Strapless (18 page)

“I deserve revenge for the Sydney project.”

“In your mind, I suppose so. In mine,
not.
” They glared at each other, lost for a moment in their everyday animosity.

“There's no reason we can't work together.” Darcie stalked away before she gave in to the urge to smack Greta.

“But you need to do your own job!”

She'd never spoken so harshly before, but Darcie didn't get out the next words, whatever they might have been. Her gaze fell upon a center display of silky lounge pants with sleeveless tops and totally smashing jackets trimmed in brilliant colors.

“Greta, look. This is it. This is
you.
” She ran the soft fabric through her fingers. “The black will make you
feel…comfortable, and the sparkle will knock out every male eye at the party.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

But Greta reluctantly joined her, and the two of them accidentally brushed hands on a beaded jacket. Green, silver, crystal. Darcie jerked it from the hanger and held it up to Greta's sturdy frame. The design looked slimming, too. Perfect.

Darcie loved perfection.

“It's…nice.” Greta's pale eyes lit with what could only be female lust for the ideal outfit.

“Nice? Green's a good color. Brings out your eyes, complements your hair. It's sophisticated yet casual. You won't spend the whole night yanking at a too-tight skirt band or hitching up your panty hose.”

Greta's mouth twitched. “That's hell, isn't it?”

“So true.”

For a long moment they stood, joined by a feminine hunt now successfully completed. Darcie stared at the vibrancy she saw in Greta's eyes against that very becoming green. Really, it looked outstanding.

“Try it on. Go ahead.” She pushed Greta toward the nearest dressing room.

When she came out, resplendent in the three pieces, Greta actually giggled.

Taking a step back, Darcie surveyed her masterpiece again.

Of course she didn't consider herself to be a fool.

She wouldn't trust Greta farther than she could drag her.

Still…

“I'm sending you to my hairdresser. A few gold highlights, a brighter shade of brown…marvelous. Come on.” She pushed Greta to the dressing room, then pulled her to the checkout counter. Back in her usual brown clothes, there was absolutely no doubt about it. The evening outfit had transformed Greta. “We're going downstairs next,” Darcie informed her. “Some new makeup, and your phone will be ringing off the hook.”

Hope sprang into Greta's eyes, despite her next words.
“My last date was ten years ago, with a janitor from my building. He didn't kiss me good-night. He never called again. He's dead now.”

 

Dylan Rafferty phoned again that night.

Which would be his next midday.

Darcie couldn't figure out how he managed to sound so sexy during his lunch break—or was it afternoon tea in Australia? Lying across her bed, she smiled into the receiver, and continued to recount her day with Greta.

“By the time we left the makeup counter—” with three hundred dollars' worth of cosmetics in a small but gorgeous bag “—Greta was glowing. I mean,
radiant,
Dylan.”

“Be careful. From what you tell me, she's a sticky beak.”

“A what?”

“Nosy. She pokes it where it doesn't belong… Were
you
glowing?”

Uh-oh. His voice had dropped lower, as it had the other night, and Darcie figured his patience with her stories about shopping with Greta Hinckley had just fizzled.

“I'm always glowing.”

“That's been my experience.”

“Flatterer.” Darcie felt a lowdown tug of answering interest, and her nipples tightened. She stared at her T-shirt. Two marbles under the worn cotton. Big marbles when Dylan continued in an even throatier voice.

“Remember the night we walked back to the Westin…and kept stopping along the way? Remember the kisses we shared right under the Coathanger—” the Sydney Harbour bridge “—and on every street corner, darling, in The Rocks?”

“I remember the bars we stopped in.”

He laughed a little. “I was pretty ruined when we reached the hotel.” His tone plunged another ten feet, like someone taking a high dive off the bridge. “You got friendly then and we…”

Darcie cleared her throat before she got carried away again.

“Dylan, I remember.”

“How it felt when we stripped each other naked, then dropped into bed…”

She started breathing fast. “Perfect recall. Abso—yes—lutely.” Her nipples strained against the cloth and Darcie rolled onto her stomach.

“I remember just how you tasted. The softness of your lips, our mouths together, slick and…”

Phone sex.

She couldn't help but play along. “Where are you now?”

“In my living room.”

“With your
mother?
” Shocked, Darcie looked around to make sure Annie wasn't hovering in her bedroom doorway.

“She drove into Coowalla. I'm alone, darling.”

Hmm. Maybe he wasn't quite as traditional as she'd thought.

“You don't have any lambs to doctor? What about that ram you ordered?”

“He's here, having the time of his life.” His voice sounded husky. Even his sheep fostered their telephone foreplay. “We bred him this morning. Where are you? In bed, I hope.”

“On top.”

“I love it when you get on top.” At his playful innuendo Darcie felt her cheeks heat, her breasts tingle, her inner thighs liquefy. She squirmed against the comforter. “What are you wearing?” he asked.

“A T-shirt. Old jeans. Nothing exciting, believe me.”

“You excite me in anything…or nothing.” She heard him swallow. “I go to bed at night and lie there in the dark, remembering the things we did, the things you wore or didn't wear. Guess what happens?”

“I, uh…you must get—” She broke off, hearing a sound across the hall. If Annie was listening in on their call, she'd kill her.

“Hard. I get hard. I'm hard right now. Darcie—”

“Ohhh.” Her moan joined his at the erotic admission.

“Take off your shirt. I'm taking off mine.”
Macho man.

“In the living room?”

“Do it.”

Obediently, wearing a wicked smile, she sat up and peeled off the old yellow T-shirt.
Sin,
it said across the front. Then, below,
We don't do that in Cincinnati.

“Tell me. Did you do it?”

“Yes. You?”

“Oh, yeah. Now get rid of the jeans,” he urged. “I'm peeling off my pants.”

Darcie lay down and wiggled her hips to strip off her worn denims.

“Your knickers, too.” Underpants. “What color are they?”

“White. Cotton.”

He groaned. “Next, the bra. Is that white, too?”

“I'm not…I wasn't wearing a bra.”

“God help me.” Now he was whispering. “Touch yourself.”

Startled, Darcie halted. “Dylan, my nosy sister may be listening.”

“If she is, I don't care.” She could hear him breathing. Rough, and ragged. “I'm pretending you're here. I can see you, feel you….”

She moaned again. Then suddenly, tears blurred her vision. In the background, on the opposite side of the world, she could hear Dylan groan, too. So out of reach. Only his voice could hold her.

“Remember when I said I'd like to see you pregnant? Your belly swollen, taut…”

“Yes.”
She had to admit, it made an erotic fantasy, especially if she involved Dylan in the event from a safe distance.

She heard his shaken sigh. “I'd touch you all over…lay my cheek against you…feel the baby….”

She would come apart if he didn't— “Stop. Please. Don't.”

He must have heard the frantic steel in her tone. The regret.

He
was
far away. And as the fantasy proved, he had such very different values.

Dylan didn't want to stop. “You'd be beautiful. Even more beautiful.”

“I'm not ready for a baby. I'm not ready for that.”

She knew he could be stubborn, and heard him take a breath. “Cold showers never work. I think you've found the effective solution, though. Watch me shrivel.”

“Dylan, I'm sorry. I just can't…”

“I gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Right or wrong, she didn't want to let him go now. She
didn't.

“Did you forget something, sheepboy?”

His soft, irritated laugh went through her like another thrill of lust.

“'Night, Matilda. Don't sleep too well. I know I won't.”

D
arcie lay in her darkened bedroom and stared at the ceiling to which she had affixed dozens of sparkling stars, her own constellations in her very own apartment. Like phone sex or picking up Dylan in a bar, this was something she'd never done before, and Annie claimed to be proud of her.

Annie herself was losing it. She had come home only the day before sporting a brand-new hole in her navel, and that red punch mark in her left nostril looked raw.

Ick.

Not to mention the small tattoo of an owl—for night owl/party animal, Annie had explained—that now graced her right flank. “Wait until Janet and Hank see those,” Darcie told herself. “If they ever do.”

Her ceiling stars wouldn't compare, but darned if she would mutilate her own body to make a statement of independence. Darcie hated blood. She hated pain even more.

With a sigh she rolled over in bed—and stifled a scream.

A shadow had crossed the window that opened onto
the fire escape. A large shadow with a deep chest, wide shoulders, a shaggy-haired head. Darcie watched in horror, her pulse racing madly, her throat bone-dry. Terrified that she would cough and alert the male intruder to her presence—no, to her state of full consciousness—she breathed, sharp but shallow, through her open mouth.
Please God, make him go away.

Dylan's warning about two women living alone filled her brain. Images of her own dead body skittered through her awareness. Could this man hear her heart beating?

It slammed against the wall of her chest and Darcie pushed a hand to her breast in the hope he wouldn't see its movement.

The figure bent down. He still looked tall, solid, muscular. Dangerous to her health.

The window was forced open.

Darcie clamped a hand over her mouth not to scream after all.

If he didn't know Annie was in the apartment, too, they might have a chance. Annie could call 911. The police would arrive in the nick of time. Darcie could almost hear them on the stairs now…

“Goddammit.” The dark shape of a man stepped inside, snagging his jacket on something sharp. Maybe a protruding nail or sliver of wood. “Make my day,” he muttered.

Darcie didn't dare to breathe.

If she stayed silent—difficult for her even under normal circumstances—he might just steal her blind then leave without noticing her in the bed.

Tonight she couldn't be that lucky.

First Dylan Rafferty had sent her off to fantasyland with his sexy voice and that hint of irritated amusement after their aborted phone sex. Now a total stranger stood in the center of her bedroom surveying his new surroundings with an apparently practiced eye.

His gaze landed on the lump of covers that was Darcie.

When he took one step toward her bed, she did scream.

He lunged in her direction. His hand covered her mouth before Darcie's voice reached full power.
Help.
But
there was a hole in her rescue fantasy. Annie Kathryn Baxter slept like a long-dead corpse herself. She wouldn't hear a sound.

“Mmmppfff.” Darcie struggled against his restraining hand.

His hand smelled good. Like an expensive men's cologne.

“Take it easy.” He eased back and Darcie froze. “Jesus. I won't hurt you.”

Wait a minute. The enticing scent, the decent leather jacket, the smell of clean male skin. What kind of burglar-rapist climbed through a window in the middle of the night wearing good clothes? What burglar even owned good clothes? Besides, would he pick some singles apartment inhabited by two women with minimal assets?

They weren't worth robbing. She doubted that between them she and Annie had forty dollars in the apartment.

Not long ago Darcie hadn't even owned a bed.

“I'm going to take my hand off your mouth,” he whispered, saying enough that she noticed a light drawl. “Don't yell again. Please.”

A polite burglar, too?

As soon as he released her, Darcie shot upright in bed, no longer afraid.

“Who are you?”

He held a finger to his own lips this time. “Shh. It's okay.”

“The hell it is.” Her vocabulary seemed to be slipping. So did the shoulder of her oversize T-shirt, which Darcie had worn to bed. It slid down to her left bicep. His gaze homed in on the expanse of bare flesh—and stayed there.

“I never thought it actually happened,” he said. “Skin. Gleaming in the moonlight.” He shook his head. “Weird.”

“Weird?” Darcie waved toward the open window. A soft but chill breeze blew through the sheer curtains, which had done nothing to guard her privacy or protect her safety. Tomorrow she would buy a metal grille to cover
the glass. “In two seconds, if you don't go back through that window and close it behind you, I'll call the police.”

“Oh, Christ. What a day.”

She felt braver now. “This is
my
apartment. Unless you leave the premises—right now—you'll end up tonight with another blot on your record.”

“My what?” He sank down on the end of her bed like an old chum. “I locked myself out of my apartment. Okay?” He glared at her in the dark. “It's not enough that I lost my keys down a subway grate on my way home from the crappiest date I've ever had? Then I tear the knee out of my best khakis, rip hell out of my new jacket on your windowsill…now I'm some kind of felon on my way to the slammer?” He ran a hand through thick, dark hair. “Just great.”

“Your apartment?” Darcie seized upon his first statement because she didn't know how to deal with the rest.

“Hi, neighbor. I live upstairs.”

“Two-A. Why didn't you climb in your own window?”

He assumed a too patient, lecturing tone. “Because a) there was a patrol car cruising this block when I got home, b) your apartment was conveniently located in the shadows on the lowest level of the fire escape and c) I get my kicks ruining the best clothes I own, clothes in which I planned to start my new job tomorrow—and frightening young women half to death in the middle of the night.”

Darcie didn't know why she felt like apologizing. “I'm sorry.”

“No, that's my line.” He rose from the bed, weaving a little on his feet. “Hold the thought. I need to take a leak.” Unerringly, he headed for her bathroom. His apartment obviously had the same layout as hers.

“So if you climb in my window, what good does that do you?”

He didn't answer. Darcie waited for him to come back into the room. Annie was still sleeping, oblivious to their late-night intruder.

“I figured if I could get inside the building, I could
jimmy my door lock. With luck, I might get a few hours' sleep before I blow the rest of my life—forget a career—tomorrow.” He picked at a hangnail on his thumb.

Curious, Darcie asked, “What career?”

“I'm in advertising. Ha,” he added. “Wouldn't you know? It's not bad enough the whole industry's in a slump. My date tonight left with another guy while I was in the men's room.”

“You have a weak bladder?”

“Only when I drink six beers trying to anesthetize myself.”

“Ah,” Darcie said. She leaned over to switch on the bedside lamp—then almost shouted again. The man blinking against the sudden glare, like Darcie, just might be, after Dylan Rafferty and Merrick Lowell, one of the best-looking men she'd ever seen. New York, like Sydney, was full of them. How could you hate it?

Not perfect, she thought, taking a longer look. His otherwise straight nose had a slight hump in the middle. Broken once, probably. His left eye seemed ever so slightly larger than the right—not uncommon, either. Annie's right eye always looked just the least bit stunned, and Greta Hinckley always appeared to Darcie like someone whose genes had gotten jumbled at conception. On this guy, his little imperfections looked good. So did his scuffed leather jacket.

Much better than the Harley-and-black-leather type Annie had brought home earlier this week. Not trendy black leather in that case but hardcore.

Her visitor stared at her in return. Although light-haired, he wasn't
GQ
like Merrick, or
International Male
like Dylan. He fell somewhere in between. A glimmer of interest flickered in his gray eyes then was tamped down. Clearly, he was in no mood for sexual adventure. Her heart still thumping, neither was Darcie. “Would you like to sit down?”

He glanced around the room. “You have about as much furniture as I do. No, thanks. I'd better just—” he flipped a hand toward the outer room “—go.”

Darcie had a better idea. She tiptoed across the hall in her too-big T-shirt, feeling his gaze on her bare legs, and filched Annie's hobo bag from her dresser. Annie snored on, unaware of the excitement in Darcie's room. She returned to find their “neighbor” leaning against the wall by the window. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Fine. You?” he said. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“Nah. Strange men climb through my window almost every night.”

He grinned. “You wish.”

Darcie handed him Annie's key ring. “My sister has every key ever, you know, cut from a blank on one of those funny machines at the hardware store. She collects keys. When she was in college, she used them all the time to get in the dorm after hours…check on her boyfriends…”

“Weird.” He echoed her earlier statement.

“You should meet Greta.”

“That's your sister's name?”

“No, someone else I work with. Never mind. Our relationship here hasn't progressed far enough for me to share Greta just yet.”

He took the keys. “Thanks. It should only take me the rest of the night to figure out which one works. You been in New York long? You're pretty trusting.”

“A few years.”

“Not long enough,” he said.

“I'm from Ohio. It's a hard habit to break.”

He held out his hand. A beautiful hand, long-fingered. “I'm from Georgia. Cutter Longridge.”

“That's your hometown?”

“No, my name.” He grinned again. “All us Southern boys have family names. What about you?”

She stood mesmerized by his soft drawl, by his soft gray eyes. There was no way she'd wake up Annie now to share the bounty. “Darcie Baxter. I'm in…underwear.”

His glance dropped to the hem of her T-shirt. Her panties.

“Wunderthings International,” she added.

“No kidding.” His grin widened. “Maybe we'll have a private fashion show one of these nights.”

“In your dreams.”

“They might be short tonight—if I ever get to bed—but I can guarantee you, they'll be excellent.” He shut her window then walked to her bedroom door.

“Good night, Cutter.”

“I'll drop your keys off in the morning.” He gave a fingertip salute. “Nice to meet you, Darcie.”

“See you.”

Long after he left the apartment, Darcie lay in bed, alone again, smiling at the stars on her ceiling.

“Wow,” she said aloud to the darkened room. “In New York you don't even have to leave your apartment to meet the most amazing men.”

 

A week later Claire dashed from the bedroom into the kitchen. She wore her panty hose (black, of course, for tonight) her matching bra (Wunderthings Sexy'N Sleek, size 36B, $24.95, purchased from the store's online catalogue because she had no time to shop) and a slinky black skirt that hung, still unzipped, from her hips, which were still wide enough the skirt couldn't fall down. Claire checked the last round of potstickers on the stove, then dashed back into the nursery.

Samantha was howling.

“What's new, pussycat?” Claire hummed, worming a clumsy finger between Sam's round belly and her diaper. “Peter!” she said without turning.

“Right here.” He peered into the crib. Sam had graduated from her bassinet, and she squirmed under Claire's restraining hand. “Wet again?” he echoed.

“Soaked. Fix her, will you? I'll never get dressed.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Fine by me. We could stay home tonight—”

“Ruin Darcie's party?”

“—and see what kind of trouble we can get into on our own.”

“With the baby-sitter in the next room?” Claire spun around, avoiding Peter's arms. “Is she here yet?”

“Any minute.”

“I hope she doesn't bring her boyfriend this time. I don't trust him.”

“With Danielle, or the silverware?”

“Both.”

Claire charged back into their bedroom, leaving Peter with the wet diaper problem. He'd become a master at it, but still, only wet ones. No matter how she tried, Claire couldn't seem to develop the skill of changing, powdering, rediapering. She felt like a first-timer every time. This, from the VP of Heritage Insurance? A different set of skills, she told herself.

Peter called out from the nursery over Sam's squalling.

“Do you realize the last time we had sex was last year?”

“Don't exaggerate.”

He strolled into the room, holding Sam. She looked dry and cozy and cute as a munchkin in her fresh sleeper with the lavender bunnies on it.

Claire looked about wildly for her top. “Could we discuss this some other time? In private?” She shot a glance at Sam, who grinned toothlessly at her and waved her arms. “Sweetie, I can't hold you right now. Daddy will play with you. Mommy's lost her clothes.”

“I knew my wish would come true. Come here. Put me out of my misery.”

Claire's pulse jumped.

He jostled the baby, making her giggle. “Sam wants Mom and Dad to…cuddle up together. Why, she asked me only yesterday about a baby brother or sister for Christmas.”

“Won't happen. This is April.”

“Might be early.”

He sounded serious, and Claire felt her heart tighten. He'd also acted pushy the day they helped Darcie move.

“Peter, I can barely handle Samantha. It will take me years to feel comfortable with motherhood. I'm very disappointed in myself—”