“Not far. I found the tables in this perfectly marvelous secondhand store about fifteen blocks from here. I picked up the rest at that hardware store a couple of blocks over.”
Paul was staring at her as if she’d just declared an ability to lift a moving van by the tips of her fingers. “Are you nuts? Why didn’t you call for help?”
“For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t that far. I had to stop a lot, though,” she admitted.
“You and your idiotic streak of independence,” he muttered in disgust. “It was far enough to strain your back.”
“My back is fine.”
“It won’t be in the morning.”
“That will be my problem, won’t it?”
“Not if it means you’ll want to soak it in a hot tub,” he retorted, staring at her meaningfully. “Call next time, okay?”
“Okay,” she said very softly. The gruff concern combined with the all too fiery memories to make her miss a step. She stumbled and only her sharp reflexes kept her from tumbling backward down the stairs. The near-accident snapped her back to reality. She concentrated very hard on reaching the apartment without further embarrassment, then on placing the tables in precisely the right spot. When Paul had them exactly where she wanted them, she nodded in satisfaction, finally taking off her coat and tossing it across the sofa.
“I knew they would work.”
“They do, don’t they?” Paul said, sounding pleased. “What about the paint?”
Oblivious to her designer suit, Gabrielle knelt down and began pulling cans of paint stripper, pads of steel wool, protective gloves and a container of tung oil from the bag. “The man at the hardware store assured me this was everything we’d need.”
“We?”
She gave him her most winsome smile. “You’ll have to help. I don’t know anything about stripping furniture.”
“Neither do I.”
Stunned, she stared up at him. “Are you sure?”
A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Very.”
“But you put it on. You should know how to take it off.”
He shrugged. “It sounds logical when you say it, but the reality is that I have never stripped a piece of furniture in my life. I have occasionally used a blow torch to melt paint off certain things.”
She frowned. “I don’t think that would be good for the tables.”
“Probably not,” he agreed with a wry expression.
“Okay. That’s a little bit of a problem, but it’s certainly not insurmountable. How hard can this be? There are directions on the cans.”
“Gaby, I love your enthusiasm, but we can’t do this now. I have work to do downstairs. I want to get another apartment rented by the first of the month.”
“Can’t you leave it just for tonight?” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “You worked all day. What kind of boss do you have?”
She watched in astonishment as he burst into laughter. “The best, actually. I work for myself.”
“Well, I know you’re a carpenter, for heaven’s sake. And you paint. And who knows what all, but you do take jobs.”
“Of course,” he said. “That’s where I was all day. I’m in the middle of the renovations on a house in Brooklyn Heights.”
She absorbed that news. It didn’t conflict dramatically with anything she’d said. “Then this is a second job?”
“This?”
“Here. Managing this building and fixing it up.”
He shook his head and said with the sort of patience usually reserved for overly inquisitive children, “No, Gaby. I own this building.”
She stared at him blankly, trying to absorb the implications. “But…”
“But what?”
“I thought you were just a…” Now that she knew differently, she couldn’t bring herself to say exactly what she had thought.
“Don’t blame me, if you jumped to a conclusion.”
“You let me do it,” she accused, feeling a curious mixture of betrayal and pleased astonishment. “You let me go on thinking that you were just some sort of common laborer.”
The words slipped out before she had time to censor them. She recognized the mistake the instant she looked into Paul’s eyes. The blue sparked with fury.
“I beg your pardon,” he said with an iciness that froze her straight to the marrow in her bones. “There is nothing common about giving a good day’s work for a good day’s wages, no matter how lowly some people might consider the task.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said miserably.
“I can’t see any other interpretation. When you thought I was no more than a common laborer,” he said, apparently determined to humiliate her by throwing her own illconsidered words back in her face, “was that what kept you out of my bed? Does everything change now that you know I own property and have a bank account that doesn’t provide for frills, but keeps a roof over my head? Does it, Gaby?”
She stood up and met his furious glare evenly. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it must seem that I’m the worst sort of snob, but you’re deliberately misunderstanding.”
His gaze was unrelenting. “Am I really? What’s held you back then?”
“Because we’re not right for each other,” she said, knowing the argument sounded weak. There were literally hundreds of reasons two people might not be right for each other. She hadn’t given him one of them.
“I’m not good enough, isn’t that what you mean?”
“No,” she protested, but deep inside she knew that was exactly what she’d thought.
He ran his hand through his hair. “For God’s sake, Gaby, don’t lie about it. What’s the point?”
The point was that she didn’t want him to know how shallow she was capable of being. Unfortunately it seemed he already knew it. “You knew what I thought all along, didn’t you?” she said finally. When he didn’t answer, she raised her voice, needing to share the anger and the blame. “Didn’t you?”
He sighed wearily. “Yes. At least I suspected it.”
“Then why didn’t you correct the mistake then? Why did you let it come to this? Did you enjoy making a fool of me?”
“I’m not the one who did that. You did it
