Pink Satin

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.

“A man named Michael,” he said briskly. “I told him you had your hands full of paint and you’d call him back when you could.”

Greer took a huge breath. “Thanks. For a minute, I was afraid it was my favorite crank call-”

“So who’s Michael?” Ryan interrupted conversationally. “Another potential heavy breather?”

Expecting him to pick up his roller again, Greer was startled when he blocked her from behind. He stole her paintbrush from one hand and a small rag from the other. For one very small moment, the backs of her thighs were cradled against the fronts of his, and Greer stood immobile as a statue. “No. Just someone I occasionally go out wi-what on earth are you doing?”

“Break time,” Ryan announced, moving away from her.

“But we could have the whole room finished in just a few minutes…” Her voice trailed off. He’d already disappeared into the hall.

“I brought Truce with me,” Ryan called over his shoulder, “so he wouldn’t start howling if you stayed a few more minutes.”

“Oh. Well, that was nice of you, but…” Greer let her voice trail off again, so he wouldn’t hear the hint of doubt. Not that saving the cat wasn’t kind, but somehow the man kept making it difficult for her to leave.

Truce sat on the kitchen counter watching both of them wash the paint from their hands, occasionally flicking his tail in disdain when water threatened to splash his way. “We’d be better off in the shower,” Ryan said.

Greer’s head jerked up. Was it only in her head that he’d just added “together”? “Yes. So I’ll just go next door, and-”

“But we’ll make do.” He tilted her chin before she’d realized he was going to, and took a small damp cloth to a white splotch on her nose and another on her cheek. She lowered her eyes the instant he touched her, and kept them lowered, her soft, dark lashes shadowing her cheeks like tufts of velvet.

Since she obviously had fifty million men in her life, Ryan couldn’t figure out why she was skittish with him. Particularly since her cheeks just faintly warmed with color when he touched her. She wasn’t indifferent.

“Let’s have a glass of wine before we call it a night,” he suggested.

Greer dried her hands, debating. Go home, she told herself. Her heart was thundering again, but that was just plain silly. He hadn’t made a pass or implied one; they’d shared a neighborly couple of hours and both of them looked like derelicts. Enough of this overreacting to him. So his touch had been infinitely gentle on her cheek. What had she expected him to do? Attack her face with a scouring pad?

She accepted a full wineglass from him, and then he poured his own. Unfortunately, there was no place to sit, between packing crates and a distinct lack of furniture. Ryan solved that by setting a candle in the middle of the hall carpet, and Greer chuckled, flopping down cross-legged next to him.

“To good neighbors.” Ryan raised his glass.

She clinked crystal to crystal. “Absolutely.” The barren hall had thick carpet and a ceiling light fixture. That was it. After the first two sips Ryan leaned back against the wall and stretched out his legs. Greer leaned against the opposite wall with an equally weary sigh.

“An hour of physical work and I probably won’t be able to move tomorrow. I think I’m getting old,” she complained ruefully.

Ryan peered at her critically. “I see three freckles but no wrinkles.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Good Lord. That old?”

She couldn’t help but stretch out one bare foot to kick him. Only Ryan grabbed her ankle, and before she could pull away he ran his forefinger up and down the sole of her foot. She jerked back with a startled giggle. “Hey,” she objected.

“Hey nothing. You’re ticklish, all right.”

She took a sip of wine, studying him warily over the rim of her glass. “A little,” she admitted.

“You said you weren’t.”

“Fib.” Greer hesitated. “I learned to fib a long time ago around men I don’t know very well,” she said casually. “Actually, that’s partly why I came over here tonight.”

“To admit you fibbed about being ticklish?” he said gravely.

Greer smiled. “No. Because I…” Her finger slowly traced the rim of the wineglass. Facing the goblins was always the best way. The kiss was still bothering her, and so was her emotional reaction to him. “Friendships are hard to come by. Know that?” she said abruptly.

“Are they?”

“Friendships with members of the opposite sex. Relationships are easy to fall into, friendships less so.” Greer paused again. “I value friendships a great deal,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t help but get the message. Ryan swallowed the last of his wine and set down the glass, his eyes enigmatically dark in the shadowed hall. “You have a man in your life you’re serious about?”

“No. I just don’t…rush into any kind of involvement. Ever.”

“Still feeling burned from your ex-husband?”

“It’s not that.” At all, Greer thought fleetingly. She would never again be so naive as to fall for a man who wanted a mother. Over the past year, though, she’d been increasingly aware of the itsy-bitsy paradox she’d made of her life. On the one hand, she’d tried a relationship in which she was the main caretaker, and it had failed miserably. On the other hand, she never allowed men close unless she exerted exactly those same controls. The old resentment over being treated like prey and used like a sex object refused to disappear. Yet only occasionally, she felt this restless loneliness…a foolish thing. She had plenty of male friends. “How on earth did we get talking about this?” she asked abruptly. “Of all the silly subjects…”

Ryan leaned over to refill her glass before she could get up. “One more,” he coaxed.

“Well…”

She was smiling sleepily by the time he poured the third glass. She was smiling like a woman who badly needed a pillow and a soft mattress…and a man to cuddle against. Ryan mentally groaned. The lady was beginning to drive him bananas.

She hadn’t told him so, but he had the definite impression she was wary of physical relationships and he couldn’t fathom it-unless her ex-husband had been an insensitive jerk in bed. The vibrations didn’t feel that way to him, though. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a woman who’d been hurt sexually; he saw a woman who hadn’t been sexually awakened at all.

He suspected that was sheer male wishful thinking on his part. He couldn’t get one thought out of his head: he wished he’d been her first lover. Her only lover. He’d even been jealous of the wall, the way she’d stroked the paint on it. Every damn movement she made was sensual, graceful. The way she pushed back her hair, the way she curled her bare toes; she had small hands that waved expressively when she was talking.

The old sweatshirt and baggy jeans were supposed to conceal the most alluring figure he’d ever laid eyes on. They failed. Her breasts were firm and full, her long legs sleek and feminine, her hips delectably curved, her tummy flat. And no, dammit, it really wasn’t just her looks that were driving him nuts. It was Greer. The inside-lady Greer. The sensual woman who was hiding for some unknown reason behind bread-baking sprees.

And from the number of men calling her, she could probably open a successful bakery.

“Ryan.”

She was suddenly wearing an exasperated frown. He’d been expecting it, and smiled to himself at the groggy look in her eyes.

“I hate to have to confess this, but I’m not absolutely sure I can get up. Do you know how very rarely I drink three glasses of wine in a row?” Greer asked.

“But then, home’s right next door,” Ryan observed. “And thanks to the wine, you’re going to sleep terrifically tonight.” He stood up and offered his hands to her.

She took them and let him pull her up. The wine hadn’t made her dizzy, just sleepy. Her eyelids were having a dreadful problem staying open. “We really should finish painting your room,” she mentioned idly.

“Tomorrow.”

“The cat-”

“I’ll get him, Greer.”

“This is embarrassing.” Her feet just didn’t want to get into synchrony, and one hip bumped Ryan’s.

“What’s embarrassing? You’re not trying to impress a bunch of high-class company. We’re neighbors.”

Greer obediently slumped her head against his shoulder as he steered her toward the door. “That’s right.” She yawned. “Just neighbors.”

She sounded ridiculously happy at the thought. Thoroughly irritated, Ryan paused at her door and had a short internal debate with his conscience. His conscience lost. He didn’t really intend to take advantage of her, anyway, but they had to clear up this little difference of opinion on neighbors and…neighbors.

“Thank you,” she murmured when he pushed open the door for her. “I think I could sleep for a year.”

“Greer?”

“Hmm?” she smiled sleepily up at him.

“I owe you a thank-you for helping.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes,” he insisted. “And since you offered me a neighborly hug last night as a thank-you, I know you won’t mind if I offer you a simple neighborly kiss-” He waited for an imperceptible second. Long enough to appease his grumbling conscience.

Greer’s eyes flew wide open, but a second wasn’t enough time to gather her scattered wits. Long arms slid under hers, drawing her close to a warm, bare chest with dried paint speckles on it. For some reason, she was staring at those paint speckles when he tilted up her chin.

A warm mouth molded itself over her lips. A light was suddenly too bright somewhere. Greer’s eyes closed. Her head tilted helplessly back. His lips wooed hers gently, a tease of lightness and then pressure, a trace of wine tasted between them that could have been hers…or his.

Her hands rose and then seemed to hover in midair until his claimed them and gave them a home on his shoulders. It was a mistake, touching his skin. A who-cares kind of mistake. He had wonderful skin, warm and resilient, smooth on his shoulders, muscled on his arms.

She felt as though she’d stepped into a different world. She’d only stepped into the man, moved closer…or he had. He wasn’t like John. He wasn’t anything like the dozens of men she’d kissed in the past few years, who offered kisses with a tentative smile, prepared for with cleared throats and organized settings and shy expectations. She’d freely returned those kinds of kisses, for all those men.

Not one of them had threatened her. Not one of them had given her a single reason to believe she couldn’t control the situation if she wanted to.

And not a damn one of them had known what he was doing, but she hadn’t realized that until now. Ryan took her mouth the way a storm hit on a summer day-languid sunshine one minute, lightning the next. Restlessly, Greer stirred, uncertain what to do with a suddenly cloud-fogged brain. The barometer of her pulse kept dropping, and then his tongue slipped between her parted teeth. Her skin heated up wherever he touched.

Hands slid up and down her back, soothing, gentle. One set of fingers of one hand stole into her hair, cupping her head. Another slid languorously down her spine to the curve of her hips. His touch said mine, as if he were identifying every vertebra that belonged to him, slowly, as if it were a secret. His secret.

He’d set a match to dry tinder. She couldn’t in a thousand years have explained her response. She felt protected in his arms as she’d never in her life felt protected. It wasn’t just a sexual sensation, she told herself. And knew darn well it was the sexiest sensation she’d ever felt in her life.

Ryan’s lips lingered and then gradually lifted. When she finally raised her eyes she found his staring down at her. Blue. A firelit blue. He wasn’t breathing well. “Just a simple thank-you between neighbors,” he said gruffly. “The same thing you offered me yesterday. Just…a natural expression of affection. Right, Greer?”

“I-”

“You need sleep. I’ll bring the cat.”

His arms were suddenly gone. She was just standing there, weak in the knees. Thirty seconds later, he dropped a cat in her arms. A purring cat.

That man, she thought dizzily, was…tricky.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Hmm. Your cold sounds much better,” Greer said from the depth of the white velvet chair in Marie’s office. The chair was in a safe corner, which was important during one of Marie’s tirades.

“You think I’m joking?” Marie’s office looked as if burglars had just left. Fabrics were strewn over the floor. Papers lay where they had been tossed. And the diminutive blonde was pacing, bunching papers in her hands, and pelting them into the air, her French accent thickening with her fury. “I will leave him and get a divorce and join another firm. That’s what I will do. He thinks my design is not good enough for his catalog cover?” Marie whirled and shook her finger at Greer. “You thought I would blame you, didn’t you?”

“Your negligee was beautiful, Marie-but I was the one who didn’t feel it belonged on the cover. Grant really had nothing to do wi-”

“I don’t blame you. I blame him. And killing is too good for him. Divorce is too good for him. I know exactly what he deserves.” Marie collapsed in the chair behind her desk, her golden eyes fiery with rage as she glared at Greer. “You look at my husband and you see a small, very proper man, who doesn’t even swear so much. Hah. He is not so polite between the sheets. You don’t think of Grant as a tiger, do you?”

Greer crossed her legs. “Ummm…” Not that the question hadn’t been raised before, but it was still difficult to answer tactfully.

“Well, he is. A tiger. Even two nights and he can’t stand going without. We’ll see,” Marie said fretfully. “We’ll see what a little abstinence does for him. We’ll see how long he lasts. He won’t dare ax one of my designs again. Wait a minute.” She bolted out of her chair and skimmed across the debris toward the door. “You. Wait here,” she called back to Greer.

Alone for at least a minute, Greer yawned. Marie had been ranting for the better part of an hour. For days after her first experience with one of Marie’s temper tantrums, Greer had been distraught, disturbed that Marie so freely sputtered private secrets to her, fearing that Marie and Grant were on the verge of a divorce.

Now she was used to it, and absently picked up Marie’s new teddy design from the floor where it had been jettisoned. It was simply white…only Marie had the talent to make simply white look wicked. And next to it lay a basic pair of pajamas…in a luscious coral silk, with coral satin piping on the hem and cuffs and a mandarin collar. Basic, yes. But utterly luxurious next to the skin.

When Marie didn’t instantly return, Greer automatically started to straighten up the office-at least until a whoosh of satin was plopped over her head. Gingerly, she pushed back enough of the fabric to see out.

Marie was smiling. “For you,” she said magnanimously. “You think I want that anywhere around here? Take it home and keep it out of my sight. It will fit you to absolute perfection. You know I can look at any woman and know her size. Your figure was made for it.”

“Mmm,” Greer murmured and divested herself of the pink satin and cream lace. For a moment, she stared at the negligee that had caused so much trouble, thinking vaguely that the lovely thing had been created to cause trouble. Of one kind or another. “Marie, you know I’m not the type to wear this sort of thing.”

Marie muttered something in French, which Grant had one time translated loosely as “horsefeathers.”

“Regardless, I don’t want you to give this to me, Marie. The design is wonderful, and if we could use a less expensive fabric-”

“I will never use the design again. Never. Oh, that man.” Marie, huffing, flopped back in her chair, five feet two inches of steam and energy.

“Grant loved the design,” Greer mentioned.

“He does not appreciate me. He has never appreciated me. I sent all the way to Bordeaux for that lace…”

“Which you knew ahead of time would make the negligee impossibly expensive.”

“And I told Barney I wanted satin. Not this-” She picked up the white camisole that Greer had placed on the desk and pushed it to the floor again. “Not like satin. Not wash-and-wear. I am so tired of wash-and-wear fabrics I could scream. I hate fake. Real satin must be treated like a baby; it requires a lot of trouble, a lot of time, but then! Then, when you see what it does next to a woman’s skin…”

“But that also brought up the price,” Greer reminded her gently.

Marie wasn’t paying attention. “I wanted to create something it would take courage to wear. A little daring. Real élan.”

“Would you wear it yourself?” Greer questioned.

Marie glanced at Greer in surprise. “Of course I would not wear it myself. I would look flat like a wall if I put that on. It would trail on the floor after me as if I were a little girl playing dress-up. You think I am stupid? You think I’ve kept Grant in my life by being stupid? He knows what he’s got when the lights are out, but when they’re still on, my darling, he can’t be sure. A little subtle padding, a few carefully sewn tucks, a flounce here and a bow there to distract him from what I don’t have.”

“That’s exactly why your designs are so brilliant, Marie,” Greer said soothingly, tactfully not mentioning that one didn’t divorce a man for whom one was willing to resort to such deviousness. “You have a gift for hiding a woman’s worst points and accenting her best. Exactly why we’ve been so successful. Grant was just telling Barney that yesterday.”

“Grant,” Marie scoffed. “My husband knows nothing. Nothing.” She hesitated. “He said that, though?”

“He said that.”

“I am not forgiving him for that negligee not being on the cover.”

“Of course you aren’t.” Greer unconsciously fingered the pink satin negligee before carefully placing it on the chair and moving toward the door. “He was upstairs with the girls yesterday. There was something wrong with one of the sewing machines; Rachel said it was usable, but Grant told her to forget it-that you’d find one stitch out of place. He told her you were a perfectionist…and that if she didn’t feel the same way, the door was available to her.”

“I am a perfectionist,” Marie said proudly.

“Of course you are.”

“That Rachel…she can be careless if I’m not looking right over her shoulder every minute.”

“I think that’s why Grant made a special trip up here while you were out with that cold.”

“Hmm.” Marie’s eyes narrowed as Greer took another step backward. “Take the negligee, take it, take it. Stop fussing. You know I meant for you to have it.”

“Marie-”

“Take that thing. Immediately.” Marie waved at the negligee, and then briskly stood, picked up the garment and pushed it into Greer’s arms again. As an afterthought, she reached up to press a kiss on both Greer’s cheeks in the French way. “You are a good friend. I want you to have it, and wear it for a very special man, yes? It suits you exactly. I knew the minute I thought of the design.” She added, “And when I divorce Grant, I will start my own business and you will come with me. We will make our own firm. All women. No men. Not one.”

Later, Greer was working in her office on ad copy, the negligee folded carefully and out of sight, when Grant paused in her doorway, nervously tightening his tie.

“Safe,” she said shortly.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Twenty minutes after that, Marie and Grant passed her office on the way out. Greer suppressed a grin. It was only three in the afternoon, yet she knew the two were leaving for the day, and not for business. Their arguments inevitably ended the same way, and Greer had no doubts that they would both come in yawning the next day.

She returned to her work and barely lifted her head again until five. The ad copy was done, and sales figures took the rest of the afternoon. She’d started a study months before on colors related to sales in lingerie. Women assumed men considered black and red sexy, and yet the men who bought lingerie for their wives invariably picked out white. Pastels appeared to confuse men so that they had difficulty choosing, but women always had a favorite soft color they adopted for their own. Putting that all together and making recommendations to Grant was part of Greer’s job.

By the time she’d cleared her desk and grabbed her raincoat and purse, she’d almost convinced herself she’d forgotten the negligee. She hesitated and then pushed open the cardboard box, fingering the delicate satin and lace wistfully.

How many studies had she done on lingerie in the past five years? And all of them had led to the same conclusion: Women bought beautiful lingerie to make a statement for them: Hold me, warm me, I need to be touched. A woman had a secret wish to be pampered, a wish that she couldn’t say out loud and that she didn’t want to say out loud.

The negligee would have been all wrong for the cover of Love Lace, but not for reasons Greer could have explained to the men. The pink satin whispered, I am a strong sexual woman, and I don’t mind singing it from the rooftops. Wearing this negligee would require confidence. Confidence in one’s own sexuality, confidence and enough courage to flaunt one’s sexuality, to entice, to boldly seduce. Few women had that kind of confidence.

Or is it you, Greer? she thought absently. Maybe you were expressing your own insecurities when you rejected that design for the catalog cover. Maybe other women feel perfectly free to play the aggressor in a sexual relationship. This is hardly the nineteenth century…maybe the problem lies in you.

She closed the box, slid it under her arm and picked up her purse again. She would tuck the negligee away in a drawer at home. She took it anyway.

Ryan’s embrace had preyed on her mind all day. His neighborly embrace. The man disturbed her. Cream lace on pink satin disturbed her.

Going home to clean out the cat’s litter box was the best method she knew of clearing the mind of disturbing fancies.

Following that, she had a date with Daniel. Come to think of it, Ryan had been listening when she’d made that date, the first night she’d met her neighbor.

Greer banished Ryan from her mind. Thinking about Daniel was safer. Daniel was a sweetie. And Daniel wouldn’t arouse pink-satin daydreams in anyone’s mind.