How could she tell him what she herself really didn’t understand? Was it possible to explain that she felt a desire to be with him and an urge to run from him?
“Are you afraid of me?” His voice broke into her thoughts.
“No!”
“Well?”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to mix business with pleasure.”
“Then,” he seemed to agree, “let me assure you that you’ll have a very unpleasant afternoon!” He placed his cup down and smiled at her in a perfectly sickening and victorious manner.
“Be serious….”
“I am! So far, you haven’t given me any viable excuse for not spending a quiet afternoon together.”
“But I thought…”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought.” Kane reached for her hand across the table, stifling her protests. “I just want a chance to get to know you better. Is that such a crime?” His angled face was earnest and open. Any doubts she had conceived earlier were quickly cast aside with the touch of his hand on her palm and the peaceful serenity of his gaze.
“No…”
“Good! Then let’s go, shall we?”
She pulled her hand away from his and reached for her jacket. He pulled his legs from their bent position under the table, stood up and let his eyes roam over the apartment. His perusal was slow, steady and deliberate. Erin felt herself once again becoming more uncomfortable as the silent minutes passed.
“Do you like living here?” Kane finally asked, all of his attention drawn to the features of her face.
“Why do you ask?”
“I guess because this apartment house isn’t exactly what I expected.” He lifted his shoulders and shrugged into his jacket.
“Just what did you expect?” Erin was intrigued by the conversation. Perhaps if she could draw him out, he would explain his feelings about her and wash away those last traces of doubt that nagged at Erin’s mind. She could sense that there was something he wasn’t telling her. It was as if he was purposely being wary with her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he began in answer to her question. “But this place—it seems a little out of character,” he remarked, looking at the faded Persian rug and running his fingers over the antique craftsmanship of the lead-glass windows.
“Out of character?”
“You’re a career woman, right?” he asked, and Erin nodded her head in agreement, all the while wondering what he was leading up to and somehow not wanting to know. “This apartment—for that matter, the entire building—just doesn’t fit with my interpretation of today’s liberated woman…”
“Why not?”
“Truthfully,” he chuckled, “because it looks like the set for one of those black-and-white slice-of-life movies of the forties.”
Erin arched an inquisitive black eyebrow. “And you expected smoked glass, chrome fixtures and black vinyl upholstery?”
“Something like that.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she quipped, leaning against the door.
“You haven’t disappointed me—not at all.” His eyes found hers for an
instant, and then his gaze swept the loft. “I knew when I met you that there was a darker, more private side of you. A side that you prefer to keep hidden away. Am I right?” His hands came up to the door, pressing on the wood and creating an imprisoning barrier near her head.
Erin met his questioning gaze with defiance. He was too close to the truth, too close to her. She drew in a deep, trembling breath. “You’re right. I am a very private person, and I like it that way. What I don’t like is anyone coming into my home and attempting to psychoanalyze me!”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes revealed only arctic cold. His breath whispered across her face. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“I hope not,” she breathed, trying to still her racing heartbeat. Surely he could hear it—he was so near.