Playing With Fire

He caressed the fine leather that banded his desk blotter, readily admitting to himself that he needed Tamar. They’d been a team since he’d landed at Bairstow & Boone fresh out of Harvard, M.B.A. in hand. She was one or two years his senior—perhaps—of mysterious origins, rarely emotionally forthcoming. But she was an executive assistant extraordinaire—smart, efficient, dependable. Although Daniel’s career could survive without her, he wasn’t eager to test the theory.

Counting Tamar as a friend was trickier. Despite his best attempts, their relationship was mainly a one-way street—certainly not his idea of a proper give-and-take friendship.

None of the guys from the office could be counted as close friends, either. They were co-workers, occasional off-hour buddies. Likewise the tenants in his building: a middle-aged woman who holed up in the third-floor attic apartment, claiming to be a writer; the gay couple on the second floor who used his garden in return for their decorating expertise. Educating Daniel’s eye was their ongoing project.

Daniel liked them all; he did not, even remotely, need them.

But, suddenly, he needed the lioness?

That was definitely new. And a mighty strange sensation.

Particularly as he still didn’t know her name.

With a certain triumph, he thought of the silk panties he’d tucked away in his own underwear drawer for safekeeping. The commingling of their intimate apparel gave him a kick.

And a kick start.

Names were not always necessary.

3

“IT WAS LIKE a fever dream,” Lara said, closing her eyes as the previous evening spun through her thoughts, a series of colorful, blurred pImages** anchored by the dark, solid presence that was Daniel. “Psychedelic. Unreal. I couldn’t grasp it.”

“Bah! You weaseled out.” Bianca Spinelli soaped her hands at the sink in her grand charivari of a kitchen. The walls were chili-pepper-red, the cabinets guacamole-green, the clay tiles on the floor and countertops all the wonderful variegated umber shades of a sunbaked Mother Earth. Folk painting in primary colors formed a border around the room. Numerous pieces of stained glass glittered in the only window. For Lara the gaudiness was both welcoming and inspiring.

“I didn’t weasel out,” she said. “It was—well, it was happening too fast.” She sat on a tipsy stool beside the breakfast bar, on the opposite side of the cheerfully crowded living area that had been fashioned out of the back half of Bianca’s art-glass studio. Double swinging doors divided the front from the back, though not so anyone would notice. The entire space was an unofficial Grand Central Station for every glass artist and creative type on Avenue B.

Lara put a black olive between her front teeth, bit it neatly in half and swallowed the salty pieces whole. Daniel lives in the East Village. Only a few streets away. The coincidence was disturbing, especially after she’d pegged him for the stuffy five-thou-per-month Central Park condominium type. Aware that he was taking shape for her, becoming more than just the prize in a sexual game, she wondered what else there was to discover about him.

“Too fast? Eh. You never were the slow-lane type—” Bianca shot her a sour look “—until recently.”

Lara grimaced. “All right, it’s true. I got scared.” By my own daring…and his.

Wiping her fingers with a napkin, she paused to admire the way she’d arranged an immense platter of antipasto. There were plump mushrooms, eggplant and tomato slices, zucchini flowers and sticks, roasted bell peppers, several varieties of sausage and thick creamy chunks of mozzarella, mortadella and provolone cheese. In addition, she’d sliced up a sweet, juicy melon and started a pan of leftover risotto warming on the stove.

Friends and customers—one and the same, in Bianca’s book—would soon begin dropping in for a nosh, a cup of wine, good conversation or a rousing debate. Mornings were reserved for Bianca’s solo studio time; afternoons, she opened up the shop, taught classes and ran what Lara referred to as either the salon or, for those times when the music was loud and the wine was truly flowing, the cantina.

Bianca had returned to scrubbing her hands free of traces of the chemical solvents used in glasswork. “You see?” she said, shaking her black wavy hair over the sink. “Moving to the upstate wilds has done you no good, Lara. Remember the days when you kept a string of men on call as need demanded? You had no qualms about…um…managing them.”

“Daniel’s different.”

“Oh? How so?”

“He’s a grown-up.” Lara unhooked her feet from the rungs and drew them up so she sat cross-legged, perched atop the stool like a stork. “Me, too. In those good old days you mention, I was newly graduated, ready to take the Manhattan art world by storm, or so I believed. I was young and crazy and rebellious. I thought independence equaled indiscriminate adventure.” In fact, she’d been trying to imitate Bianca, her mentor. “Now that I’m thirty, I’ve outgrown casual sex.” Despite their accelerated attraction, she knew that sex with Daniel would not be casual. It would be cataclysmic.

“A shame.” Bianca grinned. “Casual grown-up sex is even better.” She flung her expressive hands in the air, sending droplets flying. “Dio mio! Until a man is forty, he knows nothing about how to please a woman in bed. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’m not celibate,” Lara argued, laughing. “I just didn’t want to rush. And Daniel’s thirty-six.”

“Bosh. You’re a fool to pass up such chemistry.”

“I have not passed it up. Merely postponed it.”

“Chemistry, chemistry,” Bianca sang, doing vigorous battle with a hand towel. “Good chemistry is like catching lightning in a bottle. Don’t miss out because of this silly game of yours.”

Lara smiled. “Daniel found the game provocative, I’m certain. I did tell you about the surprise I left in his pocket.”

Bianca enjoyed her own laughter so much it was contagious. “Yes, that was good.” She chortled. “And so naughty of you. I’m proud, chica. My Jennifer Lopez dress works every time, even when you insist on wearing it backwards.”

A huge smile broke across Lara’s face. “After that stunt, he’s sure to find me.”

Bianca sobered. “But how?”

“Oh, I’m sure he has resources. He met Kensington, so he might think of asking at the gallery.”

“Would they send him here? Ai-yee, I hope so. This man, I must see.”

“I don’t know. It depends how persistent he is.” Very, she thought. If she knew anything about Daniel, that was it. The intense ray-gun heat of his eyes was not characteristic of a laid-back man. “The gallery doesn’t hand out information to every guy off the street. And I go home tomorrow. Daniel may have to continue the hunt there.”

“The hunt?”

Lara wiggled her hips; the stool rocked. She grabbed the tiled edge of the counter. “Yes. He’s a hunter.”

“And you…?”

“Blame it on the chemistry,” she said with a lick of her lips. “I am dying to be caught.”

“But not encaged, hmm?”

“Nor engaged,” Lara said drolly. Bianca scowled.

Lara squared her shoulders. “You know how I feel about that.” She’d decided early on that she was the go-it-alone type. She couldn’t see subordinating her independent desires for the security of a marriage ring, as her mother and sister had done.

“Lovers, yes. Love, no. Marriage, never.” Bianca leaned her elbows on the breakfast bar, put her chin on her hands and stared broodingly into the spirals of food Lara had arranged in the pattern of a nautilus shell.

Despite the glum expression, Bianca looked as beautiful and exotic as a bird of paradise. Bright clothing, plenty of makeup, gold hoop earrings large enough to touch her shoulders. Lara had been strongly influenced by her mentor’s style and attitude, and was grateful for that. She might have turned out like her sister otherwise.

“Bianca?” she coaxed. “You’ve always agreed that I am smart to guard my freedom.”

“In your experimental twenties, yes.” Bianca pulled on her lower lip. “But one grows up and begins to appreciate the advantages of settling for stability.”

“You’re forty and you haven’t settled.”

“Forty-one. And I have become an old woman.” With a groan, she banged the heel of her palm against her forehead.

“Ha!” Lara had done her best to acquire a portion of Bianca Spinelli’s zest for life. It was a matter of attitude, not age. Of finding your bliss, to be Oprah-ish about it.

“There’s nothing like an energetic eighteen-month-old to make a woman feel ancient,” Bianca said, hoisting her daughter off the floor. She plopped little Rosa into a high chair, buckled her in and scooped a handful of crayons off the floor. “Try the yellow one, cara mia. In this house, we don’t need the dingy old grays and browns.”