His thumb jabbed his chest. 'I'm Desmond Gerrard. My word is my bond.' My sceptical snort made him wince. 'All right, my word isn't always my bond. But I prefer it to be so, and I feel badly about what I almost did. I'd like to make amends.'
‘I'm not going to blab about this to anyone, if that's what you're afraid of.' I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide my fists. 'I don't care what you and Marianne do in private. I just don't want Joe hurt.'
Desmond's eyes glittered. 'He's lucky to have a friend like you.'
'Don't try to charm me,’ I snapped, my voice sharpened by my fear of how easily he could do it.
Desmond chuckled. 'Heaven forbid, Mistress Winthrop.'
I glared at him.
He shrugged philosophically. 'Sorry, dear. Wishful thinking. But if you ever consider getting into the scene ... No? Well, can't blame a fellow for asking.' He reached inside his coat to remove a business card. He held it out until I took it. 'Have Joe call me,’ he said, 'and if you're concerned about my principles, feel free to tell him everything you discovered this morning. That way he can make an informed decision.'
I flipped the card against my fingers, sensing a gamble in his words. He was betting I'd keep mum because I wouldn't want Joe to doubt he'd truly earned the admiration of a bigwig like Desmond Gerrard.
Damn thing was, the bastard was right.
'I'll think about it,’ I said.
He was smiling when I turned away.
Chapter Eleven
A Turn in the Road
'I'll fill in for Marianne,' Sean said. Wearing nothing but a pair of snug white briefs, he propped his shoulder against the frame of the open bathroom door. He appeared completely serious. When I failed to respond, he crossed his arms. His biceps swelled. Under the bright overhead light, the hair on his forearms glinted like gold dust, a light gilding that also bisected the muscular plane of his belly. My gaze trailed to the contents of his briefs, quiescent now but heavy.
This was not the best place to fix my attention if I wanted to gather my wits.
Nor did it help that I was naked. Fresh from the shower, I had one leg propped on the toilet cover so I could rub cream into my leg. Sean had seen me unclothed before. To cover up would have insulted him. It shouldn't have made any difference that Joe was staying the night in New York, that we were alone, or that Sean had just made an offer so generous it took my breath away.
Conscious of his gaze but trying not to show it, I squirted a line of moisturiser down my shin.
'You know,’ he said. 'You should think seriously about opening a second shop.'
I looked at him sideways. He fiddled with the end of the towel rail. Did he feel it, too - the sense of forbidden intimacy? The only rule we'd ever made was that none of us step outside the trio. But if Sean and I didn't feel guilty, why did Joe's absence make us edgy? Why didn't we jump on each other the way we would have if he were home?
'You've paid off the mortgage on this house, haven't you?' he pressed, ignoring the heightened tension.
'Yes.'
'And the South Street
property?'
'Almost. But how did you know?'
He brushed the hand towel against its nap. 'I ran into your sales assistant, Keith, at the Campus India restaurant last week. We had a nice chat over our curry. He's hoping you'll keep him on full-time after he graduates, but I'm thinking a bright kid like that ought to have a shop to run by himself.'
I smiled at Sean's reference to Keith as a kid, but he hadn't finished making pronouncements yet.
'Another thing - your mail order business is getting too big for you to handle. You've either got to farm it out to a jobber or grow it big enough to make it worth the hassle. Buy ad space in a few women's magazines or, better still, establish a presence on the Internet.'
I tilted my head to the side. 'Congratulations, Sean, you've finally told me something that hadn't already occurred to me.'
He had the decency to flush. 'I guess I sounded cocky.'
'A bit.'
He grinned at the hem of the towel, then met my sardonic gaze. 'I am right,' he said, 'and I'd be happy to prove it to you.'
I shook my head and resumed creaming my leg. 'I can't ask you to help me. Between working for the lawyers and school, you've got enough on your plate.'
'I can handle it,' he said. His eyes followed my hands down my calf. 'Once the accounts software is installed, the computer does most of the work. Anyway, I know
Marianne's type. She'll take ten hours to do what ought to take one and then gripe about being too busy.'
The moisturiser bottle let out a startled blat, as though impressed by his insight. Marianne used to complain about her workload all the time. Sean had met her twice in his life. Why had he sniffed out her tricks when I hadn't?
'Don't you trust me to do a good job?' he said.
That brought my head up. 'Of course I do.'