She waited until the door closed behind Daria before rounding on Ryan. “Possessively inquiring into my personal conversations is rather curious, given that you just bought six hundred dollars of lingerie for her.”
He gave a dismissive snort, as if the money, and the relationship, were no object at all. Simone felt a flare of indignation for a fellow woman. “So you just won’t for me?” Ryan said.
“Why would I? It’s not your native language, or your second language. I’m here to sell you intimate apparel, not seduce you, or be seduced by you. You never come here alone. You come with other women.” She should have sounded indignant, but instead she sounded pained. Hurt. She had no right to sound that way, either.
“I came alone last time,” he said.
She was having none of his sophistry. “To brag of your conquest.”
“You think that’s why I came?” he said, after a long, tense moment.
“I can’t answer that question,” she said, clinging to her temper. “From minute to minute, you’re two different men, one who appears in my showroom with women to dress for his pleasure, and another who shows up afterward, to tell me a story,” she said, choosing to ignore the flashes of another man, quiet, honest, self-deprecating.
In deference to the busy showroom on the other side of the swinging red door, they were speaking in hushed undertones, the hard lines of consonants and the occasional sharp word for emphasis. Ryan stepped close, his breath raising the hairs on her cheek. “Maybe you’ll have a story to tell next time.”
Her redhead’s temper flared, breathing hot earth lust into her core. “We could take turns. Would you like that? We’ll meet on the stoop. I’ll touch you. Tease you. Perhaps . . . here,” she said, and slipped her hand under his untucked shirt. Her hand came to rest on his hip bone, and she stroked her thumb along the crest of his hip, just above his waistband. Forbidden territory, an impulse she should deny, but she and Ryan didn’t just have chemistry. Their responses were more along the lines of nuclear fusion.
His body tensed, his abdominals quivering under her touch. “He’s a very good lover. I’d tell you a story to fever your dreams. In French. Would you like that?”
“No.”
Blunt. The shark, wolf, predator was back. “Two can play your game,” she murmured, and traced the arc of his hip bone one more time. Satisfied, Simone stepped back, smoothed down her skirt. “Think carefully before you show up on my doorstep again. May I carry this downstairs for you, sir?”
“I’ve got it,” Ryan said.
Simone held the bag out to him as she would with any other customer, steeling herself not to react when his fingers brushed against hers during the exchange. The touch, laden with longing, weighed far more than the bag of lingerie.
Chapter Four
First there was the gala at MoMA: Gowns, tuxedoes, some patrons dressed in white waistcoats and white tie, paparazzi leaning over the barricades calling names, begging for a shot. There was dinner, drinking, networking. He had Daria Russell on his arm, so everyone wanted to talk to him, take his picture. Perfect. Adopt the lips-parted, vacant-eyed, zombie-pleasant smile of the famous actor preceding them up the red carpet.
Then there was the after-gala party, more drinking, recreational drugs done in the club’s bathrooms.
Now they were at the after-after-party. His head pounding, his stomach churning, Ryan looked around while two thoughts warred in his brain: he wished he could pinpoint the moment when his pursuit of success turned into a skid down a slippery slope to the bottom, and how much Simone would hate the current scene.
Daria, however, seemed remarkably sanguine about it, the drugs, the music, the noise, studying the people in the room with a private, amused smile playing about her lips. Ryan straightened his shoulders. Time to set his harebrained, stupid-ass plan in motion and do what the SEC and the FBI hadn’t been able to do for a decade: prove MacCarren was a shell for a massive Ponzi scheme.