Pink Satin

“I don’t want to offend you by being too personal…”

“You won’t,” she assured him.

“Well. Daniel and your other men friends are probably very nice. I’m sure they are, so don’t misunderstand. But if you don’t know them extremely well…” He let his voice trail off. Greer said nothing. Ryan cleared his throat. “You’re sure you know them extremely well?” he asked gravely.

“Well. Hardly their deepest secrets, if that’s what you mean,” Greer answered thoughtfully. “Even so, I’m a long way from a naive high school girl as far as judging character goes. Really, I can’t picture any of them making those calls.”

Fine. He still didn’t know whether she was sleeping with anyone on a regular basis, but Ryan had no right to pursue that subject.

They talked a little longer before he restlessly stood up, apologizing for taking up so much of her evening.

Greer just shook her head, trailing him to the door. “You were awfully kind, listening to me for an entire evening. As a little kid, I wasn’t afraid of the goblins in the night, but I have to admit that lately I’ve been nervous staying alone.”

The thought grew as they reached the door. It was because Ryan had been there that she hadn’t felt nervous. He was a very comforting, understanding, strong kind of man to have as a neighbor. He’d made her feel safer than she’d felt in months. Impulsively, she touched his hand as he pulled open the door. He turned, a question in his eyes.

She stood on tiptoe and swung her arms around his neck in a quick hug. Affection came as naturally to her as breathing, and there was no question that Ryan was a huggable man. She clung to the warmth of his body, more grateful than she could tell him for laying her ghosts to rest that evening. “Thank you again,” she said simply. “And I promise I won’t talk your ear off the next time I see you. I’m hardly in the habit of laying problems on a stranger’s doorstep, honest.”

She smiled, expecting to see his own easy smile in return.

He didn’t smile back. She wasn’t exactly sure what happened. One minute she was smiling affectionately up at him and her arms were slipping down from his shoulders. In the next, he’d captured her arms and his smooth, warm mouth descended on hers with a pressure that was starkly, boldly sexual. All heat, all fire, all such a startling surprise of warm-blooded male… She didn’t pull back; she was too shocked.

Not angry, not distressed. Just shocked. In seconds, he’d realize that she wasn’t responding. This was no teenage boy but a man. And Greer was no longer a frightened girl but a woman who never responded until time and gentleness and trust had won her over. Blunt sexuality no longer frightened her; it simply turned her off.

Only this time something strange was happening. Ryan’s tongue was playing on the seam of her lips, forcing them to part. That smooth, warm tongue slipped inside, touching hers. She could feel the strength of his arms holding her, the warmth of him, an alien rush of…foolish sensations. He wasn’t waiting for a response. He was expecting it, demanding it. And that something strange kept happening, because that sensual rush kept coming, and like a candle, she wanted to burn and melt.

Ryan’s lips rose from hers abruptly. Brusquely, with a trace of roughness, he changed from lover to brother. He tugged the lapels of her robe together and ran a quick hand through her hair as if he were suddenly determined to obliterate the sensual toss of her hair. The kiss might never have been, except that the look in his eyes was fierce, bright and stark with wanting. “You do need a bodyguard,” he said gruffly.

“I… Pardon?”

“Lock your door and keep it locked. Now, Greer.”

He was gone.

Greer was left bewildered and mildly irritated. Exactly what had happened? Surely he hadn’t changed from Jekyll to Hyde simply because she’d demonstrated a little basic human affection?

She glanced at the gold-framed mirror in the hall and saw a woman with tousled hair and no makeup, wearing a threadbare robe. Ryan didn’t strike her as a man who would ever be that desperate.

Men just didn’t jump her, not anymore. A long time ago, Greer had had enough of being wanted for her body, and she knew better than to send out any “available” signals until she knew a man well. She knew she hadn’t sent them out to Ryan, not because she didn’t immediately like him, but because she simply didn’t know him well enough.

For whatever reasons that kiss had happened, it left her unsettled the rest of the night.

Chapter Three

Wearing a pastel green suit and matching sandals, Greer was perched on the conference table, her legs swinging as she waited for the discussion to die down.

The conference room, like the offices at Love Lace, was thickly carpeted in pale pink. Flocked ivory wallpaper added an elegant touch; the paperweights were mother-of-pearl; and the ambience from the sewing room to the customer entrance was supposed to reflect luxurious serenity-an atmosphere conducive to the selling of lingerie.

Greer had known for a long time that the atmosphere was a scam. Marketing panties was as cutthroat as any other business, if not more so. Greer’s glasses were perched on her nose as she surveyed the three pairs of male eyes glaring stubbornly at her.

“You all appear to be deaf this morning,” she said cheerfully. “I agree that the nightgown is a unique design- one of the sexiest we’ve ever had. It just won’t do at all for the catalog cover.”

“The hell it won’t,” growled the tall blond in front. Barney tossed copies of designs on the table in front of him. “The others don’t hold a candle to it, Greer. And since you’re the only holdout-”

“And Marie’s vote would be on our side. You know that,” Tim interrupted.

Greer nodded patiently. The two potential choices for their fall catalog cover design were lying next to her. One was a pastel yellow lounging outfit, an infinitely soft design that draped loosely over the model’s figure. The look was sensual, comfortable and subtly alluring.

That was the one the men didn’t like. Their favorite was Marie’s coup de grace, a negligee in pearl-pink satin and cream lace. The model wearing it had a Penthouse figure-which the gown required. Satin, however luxurious, was not an easy fabric for most women to wear. It had a sheen and, like a mirror, reflected a woman’s worst faults. The gown flowed over a body that had to be perfect, from flat stomach to smooth hips and long legs. The cobweb-lace bodice cupped breasts that had to be sizable and tilted up just so. The low, heart-shaped neckline, the cutouts showing the sides of the breasts-only a certain kind of woman could wear the style, a sexually uninhibited woman who had the courage to flaunt her assets.

“If our customers were men, I would agree with you,” Greer continued patiently. “But they’re women. Women we want as return customers.”

“Women who are increasingly buying sexy lingerie, or we wouldn’t all be here now,” Ray drawled from the chair closest to her. “Sex is in this decade, sweetheart. We’re asking you to catch up and become part of the times…”

Greer tossed a wad of paper in his general direction. Grant, from the back of the room, didn’t so much as raise an eyelid. “You can sell the nightgown on that basis,” Greer said evenly. “And it will sell, even if the price is much higher than for our usual lingerie. You’re still missing the point. The nightgown doesn’t enhance the image we want Love Lace to project, and in the long run, we’d lose money because of it.”

The argument raged on. Greer’s eyes darted back and forth between the men in front of her, her tone calm and her stance never wavering. This morning the men were generally behaving like turkeys. Normally, she was pretty fond of them.

In front of her sat Barney. In his mid-thirties, Barney was tall and blond and divorced. His specialty was fabric and tech care; he was great at his job, but she’d had a few problems with his roving hands when she first started working at Love Lace. There’d been no passes, however, after he’d had the flu and she’d taken chicken soup to his home…and listened for six hours to his divorce woes.

Tim, on the other side of the table, was the firm’s accountant. He looked harmless enough with his fluff of gray