Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) (6 page)

“I’m envious.”

She looked at Spencer. Weight resting on one hip, hands resting in his pockets, he stood rooted in one place, as if he would stand there until the world split into a million pieces and time stopped, just to listen to her speak. That she felt comfortable doing so was the surprise.

“She never let him set foot in this house. Not once,” she said. The many-paned windows looking out onto the sweep of the snow-covered front lawn were a step away. She stroked the velvet nap of the heavy, floor-length drapes. She meant her laugh to be harsh. It wasn’t. “You’d think the music would have been something they had in common.”

The sharp edges of the lead mullions created a diamond pattern that wavered before her. Stupid tears. She wondered if she could blame it on PMS, which sometimes made her weepy at the most ridiculous moments. A knuckle under her lashes erased any trace of moisture before she faced the room, and Spencer, again.

“Wanna show me the rest of the house?” She brushed past the intimate moment as if it hadn’t occurred. Something that was becoming a habit with her and this man. Neither of them had spoken a word about the kiss they’d shared earlier. And it had been much more than just a kiss, if she was honest.

She started to leave the room. A sharp tug at her elbow spun her around.

“Not this time.” Spencer stood over her. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “I can see what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, as if I were inside your head, Addy. Do you think I don’t notice it? How you shut down completely as soon as you catch yourself talking to me like a normal human being?”

Tearing herself out of his hands, she left the room.

“You can just stay out of my head,” she said, throwing the words over her shoulder.

“Your great-aunt gave up her music.” He followed her in
to the hall entryway. The man couldn’t let a damn thing go without having the last word. She ignored him.

He kept talking.

“I don’t know why she did it, but whatever her reasons were, she never played again. Even here, in her own home, she kept this room closed up.” She heard him sigh. Watched her fingertips as they skated over the checkerboard inlay of a small table against the wall.

“Maybe she was afraid of your father—if not for herself, then for what he might represent for your mother.”

This was a bit much. No one should make excuses for her great-aunt’s actions. No one could.

“And maybe it just wasn’t proper.” She looked him straight in the eye. Listen up, buddy. “Her niece got herself pregnant by a guy who had to work for a living, a musician who played in bars, not symphony halls. Instead of the grand society wedding, there was a quick ceremony at City Hall. And instead of gossiping proudly about the match with all her rich friends, Great-Aunt Adeline pretended it never happened. That my parents simply didn’t exist.”

“You may find this hard to believe—” he was angry now, she could see, blue eyes narrowed and alive with energy, both hands open in the air as if he’d like to reach out and strangle her “—but to a woman like your great-aunt, what was
proper,
as you put it, was important. She grew up in a different world and she believed she’d been taught what was right.”

“Still with the excuses,” she said and threw her hands up. “You know what I was taught by my parents, Reed?” She pointed a finger at him, stopped herself from poking him with it. “That nothing matters more than love. What you love. Who you love. That’s it. All that counts in this life.”

Before he could open his mouth, she raised her hands in surrender.

“Listen, Reed.” She shut her mouth and shrugged, caught without words for a moment. She went with the first sentence that floated to the surface. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

He looked blank for a moment and then began what she could only describe as laughing his ass off. After a moment, she grinned with him.

“Contrary to appearances,” she admitted. He might be a bit stiff and spend way too much money on his wardrobe, but at least the guy had a sense of humor. “It’s midnight. I’ve got to get up in five hours, less if I want to dig out my truck instead of calling a cab, and I’m already tired at the thought. So why don’t you give me the ten-cent tour of this house that’ll never be mine and we’ll call it a night.”

“All right.” He gave in gracefully and cupped his hand around her elbow to guide her up the stairs. She shrugged off his hand. “But next time you won’t get off so easy.”

“Yeah, well, next time I won’t fall for the ‘why don’t you sit down in front of the nice warm fire and curl up in this blanket while I read you really boring legal documents’ trick.” She made sure not to stomp up the stairs, so he would know she was kidding.

“Hey, some tricks only work once.” She whipped her head around to find him grinning at her, and then stumbled up the next step and cursed. “I’m kidding. It’s called humor. When jokes are exchanged between two friends.”

“Don’t push it, Reed.” She stopped at the top of the stairs and stared down at him. “Let’s see how friendly you think I am when I come banging on your door at five in the morning, wanting you to help me shovel a path to the street.”

“That’s what friends are for, right?”

“I’d bet most of your friends just pick up the phone and call for their drivers to pull the limo around.”

“Don’t be petty. It doesn’t suit you.” He brushed his hands against her hips to move her out of his way. She felt each fingertip like a small electric shock and then her stomach slid into that slow, rolling loop that she was coming to expect whenever he touched her. “Follow me. I’ll make this quick.”

“You don’t know what suits me,” she muttered, keeping her voice low enough to avoid the inevitable comeback if he heard
her. Spencer was striding down the hall in front of her, pointing right and left like an air traffic controller and calling out information.

There were six rooms on the second floor. Two bedrooms, each with its own bath, thanks to someone in her family tree who’d had a fondness for extensive indoor plumbing, and two suites at diagonally opposite ends of the floor. Each suite had a master-size bedroom and bathroom and another attached room, which in one suite had been made into an office and in the other, an artist’s studio.

“I don’t know who the artist was, but it’s a good space,” Spencer said, walking her through the bedroom of that suite and into the connecting room. “Lots of light. Plenty of room if someone wanted to set up a drafting table for construction plans, say.” He knew better than to look at her with that leading statement.

“Shut up, Reed,” she answered, no real malice in her voice. She stood in the middle of the open room—no curtains on these windows to block the southern light—and knew that she wanted this house. She thought of her cozy but cramped one-bedroom apartment, a place that she didn’t own and that could be taken from her in a month if her building went condo, and then craved this house.

She’d been here for six hours, had hated the very thought of the place and the woman who had lived here, and yet she felt the timbers of the floors and the plaster of the walls settling into her bones with a rightness that scared her.

It was all impossible.

“Very nice,” she said, forcing her voice to be steady, pretending all was normal. “I’m sure the charity Great-Aunt Adeline named will be thrilled to receive it when I don’t meet the terms.”

“Don’t make up your mind yet, Addy.”

He was watching her, she knew, and when she turned to him, she also knew he would read the unhappiness in her eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, sleeves unrolled but
unbuttoned, cuffs hanging open around his wrists. Her sadness made her honest.

“It’s not a matter of deciding anything and you know it. The fact is, I’m not married, and don’t see myself strolling down the aisle anytime soon.”

His words were measured. “You have some time to fulfill the requirements of the will.”

“One year.” She walked back into the bedroom and dropped onto the edge of the bed. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the average guy would just as soon marry me as watch the Bears play Monday Night Football, but I just don’t see this happening.”

He’d followed her into the bedroom and now moved as if to sit down on the bed. Her look stopped him while he was still a yard away. He was frowning at her.

Great, now she felt guilty. Years on construction sites might have made her a little rough around the edges, but she didn’t usually go around trying to make people feel bad.

“Don’t worry about it, Reed. Two days ago, I didn’t know this place existed. So it’s not like I’m really losing anything. I never had it to begin with.” Time to change the subject. “Which room is yours?”

“At the other end of the hall. The one with the office.”

She’d peeked in the door to each room, something she could now kick herself for as the image snaked its way into her mind of Reed’s naked torso wrapped in navy sheets, one tanned arm curled beneath his head, eyes closed in deep slumber. She shook her head, hoping the rattling of her brains would dispel the picture, and stood up.

“Then this room is perfect for me.” She held out a hand to him. “Thanks for the hospitality. See you in the morning.”

Deep-ocean glints in his eyes kept thoughts of navy blue sheets front and center in her imagination as he took her hand and shook it solemnly before leaving the room.

At the threshold he paused, one hand on the doorknob, and knocked her back onto the edge of the bed with a look.

“I may be at the other end of the hall, Addy, but the doors don’t lock.”

The last thing she saw before he tugged the door shut behind him was his wink.

She opened her mouth and then snapped it shut. Trying for the last word in this situation was
not
a good idea. After all, she was about to slide between the sheets of a bed in a house shared only by a man who’d already kissed her senses into oblivion once this evening.

Provoking him into trying again was not the sane choice.

But part of her wanted to.

After washing up, Addy snapped off all the lights in the room except for the warming, colorful glow of the stained-glass lamp on the night table, and climbed into bed, enjoying the feel of the soft, worn cotton sheets on her bare skin. Tugging on the lamp’s chain, she plunged the room into darkness and wrapped the down quilt around her shoulders, listening to the quiet sounds of an old house settling into sleep. She would be happy to do the same.

Twenty minutes later, she gave up and turned the light back on. She’d left the pile of legal documents on the night table and grabbed them now, hoping to bore herself into falling asleep.

Or at least to distract herself from the idea of the two unlocked doors between her and the sleeping Spencer Reed of the surprisingly muscular frame.

If sleep was what she’d hoped for, she’d made the wrong choice in reading her great-aunt’s will, she thought with frustration a wakeful hour later. Going over the specific details of Adeline’s bequest did nothing but make her angry. Make her wish she had her great-aunt standing in front of her so she could shake some sense into the crazy woman.

“This is ridiculous!” Pages flew across the room and scattered in swirls like gusts of giant snowflakes. “Does she think I’m living in a damn gothic romance novel? Crazy witch!”

She’d read the will for the first time and told herself that
it was sheer curiosity that kept her going past the first page. But at two in the morning, the only soul awake in a quiet house, Addy admitted to herself that she’d hoped…hoped to come across some loophole, some way out that would let her keep this house. Because she wanted it. Wanted it with a passion that she knew came from years of feeling the monetary tightrope wobble beneath her feet as a child.

When she was eleven years old, she knew how to balance a checkbook. How to deposit her mother’s meager paychecks and write out payments for the monthly bills, leaving them waiting on the kitchen table for her mother’s signature when she came home from another late shift at the hospital. She knew each month how close to the edge her family came, how each time one of her siblings outgrew a pair of gym shoes, paying the rent became a juggling act.

When her high school friends had spun fantasies about winning the lottery and going on shopping sprees, she’d always said the same thing: “I’d buy a house.”
So no one could take it away,
were the unspoken words that echoed in her mind each time.

And now here she was, her childhood fantasy dropped into her lap as if a fairy godmother had waved her wand and granted her fondest wish.

And she couldn’t keep it.

Loopholes. She should have known better. Should have known that an attorney like Reed wouldn’t allow any such laxity in a document he’d drafted. Even knowing he’d been obligated to do so, that he hadn’t even known who she was at the time, Addy couldn’t help resenting him just a little bit.

What kind of lawyer let his client write up something as ridiculous as this antiquated blackmail trap of a will?

The light didn’t get any brighter outside of her windows. The sun wouldn’t creep over the winter horizon until after she’d arrived at her office. But by four in the morning, having counted the number of rose clusters on the floral wallpaper on the facing wall—three hundred and twenty-six, thank you very much—she had to get out of that house.

She dressed without making a sound. Crept down the stairs and stopped for a moment to rip a sheet of paper out of her site notebook and scribble a note, which she left on the marble-topped table by the front door.

She heard the
whuff
of rough breathing and the creak of the floorboards at the same moment.

“Jesus, Elwood,” she gusted, and the dog shoved a cold nose into her palm. “I thought you were a cat burglar.” She scratched the dog roughly behind the ears as he leaned heavily against her leg. “You be quiet now.”

She patted him one last time and then let herself silently out the front door. Trudging a path through the newly pristine snow, she ignored the cold and refused to look back at the house she felt looming behind her.