secret, enigmatic looks.
Egotism’s your problem, not his, she scolded herself. Wry humor shimmered in her eyes as she glanced in the rearview mirror. A wonderful humor that she’d had since she woke up that morning. So being around Ray always disturbed her, but how egotistical was that? Just because a man looked at her sideways didn’t mean he was a threat to her. Maybe if she worked alone with him more often, those reactions would go away. And he’d suggested a half dozen more private projects in the future…
Ray dropped easily from her mind as she arrived home and flew into her bedroom. An entire day of play lay ahead of her, a treat she had every intention of savoring. Her feelings for Ryan last night had bubbled over into today. When had she ever laughed so much? She couldn’t let it go. A little voice in her head was nagging frantically about combustible chemistry, but she ignored it. She refused to let anything ruin a perfectly good day.
Her swimsuit was buried deep, for good reason. A reason she ignored as she drew it out of the drawer and slipped it on with a grin. The suit was another of Love Lace’s rejects, but this one wasn’t too dreadfully flawed. It was a black two-piece suit with a modest halter top. The bottom was cut high on the thigh, only an eensy bit higher on one thigh than the other-enough for Marie to reject it, not enough so anyone else would notice.
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