Pink Satin

Chapter Nine

“Greer?”

Marie’s high-pitched voice caught Greer in midstride. She backed up two paces to the open door of the finishing room. Marie frantically motioned her inside.

“I’ve been waiting to catch you all day. I want to show you something.”

It was that kind of Monday. All day Greer had tried to hide behind her desk with a good solid dose of depression, but the outside world just wouldn’t give her time. Impatiently, she followed Marie past the steady hum of sewing machines, into the small spotless room beyond, where the garments were stored. Marie stood on tiptoe and took a garment from a hanger, laying it over her arms for Greer’s inspection.

“What do you think?”

Greer shifted the papers in her arms to a nearby chair, dropped her glasses to her nose and delicately fingered the sparkling material. The shift was long and sleek, with dolman sleeves and a high side slit. “Not lamé?” she questioned.

“Of course not lamé. A metallic acetate; it cleans like a dream. Of course, it is a bit wicked…”

“Decadent,” Greer murmured dryly.

“Maybe a little too ‘thirties.’”

“It’s very thirties,” Greer agreed thoughtfully.

“You don’t like it.” Marie’s voice fell.

Greer peeked over her glasses with a grin. “You know darn well it’s fantastic. For the holidays. Is that what you had in mind?”

“Of course.”

Greer again fingered the shiny material. “I think that’s exactly how we should market it. Decadent. Wicked. We can haul out the old spiel about feeling irresistibly sexy when completely covered from neck to toe…” She was murmuring to herself more than to Marie, until the other woman laughed.

“You always know exactly what I have in mind,” she said triumphantly. “If you could only draw, you would be a great designer. Outstanding.”

Greer looked slightly alarmed. “You’re not going to start that again-”

“No, of course not. The last time I tried to show you the techniques of drawing, you gave me a migraine. You drew a breast the size of a nose. Your people looked like stick figures. Your-”

“Yes,” Greer interrupted, chuckling, and handed the shift back to Marie. “You left a note on my desk this morning. Something about thread?”

Marie hung up the garment with loving fingers. “For the trade show, yes. I know today’s only Monday, and you won’t leave for two more days, but I wanted to ask you about Barteau.”

Greer looked blank.

“He will be there. You will give him a kiss from me, and then you will steal every little tidbit of information you can. I want to know what he is up to. How much cotton is he using this year? How much finishing is he doing by hand? And most important, you must get his thread. Steal some, if you can. I hear he has found a new silk blend, a stronger fiber, but where he’s getting it…”

“Steal some thread?” Greer echoed wryly.

“Now, don’t get that look, darling. And keep in mind that Barteau will probably peek under your skirts if you let him. He was a dirty old man even when I studied under him, and he was only in his twenties then. Now.” Marie folded her arms over her chest as Greer picked up her folders. “We are all alone, not a soul here. What’s wrong?”

Greer was halfway to the door, and turned. “There’s nothing wrong.”

“Of course there is. You didn’t eat lunch; you barely said a word at the sales meeting this morning. Your eyes are sad. Something happened between Friday and today. A man?” Marie guessed.

“A bad case of no sleep.” Greer was willing to admit to that.

“Fib.”

“All problems are not caused by men,” Greer suggested mildly.

“Only the problems worth having. The circles under your eyes are a positive sign. A good lover should make you tired. But not listless, chérie.” Marie shook her head. “I can see from your face you do not want to talk. Fine, that is your business. But should you ever need an expert-”

Marie winked, her smile full of affection and humor, and for a moment Greer almost hesitated. Marie would listen, she knew. But Greer never burdened anyone else with her problems, and to discuss anything as personal as the touchy relationship between love and sex-never. She shook her head. “You’re a sweetie. But there’s nothing, really,” she assured Marie, and they parted at the stairs.

In her office, Greer sank into her chair, slipped off her cream-colored sandals and slid her glasses on top of her head. Depression promptly caved in on her like an avalanche. Never having catered much to the moody blues, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. And today was merely an extension of the day before.

Sunday she’d wakened alone, mortified and lost as she recalled making love with Ryan. She’d taken her car and simply driven half the day, going nowhere, thinking nothing. By late afternoon, she returned, knowing she had to face him.

She’d found him in the back courtyard, barbecuing steaks. Two steaks. There seemed no question in his mind that she’d arrive on time to share them with him. He’d looked incredibly lazy and easy in cutoffs and a loose dark shirt; he’d dropped a kiss on her mouth the minute he saw her; he’d forced her to absolutely stuff herself full of steak, foil-cooked corn dripping in butter and éclairs he’d picked up earlier at a bakery.

And when dinner was over, it was dark and the mosquitoes had started buzzing. Greer and Ryan had separated and gone to their respective apartments. There’d been a kiss that could have resurrected fire from dead ash, but Ryan hadn’t pressed. He’d been warm, affectionate and funny. Disastrously easy to be with. But he’d clearly expected to sleep alone that night.

Greer was not surprised.

Depressed, but not surprised. Absently, she plucked an imaginary speck of lint from her oyster-colored linen skirt and then stared at her outfit darkly. The oyster skirt, cocoa blouse and pearls were old favorites, a choice based on past experience to pick up her mood. They were failing her.

She wasn’t much of a lover. She was good at listening, and terrific at making pot pies; her empathy was laudable, and she was just plain excellent at her job. But she’d never been much of a lover.

Wearily, she touched her fingers to her temples, denting the skin white with unconscious pressure. She had known that, long before she got involved with Ryan. And she’d sensed up front that Ryan would be an exciting, imaginative and experienced lover. Too experienced to be fooled by a lady trying to fake it.

He was the last man she should have let herself fall in love with.

“Looks to me like our resident sex symbol needs a drink.”

Her head popped up to see Ray lounging in the doorway, the sleeves of his white linen shirt rolled up at the cuffs, his spotless black suit pants perfectly creased. His tone, as always, overflowed with husky seductiveness. And as always, it grated on Greer’s nerves.

She could barely keep the impatience out of her voice. “I take it you got the figures back from the regional sales studies we did?”

He nodded. “But it looks to me as if you’re much more in a mood for a bottle of wine and a night of love than discussing Midwestern sales patterns.”

Greer reached out for the folder in his hand. “I’ll settle for the statistics on girdle sales in Ohio, but thanks.”

He dropped the file on her desk. “One of these days you’re going to realize what you’re missing.”

“I’ll survive,” she assured him as she thumbed through the statistics he’d brought her. “Did I tell you this or did I tell you this? The Corn Belt’s going nuts for negligees.”

“Not exactly the Corn Belt, but close enough.” Ray lowered himself into the chair by her desk, his lazy black eyes skimming over her figure in the cocoa blouse. He was a man who specialized in mentally stripping women; yet Greer had never figured out how his eyes could be so opaque, so unreadable. “I won’t say I didn’t resent Grant’s pushing you into my marketing corner, but I have to admit you know your stuff. Now, Southern women I would have guessed, but never that the farmers’ wives would go for frills and lace.”

“I’ve been telling you for ages that psychology and marketing shouldn’t be strangers.” Greer shoved her glasses onto her nose and flipped through the last pages of his report.

“And I’ve been trying to tell you exactly the same thing for months, darling.”

“Pardon?” She lifted her head from the neatly typed pages distractedly.

“It’s only a half hour until quitting time. I was about to suggest a drink afterward.”

For a moment, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

For all his constant sexual patter, Ray had never asked her out before. The offer made her oddly nervous. “I really can’t, not tonight. Maybe another time…”

“Why did I know you’d say that?” Ray’s smile was cool. He moved to the door, but then turned suddenly, that practiced smile gone from his face. “You know, I thought we’d made inroads this last week, working together. Obviously, I was mistaken.”

She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. I thought if we worked together a little more closely, you might just thaw out. Obviously not.”

“Ray!” Greer fumbled for words. “I care very much that we work well together. I always have. But beyond that-”

“Beyond that, if any other man in the place had asked you for a drink, you would have gone.”

Greer clamped her jaws together. “For heaven’s sake. I’ve had a drink after work with Barney once in the five years I’ve worked here-”

He was gone. Bewildered, Greer shook her head. She’d never seen Ray behave so…ridiculously.

For the next half hour, she pored over the regional statistics he’d brought her, and fretted over the confrontation. She’d always regarded him as an insensitive, chauvinistic SOB. Well, he was. But perhaps she herself had shown a lack of sensitivity toward his feelings. Had her dislike of him shown through?

The thought upset her. Simply because she didn’t like the man didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him. And she knew she hadn’t made any serious efforts to understand Ray, as she had with the others at Love Lace. She hadn’t cared enough to try.

Besides, one short drink after work wouldn’t have hurt you, she scolded herself. For the first time since you’ve been here, he’s actually trying to get along. You blew it.

Bodies were moving past her door. Greer glanced at the clock and gathered up the report and her purse. Feeling utterly low, she made her way down the hall, anxious simply to be home where she could mope in peace. She was fumbling with sunglasses at the back door when she heard a sneeze.

Normally, a sneeze was hardly enough to make her turn around, but this one sounded out of place. Grant’s office was behind her; she backed up three steps to where she could see through the windowed partition.

The office hadn’t changed; it still had a teak desk so well polished you could use it for a mirror to put on lipstick, a neat array of bookshelves and a wall collage of photographs-models in various styles of lingerie-that Greer could never fathom why Marie tolerated. The office was the same, and Grant was the same, his blue suit impeccable on his square, lean form, his mustache meticulously trimmed, his posture, as always, erect. The only thing out of place was Ryan.

Work boots, jeans, hard hat, sun-weathered skin… Ryan was a shout of sheer sexy machismo next to Grant’s overmanicured smallness. The difference between the men was more than physical, Greer mused for a second and a half. Grant was the kind of man who would make lingerie. Ryan was the kind women wore it for.

That second and a half passed quickly, during which she was quickly striding the five steps necessary to walk inside Grant’s door, where she stood, her jaws clamped into a counterfeit smile.

“Greer!” Grant leaned back on his desk, motioning her in. “I told Mr. McCullough you’d be passing by here any minute. I was just filling your friend in on the industry.”

“Done for the day?” Ryan queried lightly.

She nodded. Ryan offered a hand to Grant, and the two men exchanged a few more pleasant words before Greer found herself escorted from the office into the hot sunlight of the parking lot. Just as Ryan’s stride was lithe and easy, Greer’s was stilted and clipped.

“You’d better be good for a ride home, honey. I was dropped off here.”

“And just miraculously ran into my boss in the farthest office in the back?”

“Once I had the receptionist call him, yes.”

“Why?” Greer asked, bewildered, as she climbed into the driver’s seat and hurriedly rolled down the windows against the sweltering oven inside. Ryan folded up his knees next to her, tossed his hard hat in the back and grinned. “McCullough, what are you up to?”

“Infiltrating the enemy lines.”

“Fine. Where’s the war?”

“Don’t get nervous. I was swarmed the minute I walked in the back door. I never asked for all the attention.”

“Most people use the front door.”

“And face all that stuff in the window?”

Greer chuckled. “You mean underpants?”

He shoved down his visor against the relentless late afternoon sun. “Looked like a pretty decent group of people you work with.”

“You’d figured them for flakes. Because of the lingerie,” Greer said wryly.

“I hadn’t figured them for anything at all. Don’t jump to conclusions, sassy.” He paused. “I must have met at least five of your colleagues.” And there was no need to mention that he’d engineered all of those meetings. “There’s no question they’re fond of you.”

“And I love them back,” Greer said mildly.

“The first one I ran into was a man named Ray. The one you mentioned you’d be going to that trade show with.”

“Hmm.” Traffic was thick, less because of rush hour, since Greenville really didn’t have that much of a rush hour, than because of a muggy day when drivers were crabby.

“You trust him, Greer?”

“Ray?” She chuckled, darting around a poky Chevy. “No woman in her right mind would trust Ray.” She flashed Ryan a glance. “I can land a mean right hook, if that’s what you were thinking. And you work in an office yourself, so don’t tell me there isn’t a woman around who makes the men occasionally nervous. It comes with the business. You can’t like everyone you work with, and some people are more aggressive than others.”

“Yes.” He wanted to pursue it, but didn’t. Greer’s voice held a defensive pride. I can handle my own problems. I always have. Ryan watched her steadily maneuver in and around the other cars. “Are you going to feed me tonight?” he asked casually.

“No.” But she was. She had known the minute she saw him that she was doomed again. It wasn’t wise, getting involved with McCullough; she had been foolish to sleep with him, and the best thing she could possibly do now was tactfully ease herself out of any further intimate contact. Besides that, she was hot, tired and irritable; she had to call her mother…and blood was dancing up and down her veins just from being this close to Ryan again.

“Greer? It’s a red light.”

Obviously. She turned to him quizzically as she stopped the car, unsure why he was stating the obvious. His face loomed closer, much closer. So swiftly, so softly, his lips touched hers. And again. And then sank in the way a pillow sank in, a soft crash of weight, leaving the molded indentation of his mouth afterward. She was staring at him, dark eyes bemused, confused and warm with longing, when the car behind her honked.

She jammed her foot on the accelerator. The car stalled. Ryan chuckled.

“Listen,” she began abruptly as she started the engine and drove through the intersection.

“I’m listening.”

But Greer didn’t have anything to say. Ryan sneezed again, and she frowned.

“Are you catching something?”

“I never catch anything.”

“What’s wrong with your car?”

“Nothing. Just needed an oil change. And I used the excuse to get dropped off where you’d be stuck taking me home.”

“Didn’t it once occur to you to call? I might have been working late.”

“I considered that, rationally. Except that rational decisions haven’t always worked out too well lately.”

“Pardon?”

At her apartment, a tall, towheaded boy was ambling out of their building with a sack of newspapers slung over his shoulder. He brightened at the sight of Greer. “Hi.” His voice sounded cracked and wistful.

“Hi, Johnny,” she returned warmly. “Life treating you okay?”

The boy spread his fingers and wagged his hand back and forth, and Greer chuckled. “You’re not alone,” she assured him as she waved goodbye and fumbled for her apartment key.

Ryan glanced back, to see the boy staring at Greer-at least until he caught Ryan’s deadpan stare. Johnny turned in a hurry, flipped up the kickstand of his bike and sped off. Ryan climbed the stairs at a more sedate pace, noting that Greer’s newspaper had been neatly tucked behind her doorknob. His own had been haphazardly tossed near the mailbox.

“Known him long?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The kid.”

Greer looked up. “Sure. Johnny and his mom have lived across the street for as long as I’ve been here.”

“He’s got a crush on you.”

“Yes. Painful. On both sides. I wouldn’t hurt him for anything; he’s a sweetheart.” She glanced up when Ryan stole the key from her hand and motioned her toward his place. “I thought you wanted me to cook?”

What he wanted her to be was safe, and away from every damn male but him.

Prepared for a touchy exercise in tact, Ryan had found her boss more than willing to listen. Grant clearly appreciated Greer’s talents and was personally fond of her. Ryan had liked him instantly. The man had been disturbed that Greer hadn’t mentioned her crank calls to him, and not all that quick to discount any of his employees as possible culprits. He wasn’t in a hurry to malign any of his staff, but Grant admitted that several men would have done more than look at Greer if she’d ever given them the first encouragement. If Ryan was implying that those calls could mean a threat of a sexual nature…

Ryan had implied nothing. He’d said it straight out.

The police had assured him that nuisance callers rarely followed through on their telephone threats. Despite that, every instinct told him that this caller was a sexual threat to Greer.

And Ryan was disturbed, frustrated, fiercely protective and beginning to worry about even fourteen-year-old boys who looked at her.

He coaxed. “You haven’t seen my place since it was decorated in packing crates. We can eat there just as well.”

“I need to change my clothes, my mother calls on Mondays, and I-”

“You can call her from my apartment, or vice versa. I had an extension of your phone installed this morning.’”

“You what?”

Greer’s temper simmered helplessly while Ryan shoved some kind of gourmet TV fare in the oven, showed her around the apartment, nudged a dish of mixed raisins and nuts into her hand, and left her to muddle around while he disappeared to change his shirt.

By the time they finished dinner, she figured he had to have exhausted himself with inconsequential nonstop patter about engineering, and weather, and his mother’s love of gardenias, and health care in England. Only after dinner, he installed her on the couch. His furniture was new; she couldn’t help but approve of it. The couch was an off-white nubby affair, and she sank into it so deeply and so comfortably that she doubted she could get up.

Her stocking feet seemed to be propped on an ottoman, and she hadn’t seen her shoes in an hour. It was tough, dredging up irritation when she was so comfortable. The rest of his new furnishings were equally pleasing. He had placed them all wrong-men will be men-but they were tasteful and appealing. Brass lamps, an oak rolltop desk, shelves in pecan, a coffee table in that rare dark marble she’d seen only in books before… The only thing he hadn’t found a place for was a painting.

The oil was resting on the floor against the wall, a seascape at dawn; the creamy breakers were rolling in, and the waters beyond were a bright, endless blue. The blue of Ryan’s eyes.

“That’s been sitting there for days,” he said casually. “Wouldn’t have any ideas where I should hang it, would you?”

She had several ideas where Ryan was concerned, none of them mentionable. In a demonstration of totally out-of-character garrulousness, he’d mentioned lightly that he’d had a very busy day with the police and the phone company on her behalf. Now her phone-temporarily-rang in his apartment as well as her own. Since it was past time to get to the bottom of the caller mystery, he couldn’t imagine that she had any objections.

Four times she’d opened her mouth to read him the riot act. Four times she’d closed it.

Confusion kept her silent. She heard Ryan’s overt message, but she heard the unspoken one as well. She’d given him certain rights when she made love with him. Privacy and lovers didn’t go together, of course. Or they shouldn’t. When you loved someone, you bared your vulnerabilities, laid open your weaknesses. Like the things you were afraid of.

And where Greer could have criticized Ryan for interfering if he’d been a friend, she couldn’t bring herself to do so now. He’d gone over her head only because she’d given him certain rights. To love. And in loving, to protect.

Ryan, so very subtly, was bulldozing her with the fact that he considered her part of his life.

He was also busy wandering to and from the other rooms. He placed a hammer in her lap. Then two nails. Then some wire. By the time he plopped into the chair across from her, he managed somehow to look boyishly innocent.

Greer sighed. “Why do I have the feeling you’ve never tried to hang a picture before?”

“I have. But they always end up crooked.” He added hopefully, “Do you want a tape measure?”

“No. You can’t do these things by measuring. You have to do them by the look of the thing.”

She didn’t want to do it. Putting up pictures was another one of those things. Those intimate things. It didn’t involve naked skin, but it was still inescapably intimate. The picture had bothered her from the instant she’d walked in, not because it was on the floor, but because she wanted it in the right place. An idiotic feminine impulse. A desire to put her personal stamp on his place. An instinct that assumed a vested interest, and she didn’t dare give in to it.

“I thought about hanging it over the TV,” Ryan said absently.

“No!” The painting would look wretched there. Dammit. Feeling helpless, Greer stood up, straightening her blouse, and surveyed the picture and the room with a critical eye. “You can’t put it there. Hang it over the couch or on that wall so you can see it when you come in…” Her eye lingered on the far wall.

“Okay.” A step stool miraculously appeared where she was looking. “You want me to do it?” he asked innocently.

She wanted him to take a flying hike. “If you were going to do it, you wouldn’t have brought out the step stool,” she said dryly.

“You need someone to hold the nails,” he said helpfully.

She gave in. They bickered back and forth for the better part of an hour. Greer climbed up and down the step stool forty times to judge the height of the picture, endured no end of comments about her fussiness, paused for a phone conversation with her mother, hammered in the first nail crooked, made a hole in the plaster, suffered his laughter, and triumphantly accepted a glass of wine while they both surveyed the perfectly placed oil painting in shared total exhaustion.

The first sip of wine was sliding down her throat, cool and smooth, when Ryan abruptly murmured, “Stay.”

Her eyes darted up to his. The painting behind him abruptly disappeared. Something went wrong with her focus, because the only thing clear in her vision was Ryan. A man with shirtsleeves rolled up and an open collar, a man with brilliant blue eyes and ruffled hair. A man who wasn’t smiling. A man who couldn’t possibly have playfully patted her fanny moments before when she descended the step stool, because there wasn’t an ounce of play in his eyes now. Just wanting. Honest, bold, clear.

In her heart, she’d been expecting that invitation, but not at this particular instant, not after she’d just very foolishly immersed herself in playing wife for the past hour. Lots of clever reasons why she couldn’t stay popped into her head. The cat. Stockings to wash out. She’d forgotten to water the plant in her bedroom; she just now remembered it.

Gently, his arms draped over her shoulders, pulling her closer. She couldn’t speak; there was something tight and thick in her throat. Maybe the wine. Her cheek rested against his heart a moment later, his arms slowly smoothed around her and he simply held her, length to length, warmth to warmth. He felt so right she could have cried.

“You’re going to have to tell me what’s bothering you,” he said quietly. “Do you know I love you?”

She shook her head, eyes closed.

“I do, Greer. So much. I love the way you think, your eyes, your legs…” He forced her chin up with a smile. “Your sense of humor. I love being beaten by you at chess. I even love your damned cat. And I love…touching you.” Softly, he stroked her hair back from her forehead with a single finger. “I love doing that, too. Making an absolute mess out of your hair, knowing you don’t give a damn. Knowing you care more for the feel of my hands on you than about how you look. Are you going to try to tell me you don’t like it when I touch you?”

“No,” she said quietly, honestly. Her stricken eyes met his. “You know I do.”

“Greer.” His finger stayed gently tucked under her chin, his voice grave, gentle. “Has someone hurt you in bed?”

All his subtlety had disappeared, remarkably fast. She should have known. “No, nothing like that.” She flushed. The knot in her throat refused to budge. Her palms suddenly felt icy, and she was trembling. “I think…” she said hesitantly. “Ryan, I think you want something from me that just…isn’t there.”

The smallest frown furrowed his brow. “You’ll have to explain that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how,” she said helplessly.

“Honey…”

She ducked away from his touch, wrapping her arms around her chest, slowly pacing away from him, and then looking frenetically around the room for her shoes. They weren’t in sight. The door, at least, was. Until he slowly, quietly, moved in front of it.

“Look,” she said abruptly and took a huge breath, facing him. “Ryan, I’ve just never been very good at…sexual relationships.” She worked frantically to keep her tone light, casual. “Some women are the black-nightgown type, you know? Not me. Caring, loving, listening, showing respect-those are terribly important things to me in a relationship. The…other…has never really mattered to me.” She gulped. “I just feel that…that perhaps it would be wiser for us to call it off, not try to go any further. I don’t want to disappoint you, and I don’t want to be hurt.”

“Greer-”

“This is a wonderfully liberated decade. There are lots of women out there who are much more…sexual than I am. It’s not a question of willingness, or even love.” She tried for a smile. “Ryan, I go to bed in a T-shirt with a picture of Garfield on it. Does that tell you anything?”

“Greer-”

“I’ll get my shoes another time.”

Before the tears could blind her, she whisked past him and out the door, fumbled in the flowerpot for her key and whipped inside her apartment. She locked the door and leaned against it, her heart pounding, her eyes moist, her hands shaky.

She was terrified he would come after her, but he didn’t. After several long minutes of just standing there with her head thrown back against the door, she bit her lip and moved through the dark apartment to turn on a light.

The telephone jangling next to her ear made her jump. She grabbed it, for once with no fear of her crank caller, her only purpose in stopping the mind-splitting noise-or for that moment it seemed mind-splitting.

Her caller didn’t wait for her to say hello.

“I love Garfield,” said the low voice, “and the rest, sweetheart, is bull.”

He hung up.