The door opened and she stood there in jeans and a well-worn N.U. sweatshirt. Although she’d put on lipstick, which surprised him, she didn’t have on any other makeup that he could tell. Between her freckles and the college sweatshirt, she looked more like twenty-two than thirty-two.
He had a sudden attack of lust. Her outfit emphasized the slender, wholesome look that made him salivate. Maybe, too, her outfit reminded him of his college days when sex had happened in the back seat of cars and on blankets in the grass. Now it took place in civilized spots such as bedrooms or hot tubs. He’d thought the thrill had disappeared because he was older and more jaded, but maybe it had more to do with who he’d been with.
“Come in.” She didn’t smile, which was probably a good thing.
“I’m sure this is a real pain in the patoot for you,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. The idea’s a good one. Here, let me take your jacket.”
“Thanks.” Shrugging out of it, he handed it to her. At the same moment, he registered the aroma of coffee and that scent of baking pie from the last time.
She turned and hung his jacket on the antlers of a fake moose head mounted on the wall.
“I like your moose.” He couldn’t think of a single woman he’d dated who would hang a grinning moose head on the wall as a coat tree. Jamie really fascinated him. He sure wished that he fascinated her, too.
“That’s Gerald.” A hint of a smile flitted over her mouth.
He looked away from that potential smile, which could have a lethal effect on his restraint. “What’s that I smell?”
“Coffee?”
“No, the other thing.”
“Must be the blend of cinnamon and cloves in the diffuser. Does it bother you?”
Even without the smile, it makes me want to strip you nak*d and make love until we’re cross-eyed, even if there is a moose watching. “No, I like it. I just remembered the last time I was here your apartment smelled the same way, and I thought you were baking something.”
“Oh, yeah—the bookcase-moving caper.” She swept a hand toward her small living room. “See? All filled up.”
He glanced at the bookcase that took up most of one wall and, sure enough, it was jammed with books—hardbacks and paperbacks, thick volumes and thin, some scuffed and ragged, others shiny and new.
He turned to her. “What now? You stop buying books?”
“Oh, no.” She remained serious. “I have a smaller bookcase in my bedroom, but it’s almost full, too. Unless I can figure out where to put another bookcase, I might have to move into a two bedroom.”
“You’d move just to have more space for books?”
She gave him a puzzled glance. “What else can I do?”
“Get rid of some.” From her look of horror he quickly figured out that wasn’t an option. “Okay, so I don’t get it. Obviously I’m not big on reading like you are.” Obviously I’m also forty points below you on the IQ scale.
“It’s not only the reading.” She seemed eager to have him understand. “It’s the way they look on the shelves, marching along side by side, all that delicious knowledge captured inside those colorful covers. And I love the way books smell. I don’t know if it’s the glue, the paper or the ink, or the combination, but I’ve been thinking that the aromatherapy folks should look into creating a book-lover’s blend.”
She had that glow going on in her eyes again, and her cheeks were flushed with enthusiasm. Her topic didn’t matter to him, and she could have been speaking in Portuguese for all he cared. When she got enthusiastic about something, he began to heat up. Maybe her smile wasn’t required for him to combust, after all.
“Coffee!” She snapped her fingers. “Here I am blabbing away and I haven’t even offered you a cup. Some hostess I am. Have a seat anywhere and I’ll be right back.”
Before he could say anything, she’d darted out of the room and through an archway on the left into the kitchen.
ONCE INSIDE THE KITCHEN, Jamie slapped her forehead in frustration. Had she just stood there and given him a minilecture on the appeal of books? Yes, she had. Her Royal Nerdiness had done exactly that. Wow, talk about putting the moves on a guy. Stand there and rave about the scent of book bindings, and he’ll be all over you.
As if Dev would ever have such an impulse under the best of conditions. No, that would be her projecting her lust on him. The minute he’d stepped into her apartment, her body had started to hum. That pheromone situation had gone straight through her, activating all her special places.
Apparently intense arousal made her go insane and babble about the spines of books. Who knew? At least Dev wouldn’t recognize her reaction for a passionate response. No normal woman would go into lecture mode when she really craved a permanent liplock.
And she’d had something positive going with the moose head, too. The moose head had surprised him and might have even made him think she had a wild-and-crazy side. But then she’d had to turn into Professor Bookworm. Gee, he must have been thrilled down to his toes.
Well, she’d probably killed the evening dead, but at least she had the cherry-bark coffee he loved so much, so she’d serve him that, just as soon as she found a tray. Dev came from the land of household help and serving trays. She couldn’t just march in there with two bare cups. She had a tray around somewhere. Yes, it was metal and had the Chicago skyline on it, but it was better than nothing.
She was determined to find it, even if it meant emptying out every damned cupboard. Of course, the longer she left him in there alone, the more time he had to dwell on her eggheaded behavior. She’d known tonight would be a disaster and, sure enough, the disaster was proceeding right on schedule.
CHAPTER THREE
DEV WANTED TO FOLLOW HER into the kitchen. He wanted to follow her everywhere, most especially into her bedroom. This was bad. She had no interest in him and he was fast becoming loony over her.
Wandering over to the bookcase, he listened to her bang and clatter around in the kitchen while he looked at the wall of knowledge. To think it was so much a part of Jamie that she’d pay more rent instead of giving up any of it. He tried to think of whether he had any books in his apartment.
He had magazines and newspapers, a whole collection of movies on DVD, but books…oh, yeah. Faith had given him that Tom Wolfe book, Bonfire of the Vanities. Dev had watched the video instead. No wonder Jamie wasn’t interested in him, an intellectual bottom-feeder.
The racket in the kitchen continued, and he wondered if she was stalling. It sounded as if she was building a set of steel shelves instead of making coffee.
He turned, looking for a place to sit. Against the wall opposite the bookcase was a love seat flanked by two overstuffed chairs, all of them covered in some beige slipcover thing that looked very ecofriendly. He picked out a chair and discovered it was very body-friendly, too. The chair seemed to give him a hug.
Shoving himself out of the chair, he started to pace. A chair that cozy made him think of how else it could be used. If a woman happened to be small, like Jamie, and athletic, like Jamie, then the possibilities were endless.
Damn, Jamie sounded as though she was doing metal sculpture in the next room. He’d never heard a person make so much noise brewing coffee. And if he didn’t stop staring at that comfy chair of hers, he’d be erecting his own personal sculpture.
He scanned the room, desperate for a distraction from thoughts of sex. There, that picture over the love seat might work if he could forget about the love seat and concentrate on the picture. Two little kids, a boy and a girl, skated on a pond. Jamie liked to skate. Faith had told him Jamie kept a pair of skates in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet at work. Sometimes on her lunch hour she’d go over to the McCormick Tribune rink right down the street.
He’d love to watch her skate, love to watch her lithe body glide across the ice. Maybe she wore a short little skating skirt. He licked dry lips and forced himself to concentrate on the kids in the picture instead of his mental image of Jamie flitting around the rink in a short skirt.
The little girl had red hair. The little boy had brown, like his used to be as a toddler. He caught himself wondering whether Jamie planned to have kids someday and turned away from the picture. As if it made any difference to him what her marriage and family plans were. He might have sexual fantasies about her, but he sure as hell wasn’t dreaming of white picket fences. Not this boy. He wasn’t ready for that.
Continuing his inventory of the room, he saw a little cranny beside the bookcase where she’d squeezed in a small computer table. The monitor was on, and a screen-saver graphic of time-lapse blooming flowers entertained him while he waited for Jamie to come in with the coffee. The flowers were about as neutral as he was going to get, so he focused on them.
“Here’s the coffee.” She finally came in holding two oversize pottery cups, one yellow and one blue. “I couldn’t find my tray. I know I had one, but I don’t use it much, make that never, so maybe in a weak moment I gave it to one of my brothers.” She handed him the blue cup. “This is how the other half lives. No trays.”
“Who needs trays?” But as he took the cup in both hands, he realized a tray would have provided a buffer and he wouldn’t have touched her when he accepted the drink.