“You don’t know my mother.”
“Uh-oh, do we need a bottle of wine for this?”
“If there’s wine in that refrigerator, then I am going after Paul’s behind.”
And that quickly, that deftly, she turned the conversation away from herself.
Alex suppressed the little surge of frustration. He should be used to it by now. It was the same blank wall he always came up against. The minute things became personal, Julia adroitly found a way to elude, evade. Escape.
Escaping wasn’t going to be so easy now, though, he thought. The night before had shown that. She had nowhere to go, there was nothing to distract either of them. Given enough time, he might just make it past those barriers she’d erected.
He bounced on his toes, restless. Normally at this hour he’d be working out, running in Central Park or hitting the palatial facilities of the health club at the Chelsea Piers. Now, of course, he was trapped in the lab.
Shrugging, he slipped off his socks and began pulling off his T-shirt. He saw Julia’s head snap around toward him, but she said nothing. Then his hands dropped to his belt.
She gave him a sardonic look. “Trying out for Chippendales?”
Was it his imagination or did she sound just the least bit uneasy? Interesting, considering how many times they’d been naked together. He pulled down his zipper, taking his time, watching her eyes widen as he pushed down his trousers.
And then her mild alarm gave way to amusement. She eyed his boxers. “Palm trees?”
“Just my fun-loving nature.”
“If stripping is a way of hinting that you want to have sex, you’d be barking up the wrong palm tree.”
“But I thought you said you loved me,” he protested.
“I refuse to be held accountable for anything I say before coffee.”
Alex ignored her and stepped out of his trousers.
Julia folded her arms. “Do you have nudist persuasions I’m not aware of?”
He grinned. “Nope.” He dropped down and began to do push-ups. “Just feeling a little stir-crazy. I thought I’d see if I could work some of it off.” The muscles flexed in his arms and torso.
Julia just stared.
He turned his head a little to glance at her. “You can help out by keeping count if you want.”
Nineteen…twenty…twenty-one… Her brain feverishly kept up the count as he worked. She was powerless to turn away. His triceps flexed, his pecs swelled. She’d seen him naked before, but not like this, not outside of the flash and fire of lovemaking when she couldn’t think straight. Now, she could just look.
His body was long, stripped down, muscled but not muscle-bound. It was the kind of build that was an adventure for the hands, all dips and rises, smooth curves and intriguing hollows.
She remembered.
Thirty-nine…forty…forty-one… She watched him move and thought of sliding her hands over him. She watched him tense and thought of how his body clenched at orgasm. She watched him dip and she couldn’t help but imagine his body stretched over hers, skin pressed to skin, against her, on her, in her, sliding, rubbing, thrusting, slick, heavy, hot, hard.
“Fifty.” Breathing easily, Alex got to his feet. He looked at her more closely. “You okay? You have seen a person do push-ups before, right?”
It would be too obvious if she shoveled her tongue back into her mouth with her hands, Julia thought. “Of course. I’ve just never seen it done in palm trees before.”
A corner of his mouth curved up. “It’s important to broaden your horizons.” He walked to the end of the gantry and hopped up to catch the crossbar. And before her stupefied gaze he began doing pull-ups.
This was worse than the push-ups, far worse. She watched the swell of his biceps, the flare of his lats, watched his body move as easily as though it were a machine that knew no fatigue, no limits.
“If you’re going to stare, you’re going to have to start counting for me,” he grunted.
Julia flushed. “I’m not staring.”
“Really? What do you call it then?”
“I’m monitoring your safety so that I can react if the gantry breaks and dumps you on your butt.”
“That’s neighborly of you.” He was breathing harder now, she noticed, although given that he was up to nearly twenty, she didn’t blame him.
“I grew up in a public-service-oriented family.”
He dropped lightly to the ground and dusted off his hands. “I’m sure they’d be proud of you.” He walked over to get a drink.
It had grown warmer in the room, Julia realized, and unbuttoned the bottom button of her jacket.
“Are you thinking about joining me?” Alex asked. “Or are you just getting warm?”
“Exercise is a spectator sport for me.” She pushed up her sleeves. “You seem to be doing fine on your own.”
“It’s lonely.”
“I’m sure you’ll survive.”
“Guess I’ll just have to work out my frustrations.” And he took two steps toward the wall and swung up into a handstand, heels tapping lightly against the wall until he got his balance. Under her astounded gaze he slowly bent his elbows to lower himself headfirst toward the floor, then raised back up. “This is harder than it used to be,” he said through his teeth.
Shoulder presses. Of course. Afraid she’d disturb his concentration, Julia just watched as he went through a dozen repetitions before dropping his feet back down to the floor.
“So are you going to start contortions now?” she asked.
He grinned. “When you don’t have weights, you have to improvise.”
“Were you a gymnast or something?”
He snorted. “Nah. I was on the basketball team. We took my college team to the Final Four my junior year.”
“Final Four?” she echoed.
“The NCAA tournament?”
She shook her head, mystified.
“It’s the college championship basketball tournament. A pretty big deal in the sports world. Remember all the sheets with brackets people were passing around the office in March?”
“Vaguely.” She pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “I also remember a couple of weekends you were pretty scarce, now that you mention it.”
He gave her a delighted grin. “Why Julia, and here I didn’t think you cared.”
She felt her face heat. “So why didn’t you wind up in the NBA and out of my hair if you were a basketball star?”
“I was too short.”
“How tall are you, six foot?”
“Six-four.”
“And that’s too short?”
“For the NBA.” He gave her a wolfish look. “For other things, I’m just right.”
In his tropical-patterned boxers and bare feet, he looked like a beach boy who’d lost his way. His skin gleamed with a faint sheen of sweat. He looked just right.
And she did her damnedest to remember why it was that he just wasn’t right for her.
12
Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
PAPER TOWELS, ALEX DISCOVERED, were not the best for drying off after a shower. “Note to the conservation lab staff,” he announced, walking out to the lab carrying his T-shirt in one hand, picking off bits of paper towel lint with the other. “If you’re going to have a shower, you should at least provide towels.”
“I don’t think they planned it as a locker-room shower. It’s the one you’re supposed to run to if you accidentally douse yourself in hydrochloric acid or something.”
“Ah. That’s why you turn it on by pulling the big ring on the chain.”
She nodded. “And why it has no shower curtain.”
“Can I help it if I needed to clean up?”
“That was because you insisted on getting all hot and sweaty.”
He smiled, then slipped on his T-shirt, covering up the display of washboard abs, she noticed, relieved.
She sniffed and turned to get some more coffee. “While you were making yourself beautiful, some of
us were working.”
“And here I was hoping you’d be watching.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” She threw him a glance over her shoulder while she was still pouring.
It was a fatal mistake.
A splash of hot coffee dripped on the fingers holding the mug. She jerked her hand reflexively out of the way, dropping the mug the three inches to the counter and sending a gout of liquid splashing up.
And cascading over the front of her before she could move.
“Dammit!” The coffee dripped down her skirt, even as she snatched up paper towels. She mopped herself, but not in time to eliminate the wide, dark stain that spread out on the silk. “It’s brand-new,” she wailed. “I loved this suit.”
“Well, it’s not new anymore.” Alex’s voice was dry. “Between being worn for twenty-four hours straight and being dripped on, I’d say it has a trip to the dry cleaners coming.”
Her mouth twisted with disgust. “Are you kidding? Coffee stains fabric unless you get it out immediately. In five minutes this suit will be toast.” She didn’t add that it was couture, with a price tag approaching the cost of a small car. She didn’t consider herself one of the frivolous ones who bought a new couture gown for every gala and discarded it after a single wearing. She did, however, believe in paying for quality when it came to classic clothing that, if carefully tended, would wear for years.
Julia didn’t think pouring coffee down the front of herself counted as careful tending. Dispirited, she dabbed at the patches of wet—and now cold and clammy—fabric. Great. She’d ruined her suit, her skirt was all wet and she now smelled of eau de java.
And there was still no sign they were ever going to get out of the lab.
Something gray dangled before her. She glanced up to see Alex holding out his shirt. “I know it’s got a little mileage on it,” he said hastily, forestalling her protest. “It does have the virtue of not being soaked with coffee, though. It’s got to be more comfortable than what you’re wearing’s going to be.” He glanced over at the rack of lab coats that hung by the door. “I mean, you could put on one of those, but at least I can vouch for this one. It’s been tenderly worn. Spent the day in air-conditioning. It’s a Hugo Boss,” he wheedled, holding it out.
She worked her lips and finally surrendered to the smile. “Give me that.” She swiped it from his hand. “I’ll be in the shower if you need me.”
Being clean, she discovered, however minimally, improved her outlook dramatically. Leaving the skirt to soak in a sink full of cold water, she finished drying off and slipped her arms into Alex’s shirt.
It smelled like him.
Not like guy, I’ve-been-in-this-all-day smell. Thanks to the air-conditioning, she couldn’t catch a hint of that. What she could smell, though, was the scent of his aftershave, his deodorant, lingering around her. Wearing his shirt was like having his arms around her. Her knees went weak.
ONE BENEFIT TO BEING head conservator, Alex thought as he sat at Wingate’s desk, was having the most comfortable chair in the place. He leaned back to put his feet up, but his toes came too close to the wooden box with the statue. Julia would not be amused if he knocked it off and broke the damned thing, Alex decided, sitting upright. And it was a statue worth keeping.
Flipping the clasp free, he opened the lid and stared down at the impassive stone figure. So crude and yet there was something inifinitely more compelling about it than some pretty French ceramic. He hadn’t told Julia the entire truth about coming to New York. Part of it was for the challenge, sure, but part of it was that he loved the ancient things just as much as she did.
Alex took a final look and reluctantly closed the box. Julia, he was sure, would lecture him about exposing the statue unnecessarily to light and air. Better to entertain himself some other way, he thought, glancing around the office.
“I’m back,” Julia announced, and Alex glanced up from skimming through one of Paul’s books.
For a moment, he was afraid his heart had quite simply stopped. How was it that the same garment could look so astoundingly different on a female-type person? The vee of the neckline, sweeping down to the first closed button made him very aware of the soft, pale skin of her throat and the very intriguing curves below. Even folded up, the sleeves bumped her forearms. A length of cord secured the shirt around her waist. The tails hung down at the front and back to about the length of a short—very short—miniskirt, exposing an eye-popping length of long, lovely thighs. From the side where the hem cut up, well, it was downright scandalous.
She looked as if she’d just climbed out of bed and pulled on one of his shirts for temporary covering before she got in.
“What do you think?” she asked.
That he’d been out of his mind to give her the shirt so he’d have to watch her walk around looking like that? That he had no idea how he was going to keep his hands off her for two days? It took him two tries to speak. “I think you could sell a lot of shirts for Hugo Boss.” He cleared his throat. “How’s your skirt?”
“Oh, I put it in to soak for a bit. The stains might not come out—it might ruin the fabric, for that matter—but at least I’ve tried.” She glanced at the book in his hands. “Conservation in Ancient Egyptian Collections?” she read.
“I’m learning how to get grime and wax out from between the toes of statues.”
“Well, that sounds exciting.”
Not nearly as much as looking at her, he thought. “Well, I take my entertainment where I can find it. Felix likes to sleep in on the weekends.”
“I don’t suppose you want to do some more research,” she asked casually, picking up her temporarily abandoned coffee mug.
“Don’t spill coffee on that,” he warned her. “I’m running out of clothes for you. Though you might look kind of fetching in my suit coat, now that I think about it.” She might look fetching in anything, he thought feverishly, watching her as she leaned against the counter, slender and leggy and altogether delectable.
“I found a chronology of the abbey earlier, while you were showering,” she said.
The words didn’t register right away, probably because his synapses had been singed. “The abbey,” he repeated blankly and then stared at her attentively. “You mean the abbey?”
“‘Blessed by a man of God,’ the woman said. What’s a better source for men of God than an abbey two miles away?” She turned toward the book room and he followed her like a man hypnotized.
The door of the book repository hissed as she opened it. She didn’t look any less tempting in the dry, sedate surroundings of the book room. Then again, he couldn’t think of any surroundings where she would. “So you found a historical review?” he asked, doing his damnedest to get his brain working again.
Julia’s eyes gleamed. “Better. It’s their own living history, pretty much a week-by-week diary.”
Just then, being a celibate monk was the last thing he could imagine. “How long does it run?”
“It looks like it starts in the late twelfth century. It goes on for a hundred years, maybe more. I didn’t go through the entries for all of them.” She pointed to the shelves. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
It was like some sort of surreal medieval encyclopedia, ponderous leather-bound volumes filling an entire bookcase, the gold-leafed inscriptions on their spines worn but still faintly gleaming even after centuries worth of handling.
Still…Alex turned to her. “You realize it’ll take weeks, maybe even months, to get through all these.” Not that sitting by her side for weeks and months didn’t have its appeal.
“That’s the thing—we don’t have to get through all of them,” she told him, eyes glimmering with excitement. “The museum went through a big indexing project in the early nineties, detailed the contents of a lot of the volumes and scrolls. It should give us at least some idea of what’s there.”
She sat down at the computer and began clicking keys. “See? It goes from 1190 to almost 1500. No wonde
r there are so many volumes.”
“Seems like kind of a strange holding for a museum of antiquities.”
“It says here it was part of a bequest from the Toupin family. When you’re a not-for-profit, you never say no, you know that. Anyway, they were French. Who knows, maybe they’re our manor family. We didn’t get all the volumes, but we have most of them.” She studied the screen.
And he studied her.
“Oh, this’ll work,” she said. “They took an inventory of the entire abbey in 1346.”
“Interesting timing,” he remarked, focusing his attention on the screen for the first time.
“How so?”
“That would have been in the middle of the Hundred Years War.”
“Would they have been caught up in it?”
Alex considered. “Could be. They were close enough to Calais and Crécy to see their share of trouble. In theory, an abbey would be immune from the fighting, but when men are in the field, far from their command, you never know.”
“Let’s take a look.” She headed over to the stacks. “Was there a lot of skirmishing in the war?”
“Depends what part you’re looking at.” As everything did, he thought, watching the sway of her hips as he followed her to the shelf. “The English held Calais for almost two centuries and ran sorties from it. Crécy was even closer. It’s entirely possible the abbey could have been threatened.” He took the heavy book she pulled from the shelf and carried it back to the tables.
They settled down, side by side. Her scent had lessened in the night, but it was still there, a scent that meant Julia to him, subtle and complex.
As she opened the book, he leaned closer to see the page.
And inhaled surreptitiously.
“Oh, hell.” Julia stared at the vellum. “The index didn’t mention it was written in French.”
“What did you expect? It was a French abbey.”
“They were Catholic monks.”
“And nuns,” Alex interjected, glancing down the printed contents sheet that she’d set aside.
“Either way, they’re supposed to write in Latin,” she said impatiently.
“It was a daily journal, one more hassle for them. They used whatever language came most easily to the writer—French for some, Latin for others. Just not this one.”
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