Pink Satin

mind.

She hadn’t been able to get her new neighbor out of her mind, either. She’d woken up thinking about Ryan, and at most inconvenient times all morning she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head.

His kiss bothered her. The men who knew her would never have misunderstood a simple gesture of affection; he obviously thought she’d invited that kiss with her own behavior. Because they were going to be neighbors, she obviously had to find some way to correct a misleading impression if she’d given one.

Glancing at her watch, Greer turned around and ambled back toward work, suddenly feeling restless, unsettled. Something about her new neighbor seemed to bring on a bad case of spring fever.

She’d known and worked with a lot of men in the past five years. As a girl, she’d hid her figure in oversized clothes, but that nonsense was all past. These days she had no reason to hide, and dressed to reflect the woman she was. Gentle colors and subtle styles suited her; sexy fashions didn’t. She happened to be a naturally affectionate, caring woman, but not the type to lure out the sexual predator in a man.

Ryan-she couldn’t fathom why-felt like danger.

Greer was too sensible to let a dangerous case of spring fever get her down.

***

“Off the counter if you value your life,” Greer warned Truce. For once, the feline seemed to realize she meant business. He immediately leaped down and paced in wounded silence toward the living room.

Blowing a wisp of hair from her eyes, Greer turned the steaming bread out of the loaf pan and set it on a plate. Next to it was a luscious chocolate cake covered with two inches of seven-minute frosting. Licking her fingers, Greer stood back to survey her masterpieces with a critical eye.

They passed. They definitely passed. The loaf was tall and golden brown, and smelled…irresistible. And the cake-if she said so herself-would tempt the most determined weight watcher. Satisfied, Greer glanced at the clock, noted it was just after nine o’clock, and realized absently that her crank caller had actually left her alone for an entire evening. It seemed a good omen. Resolutely, she balanced the cake plate in one hand and the bread in the other.

Truce didn’t make the juggling act any easier by trying to wind around her legs at the door. “I’ll be right back. Promise,” Greer told him.

Turning the knob was a precarious business, but she managed, and padded barefoot across the hall. Using her elbow as a knocker, she thumped on her new neighbor’s door and waited.

No answer. Earlier Greer had heard various thumps and rattles through their shared apartment wall; she was certain Ryan was home. Chewing her lip indecisively, she tried her elbow on the bell and threatened the bread with a dire future if it toppled.

“Just open it,” Ryan’s voice finally yelled impatiently from within.

“I can’t.”

“You’ll have to.”

Hmm. Pasting an innocuously cheerful smile on her face, Greer managed to turn the knob with her wrist and push it open. “Ryan?”

Boxes and packing crates greeted her. Of course he’d only moved in a few days before, but Greer still couldn’t help smiling. He had obviously unpacked assorted tools and books as a first priority, whereas he hadn’t bothered with anything so mundane as putting up his bed-a queen-sized mattress was lying plop center on the living room carpet. Men.

“I heard that.”

“I never said a thing.” Greer swung around to face him-as well as she could with her arms full.

Like Greer, Ryan had tousled hair and bare feet; he was wearing jeans so old they were a soft gray-blue. But whereas Greer wore a scarf and a holey sweatshirt, Ryan was bare from the waist up.

Very bare. Strikingly bare. His chest was sun-browned, his shoulders sleek and muscular, and his jeans hung low over lean hips. Crisp, curling hair grew in an intimate line from his throat to his navel.

For an instant, Greer felt a strong, unfamiliar emotional rush, making her palms feel oddly slippery, her world tilt slightly off-balance. She tried to banish it. Certainly the rest of Ryan’s appearance was enough to bring back her natural humor. He was covered with paint. Speckles of white dotted his mustache, his chest hair and his jeans, and both hands glistened with them…partly because he was still holding a paintbrush.

Greer took a breath and then chuckled. “I can see why you couldn’t answer your door,” she said lightly. “Don’t tell me you don’t share Mrs. Wissler’s love for purple?”

“I’m glad you came over,” he said quietly. “If I’d known it was you-”

“Just bringing welcome-to-the-neighborhood offerings.” Greer rushed past him, her arms beginning to give out even before she reached his kitchen counter. Sensibly, she plopped down her peace offerings, while most unreasonably her pulse was throbbing a mile a minute. She’d heard his low, vibrant baritone, the obvious glad-to- see-you-here in his voice. “I didn’t come to stay, just to cart over the cake and bread,” she called back brightly. “I have this terrible problem when I come home from a tough day; I can’t sit still and inevitably find myself in the kitchen. Then, though, there’s this problem with calories-which I figured I could shift on to you, being the nearest unfortunate neighbor. No hurry returning the plates-”

You can stop jabbering any time, Greer. She hadn’t meant to stay, and she now found herself in a great hurry to leave once she’d deposited her gifts in his kitchen.

Wiping her palms on the seat of her jeans, she whirled for the doorway, and found Ryan’s dark shadow blocking it. Her best company smile immediately curved her lips. “Honest, I’m not staying,” she repeated.

“Did you get another phone call tonight?”

“Nope. He must be taking a vacation. Hardly ever misses a Wednesday.” It was still easy to talk to him. The only difference was the memory of a thirty-second kiss, and a feeling of sexual awareness Greer hadn’t had the day before.

She tried to shake it off, but it wasn’t that simple with Ryan standing there half-naked, a silent apartment behind him, and his soft, luminous eyes on hers. Had she really thought him ordinary-looking yesterday?

He wasn’t at all. He had the sleek, lean look of an animal in the wild, the body of a man who used his muscles to do far more than push paper around a desk. His maleness assaulted her in the suddenly intimate silence, and Greer felt totally irritated with herself. It was one thing to be unnerved by a man who threatened her, but another thing altogether to get uptight when the man had done nothing but be friendly…give or take one kiss. “I’ll be going…”

“Stay a minute and see what I’m doing.”

She shook her head, “Really, I still have a ton of things to do.”

“Just for a minute,” Ryan coaxed.

“You’re busy,” she informed him firmly.

“And if I have to face one more purple room alone, I think I’ll suffer apoplexy. Have you ever tried to outstare a dead purple wall?”

“Actually, no.” Greer took a breath, and another step closer to the door. Ryan didn’t move. She smiled engagingly at him. “Something told me you wouldn’t keep the purple walls. Honestly, though, I don’t want to get in your way.”

“You don’t have to pick up a paintbrush, I promise. Just spare me a few minutes of conversation.”

“Really, I…” She’d only come to set things straight, and in Frank Sinatra fashion, her way. If she made an act of pure uncomplicated friendship, he would have to react in kind. And since she was dressed like a bag lady, she figured he’d get the rest of the message.

Maybe he was getting the rest of the message, Greer thought dismally, but for some unknown reason she seemed to be headed toward his bedroom a few seconds later.

Chapter Four