Three
Look before you leap. Or carry a first aid kit.
—Lucas
Lucas had expected her to leave, but she was still standing there.
“I have work to do.” And he was desperate to get started. The characters were coming alive in his head, becoming people with flaws and qualities. He could hear dialogue and picture scenes. For the first time in far too long he couldn’t wait to sit down in front of his laptop. He wanted to escape into the fictional world that was waiting for him. It was like someone in chronic pain, contemplating a syringe full of morphine. He wanted to grab it and empty the barrel into his veins until the sweetness of oblivion numbed the agony that had been his constant companion for three years.
The only thing stopping him was the source of his inspiration who seemed stubbornly determined not to leave. He might have scared her, but apparently he hadn’t scared her enough to send her running for the door.
“Your grandmother gave me this job, so either I call her and explain, or I do the job she sent me here to do.”
If she called his grandmother, any hope of being left alone over the Christmas period would vanish. He’d be required to explain why he was in New York rather than Vermont and, most awkwardly of all, why he’d lied about it.
“Look around you.” He tried intimidation, his tone silky soft. “Do I look like a man who wants his apartment decorated for the holidays?”
“No, which is why your grandmother wanted me to do it. She doesn’t think you should be living like this. She’s worried about you. And frankly, having met you, so am I.”
“Why would you care how I’m living my life?”
“Everyone deserves a Christmas tree in their lives.”
“Only if you’re trying to punish them.”
“Punish? A Christmas tree is uplifting.”
“What is uplifting about a fake Christmas tree, which is essentially a petroleum-based product probably manufactured in a Chinese factory?”
“Fake? Who said anything about fake? I don’t do ‘fake,’ Mr. Blade. I don’t do fake Christmas trees, fake handbags, or fake orgasms.” Color streaked across her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that last one. It slipped out. But my point is nothing in my life is fake.” The words tumbled over each other and Lucas found himself struggling not to smile.
He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone so deliciously indiscreet.
“You’ve never faked an orgasm?”
“Could you forget I said that?”
He imagined her in bed, naked and uninhibited. Heat raced over his skin and his thoughts were explicit enough to make him uncomfortable. Since his wife’s death he’d had no shortage of offers, from sex to marriage, but had never once been tempted. It wasn’t just that he’d left his bad boy days in his past. It was more that he no longer had the taste for it. Every time he looked at a woman he saw the expression on Sallyanne’s face the last time he’d seen her alive.
But he was definitely attracted to Eva.
To take his mind off sex, he pondered on how someone of her build could murder a man twice her size.
“I’m a writer. Human behavior interests me.”
She interested him.
He told himself that his interest was professional, but part of him recognized that as a lie.
She let her hands drop. “We were talking about Christmas trees. Real Christmas trees, which smell and look beautiful.”
“And drop needles all over my floor.” He remembered the way she’d felt underneath him.
“If needles drop you clean them up.” She unbuttoned her coat. “It’s not hard.”
“I don’t have time. I have a book to finish and I need to be left in peace to do that. If you decorate my apartment, you’ll disturb me.” It wasn’t the noise that worried him, or the intrusion of having someone else in the apartment, it was her.
She made him feel something he didn’t want to feel.