One Touch of Moondust

by Sherryl Woods

“Count sheep.”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “Try reciting the names of all the states and their capitals.”

  “I want to sleep, not test my memory. If I miss one, I’ll be up the rest of the night trying to remember it.”

  “I’m sure the aerobics won’t help. Your blood’s probably pumping so fast right now, it’ll be hours before you settle down. Try some warm milk.”

  “We don’t have any. We never did get to the store today.” She smiled at him enticingly. “Since you’re awake, too, we could play cards.”

  “Bridge, I suppose?”

  “Poker.”

  He hesitated. The idea of playing poker with a half-dressed woman in the middle of the night held a certain appeal. Too much appeal. If he had a grain of sense, he’d go out for the blasted milk instead. “Do you have any cards?”

  “Of course,” she said, going immediately to a box that had been carefully labeled with every item in it.

  “That much organization is probably illegal. When you move, you’re supposed to lose things.”

  “Who says?”

  “It’s a law of nature or something.” He led the way into the living room and gestured toward the orange crate. “You deal. I’m getting a beer. Want one?”

  “Beer sounds good.”

  That surprised him, but he made no comment. Nor did he say much when she displayed an extraordinary knack for knowing when to hold her cards and when to fold ’em. When she folded for the fifth or sixth time in a row, Paul grew frustrated.

  “Why not play the hand out?”

  “It’s always better if you know when to cut your losses.”

  “We are not playing for the rent money. Hell, we’re not even playing for matchsticks.”

  “If you get out of the habit of playing like you mean to win, it’ll get you in trouble later.”

  “And who taught you that bit of wisdom?”

  “My father. He swears it’s how he made his first million.”

  “His first million?” Paul repeated with a dry inflection. “Exactly how many does he have now?”

  Gabrielle shrugged sleepily and took another sip of beer. “Ten. Twenty. I don’t know. He doesn’t think it’s important for women to know those things.”

  “If your father has all that money, why are you living here?” Paul asked, thoroughly bemused. He’d known Gabrielle was classy, that until very recently she’d had some money, but he’d had no idea just how much.

  “Because I’m almost broke,” she explained patiently.

  “But your father—”

  Her chin set stubbornly, though the effect was lost in a yawn. “That’s his money,” she said, continuing to shuffle the cards.

  It finally dawned on Paul that there was some sort of pride at stake here. “Your father doesn’t know you’re running out of money, does he? How long before the next trust fund check comes through?”

  “What trust fund check?” She put the deck of cards down in front of him. “Cut.”

  Still perplexed, Paul did as she asked. So there was no trust fund, he thought as she dealt. Yet she didn’t seem to be estranged from her family. The fondness she felt for her father had been unmistakable in her voice. She had quoted him not with irony, but with respect. Figuring out the complexity of the relationship was something he decided to leave for another time.

  They played a few more hands before he got up and went for another beer. When he came back into the living room, she was sitting on the floor, legs tucked under her, her head resting on the orange crate.

  “Gaby?”

  She gazed up at him with sleepy eyes and a suggestion of a smile on her lips. All at once playing poker and her family’s elusive financial dealings were the last things on his mind. He tried to tell himself the swift sexual reaction was perfectly understandable. He hadn’t fully recovered from that earlier misinterpretation of the noises in her room. He reminded himself sternly that he had no personal interest in Gabrielle Clayton beyond her ability to pay the rent.

  Then he made the mistake of picking her up and carrying her back to her room. She snuggled. The woman curled up in his arms, buried her face against his neck and smelled like some exotic flower. He wanted to drop her onto her bed and escape just as quickly as he possibly could. Instead he put her down gently, then stood watching her, wondering at the vague tightening in the pit of his stomach. This woman wasn’t cool and distant. This woman wasn’t a snob. She was warm and vulnerable and desirable. And he needed to get very far away from her very fast.

  The room next door wasn’t nearly far enough. Gaby might have been sleeping peacefully in her own bed, but she made her presence felt in his dreams. He blinked awake to incredible loneliness and throbbing memories.

  Well, hell, he thought, staring at the ceiling for the second time that night. He might have been tempting fate by inviting her to share this apartment. He might even have hoped that the chemistry between them would prove irresistible. But he hadn’t planned on feeling this tender protectiveness at all. In fact, quite the opposite. He’d been absolutely certain that daily doses of her disdain would fuel his natural aversion to women who thought they were too good for the average man. Instead she hadn’t been in the apartment twenty-four hours and already his carefully erected wall of preconceptions was cracked at the foundation. It made for a very long night.

  * * *

  Gabrielle did not want to get out of bed. It was Saturday morning. From the brightness of the sun slanting through the window, she judged it to be a beautiful day. But Paul was very likely to be in the next room and she wasn’t sure she was at all prepared to go another round with him.

  Every one of their encounters had disturbed her in some indefinable way that went well beyond irritation. Their latest, in fact, was a dim but decidedly pleasant memory. She recalled the strength of his arms around her, the gentleness of his touch, the oddly haunted look in his eyes when he’d thought she’d been with another man. She wasn’t sure which was likely to be more difficult to face, the impossible man she’d first met or the tender one who’d helped her through the night. Such uncertainty had a tendency to make her cranky.

  Finally she dared a trip to the bathroom. Fortunately Paul didn’t seem to be anywhere in the apartment. In the bathroom, however, she was reminded emphatically of his presence. She found his damp towel laying on the floor, his razor beside a sink dotted with specks of dark hair and his T-shirt on the door handle. The intimacy it suggested sent a little shiver dancing along her spine. That made her mad, though admittedly out of all proportion to the seriousness of his transgression. It also helped her to put that single incident during the night into its proper perspective once and for all. She was rooming with an inconsiderate slob, not some knight in shining armor.

  She cleaned the sink, washed up, dressed, picked up his belongings and tore open the door with every intention of dumping the items in the middle of his bed. She hadn’t counted on practically tripping over him. He was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, his very bare upper body partially hidden in a cabinet. Unfortunately quite enough was exposed to tease her imagination. She dropped his things on his stomach and heard a muttered exclamation, a thump and then a curse.

  He emerged rubbing his head and peered at her balefully. “What’s the story?”

  “There is one bathroom in this apartment.”

  “How observant of you to notice,” he retorted, responding to her admittedly nasty mood. “What’s the problem?”

  “I will not clean up after you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Well, we sure as hell don’t have a maid to do it.”

  “Right again.”

  “I will not live in a pigsty.”

  He carefully removed the assortment of items on his stomach, holding them up for inspection. “I’d hardly call one towel, a razor and my underwear the makings of a pigsty.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Come on, Gaby, loosen up. I’m used to li
ving alone. We’ll have to work out the details as we go along. I’ll buy a medicine chest for the razor. I’ll install a towel rack later. As for my underwear, if that disturbs you…” he began with a leer.

  “It doesn’t disturb me!” She was practically shouting.

  He grinned. “Then why are you shouting?” Paul couldn’t resist chuckling at her furious expression. It was good to see yet another break in that cool, controlled facade of hers. In fact, if it weren’t so dangerous to his own equilibrium, he might make that his immediate goal, seeing to it that Gabrielle Clayton exchanged what had apparently been a rather uptight existence for something a little more carefree. Even now her frown wavered uncertainly. He had a feeling that now that she’d told him off, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Politeness dictated an apology, but her mood obviously did not.

  “Come on,” he said, putting aside his wrench and his common sense. He got to his feet and held out his hand.

  She regarded him warily. “Where?”

  “We’re going to brunch.”

  He caught the quick flash of interest in her eyes before she shook her head. “We can’t. There’s too much to do around here.”

  “It can wait.”

  “I cannot live in total chaos.”

  “You can work twice as hard on a full stomach.”

  “I don’t have money to throw away on brunch when we can cook right here.”

  “I do. Besides, there’s no food in the refrigerator except for some cheese that’s turning green.”

  She swallowed hard at that. “Okay. But we’re roommates. We go dutch or not at all.”

  “Not this time. We’re celebrating.”

  “What?”

  “Our first fight.”

  “It’s not our first,” she said with the beginnings of a smile. “We’ve been arguing since we met.”

  “Then it’s time we called a truce.” He grinned at her. “Over brunch.”

  She caved in sometime between his deliberately provocative description of freshsqueezed orange juice and the promise of waffles and warm maple syrup.

  “One hour,” she agreed finally. “No more.”

  “Relax, Gaby. If you eat too fast, you’ll get indigestion. Isn’t that what you told me yesterday?”

  “An hour,” she insisted, glaring again.

  “Do you want to time it down to the second?” he inquired, offering her a view of his watch. She scowled back, yanked on her jacket and descended the stairs like a queen on her way to court.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, turning back at the corner to wait for him.

  “I thought you knew,” he retorted. “You’re leading the way.”

  She slowed her steps and grumbled, “Don’t you ever hurry?”

  “Not if I can help it. Stress is bad for you. Don’t you ever slow down?”

  “You can’t afford to in my business.”

  So, he thought, she really hadn’t been taking money from her father. “What is your business?” he asked, envisioning an elegant boutique on Madison Avenue struggling against exorbitant rents and fickle tastes.

  “I’m a stockbroker.”

  Stunned, he simply stared at her.

  Oblivious to his astonishment, she bit her lip. “Actually, I was a stockbroker. Now I seem to be having trouble convincing people of that.”

  Paul tried to reconcile his first impressions with reality. “Were you any good?”

  “I was damn good.”

  “So why’d they fire you?”

  “Who says they did?”

  “You don’t seem like the type of lady who’d walk away from a sure thing with no prospects in sight.” And yet, in many ways, that was exactly what she’d done when she’d left the family nest.

  “You think you have me all figured out, don’t you?”

  “Not really,” he said honestly, gesturing to a crowded deli at the same time. “Is this okay?”

  “Fine.”

  He gave his name to the hostess, then turned back to Gabrielle. “Well? What happened?”

  “Okay, I was fired.” The sparks in her eyes dared him to make fun of her for that. “Not because I wasn’t good, though. It’s just that there were dozens who were better and who’d been there longer.”

  “If the business is all that tight, what makes you think it’ll be any better at another brokerage house? You could work your tail off and end up out of a job again, right? All through no fault of your own.”

  She shrugged, her expression resigned. “It’s a risky business.”

  Curious about her unemotional tone and the flat, empty look in her eyes, he said, “Why do you do it?”

  “I trained for it. It’s what I do. You hammer and paint. I sell stocks and bonds.”

  “Why?”

  She ignored the question as they were finally led to a table. As soon as she was seated, she buried her face behind the menu. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she was avoiding the question. As soon as their orders had been taken, Paul persisted. “Why, Gaby? What is it about the stock market that turns you on? Is it the money, the power, the risks? What?”

  Her gaze narrowed defensively. “You sound as though you disapprove of making money.”

  “Hey, what’s to disapprove of? Money’s great and it’s none of my business what you do with your life. I just see a woman who’s existing on nervous energy, who can’t sleep at night, who’s living in an apartment she considers to be not much better than a slum—”

  “I never said that.”

  “It’s in your eyes, sweetheart. They’re the windows to the soul, remember. They’ll give you away every time.”

  She immediately looked chagrined. Rudeness apparently was inconceivable to someone of her unfailingly polite Southern upbringing. Every time she crossed the boundaries of what she considered polite conversation, she looked guilty. And apologized.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, right on cue.

  “Hell, you don’t have to be sorry on my account. I like where I am. I like who I am. What about you? What does it take to make you happy, Gabrielle Clayton?”

  “Success,” she said instantly, but that trace of uncertainty was back in her eyes.

  “How do you measure success? By the number of shares of stock you’ve sold? By the size of the portfolios you handle? By the take-overs you’ve manipulated? When you played Monopoly, were you only happy when you’d bought up all the real estate?”

  She looked uncomfortable with the question. “I wanted to win, if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t you?”

  “Sure, but I only compete with myself. I don’t have to conquer the world.”

  “We’re all entitled to different goals.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Gaby.”

  She flushed guiltily again. “That’s not what I was doing.”

  “Wasn’t it? I’m sure you think it’s just terrific that I’m content when the paint goes on smoothly. Isn’t it nice that Paul can be happy with so little?” When she started to deny it, he shook his head. “Those eyes again, sweetheart. They say it all.”

  “And what about your eyes?” she snapped back. “You’ve jumped to a few conclusions about me, too. Rich. Spoiled. What else, Paul? What labels did you stick on me at first sight?”

  He slumped back in the booth and grinned ruefully. “Touché. Maybe we ought to start all over again without any preconceptions.”

  “Why?” she asked softly. “In a few weeks I’ll be out of your life. What we think of each other won’t matter at all.”

  “Are you so sure of that?” he responded just as quietly, not sure why he was so quick to defend the possibility of a future for them.

  He saw the heat rise in her cheeks, caught yet another glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes. “Never mind. We’ve gotten entirely too heavy for an outing that was meant to relax you. Let’s play hooky for the rest of the day and just have some fun.”

  “But the apartment, all those boxes, you promised to get the medicine chest and the to
wel rack…”

  He heard the token resistance in her voice, saw the wavering resolve in her eyes and wondered how long it had been since she had allowed herself the simple pleasure of an afternoon off.

  “Tomorrow will be soon enough, Gaby.”

  A spark of irritation flared in her eyes and something else, a surprising wistfulness. It confirmed his suspicion about the lack of stolen moments she’d captured for her own joy. He played to that tiny hint of vulnerability.

  “Please,” he coaxed, “Gabrielle.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Despite its brightness, the sun hadn’t taken the crystal sharp bite out of the fall air. Gabrielle shivered as they strolled toward the subway entrance at Paul’s favored leisurely pace. Seeking warmth, she poked her icy hands into the pockets of her denim jacket. She should have worn the fox coat, but it would have looked out of place with her jeans and sweater. It would also have underscored the vast differences between herself and Paul. His idea of style seemed to consist of clean jeans, an unrumpled shirt and a sheepskin jacket that was several years removed from the sheep.

  “Come on,” he said, apparently noticing the effect the brisk air was having on her. “It’s freezing out here. I’ll race you.”

  Gabrielle’s prompt protest was lost as he took off with the loping, natural stride of an athlete. She sputtered indignantly, but was too much of a competitor to ignore the challenge. By the end of the block, the cold air hurt her lungs and her side ached, but she was filled with the strangest sense of exhilaration. Her whole body felt alive with anticipation.

  Paul grinned at her and she found herself smiling back, suddenly more lighthearted than she’d felt in years. It was a beautiful day, her housing problem was temporarily resolved and until Monday there was not a thing in the world she could do about finding a new job. Paul was a handsome, sexy companion with a sense of humor. Why not enjoy this day, this moment?

  “That run put some color in your cheeks,” he said approvingly.

  She shook her head with feigned impatience. “What is this fixation you have about my coloring? Did you have aspirations for being a doctor?”

  “No medical hopes at all,” he said, taking a slow step toward her. Gabrielle’s breath caught in her throat as he reached over, caught a strand of her hair and tucked it behind her ear. The unexpected gesture startled her with its tenderness. His rough knuckles grazed her cheek and sent warmth flooding through her.