Ready & Willing (32 page)

He looked down at her face, pressed to his naked chest, her eyes closed in shallow slumber. Faint circles darkened the pale skin beneath her eyes, but she looked content otherwise. They hadn’t spent the entire day in bed, of course. He’d fixed her breakfast after that first time, and they’d passed the morning together sharing coffee and the Sunday paper. He’d loaned her a pair of sweatpants and a Louisville Cardinals T-shirt that had swallowed her, and had experienced a thrill of something raw and masculine at seeing her dressed in his clothes. Around noon, they’d found
The Thin Man
on On-Demand, and then Nathaniel had pulled his own copy of
After the Thin Man
from his DVD collection to make it a proper double feature. For dinner, they’d ordered a pizza from Bearno’s, and he’d opened a bottle of Chateau Letour he’d been saving for a special occasion to go with.

It had been the sort of day any couple might share on a lazy weekend, and it had been as comfortable as if it were the sort of thing the two of them did all the time. It was almost as if they’d agreed by mutual consent to pretend just that. After that first exchange about Sean, Audrey hadn’t mentioned her husband, and Nathaniel had been content to leave it that way. Eventually, though, this day was going to end, and they would have to return to the problems facing them. They would have to find the key to freeing Nathaniel from his ties to Edward. They would have to topple Edward’s plans to develop the block of Main Street he wanted to develop.

And they would have to figure out where this thing between them was going.

Her left hand lay open on his chest not far from her face, her gold wedding band snug on her third finger, where it had always been. Her hair hid the still turned backward chain with her husband’s ring, but she still wore that, too. He’d halfway thought—and wholly hoped—that there would come a point during their lovemaking where she would finally remove both, but she hadn’t. What would happen, he wondered, if, when she opened her eyes, the ring her husband had given her once upon a time was the first thing she saw?

He circled a strand of black hair around his finger, coiling it again and again, until his finger disappeared. The small motion must have woken her, because she stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes. Instead of looking at the ring on her finger, however, she immediately looked up at Nathaniel. For a moment, she seemed a little disoriented, as if she didn’t know where she was. Then her eyes focused and, after only a small hesitation and only a small furrow of her brow, she smiled.

“What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

He looked at the clock on the nightstand. “It’s just past nine.”

She expelled an incredulous sound at that and pushed herself up to sitting. “I have to get going.”

He hesitated only a moment before offering, “You could stay the night.”

She couldn’t possibly know how significant an offer that was. Nathaniel had never invited a woman to spend the night at his place before. Normally, he didn’t want women here in the morning when he awoke. Hell, normally he didn’t want women here at all. He didn’t want to share any part of his private life with anyone that way. But especially in the morning. What if she woke up before he did and saw him lying there at his most vulnerable?

The thought of that happening with Audrey didn’t bother him as much as it did with other women. Not that he wanted her to wake up and look over and see him drooling . . . But even if she did, she was the kind of woman who would probably smile, then wipe his mouth with the edge of the sheet and snuggle in close again. At least, that was what she would do if she felt the same way about him that he felt about her. Just how did she feel about him anyway?

“I have to go,” she said again. Still softly, but more insistently this time. Which, he supposed, was an answer to his own mental question.

“I’ll drive you,” he said.

“No, that’s okay,” she told him. “I can call a cab.”

Strike two, he couldn’t help thinking. Nevertheless, he insisted, “I’m not going to let you spend the day here with me like this, then take a cab home. That’s just too . . .”

“Tawdry?” she finished for him.

“Impolite,” he corrected her.

She lifted a hand to his face, pressing her palm lightly to his cheek. She looked, somehow, like she was going to say something very, very important. But all that came out was, “It’s okay, Nathaniel. I’d rather take a cab. I need to take a cab. Okay?”

He tried to understand. She needed some space. Needed to think. Needed to do whatever women did after they had unexpected sex with an unexpected man in an unexpected place. He just wished he knew what to say to make her realize it had been anything but that to him.

Holding the sheet to herself, she reached for the oversized T-shirt she’d worn earlier and pulled it over her head, clearly no longer comfortable with her nudity. That was made more obvious when she stood and tugged it down over her thighs, even though it covered all of her that needed covering.

“My clothes?” she asked.

He’d picked up all of their clothing earlier, while she was sleeping and nodded toward the chair where he’d tossed them. She picked through the pile of black to separate her things from his, then turned and threw him a sheepish look.

“I’ll, um . . . I’ll change in the bathroom,” she said uncomfortably. “Could you . . . call a cab for me?”

He nodded, but she’d already turned away, so he wasn’t sure she saw it. Then he pushed his side of the covers away and slung his feet over the bed. After a quarter of a century of being sexually active, it had finally happened to Nathaniel. The awkward morning after. And it wasn’t even morning.

Fifteen

CECILIA TALLIED THE LAST OF MONDAY’S RECEIPTS
for Finery, entered the appropriate figures into their proper places on the computer spreadsheet, filled out the bank deposit slip, and put everything in the safe in Audrey’s office. Then she glanced down at her watch. Six twenty-seven. She had three minutes to freshen up before her gentleman caller arrived.

She grabbed her purse and hurried down the second-floor hallway to the tiny bathroom at the end that was, for all intents and purposes, the company washroom. There, she dusted her face with a little powder and poofed her hair as best she could, then swiped a touch of gloss over her lips. She’d never been big on makeup, but a little color never hurt, right? And she did so want to look her best. She swept a hand down over the pale green column dress to smooth out the worst of the wrinkles, then opened the door. She glanced quickly down the hallway and, seeing no one, made her way to the stairs. Audrey had left right after Finery’s closing to attend a Derby fashion event, so Cecilia had promised to lock up. And if she hadn’t quite said exactly
when
she would be locking up . . .

But Audrey wouldn’t mind. Thanks to Nathaniel Summerfield, the mysterious—but very hunky—guy who kept calling and showing up lately, Cecilia was confident her employer-neighbor-friend was sympathetic to matters of the heart.

Her own heart turned over as she made her way down the stairs and found Silas waiting for her in the showroom. He was dressed as he always was, in his black trousers and white shirt, so she’d come to the conclusion that wardrobe selections on the other side weren’t what they were here in the real world. But that was okay, since Silas looked eminently yummy in his nineteenth-century togs.

The real world, she echoed to herself. Hah. This world hadn’t felt real since that dream she’d had of dancing with Silas. Ever since waking from that, she’d felt as if
this
life was the shadow of reality, not her dream life. And since that dream, there had been others. Cecilia had found that there was nothing to make a lunch hour pass more pleasantly than taking a little nap. She’d had lunch with Silas almost every day, in her dreams. And in every one of them, they’d been able to touch and hold hands and dance and . . .

Well, they hadn’t done
that
yet. He hadn’t even kissed her again. But they’d danced on his riverboat again, and they’d walked along the Ohio, both in his time and in hers. And they’d shared a picnic in Central Park. Her dreams, which had once been filled with dark shapes, menacing shadows, and faceless ogres all representing Vincent had become idyllic scenes of romance with Silas. Two weeks ago, Cecilia had dreaded falling asleep. Now, at least for those times when she could catch a few winks at work, she looked forward to drifting off.

And even in her apartment, where Silas couldn’t follow, because his portrait was here, she still dreamed of him at night. Regular dreams that were insubstantial and sometimes brief, but her head still filled with images of Silas instead of the man who used to terrify her.

And even without being able to touch him in her dreams, she could still enjoy his company whenever she was here. And she did, every chance she had. Cecilia enjoyed working late these days. Because working late meant uninterrupted time with Audrey Magill’s ghost.

No, not Audrey’s ghost, she thought as she stepped down from the last stair and into the living room. Maybe Silas was haunting her friend’s house, but he didn’t belong to her. Not the way he belonged to Cecilia.

“Good evening, Cecilia,” he greeted her as he crossed the room to stand before her.

“Hi, Silas,” she returned, almost shyly.

She still wasn’t sure what had happened to make him visible to her now. Silas seemed to think that by dreaming about him, she’d opened a portal into her soul that allowed him to pass through the barriers she’d erected around her heart in the wake of her experiences with Vincent. Cecilia wondered if maybe it was just that she’d grown to trust him enough to let him in. Honestly, at this point, she didn’t care what had caused it. She only knew that being able to see Silas like this, and being able to touch him in her dreams, was almost like having him around for real.

She just wished she knew how long he would be able to stay.

“How was your day?” he asked.

She smiled. “It was good. But I missed you. You know, I wouldn’t mind if you popped in every now and then, just to wave or something.”

He shook his head. “You need time to be with other people, Cecilia. You don’t need me skulking around watching you all the time.”

She eyed him curiously. It was an odd thing for him to say, unless he knew something about her past. And since she’d told him almost nothing about that . . .

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

He arched a dark brow in speculation. “Perhaps because it’s true?”

“Yeah, but . . .” She shifted her weight to one foot, crossing her arms over her midsection. “How much do you know about me?”

He lifted a hand toward her face, then seemed to remember he couldn’t touch her now the way he could in her dreams. With a small frown of disappointment, he dropped his hand back to his side. “I know only what you’ve told me. And what I saw during that brief glimpse inside. That you were hurt badly. The rest is conjecture on my part. But,” he added, “I’m very good at conjecturing.”

So he was,
she thought. Still, this wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.

“I can’t stay long,” she told him. “I’m only scheduled to work ’til seven, and I don’t want to take advantage of Audrey.”

“I understand.”

“But we have a little time. What would you like to do?”

She hadn’t meant the question to be anything but a conversation starter, but a look came over Silas’s face in response that was wholly unexpected. Part bleakness, part sadness, part desperation . . . and all heartbreaking.

“What?” she asked. “What did I say?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Everything. Oh, Cecilia, there’s so much I would like to do. Yet I have no way of knowing how long I have left here, and I’m bound by that damnable painting. It is lovely to escape with you in dreams. But I would like, just once, to do something in the here and now that would give me a taste of this time.”

“Well, pick one thing,” she said impulsively. “One thing that it would be possible to do. Right now. Maybe we can figure out a way to do it.”

He strode slowly to the window and looked out at the street. “I should like to see the river,” he said. “I miss the river. She’s a splendid mistress, the Ohio. And the Mississippi is an even more magnificent creature. To be here now, like this, so close to the water and yet not be able to see it and smell it and experience it, is a poignant loss indeed.”

Wow. Cecilia had never heard him talk like that before. He sounded almost poetic. She liked this pensive side of him. “Sometimes I miss the ocean,” she said, tracing his footsteps to join him at the window. “I grew up in the Bay area . . . San Francisco,” she clarified, “and although I like the river, too, it’s not the same as the Pacific. The ocean is so much more breathtaking and has so many more moods.”

He spun around to look at her, his dark brows arrowed downward. “Ah, but that isn’t true at all. The Ohio is as intemperate a body of water as any. In the summer, she can be warm and playful, her surface rippling like the lace of a petticoat. And in winter, she sometimes freezes, and it takes a gentle, but steadfast man to find her most yielding facets and ease them open. In the spring and fall, she’s completely unpredictable, fiery and temperamental one minute, generous and obliging the next. But through it all, she is a tough, feisty, steadfast individual.”

Cecilia smiled. He really did make the river sound like a woman. And the way he’d looked at her when he’d talked about her winter moods, she’d somehow known he was talking about more than the Ohio. She warmed a little inside at the thought of Silas gently but steadfastly finding
her
most yielding facets. Then she marveled that such a thought could make her feel warm. Usually, the thought of any man getting close to her facets or any other part of her made her freeze up harder and colder than the river would.

“You know, a woman could get jealous, listening to you talk about your mistress the way you do.”