Her second mistake, she decided while she and Lorrie shoved and tugged the four-poster bed to a better position under the windows, was letting him tell that story. The whole story.
Her third mistake, the worst mistake, she decided when she crawled into bed at the end of a week without seeing him, was laughing at him. With him. He looked younger, happier, more alive when he laughed at himself.
Maybe he wouldn’t come back.
She set him aside and focused on her work.
She didn’t see him for several long, hot weeks, during which his irresistibility should have faded into nothing but a memory. It didn’t, because Ryan Hamilton’s cream-smooth voice and skill as a storyteller wreaked havoc with her, body and soul. Before he started telling her about his night with Jade, she’d not thought about the consequences of listening to him, but afterward she couldn’t erase the images from her mind. Therefore even though she was fully occupied with helping a client on a busy Saturday afternoon, Simone knew the exact moment Ryan walked into Irresistible. A frisson ran over her nape, and the resulting electric spark made her heart skitter in her chest. It took her a moment to realize that the energy in the room had changed. A hush fell in the showroom, the kind that happened every so often when the people in a crowded room all stopped talking at once, but when conversation resumed, the energy was different. It was the agitated hum of a group of people pretending everything was normal when something shocking had actually happened.
She quickly glanced over her shoulder. As she expected, she saw Ryan, but the woman he was standing next to was the one generating the beehivelike buzz in the room.
“I believe that’s Daria Russell,” the woman she was helping said under her breath.
“I believe you’re right,” she replied.
Daria Russell, an actress in her midthirties, had labored in the obscurity of character roles and theater until breaking out via a gritty role on a cable series. Since then she had become the darling of Hollywood. She had incredible range, a deft hand with comedy, and the ability to take an audience through a character’s emotional journey using subtle shifts of shoulders or spine, and her expressive green eyes. She had an odd face, not characteristically beautiful, but enlivened by an uncommon intelligence and sensitivity that made her absolutely striking and very watchable. In a single glance Simone took in her untidy chestnut hair, her lack of makeup, and the way Ryan lowered his ear to her mouth the better to catch whatever observation she was making about Simone’s showroom.
He wasn’t wearing the Bluetooth headset today, she noticed. Jade had had to demand that he take the earpiece out of his ear, but Daria had all of his attention. Simone noticed two things simultaneously: Ryan was blatantly avoiding her eye, and she was jealous.
Lorrie approached her, all but quivering with excitement. “May I . . . ?”
“Be my guest,” Simone said, and was quite pleased with her level tone. She gave her entire attention to the client she had been helping, collecting a variety of one-piece lace body suits, then escorted her to a dressing room, but when she emerged, the tension in the room was palpable. People had their phones out, and while they weren’t obviously pointing them in Daria’s direction, attempts to capture an image of this A-list actress shopping for sexy underwear weren’t far off. Lorrie was flustered to the point of wringing her hands, but Ryan raised his hand to catch Simone’s attention, then beckoned her over.
Simone crossed the showroom floor. “Pardon me, Miss Russell, but perhaps you and your companion would prefer a more personal shopping experience?”
The woman looked relieved. “Yes, thank you very much,” she said.
Simone held out her hand toward the workroom, indicating that Daria and Ryan should precede her. She didn’t miss the way Ryan put his hand at the small of Daria’s back, and positioned himself so he stood between most of the other shoppers and the actress. He looked strained, Simone noted, although she wasn’t sure why. Was it because he brought another woman to her showroom after their conversation on the stoop? He certainly seemed to welcome the publicity, so it couldn’t be the threat of pictures posted to Twitter or Instagram. Another wave of jealousy bubbled in her gut. For a single second, she acknowledged that she was irritated Ryan hadn’t contacted her, then let it go. Tried to let it go.
Lorrie opened the door for Daria. She swept through, and Ryan held back for a split second. “Thanks,” he said to Simone.
“It’s nothing, sir,” she said
He stopped her from entering the workroom by shifting his weight ever so slightly to block her progress to the door. To anyone watching from the showroom, it would look like Ryan was laying down some version of That was unacceptable. Miss Russell requires . . . , but Simone knew better. The sheer nearness of his face to hers, the fact that he turned his shoulders and torso to bodily block her progress made her breath halt in her throat.