The Mistress Deal

She gave him an equally pleasant smile back, wondering why she should feel like a high-class call girl when she was anything but. The elevator smoothly deposited her outside double doors with exquisite wrought-iron handles; Reece’s unit was the only one on this floor. Her feet sinking in the thick carpeting, Lauren pushed the bell. Let the adventure begin, she thought, and fixed her smile on her face.

CHAPTER THREE

REECE swung the door open. For the space of five full seconds Lauren stared at him, all her rehearsed greetings fleeing her mind. He was naked to the waist and barefoot, his hair wet and tousled. Detail after detail emblazoned itself on her brain: the pelt of dark hair on his deep chest; his taut, corded belly; the elegant flow of muscle and bone from throat to shoulder. He said flatly, “You’re early.”

“I allowed too much time for the traffic.”

“You’d better come in—I just got out of the shower.”

His jeans were low-slung, his jaw shadowed with a day’s beard. He looked like a human being, Lauren thought, her mouth dry. He also looked extraordinarily and dangerously sexy. “Here,” he said, “let me take your suitcase.”

She surrendered it without a murmur, staring at the ripple of muscles above his navel as if she’d never seen a half-naked man before. As Reece turned his back to her, putting the case down, the long curve of his spine made her feel weak at the knees. Only because she was an artist, she thought frantically. Nothing to do with being a woman in the presence of an overpowering masculinity. Yet why hadn’t she realized in his office how beautifully he moved, with an utterly male economy and grace?

He said, “I might as well show you your room right away. What’s in the other bag?”

In her left hand Lauren was clutching a worn leather briefcase. “My tools…I never travel without them.”

“Here, give them to me.”

“I’ll carry them.” She managed a faint smile. “I’ve had some of them for years.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?” he rasped. “Not even with something as simple as a bag of tools.”

“Reece,” she said vigorously, “the agreement is to act like lovers in public. Not to fight cat-and-dog in private.”

He looked her up and down, from her ankle-height leather boots and dark brown tights to her matching ribbed turtleneck and faux fur jacket with its leopard pattern of big black spots. “You’re obviously the cat. So does that make me the dog?”

“You’re no poodle.”

“A basset hound?”

She chuckled, entering into the spirit of the game. “You have very nice ears and your legs are too long. Definitely not a basset.”

“Do you realize we’re actually agreeing about something?”

“And I’m scarcely in the door,” she said demurely, wondering with part of her brain how she could have said that about his ears.

“Let me take your coat.”

As she put down her tools and slid her jacket from her shoulders, her breasts lifting under her sweater, he said, “I wondered if you’d back out at the last minute.”

The smile faded from her face. “So that you could blacken Wallace’s name from one end of the country to the other? I don’t think so. Which room is mine?”

“At the end of the hall.”

For the first time, Lauren took stock of her surroundings. Her initial impression was of space; and of some wonderful oak and leather furniture by a modern Finnish designer whom she’d met once at a showing in Manhattan. Then her gaze took in the collection of art that filled the space with color, movement and excitement. She said dazedly, “That’s a Kandinsky. A Picasso. A Chagall. And surely that collage is James Ardmore. Reece, it’s a wonderful piece, I know he’s not very popular, but I’m convinced he’s the real thing. And look, a Pirot, don’t you love the way his sculptures catch the light no matter where you stand?”

Her face lit with enthusiasm, she walked over to the gleaming copper coils, caressing them gently with her fingertips. When she looked up, Reece was watching her, his expression inscrutable. She said eagerly, “It begs to be touched, don’t you think? I adore his stuff.”

“I have another of his works. In my bedroom.”

She didn’t even stop to think. “Can I see it?”

Reece led the way down a wide hallway, where more paintings danced in front of her dazzled gaze. His bedroom windows overlooked the spangled avenues in Stanley Park; but Lauren had eyes only for the bronze sculpture of a man that stood on a pedestal by the balcony doors. She let her hands rest on the man’s bare shoulders, her eyes half shut as she traced the taut tendons. “It’s as though Pirot creates something that’s already there,” she whispered, “just waiting for him.”

Reece said harshly, “Is that how you make love?”

Her head jerked ’round. Jamming her hands in her pockets, she said, “What do you mean?”

“Sensual. Rapt. Absorbed.”

She’d hated being anywhere near Sandor’s bed by the end of the relationship. Not that Reece needed to know that. “How I do or do not make love is none of your concern.”

“So what are you doing in my bedroom?”

The bedside lamp cast planes of light and shadow across Reece’s bare chest; Lauren was suddenly aware that she was completely alone with him only feet from the wide bed in which he slept. “You think it was a come-on, me asking to see the sculpture?” she cried. “Do you have to cheapen everything?”

As if the words were wrenched from him, he said, “I bought the condo new just ten months ago. You’re the only woman to have ever been in this room.”

She knew instantly that he was telling the truth; although she couldn’t have said where that knowledge came from. Frightened out of all proportion, she took two steps backward. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve had fifty women in your bedroom,” she said in a thin voice. “I haven’t slept with anyone since Sandor and I’m certainly not going to start with you.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t care if you do or not!”

“But that was four years ago and—”

“Three years and ten months,” she interrupted furiously, “and what business is it of yours anyway?”

“None. I’ll show you to your room.”

If eyes were the windows of the soul, Lauren thought fancifully, then Reece had just closed the shutters. But did he have a soul? He certainly had emotions. She’d learned that much in the last few minutes.

She trailed after him, noticing another Picasso sketch on his bedroom wall, as well as a delightful Degas impression of a dancer. Reece was striding down the hallway as though pursued by a hungry polar bear. About to hurry after him, Lauren suddenly came to a halt. In a lit alcove in the wall stood a small Madonna and child, carved in wood so old its patina was almost black. The figures were simply, rather crudely carved; yet such a radiant tenderness flowed from one to the other that Lauren felt emotion clog her throat.

She wasn’t even aware of Reece walking back to where she was standing. He said roughly, “What’s the matter?”

“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered, her eyes filled with wonderment.

“Unknown artist, late fourteenth century. You can pick it up, if you want to.”

“But—”

“Lauren, pick it up.”

With a kind of reverence she lifted the statue, her hands curling around it with the same tenderness that infused the figures. “Look how her shoulder curves into her arm and then into the child’s body,” she said. “Whoever carved it must have loved his child…don’t you think?” She lifted her face to Reece, a face open and unguarded, totally without guile.

Briefly he rested his hand on her cheek. He said thickly, “You could have been the model. For the mother.”