“What’s all this?” he asked cautiously, staring at the two badly scarred tables and the large bag from a neighborhood hardware store.
“It’s for the apartment,” she said excitedly, determined to put the morning’s awkwardness behind them. “Aren’t they absolutely perfect.”
“For what?”
“End tables, of course. And I saw this really wonderful sofa. It was an incredible bargain, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it home and I decided you might want to take a look at it, too, before we get it.”
“Why are you doing this?” He looked thoroughly baffled.
“What?”
“Furnishing an apartment you have no intention of staying in more than a few months.”
“Because I’m not sure I can stand looking at what’s in there now, even for a few months.”
He regarded the tables skeptically. “If you don’t mind my saying so, these don’t appear to upgrade the quality of the decor by much. How many layers of paint do you suppose are on here?”
“Six,” she said readily. At his surprised glance, she grinned. “I counted when I was chipping my way down to the natural wood. I think it may be cherry. Come on. Help me get them upstairs.”
“How did you get them this far?” he asked, stacking them on top of each other.
“They didn’t walk by themselves, I can tell you that.”
He regarded her incredulously, from the fox coat to the tips of her two-inch Italian heels. “And you carried that bag, too? How far did you lug this stuff?”
“Not far. I found the tables in this perfectly marvelous secondhand store about fifteen blocks from here. I picked up the rest at that hardware store a couple of blocks over.”
Paul was staring at her as if she’d just declared an ability to lift a moving van by the tips of her fingers. “Are you nuts? Why didn’t you call for help?”
“For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t that far. I had to stop a lot, though,” she admitted.
“You and your idiotic streak of independence,” he muttered in disgust. “It was far enough to strain your back.”
“My back is fine.”
“It won’t be in the morning.”
“That will be my problem, won’t it?”
“Not if it means you’ll want to soak it in a hot tub,” he retorted, staring at her meaningfully. “Call next time, okay?”
“Okay,” she said very softly. The gruff concern combined with the all too fiery memories to make her miss a step. She stumbled and only her sharp reflexes kept her from tumbling backward down the stairs. The near-accident snapped her back to reality. She concentrated very hard on reaching the apartment without further embarrassment, then on placing the tables in precisely the right spot. When Paul had them exactly where she wanted them, she nodded in satisfaction, finally taking off her coat and tossing it across the sofa.
“I knew they would work.”
“They do, don’t they?” Paul said, sounding pleased. “What about the paint?”
Oblivious to her designer suit, Gabrielle knelt down and began pulling cans of paint stripper, pads of steel wool, protective gloves and a container of tung oil from the bag. “The man at the hardware store assured me this was everything we’d need.”
“We?”
She gave him her most winsome smile. “You’ll have to help. I don’t know anything about stripping furniture.”
“Neither do I.”
Stunned, she stared up at him. “Are you sure?”
A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Very.”
“But you put it on. You should know how to take it off.”
He shrugged. “It sounds logical when you say it, but the reality is that I have never stripped a piece of furniture in my life. I have occasionally used a blow torch to melt paint off certain things.”
She frowned. “I don’t think that would be good for the tables.”
“Probably not,” he agreed with a wry expression.
“Okay. That’s a little bit of a problem, but it’s certainly not insurmountable. How hard can this be? There are directions on the cans.”
“Gaby, I love your enthusiasm, but we can’t do this now. I have work to do downstairs. I want to get another apartment rented by the first of the month.”
“Can’t you leave it just for tonight?” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “You worked all day. What kind of boss do you have?”
She watched in astonishment as he burst into laughter. “The best, actually. I work for myself.”
“Well, I know you’re a carpenter, for heaven’s sake. And you paint. And who knows what all, but you do take jobs.”
“Of course,” he said. “That’s where I was all day. I’m in the middle of the renovations on a house in Brooklyn Heights.”
She absorbed that news. It didn’t conflict dramatically with anything she’d said. “Then this is a second job?”
“This?”
“Here. Managing this building and fixing it up.”
He shook his head and said with the sort of patience usually reserved for overly inquisitive children, “No, Gaby. I own this building.”
She stared at him blankly, trying to absorb the implications. “But…”
“But what?”
“I thought you were just a…” Now that she knew differently, she couldn’t bring herself to say exactly what she had thought.
“Don’t blame me, if you jumped to a conclusion.”
“You let me do it,” she accused, feeling a curious mixture of betrayal and pleased astonishment. “You let me go on thinking that you were just some sort of common laborer.”
The words slipped out before she had time to censor them. She recognized the mistake the instant she looked into Paul’s eyes. The blue sparked with fury.
“I beg your pardon,” he said with an iciness that froze her straight to the marrow in her bones. “There is nothing common about giving a good day’s work for a good day’s wages, no matter how lowly some people might consider the task.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said miserably.
“I can’t see any other interpretation. When you thought I was no more than a common laborer,” he said, apparently determined to humiliate her by throwing her own illconsidered words back in her face, “was that what kept you out of my bed? Does everything change now that you know I own property and have a bank account that doesn’t provide for frills, but keeps a roof over my head? Does it, Gaby?”
She stood up and met his furious glare evenly. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it must seem that I’m the worst sort of snob, but you’re deliberately misunderstanding.”
His gaze was unrelenting. “Am I really? What’s held you back then?”
“Because we’re not right for each other,” she said, knowing the argument sounded weak. There were literally hundreds of reasons two people might not be right for each other. She hadn’t given him one of them.
“I’m not good enough, isn’t that what you mean?”
“No,” she protested, but deep inside she knew that was exactly what she’d thought.
He ran his hand through his hair. “For God’s sake, Gaby, don’t lie about it. What’s the point?”
The point was that she didn’t want him to know how shallow she was capable of being. Unfortunately it seemed he already knew it. “You knew what I thought all along, didn’t you?” she said finally. When he didn’t answer, she raised her voice, needing to share the anger and the blame. “Didn’t you?”
He sighed wearily. “Yes. At least I suspected it.”
“Then why didn’t you correct the mistake then? Why did you let it come to this? Did you enjoy making a fool of me?”
“I’m not the one who did that. You did it all by yourself. You used superficial values to judge me, label me and tuck me away.” He grabbed her arms and held on so tightly that she had to bite back a gasp. She refused to admit to the pain, which she was certain was no greater than the anguish she saw in his eyes. “I’m a man, Gab
y. An individual who has a thousand different facets to his personality, just like you do.” Their gazes clashed, hers repentant, his blazing with anger and frustration.
“Dammit,” he swore softly, his hands dropping to his side. He seemed to be biting back something, restraining himself.
Gabrielle rubbed her arms and waited for the explosion to go on. When it didn’t, she said, “You might as well go on.”
“No.”
“Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll. Then, again, maybe I should remind you of the niche you’ve put me in and exactly how many times I’ve proven you to be mistaken. Don’t tell me you didn’t expect to have a rich prima donna, a real spoiled brat on your hands. You have a real hang-up when it comes to money. Even I can see that.”
He sighed. “Okay, you’re not the only villain in this piece. That’s all the more reason we should stay as far away from each other as we can get. We seem to bring out the worst in each other.”
Gaby refused to let that lie go unanswered. “Not always.” At his shocked and disbelieving look, she added, “At least not for me.”
“What are you saying?”
“All day today I’ve been remembering the way I felt this morning. You never even touched me and yet I felt as though I were the most desirable woman on the face of the earth. I felt a fire inside that I’d never felt before.”
“That’s lust, Gaby. We’ve never even tried to deny that we feel that. I ought to know. I came damned close to forcing myself on you in there this morning.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Don’t even try to turn what nearly happened here today into some sort of ugly scenario with me as the poor victim. I wanted you, just as much as you wanted me.”
“It’s not enough, Gaby. For this to work, we need mutual respect and we’ve just established that it doesn’t exist. Our bodies may be in perfect harmony,” he said, a bitter note of regret in his voice, “but our heads are in different worlds.”
Gabrielle wanted to protest, but there was far too much truth in what he said. If they were to find their way to something real and meaningful between them, they would have to start over. The prospect might have seemed insurmountable were it not for one thing.
“What about our hearts?” she responded finally, reaching out to touch his chest. He trembled as her fingers lingered over the spot where his heart thundered at a revealing pace. “What about those?”
Paul’s eyes widened at the softly spoken taunt, but she didn’t wait around for an answer. She picked up her coat and left, not sure where she was going, only certain that she wanted to be far from here when she began to cry.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Paul stared at the door as it slammed behind Gabrielle, instinctively noting that the frame seemed a little loose on top. He automatically went for his hammer and a handful of nails as he pondered her exit line.
What the hell was she talking about? Had she been trying to suggest that this thing between them amounted to love? That was crazy. They barely knew each other. In fact, until tonight they’d both apparently been influenced—subconsciously at least—by fairly negative first impressions, the kind that did not inspire love or anything remotely akin to it.
Then, again, maybe that’s what someone of Gabrielle’s background had to think in order to justify a sexual relationship. Which, he noted ruefully, they didn’t even have. Perhaps in her circles, she even had to justify desire.
Well, she could call it anything she liked. Personally, he thought lust or chemistry was a pretty adequate label. It was possible to lust after a total stranger—a lady with a pair of shapely legs, for instance, or one with long red hair that flashed fire in the sunlight. But you sure as hell couldn’t love someone you didn’t even know. If tonight’s argument had told him anything, it was that he and Gabrielle knew as much about each other as two people who happened to sit on neighboring bar stools. They’d both been talking for days, but obviously neither of them had been listening.
And that, he decided, was something he couldn’t do a damn thing about until she came home. He went back down to work on the third floor apartment. The sooner it was finished and rented, the sooner he could complete the second floor unit and then, finally, his own on the ground floor. Then there would be some space between him and Gabrielle, assuming she hadn’t already moved on long before that. That prospect wasn’t something he cared to think about at all.
At first, tonight, seeing the excitement that lit her eyes when she’d come in, his stomach had knotted. He’d been convinced that only a new job would spark that high-voltage smile and guileless enthusiasm. When he’d seen the two tables and realized that, for the moment, she intended to stay—job or no job—he’d been overwhelmed by relief and a vague sense of victory. It was as if those tables represented a sort of commitment.
It made what had happened afterward all the more confusing. How, in the midst of the teasing and laughter over those tables, had things gotten so intense and so wildly out of control? One minute they’d been talking about paint, putting it on and taking it off. It certainly should have been less volatile than a similar discussion about clothes, for instance. Still, the next minute accusations and countercharges were whizzing through the air aimed at hurting.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t account for Gabrielle’s motives. To be honest, though, he understood his own all too well. In part at least, he’d been releasing years of pentup emotions, blaming her for long-ago slights, protecting himself from the pain of another rejection. He’d set out to achieve emotional distance at a time when physical space wasn’t possible. What had almost happened this morning had shown him the need for that.
Gabrielle had been gone nearly an hour when he heard the downstairs door open, then the heavy tread of slow, tired footsteps. He held his breath as the steps approached the third floor, then went on. He sighed. Apparently there would be no confrontation again tonight, no resolution of the earlier argument. Maybe it was for the best. Perhaps in the morning, with clearer heads, they could get at the real problems between them. He felt slightly guilty over his relief at the reprieve.
Working with renewed concentration on the new kitchen cabinets, he was startled when he turned and found Gabrielle standing in the doorway. She’d changed out of her tailored-for-success business suit into jeans and a surprisingly faded sweatshirt that dipped unevenly at the neckline and bagged everywhere else. She’d never looked sexier or more approachable. If he kept looking at her, it would shatter his control. He turned back to the cabinet, fitting a corner together with careful precision, then tapping a nail into place.
“What happened here tonight?” she said softly. The uncertainty in her voice was enough to tie his gut into knots all over again. He couldn’t look at her. If he did, if he saw the slightest hint of vulnerability in her eyes, he would take her in his arms and they would both be lost.
“We both found out we’d been living in a dreamworld. Reality set it.” He kept his voice deliberately cool, determinedly nonchalant.
“I don’t think so.” The crisp note of conviction surprised him.
“So what do you think happened?”
“I think we were getting too close. I think you were feeling things you didn’t want to feel and you set out to destroy those feelings.”
His head snapped around at that. He hadn’t credited her with mind-reading and wasn’t about to admit to her skill. “Where the hell would you get an idea like that?”
She was not the least bit intimidated by his gruff tone. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You admitted that you’d known all along that I had doubts about getting involved with you, so all that garbage about my being a snob was hardly news. You used it, though. You took something we hadn’t even put to the test…”
“Your attitude…”
“Was based on a misperception.”
“Does that make it any less unconscionable?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re every bit as hung up on the class distinction
as you accuse me of being. Is being a reverse snob one bit better than being a snob? I resent that label, anyway. It’s not the money itself or the lack of it that creates incompatibility. Even two rich people often develop even more dramatically different life-styles, make far different choices because of the restrictions or size of their bank account.”
“You went to Harvard. I went to the school of hard knocks. Is that what you mean?”
She grinned. “In a way.”
“That’s a wide chasm to bridge.”
“Maybe.”
“I tried it once before and it didn’t work,” he admitted, surprising himself with his candor. He’d never told anyone about Christine. His parents had guessed, of course. They had even tried to warn him the relationship was a mistake. He’d ignored the warnings.
“Why didn’t it work?” Gabrielle asked.
“She was rich. I was poor.”
“Was it really that simple?”
He thought about Christine, really thought about her for the first time in years. Nothing about her had been simple.
“She liked to be where the action was. If her friends were skiing in Switzerland, that’s where she wanted to be. If they were on a cruise in the Mediterranean, she couldn’t wait to join them. She went to every charity ball in the city, every club opening, every major art exhibit. It all cost money and I didn’t have it. The few times I went with her it was a disaster. She and her crowd talked about places and people I’d never even heard of. At first I was a curiosity. But it didn’t take long for her to figure out that the novelty had worn off and I didn’t fit in.”
“So she dumped you?”
“Something like that,” he said. It was a calm, unemotional description of something that had once been devastating. Even now he couldn’t recall it without a surge of anger and humiliation.
“Were you really that happy with someone so different?” He tried remembering exactly how it had been ten years ago on the day when he’d had to admit it was over. He and Christine had spent the weekend sailing with her friends in Newport. Lulled by the sun and the ever-present pitcher of vodka and tonic, he’d felt oddly detached. He’d listened to the gossip that substituted for meaningful conversation. He’d watched Christine spend an entire day worrying about her tan line. And he had been incredibly bored. Still, that night he had been caught up in years of powerful feelings again. He had proposed. What a mistake it would have been if she’d said yes.
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