by Gwyn Cready
Hugh cleared his throat. “Fiona, this is Joss and her acquaintance . . .?” He turned to Di.
“Diane Daltrey,” she said.
For a moment, the room erupted in the sounds of forced cordiality.
“We’re so sorry to interrupt here,” Joss said. “We should be heading out.”
“Not at all,” Hugh said. “I was just looking over the books. ’Tis nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“Do you have anything to drink?” asked Di, who was clearly determined to stay. “I’m parched.”
“I think we have a pot of coffee upstairs.”
“Gosh, wine would be nice. Especially for Joss,” she added in a camouflaging cough.
“Wine, then?” Hugh met Joss’s eyes.
She nodded reluctantly, and he excused himself.
“Tell me about the lucky fellow,” Fiona said to Joss. “I believe Hugh said his name was Rogan.”
“Rogan Reynolds, yeah. He’s great.”
“It’s Joss’s bachelorette night,” Di said.
Fiona’s interest sharpened. “Oh?”
“The wedding’s in a week—right after a benefits meeting. We’re hoping to stir up a little fun before then. Joss’s idea of fun is a surprise plant visit. I’m trying to kick that up a notch.”
“I see.” Fiona nodded.
“We’re sort of in the market for a Mr. Mistake.”
“Di,” Joss squawked.
“C’mon,” Di said. “Every woman needs one. At least one. One last guy before she takes the plunge. The man who’ll remind her how horrible men are in comparison to her husband; you know, the sort with all his best points between here and here.” She gestured to her stomach and thighs.
“For God’s sake, Di!”
“So if you know of anyone . . .”
Hugh entered with a tray of cups and a corked bottle under his arm.
Fiona nodded tightly. “I’m afraid I might.”
Snagging a cup and handing it to Joss, Di said to Hugh, “I for one would love to see Joss in that dress. She’s told me so much about it.”
Hugh gave Joss an even look. “That would be the bride’s call.”
She flushed. Half of her wanted to kill Di, but the other half wanted to keep the adolescent excitement of the crush going. “Sure. I suppose.”
“Oh, look.” Diane nudged the car seat enough to wake Luke. “I’m afraid the baby’s hungry. Is there a quiet place I could make myself comfortable?” She gave Fiona a helpless look, and Joss rolled her eyes. Di was the most nonhelpless person she knew and frighteningly unperturbed to nurse Luke anywhere. In fact, she’d nearly caused several cars to veer off the road last time she’d sat outside at Starbucks.
In a moment, the fitting room was empty save Joss and Hugh. He seemed different. A little cooler, a little more direct. A little more, she had to admit, like the man in her daydream.
“Who’d have thought I’d be having wine with you twice today?” she said with a nervous laugh.
“Who indeed?” He unfolded the piece of silk. “This time will you wear it as the goddess herself would?”
She shifted. She knew what he meant. Without the distorting influence of clothes. However, the fitting room offered no separate changing area. The way she saw it, she had two choices. She could say yes, ask where the ladies’ room was and look like an idiot. Or she could say yes, bite the bullet and look like someone who had maybe done it once or twice before.
She drained her glass.
Yes or no?
She thought of the dress, that gorgeous, empowering gown. The woman who wore that dress was the sort of woman who just put it on. Dammit, if she was going to have fun, this was the time. Game on, dress. I’m doing it.
“Yes, of course.” She took a deep breath and stepped onto the platform.
The room was darkly lit, and the soft lights were pointing at her. The mirrors surrounded her in a half circle. Hugh drew the curtain across the entrance and gave her a long look. Why did this feel like a private strip show?
But that was ridiculous. There was a woman breast-feeding upstairs—or at least pretending to. No, the right metaphor here would be a doctor’s office. He was a professional. His assistant would be wandering in and out to see if he needed help. And if Joss had any hope of wearing the dress someday, she would have to have it fitted properly.
Right. Easy as a colonoscopy.
She reached for the tie of her dress.
It would probably be easier if he turned his head, she thought. Actually, it would probably easier if he were supervising this by phone from somewhere in the vicinity of Cleveland, but that was not meant to be.
His gaze was not prurient, but it was direct, and she found herself fumbling with the inside button. Diane von Furstenberg had probably not been thinking of the ease of disrobing for one’s tailor when she’d designed her famous wrap dress.
“You said you work with maps.”
“I do, yes.” She freed the button and considered her lingerie. A beige bra with black lace seemed almost passable. But the low-cut cheeky panties were something else entirely. A business-like beige opaque in front, the panties were jaw-droppingly sheer on the other side and flounced with sheer ruffles. And if that weren’t enough, a tiny skull and crossbones made of shimmering black beads adorned the center of the elastic on the back. It was perhaps the most distinctive pair of panties she owned, and as Rogan liked to say, they definitely screamed, “Let the treasure hunt begin!” All in all, probably not what she would have picked for a visit to the doctor’s office or the tailor.
“You mentioned your fiancé, Rogan, earlier. Is he Rogan Reynolds?”
“Yes,” she said, flustered.
“Rogan’s an unusual name. I read something about him today, and I wondered.”
“That’s him.”
“Do you work for Brand Industries as well?” he asked, tumbling the pins in his palm.
The question wasn’t surprising. A lot of people thought her mother’s company was part of Alfred Brand’s empire. Her mother had been, Joss thought sadly, but not the company.
“No, actually. A lot of people think that. We do share office space with them in the USX Tower.”
He held out his hand for her dress.
She slipped it off her shoulders and handed it to him.
At this point the only strategy was to play it cool. She knew she looked okay in lingerie—better than okay, really, especially wearing it with three-inch black pumps; nonetheless, she wished that her ass wasn’t being reflected like two large ruffled spotlights about a thousand times over in the mirrors behind her. On the other hand, that probably kept his eyes off the nipples straining through the lace of her bra.
“There must be a lot of old maps there.” He handed her the chiton, repinned at the shoulders.
“Yes.” She lifted her arms and hurried the fabric over her head. “A pretty extensive collection, actually.”
The chiton was open on one side where the two flaps met, but overall, she was more covered than not.
She looked in the mirror. The gown was striking—even more so now with the waves of fabric falling against her. He grasped the flaps and held them just behind her waist, demonstrating what the gown might look like after it had been fitted properly. The place where his hand brushed her skin burned.
“Only the simplest adornments,” he said.
“I’m going to carry sunflowers.”
“Quite fitting.” He smiled. “Look at the back.”
She turned, and he followed. The fabric hung down far enough in back to show the tanned plane of her back, intersected by the narrow band of her bra.
“Just the gown, I should think.” His gaze went from the line of the bra to her eyes.
“I-I—”
But she, too, wanted to see the dress without the marring effect of lingerie. She wanted to feel the fabric against her like a second skin. And if she were totally honest, she wanted to feel the weight of his gaze on her as she did i
t. Whether it was the martinis or Di’s nagging, before she married Rogan she wanted to have one tiny adventure that she could look back on and smile about.
Feeling like she was about to make the first leap in a skydiving class, she maneuvered a hand to the clasp of her bra in the back.
“May I?”
He found the clasp and her breasts fell loose. She slipped the bra off her arms and for an instant he had an unfettered view, then she pulled it free.
There, she thought. I’ve had my adventure. I’m done.
If it affected him in any way, he didn’t show it. He took the bra without even looking at it and waited.
She gulped. Did he expect the panties, too? This was more than skydiving. This was skydiving naked with an instructor you barely knew. She flushed, deeply conflicted, but it seemed to be worse to do nothing. She snagged the panties, slipped them off and let them drop.
Only the thinnest silk stood between Hugh and her, and when she moved, the long waves of fabric slid over her skin, caressing it.
“Come,” he said. “I need to do the fitting.” He held out a hand and led her off the platform. Then he knelt, slipping off each shoe, a reversal of Cinderella that sent a sizzling trail of sparks up her spine.
“I see you in sandals—something touched with gold, aye?”
Nodding, she tried not to think about being naked. She tried not to think about the fact that from his position, there was almost nothing that couldn’t be seen or imagined. But most of all, she tried not to think that in some small number of moments she would have to return the dress and redon the panties and the bra without the comforting camouflage of five yards of raw silk behind which to hide.
He worked quickly, pinning the fabric along the open flap: at her thigh, at her hip, at the rise of her breast. The silk clung to every curve, even the small rise of her belly, which she normally hated but tonight looked exactly right.
When he unbent, he was quite close, so close she could see the pulse at this throat and smell the fresh breeze scent of his skin. The air between them hummed with promise.
“Lift your hair.”
It was the command he’d made that morning, the one that had sent her running. Was it a test—a test to see if they’d passed that point? Or was he flaunting the fact he knew they already had?
She lifted her arms and twisted her hair into a loose knot. He was right. It looked stunning, and the approval on his face took her breath away.
He was so close, she wondered if he’d kiss her. More important, she wondered if she’d kiss him back. A daydream was not real life.
“I want to make this dress for you.” His eyes glowed green as he took in his work.
“You can’t,” she said softly. “There isn’t enough time.”
“If I make it, will you wear it?”
She thought of that skirt and she thought of Nike, with her striking strength and ethereal beauty. “Yes.” It was barely a whisper.
“Will you come back tomorrow for a final fitting?”
“When?”
“Six o’clock,” he said. “Just before we close.”
She crossed her arms, unsteady. She wished she had more experience in the gray areas of seduction, to know what, if anything, he was suggesting. She knew, hard and fast, she would do nothing to hurt Rogan. But she’d never tarried at the edge of danger with the boys she’d dated. They’d either been dating or they hadn’t. There had been no question.
He saw the unease on her face.
“I have no intention of drawing you into something that would hurt you,” he said carefully. “But I want to see you in this dress, and I want to see you again before you marry.”
Well, if she wanted direct, there it was. And the truth was she had enjoyed this little bit of harmless derring-do. It sent a wonderful frisson through her that was just the distraction she needed on this stressful road to the ceremony. Perhaps Di was right: she had missed too much in life.
“Then yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
She heard Di’s voice on the stairs and stepped away.
The women entered, laughing, Fiona holding Luke against her shoulder.
Di did a 360 of the room without breaking stride. When her gaze came to the bra on the table, she started. With a happy clap she said, “Well, I see we’ve made some progress here. I’m impressed. C’mon. Let’s see it.”
With her hands in the air, Joss turned in a circle, and the women made reassuring oohs and ahs. “There’s still supposed to be some gold rope that crisscrosses my chest”—she shot Di a threatening look—“but you get the general impression.”
“Oh, I definitely get the general impression,” Di said. “Will you wear it for the ceremony?”
Hugh’s eyes flickered to Joss’s, and she felt the pleasure of shared agreement effervesce in her blood. “Yes.”
Di exhaled. “Thank the Lord.”
Hugh’s mouth broke out into a small smile. “I believe I can second that. Fiona, will you help Joss out of the gown?” And with a quick bow he exited the room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
One day the old man who had hidden his treasure returned to the beautiful mapmaker’s shop. Many years had passed since she had seen him. She said, “I was afraid you’d forgotten.” He said, “I had not forgotten, but the woman agreed to be my wife because she loved me. I did not need the money to buy her hand. We live in a little house beside the river, and I’ve never been happier. I want you to have the gold because you gave me such good advice.”
—The Tale of the Beautiful Mapmaker
With the women’s voices rising and falling beyond the closed curtain in the fitting room, Hugh shifted the coats in the entry, and found Joss’s handbag.
She was a spy, he thought, and one he had invited within his own well-guarded perimeter. He cursed himself for missing what would have been obvious to anyone—anyone, that is, who hadn’t been guided by an organ far less dependable than his brain.
He would have liked to say that organ had been his heart—and he had certainly found himself irresistibly drawn to her passion for maps as well as her determined curiosity about him—but he was afraid the true culprit resided somewhat south of that beating mass.
That dress. Those breasts. The fire in those eyes . . .
Idiot. She was here to betray him and still he could not tear her from his thoughts.
She’d said she was engaged to Rogan Reynolds, and the large diamond on her hand certainly seemed to testify to that, but whether she was or not hardly mattered. She was in Reynolds’s employ, and if her reward for that collaboration was monetary or something more primitive, Hugh would ensure that she paid a price for her part in it.
He opened the clasp on her bag and dug through the hidden bits and pieces of a woman’s life. With any other woman, he would have died before committing such a transgression. It was ungentlemanly, and his cheeks warmed despite the knowledge it was necessary.
He pushed aside the ring of keys, the change purse and the sleek, heavy rectangle, thinner than a deck of cards, with which she’d made that audible connection with her colleague. Had he more time, he would have certainly pored over the last, but the primary object of his attention was flatter and stiff, almost like a single playing card, displaying a portrait of its owner, that had been used like a key by the people entering and leaving the inner reaches of the building she called the USX Tower.
There it was. He slipped the item into his pocket and would have closed the bag and placed it back under her coat except for a small liquid-filled bottle that caught his eye. The voices beyond the curtain showed no signs of slowing. He removed the cap and lifted the bottle to his nose. It was her. That scent of plums and jasmine. He closed his eyes and immediately the long stretch of back and the way she’d let his eyes glide over her filled his head.
Whether she was a spy or not, he would have liked Fiona and the friend to have disappeared. He would have liked to watch Joss pull that dress over her head. And he would very much have liked t
o lift her onto the worktable, pressed her hands behind her and watch that small, round mouth move as he plumbed her.
He wished he could say it was for revenge, but he knew better.
That, he thought, is the trouble with allowing one’s heart to be breached. In that direction, there is only pain. For now, he must remain single-minded. Brand was gone, and he couldn’t kill him to avenge that horrible death so many years ago. But he could destroy Brand’s reputation—his business, his legacy, whatever he held dear. If Joss was hiding the map, and if Reynolds or Joss were privy to the reasons it must be kept hidden, Hugh would destroy them, too.
He slipped the bottle and card in his pocket, feeling them clink against his timepiece, then placed the bag under her coat and went outside into the wind-tossed night, hoping the stench of thievery would not linger on him long.
Fiona slipped her head out the door and squinted into the dark alley. He could be no more than a cipher to her. “Are you there?” she whispered.
“Aye.”
“They’re done. Do you have it?”
“Aye.”
The door closed, and again he was alone. He withdrew farther into the night. He did not wish to see Joss again, given what he was about to do.
From the safety of the darkened cross street, he watched, unseen, as Joss tumbled out with the baby chair in her hand, followed by her friend and the baby. Fiona, hostess to the last, held the door open and looked down the alley.
“Ooh, it’s a windy one,” Fiona said. “Bundle up, ladies. ’Twas a pleasure to meet you, Master Luke.” She squeezed the lad’s hand. Hugh wondered for an instant if Fiona had ever wanted a child. He knew little about her. He had taken no time to learn.
“Is Hugh around?” Joss asked hesitantly, and he felt a warmth he would not have expected. “I wanted to say good night.”
“I believe he’s busy with something upstairs.”
“Oh.”
“C’mon, kiddo,” Diane said to her. “Another time.”
Fiona waved and closed the door.
Diane leaned low, struggling to find her balance as she lowered the baby into the little chair.
