Infatuation

He found himself smiling and stopped. “I don’t have anything to do, so I’ll see you in twenty.”

“Great,” she said, and reminded him of her address before she disconnected the phone.

Not too shabby, he mused as he headed that way. Who knew dating for a living paid so well…unless she was living above her means or spending her inheritance, still of the mind-set that those who had were somehow more well thought of than those who had not.

Then again, he wasn’t sure she’d ever embraced that ideal as fully as the rest of the moneyed crowd she’d run with. He’d been the lone exception. What had drawn them together came from a visceral, baser place inside both of them and had nothing to do with material things. Their infatuation had been…unexplainable.

All these years later—and for no reason he could fathom—he was hoping to finally solve the puzzle. This time with her might have fallen into his lap, but it still presented the perfect occasion to work Milla Page from his system for good.

4

“MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME,” Milla said, tossing her purse and key ring on top of a wooden secretary in the entryway and setting her cell in a charger there.

“There’s a bar in the kitchen and a freezer full of ice. There’s also coffee in the basket next to the coffeemaker. The living room’s off the kitchen, and I figure you can find the TV. Give me thirty minutes, okay?”

“No rush,” Rennie replied, as she did just that—rushed down the center hallway of her third floor flat in the Inner Richmond Victorian and out of his sight.

Yeah. So far, so bad, he mused with no small amount of self-directed sarcasm. It was always a good sign when a date ran away.

He’d arrived only moments behind her, following her from where they’d parked in the street up the three flights of stairs to her door.

She’d smiled at seeing him, but then avoided his gaze, tossing talk of the weather over her shoulder while they’d climbed.

For all the attention she paid him, he might as well have been a stranger—one with whom she had no history, one to whom she had nothing to say. One who had never meant anything to her, who had never been a part of her life.

It was when she’d dropped her keys while unlocking the door that he’d admitted he wasn’t being fair. In fact, he was being the same prick he’d been too much of the time while in school.

He was older. He should be wiser. And he was—at least wise enough to realize she was nervous.

First it had been the fumbling with the keys, then the mile-a-minute speech, then the flight to her bedroom. Nerves weren’t exactly what he associated with the Milla Page he’d spent four years getting to know, and he couldn’t help but be curious at the change.

He was also surprised that she’d left him alone. Doing so hinted at a level of trust he wasn’t sure he deserved. Taking advantage never crossed his mind, but she had given him free run of the place.

And accepting her unspoken offer might give him an insight, a hint of why she’d come to see him…something he could latch on to that made sense.

Because finding himself in the entryway to her house all these years later didn’t make any sense at all.

He headed for the back of the flat and the kitchen. Nursing one drink now couldn’t help but ease some of the tension he was feeling. Coffee on the other hand might possibly send his blood pressure rocketing before the night even got off the ground.

He found a glass on the bar set up at the end of the kitchen counter, found ice in the freezer, went back for a splash of Scotch and wondered why everything about Milla’s place was so colorless and cold.

Her kitchen was as white as everything else he’d seen so far, the only color break, the stainless steel appliances. The countertops were a white marble with a thin gray vein. The floor was similarly tiled.

Even the items she had sitting out—the coffeemaker, the canister set, the mugs hanging on a rack—lacked any hint of color. Rennie frowned, sipped his drink, moved into the living room toward the TV.

There wasn’t anything he wanted to watch, but at least the noise would give life to the room that made him think of bones bleached to death silently by the sun. This absence of color, of energy, of…soul wasn’t right. It wasn’t Milla.

Remote in one hand, drink in the other, he stood in front of the television and flipped through the channels without taking in any of the flickering scenes.

Milla had been vibrant, passionate. She’d dressed in bright colors. Reds, purples, hot orange. He’d never seen her wearing anything like the black skirt and pale yellow blouse she’d worn yesterday, or the similarly dull combination of pink and navy today.

Then he’d chalked it up to being the middle of a workday and her obvious business attire. Now that he’d seen what he had of her home, he wondered if it was something deeper, something more and telling.

He stopped flipping when he realized the station he’d stumbled on was showing a rerun of “Hell on Wheels.” It was the episode where his team had cut down an ambulance and turned it into a nitro-powered dragster.

And here he was sweating out the submersible idea. Then again, he pretty much sweated everything during the weeks it took to put together each one of the shows.

He didn’t have to do it; even the conversions that bombed were a big hit with the viewers. The show’s audience loved seeing the modification process and watching the crew put the tricked-out vehicles through their paces.

And Rennie, well, he loved getting his hands dirty taking care of his own, doing something that gave so much to so many people including fans, employees, family and friends.

In college, that had been Milla’s role, the nurturer, the caretaker, the one who kept friendships from falling apart, who everyone looked to for answers.

He’d been the one living a dull and colorless workaholic existence. And look at them now, he thought as he sipped at his drink. It was role reversal in action.

When Milla had shown up so unexpectedly and propositioned him yesterday, he’d grabbed at the chance to finally work their past out of his system. Not that it was holding him back, or that he’d let those years eat at him all this time. Not that he hadn’t moved on with his life.

The past was just there, and it didn’t need to be. But now…now he wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to walk away with a clear conscience without knowing more.

Because if there was anything he’d learned in the past twenty-four hours, it was that somewhere, somehow, Milla Page had been broken. And that was the most unexpected discovery he’d made since seeing her again.

“Sorry to take so long,” she said, walking into the living room from the hall.

Nearly choking on his drink, Rennie clicked off the television, hoping he’d been fast enough to keep her from seeing his face or anything of the garage on the screen. He glanced at his watch—he’d been lost in thought for forty minutes—before he drained his glass and turned.

He found her struggling to tug the strap of her shoe up over her heel, found her wearing bright cherry-red. The color had always been one of his favorites. He wondered if she remembered, if she’d dressed with him in mind, if he was going to manage to get through the night without touching her.

When she straightened, her hair fell to frame her face, the shorter strands brushing her chin, the longer sweeping against her neck. In college, her hair had been soft and feathery. Now it was smooth, the ends stylishly flipping this way and that.

She looked great. She looked better than great. The light of which he’d only seen glimpses was back in her eyes. It set his blood to stirring, his fingers to itching, and his body began to warm.

He left the remote on top of the television and crossed the hardwood floor, returning his glass to the kitchen, turning to find she’d joined him. She’d grabbed her purse from the secretary and was now transferring the contents to a smaller bag.

He sat beside her at the table. The piece of furniture, not surprisingly, was painted white, the top inlaid with tiles the color of Ivory Snow. He watched as she sorted through her things. “Don’t you get cold in here?”

She glanced up briefly. “Not really, why? Are you cold? I can turn up the heat.”

“I’m not talking about the temperature. I’m talking about the igloo look you have going on.” His encompassing gesture included both the kitchen and the living room beyond. “Or is white the new black or something?”

This time when she looked up, she seemed confused, but she did study her surroundings for several seconds before returning to the task of switching one purse for the other. “The place had just been painted when I bought it. The kitchen was newly tiled and the countertops were still being installed.”

“Did it come furnished?”

She shook her head. “You can blame me for the dreary decor. I’m not here enough to really notice it, and it doesn’t seem that important when I do. I’ve got too much else going on to worry about adding splashes of color.”

He took that in, but didn’t respond. He didn’t know what to say. This was her home. Her supposed castle. He would think it would matter more than it did. “How long have you been living here?”

She closed up the purse he assumed she was carrying tonight and sat back, arms crossed, the fabric of her dress pulling tight over her small breasts. “It was a year in September.”