“Yes, in a minute. You’ve made a good start down here. You need more art, a couple of chairs, another table or two, including one for over there so you have an actual table when you have someone to dinner.”
“I can’t cook. Well, scrambled eggs, a GCB.”
“GCB?”
“Grilled cheese and bacon. House specialty along with frozen pizza. Are you hungry?”
“More curious.” Perching on the arm of the sofa, she sipped wine. “The last time I saw you, and that’s been more than two weeks, you kissed me and told me I was the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen.”
“I did. You are.”
“You never followed up.”
He gestured with the beer, drank. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
Her eyebrows lifted, one disappearing under a sweep of mahogany. “That might make you smart, strategic, or lucky. I wonder which?”
“I’ll take some of all three. I figured pushing equaled mistake.”
“You’d be right. And you figured waiting would bring me around?”
“I hoped it would. I should also tell you I only had another couple days of waiting in me before I headed your way. I was working on how to be subtle about it.”
“Okay then.” She rose. “I have something for you in the car. I wasn’t sure I’d give it to you. For one thing, I wasn’t sure it would suit. I think it will.”
She handed him her glass. “Why don’t you top this off for me while I get it?”
“Sure.”
He topped off the wine, wondered what to make of her. She wasn’t really flirting, more conversing. He thought he might drown himself in his strange green tub if she’d decided they’d just be friends.
She came back, traded him a box for the glass.
He broke the seal with his pocketknife, pawed through the packing. Lifted out the sculpture of a woman, no bigger than his hand. Exquisite, she perched on some sort of budded stalk like a flower herself with her hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back between a pair of wings.
She held a hand to her hair as if brushing it back from a face with the lips curved and long-lidded eyes full of fun.
“Your house fairy,” Simone told him. “For good luck.”
“Jesus, first an original Lennon, now an original Simone Knox.”
“Some men might think a fairy too girlie.”
“I think she’s beautiful.” He set her on the mantel at the corner of the painting closest to where he sat with CiCi. “Does she work there?”
“Yes, she does. You need candlesticks on the other end. Something interesting and not—”
He moved in, kissed her with a little more punch than the first time. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” This time she stepped back. “How about that tour?”
“Good timing on that. I hired a bimonthly cleaning crew. They came in today.”
“Kaylee and Hester. I heard.”
He took her around the main level. She, like Essie, like CiCi, made comments, suggestions.
She paused in front of a closed door.
“Office,” he said, placing a hand over the knob to keep it closed. He sure as hell didn’t want her to see his boards. “I take care of that myself, so it’s pretty messy right now. I’ve got a guest room over here.”
“It’s really pretty, welcoming.”
“My partner had definite ideas, so I tried to follow them. Mostly. I’m hoping she and her husband will use it this summer. They’ve got a kid, but I’ve got a second guest room—or will eventually. And my parents. My sister and her family. My brother and his.”
“It’s nice, an en suite. Was it the master?”
“No, that’s down the other end.”
On the way, she stopped at what he thought of as Retro Green.
“This is … this is just charming. Anybody else would have gutted this, but you went with it, and it’s adorable.”
“And now I have to confess gutting was my first thought. Essie, my partner, had different ideas. And she sent me the seahorse shower curtain, and the towels, even the mirror over the sink with the seashell frame. The only thing I did was buy the vanity. Oh, and I had John Pryor replace the faucets. They were pretty awful.”
“But you stuck with the old style. Midcentury. You need a mermaid,” she decided. “Find yourself a good print of a sexy mermaid, frame it in shabby-chic white like the vanity, and hang it on that wall.”
“A mermaid.”
“A sexy one.”
She walked out, followed him down to the master.
“Well now.” She stepped in, circled. “Is this your partner, too?”
“Some. She insisted I get a bed.”
“If you didn’t have one, what did you sleep on?”
“It was a bed. The kind of bed that’s a mattress on top of box springs on top of the floor. I lived in a craphole apartment in Portland. Moved in right out of college, and I stuck with it because I wanted to buy a place. You have to save up for the place, then find the place. It wasn’t the sort of apartment where you thought about furniture.”
“You thought about this. The colors are good—strong, but relaxing. I like that you didn’t go with a new dresser. Did you paint it the navy blue?”
“I found it at the flea market—picked up a few things there. The drawers needed some work, but it was already painted. I saw it, and thought, Deal.”
“No curtains at the doors to the porch. I’d never put curtains on that view. If you want to sleep late, pull the sheet over your head.”
She turned back to him. “Do you step out there in the morning, look around, and think: all mine?”
He looked around now, nodded. “Pretty much every day.”
She opened the door, let the wind roll. “God, doesn’t it just rush right through you? All that power and beauty. The energy.”
Her hair flew back in wild streams. Her skin seemed to glow against the angry, roiling sky. In the distance he saw the first flash of lightning.
“Yes.”
She eased the door closed, turned back with that crazy sexy hair, the glow. She walked to the nightstand, set down her glass. “A coaster.”
“If I set a glass or bottle down without one, I hear my mother’s voice saying—and she’s got that exasperated Mom tone down cold—‘Reed Douglas Quartermaine, I taught you better.’ So … coasters, because sometimes you want to stretch out with a beer.”
“Sometimes you want.” She moved to him and, with her eyes on his, began to unbutton his shirt.
He saw himself grabbing her up like a madman, taking what he so desperately wanted for his.
To his surprise as much as hers, he closed his free hand over her busy ones. “I’m going to slow this down a little,” he said.
Her eyebrows shot up again. “Oh?”
He had to take a breath, step back. Since he only had the one coaster handy, he set his beer on the dish he used for loose change every night.
“Did I read this wrong?” she asked him.
“No. A-plus in reading comprehension. I wanted you from the first second I saw you, walking down the stairs at CiCi’s party. No, I lie,” he corrected. “I wanted you when I saw you in that painting, the one CiCi calls Temptation.”
“Hence the name,” she said, watching him.
“Yeah, good title. But the night of the party, I saw you. I saw you walking down the stairs, and everything turned. Everything stopped, then started again. It was a goddamn moment, Simone.”
“You’ve had moments before.”
When she started to turn and reach for her wine again, he put a hand on her arm. “Not like this. Let’s get that clear straight off. This is another goddamn moment. I just want to slow it down.”
“You don’t want to have sex with me tonight?”
“I said I wanted to slow it down a little. I didn’t say I’d lost my mind. I want you tonight. I’m going to have you tonight, unless you walk out the door. I just want to slow it down.”
He drew her in, took her mouth.
Long and slow, in contrast to the storm breaking outside the glass. Soft and smooth and dreamy.
“Don’t walk out the door,” he whispered.
In answer, she wrapped her arms around his neck, took the kiss deeper.
“How slow?” she asked.
“Pretty slow, to start anyway.” He slipped the jacket off her shoulders. “I’ve had some pretty intense dreams about you in that bed. We may get there.”
He went back to her mouth as the wind kicked. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled in its wake.