For an instant, Greer felt a strong, unfamiliar emotional rush, making her palms feel oddly slippery, her world tilt slightly off-balance. She tried to banish it. Certainly the rest of Ryan’s appearance was enough to bring back her natural humor. He was covered with paint. Speckles of white dotted his mustache, his chest hair and his jeans, and both hands glistened with them…partly because he was still holding a paintbrush.
Greer took a breath and then chuckled. “I can see why you couldn’t answer your door,” she said lightly. “Don’t tell me you don’t share Mrs. Wissler’s love for purple?”
“I’m glad you came over,” he said quietly. “If I’d known it was you-”
“Just bringing welcome-to-the-neighborhood offerings.” Greer rushed past him, her arms beginning to give out even before she reached his kitchen counter. Sensibly, she plopped down her peace offerings, while most unreasonably her pulse was throbbing a mile a minute. She’d heard his low, vibrant baritone, the obvious glad-to-see-you-here in his voice. “I didn’t come to stay, just to cart over the cake and bread,” she called back brightly. “I have this terrible problem when I come home from a tough day; I can’t sit still and inevitably find myself in the kitchen. Then, though, there’s this problem with calories-which I figured I could shift on to you, being the nearest unfortunate neighbor. No hurry returning the plates-”
You can stop jabbering any time, Greer. She hadn’t meant to stay, and she now found herself in a great hurry to leave once she’d deposited her gifts in his kitchen.
Wiping her palms on the seat of her jeans, she whirled for the doorway, and found Ryan’s dark shadow blocking it. Her best company smile immediately curved her lips. “Honest, I’m not staying,” she repeated.
“Did you get another phone call tonight?”
“Nope. He must be taking a vacation. Hardly ever misses a Wednesday.” It was still easy to talk to him. The only difference was the memory of a thirty-second kiss, and a feeling of sexual awareness Greer hadn’t had the day before.
She tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t that simple with Ryan standing there half-naked, a silent apartment behind him, and his soft, luminous eyes on hers. Had she really thought him ordinary-looking yesterday?
He wasn’t at all. He had the sleek, lean look of an animal in the wild, the body of a man who used his muscles to do far more than push paper around a desk. His maleness assaulted her in the suddenly intimate silence, and Greer felt totally irritated with herself. It was one thing to be unnerved by a man who threatened her, but another thing altogether to get uptight when the man had done nothing but be friendly…give or take one kiss. “I’ll be going…”
“Stay a minute and see what I’m doing.”
She shook her head, “Really, I still have a ton of things to do.”
“Just for a minute,” Ryan coaxed.
“You’re busy,” she informed him firmly.
“And if I have to face one more purple room alone, I think I’ll suffer apoplexy. Have you ever tried to outstare a dead purple wall?”
“Actually, no.” Greer took a breath, and another step closer to the door. Ryan didn’t move. She smiled engagingly at him. “Something told me you wouldn’t keep the purple walls. Honestly, though, I don’t want to get in your way.”
“You don’t have to pick up a paintbrush, I promise. Just spare me a few minutes of conversation.”
“Really, I…” She’d only come to set things straight, and in Frank Sinatra fashion, her way. If she made an act of pure uncomplicated friendship, he would have to react in kind. And since she was dressed like a bag lady, she figured he’d get the rest of the message.
Maybe he was getting the rest of the message, Greer thought dismally, but for some unknown reason she seemed to be headed toward his bedroom a few seconds later.
Chapter Four
Forty-five minutes later, Greer was perched on the fourth rung of a ladder with a paintbrush in her hand, doing her darnedest to work up a sweat. As fast as she slathered white latex on the purple corner, she was dipping the brush back into the coffee can Ryan had given her.
“I really didn’t ask you in to put you to work.” From behind her, Ryan’s tone was laced with amusement. “Do you always paint as though you’re attacking your worst enemy?”
Greer’s bare toes curled on the ladder rung, but she didn’t turn her head. “When it’s the purple villain, yes,” she said blithely. “If I had to eat scrambled eggs in the morning staring at dark purple walls, I believe I’d be able to give up breakfast.” Without turning, she added, “What are you planning on doing with the room after this, or have you decided yet?”
Ryan paused, as he dipped his roller into the paint. “Beyond getting rid of the purple, I haven’t worried about it much, knowing I’ll build my own place as soon as possible. I don’t know… At home, I had a corner fireplace in the bedroom-but this climate hardly calls for it. The stereo has to go in here; I almost always listen to music before sleeping…”
Or seducing, Greer thought darkly. Fireplaces, firm mattresses and music at midnight…it all suited him. Her paintbrush swish-swished over the wall at the speed of sound. Why couldn’t he have needed his kitchen painted instead of the bedroom? Why did these silly images keep popping into her head?
Oh, well. In a half hour, the room would be done. He’d already finished three walls and the ceiling before she came in. A little molding and one windowsill were all that remained, except for the wall Ryan was painting now. She climbed down from the ladder and started working on the windowsill.
Truthfully, she didn’t mind helping him. Facing house projects after a long day’s work was never any fun alone. And even though he was only a short-term resident, she wasn’t surprised that he wanted a fresh coat of paint on the place-not simply because he couldn’t live with Mrs. Wissler’s purple, but also because he was clearly a man who’d want to put his own stamp on a place.
Her eyes darted to Ryan. His forehead was dotted with moisture, and damp brown hair curled on his brow. An evening beard darkened his chin, and Greer found herself staring at it, then letting her eyes wander deliberately down to his bare, muscled chest.
She relaxed. No dreadful rush of sexual emotions assaulted her. These little fantasies that kept cropping up in her head were absolutely ridiculous. Ryan had done little but tease her and make her laugh. There’d been nothing to make her believe he was even seriously interested. “I should have brought Truce,” she said absently as she picked up the paintbrush again. “He’ll be howling up a storm next door. He doesn’t seem to mind if I’m gone all day, but if I leave at night I always come home to those pitiful wails.”
“A cat that needs a babysitter,” muttered Ryan.
“I take it you’re a dog man.”
“Was that meant as an insult?”
She shook her head, laughing. “No, but people always seem to go one way or the other. German shepherd?” she guessed.
“Great Pyrenees. I left her with my brother in Maine. I knew there’d be no place for her to run here.”
“I thought the Pyrenees were mountains.”
“They’re also big white dogs. Would you stop working like a Roman slave, please? You’re hitting my masculine ego where it hurts. I can’t keep up with you.”
“You poor thing,” Greer began, and dropped her paintbrush on the tarp at her feet when she heard the faint but unmistakable ring of a telephone through the paper-thin walls.
Behind her, she heard Ryan setting down his paint roller. “Your apartment’s unlocked?”
“Yes, but don’t. Really. I-”
He paused only long enough to grab a rag for his hands before he disappeared. Greer gnawed on her lip, then picked up her brush and dipped it in the paint can again. Dip and stroke, dip and stroke. Her heart was trying to condense into a tight, hard beating ball in her chest, yet Ryan couldn’t have been gone five minutes.