“A huge difference,” Greer corrected.
“You’re full of peanuts, darling.”
Control your temper, Greer. “You voted with me in the end,” she reminded him.
“That was business. Business is a different game from life.” He stood up and stretched lazily, his opaque, hypnotic eyes fastened on her. “I really only came in to say I was shocked you didn’t have a little feminine temper tantrum over going with me to the trade show.”
“Why on earth should I?”
He shrugged. “You’ve backed out of attending every other trade show before this.”
It was true-she had. Because lingerie conventions were just like other conventions. A lone woman was a prize lamb in a meat market, something Greer would never willingly let herself in for. And the minute she’d yielded to Grant’s suggestion at the end of the staff meeting that she go, she knew Ray would offer a suggestive comment. “Love Lace always sends two representatives,” she said smoothly, “and since Marie can’t go with you this time, I don’t mind.”
“Somehow I thought you would.”
“Why?”
“You and I rather rub each other the wrong way, don’t we? On the other hand, we could probably solve that rather quickly if we took a double room at the convention.”
Greer frowned innocently, as if considering. “Sex does solve everything,” she said cheerfully, “but I doubt it would work in this instance. I snore-loudly, I’m told. You’d get crabby from lack of sleep, and then we’d never stop bickering.”
“I didn’t have in mind getting all that much sleep, anyway.”
“Would you kindly get your bedroom eyes out of here so I can get some work done?”
Ray chuckled, pausing only for another second at the door. “Are you that sassy with the men in your life, Greer?”
“Worse,” she said absently, and deliberately opened a folder on her desk. He was gone a few seconds later. Her pulse slowed down a few moments afterward. Ray inevitably ruffled the figurative fur on the back of her neck. She didn’t know why she let him do it. There was a psychological label for men who didn’t feel sexually secure about themselves unless they were aggressive with the females of the species. Whatever the term, it was her own problem that she let him continue to bother her.
She worked for an hour and accomplished precisely nothing. When the clock struck twelve, she put on her shoes, grabbed her purse and sauntered to the front door.
On the street, a soft breeze fluttered through the leaves in restless surges. The day was warm, bright with the North Carolina sun. Settling her sunglasses on her nose, she slid her hands into the pockets of her suit and simply strolled, taking in the springtime mood and relaxing.
The offices near Love Lace were well landscaped; gay rows of colorful flowers danced in the faint breeze, neat and confined within their borders and as new as the season. The smell of freshly mown grass filled her nostrils, and birds were rocking on the branches overhead, most of them in pairs. Another sign of spring.
The sun’s touch on her face felt as sensual as a caress. Her mood half lazy, half oddly wistful, Greer strolled through the business district and window-shopped. She paused before a display showing a rose-colored evening gown, and thought helplessly of the pink satin negligee. The damn thing, she was well aware, was starting to haunt her, but not because she hadn’t been right about the catalog cover.
Cream lace on pink satin…maybe every woman had a secret fantasy about color and texture and whatever it was that made her feel sultry and sexy and exotic. That negligee was Greer’s. She wasn’t the type to wear it; even the thought of wearing it raised a fleeting feeling of nameless anxiety, but she couldn’t get the thing out of her mind.
She hadn’t been able to get her new neighbor out of her mind, either. She’d woken up thinking about Ryan, and at most inconvenient times all morning she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head.
His kiss bothered her. The men who knew her would never have misunderstood a simple gesture of affection; he obviously thought she’d invited that kiss with her own behavior. Because they were going to be neighbors, she obviously had to find some way to correct a misleading impression if she’d given one.
Glancing at her watch, Greer turned around and ambled back toward work, suddenly feeling restless, unsettled. Something about her new neighbor seemed to bring on a bad case of spring fever.
She’d known and worked with a lot of men in the past five years. As a girl, she’d hid her figure in oversized clothes, but that nonsense was all past. These days she had no reason to hide, and dressed to reflect the woman she was. Gentle colors and subtle styles suited her; sexy fashions didn’t. She happened to be a naturally affectionate, caring woman, but not the type to lure out the sexual predator in a man.
Ryan-she couldn’t fathom why-felt like danger.
Greer was too sensible to let a dangerous case of spring fever get her down.
“Off the counter if you value your life,” Greer warned Truce. For once, the feline seemed to realize she meant business. He immediately leaped down and paced in wounded silence toward the living room.
Blowing a wisp of hair from her eyes, Greer turned the steaming bread out of the loaf pan and set it on a plate. Next to it was a luscious chocolate cake covered with two inches of seven-minute frosting. Licking her fingers, Greer stood back to survey her masterpieces with a critical eye.
They passed. They definitely passed. The loaf was tall and golden brown, and smelled…irresistible. And the cake-if she said so herself-would tempt the most determined weight watcher. Satisfied, Greer glanced at the clock, noted it was just after nine o’clock, and realized absently that her crank caller had actually left her alone for an entire evening. It seemed a good omen. Resolutely, she balanced the cake plate in one hand and the bread in the other.
Truce didn’t make the juggling act any easier by trying to wind around her legs at the door. “I’ll be right back. Promise,” Greer told him.
Turning the knob was a precarious business, but she managed, and padded barefoot across the hall. Using her elbow as a knocker, she thumped on her new neighbor’s door and waited.
No answer. Earlier Greer had heard various thumps and rattles through their shared apartment wall; she was certain Ryan was home. Chewing her lip indecisively, she tried her elbow on the bell and threatened the bread with a dire future if it toppled.
“Just open it,” Ryan’s voice finally yelled impatiently from within.
“I can’t.”
“You’ll have to.”
Hmm. Pasting an innocuously cheerful smile on her face, Greer managed to turn the knob with her wrist and push it open. “Ryan?”
Boxes and packing crates greeted her. Of course he’d only moved in a few days before, but Greer still couldn’t help smiling. He had obviously unpacked assorted tools and books as a first priority, whereas he hadn’t bothered with anything so mundane as putting up his bed-a queen-sized mattress was lying plop center on the living room carpet. Men.
“I heard that.”
“I never said a thing.” Greer swung around to face him-as well as she could with her arms full.
Like Greer, Ryan had tousled hair and bare feet; he was wearing jeans so old they were a soft gray-blue. But whereas Greer wore a scarf and a holey sweatshirt, Ryan was bare from the waist up.
Very bare. Strikingly bare. His chest was sun-browned, his shoulders sleek and muscular, and his jeans hung low over lean hips. Crisp, curling hair grew in an intimate line from his throat to his navel.