Now she was the one hesitating. She had finally accepted the idea that her current budget wouldn’t allow for luxuries, but a tub in the kitchen? Still, she thought of the long list of depressing, unsatisfactory apartments she’d already seen. With all its flaws—and she wasn’t minimizing them—this was still far and away the best.
“Okay,” she said eventually, if reluctantly. “I can live with this.”
“There’s one other thing.”
She felt her heart sink. The way he’d said that told her it was even more ominous than having to take her bath in the middle of her kitchen. “What?” she said with a weary sigh.
“If you’re in a hurry to move in, you might have to deal with a roommate.”
Her eyebrows shot up. She gave him a hard stare. He looked decidedly uneasy again, which was unnerving in a man of his apparent self-confidence. “A roommate? You mean it’s already rented?” She felt oddly disappointed.
“Not exactly.”
“Well, it’s either rented or it’s not.”
“Actually it’s just temporarily occupied.”
“Does this have anything to do with the sleeping bag I saw rolled up in one of the bedroom closets?”
He nodded. “It’s mine.”
That was definitely a problem. “When will you be moving out?”
“In a couple of months, as soon as I can get the apartments downstairs finished, but it’s okay. We could share the place until then. It has two bedrooms and I’d promise to stay in mine.”
He crossed his heart dramatically, then treated her to that wide, high-voltage smile. Obviously he meant it to be friendly and reassuring. He had no idea that it set her pulse to racing in a way that normally indicated such crises as imminent stock market crashes or a dramatic fall in the value of the dollar. If there had been a chair in the room, she would have collapsed into it. She refused to sit in the tub.
“This isn’t such a good idea,” she said. It was an eloquent understatement. It was a horrible, impossible, not-to-be-considered-for-an-instant idea. “I’ll have to keep looking.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Someplace.”
“Can you stay where you are?”
“Not after Saturday.”
“Is there a friend you can move in with?”
She thought of several who’d offered, all of them part of the fast-paced, well-heeled world she was leaving behind. “No.”
“Can you afford a hotel?”
For the first time she heard a note of compassion in his voice. She sighed. “No.”
“Then think about my offer. Come see the garden before you decide,” he encouraged, holding out his hand. Gabrielle ignored it and he jammed it into his pocket. The snub didn’t faze his upbeat mood as he enthused, “It’s a little ragged now, but in the spring with tulips and crocuses and forsythia in bloom, it’ll be magnificent. At least that’s what my father says and he’s got a green thumb that’s known all over Long Island.”
Gabrielle felt a ridiculous twinge of doubt. She was a sucker for a garden. Always had been. The Clayton house in South Carolina had been surrounded by azaleas and roses with an extravagantly colorful and overgrown English country garden in back that had been her personal domain.
“I’ll take a look,” she said finally. “But I don’t think it will change my mind. I’ve never had a roommate, not even in college.”
Left unspoken was the fact that she’d never lived with a man under any circumstances. Where she came from it still wasn’t considered proper, especially for the daughter of a highly recognizable politician. Goodness knows, her relationship with her former fiancé had been proper. Which, she admitted ruefully, was probably part of the problem. With Townsend Lane she hadn’t even been tempted to commit a casual indiscretion, much less have a sizzling affair.
She followed her prospective roommate downstairs, through a narrow hallway and onto a tiny stoop. What she saw made her smile in a way that she hadn’t smiled in a very long time. A bit of sunshine stole into her heart.
The tiny, walled-in area had flower beds along the fringes. Now they were jammed with a haphazard display of chrysanthemums, marigolds and zinnias in yellows and oranges and reds. A wrought-iron table and two chairs fit tidily into the middle. The whole garden was shaded by a huge maple tree next door, its leaves already turning to the fiery shades of autumn. It was charming, utterly and irresistibly charming.
“What’s the rent?” she asked finally. Perhaps if she concentrated on the business aspects of the transaction, she wouldn’t be quite so vibrantly aware of the fact that she was committing herself to living with a man she’d met less than an hour earlier. It would be a practical decision under the circumstances, a way to stretch her remaining savings. She waited for his response to see just how far she could make those last dollars go.
“We can work it out.”
“Will I have to sign a lease?”
“What for?” he asked. “You’ve already told me you have every intention of breaking it.”
It was an unexpected plus. There would be no arguments when the time came for her to move back out.
“And we’re strictly roommates? You have your own room. I have mine. We share the kitchen. Right?” An image of the tub popped into mind. “We have a schedule for the kitchen,” she amended.
Apparently the same provocative image lurked in his mind, too, because he grinned. “If you say so.”
She took another look around the garden, then held out her hand. “Then I guess we understand each other Mr.…?”
He enfolded her hand in his much larger one and held it just long enough for the calluses and warmth to register against the chilled softness of her own flesh.
“Reed,” he said in a slow, deliberately provocative way meant to emblazon the name on her memory. “Paul Reed.”
She swallowed hard. “And I’m Gabrielle Clayton.” It came out sounding disgustingly breathless.
“Gabrielle, huh? Quite a mouthful for such a little bit of a thing. Why don’t I call you Gaby?”
She felt her control slipping away and inserted the haughty edge back into her voice. “Gabrielle will do just fine.
