“I noticed.” He smiled again, his dark eyes slightly heavy-lidded. Despite her refusal, he draped the coat over her.
She almost moaned in delight. It was just as she had imagined, so toasty warm she thought she might melt. She snuggled into the coat, pulling the fabric high around her face and unconsciously inhaling, drawing his scent into her lungs like a smoker taking the morning’s first drag.
“I had to do something to cover up that sweater,” he said by way of explanation, his tone amused.
“It’s cursed. I’m going to burn it when I get home.”
“Don’t bother. It’s what’s underneath that’s doing the damage.”
Oh, God. He felt it, too.
The realization was like a punch in the stomach. She froze, unable to look at him, afraid of what she would see in his eyes. This wasn’t just an aberration inspired by the red sweater. This wasn’t a strange moon cycle. She couldn’t say how she knew; it certainly couldn’t be experience telling her, because she had made it a point through the years to avoid letting messy relationships clutter her life. Richard was the third man in an hour to look at her with appreciation—well, the fourth, if she counted the senator, but his look had been more insulting than appreciative—but in Richard’s case, it was something more. Not even Kai’s knee-jerk attempt at casual seduction had been like this, but then Kai was a lightweight, and Richard . . . Richard was not.
Still, she would have been tempted, if he hadn’t been embroiled in a divorce; a divorce, moreover, from a woman very much involved in Sweeney’s career. No, be honest. She was tempted, beyond a doubt, and against every grain of common sense in her body. But being tempted didn’t mean she had to act on that temptation; a woman who could see ghosts and make traffic lights change when she approached sure didn’t need a man in her life to complicate things. She could handle the ghosts; she couldn’t handle a man, especially not Richard. Just why she thought he was more trouble than any other man was an issue she didn’t want to explore.
Still, the urge to look at him, watch him, study him, was almost overpowering. To keep her gaze away from those intense, knowing dark eyes, she looked down, and found herself staring at his hands. They were rather elegant hands, she thought in surprise, in a rough way. She had always thought of him as an expensively dressed dockworker, but she had never before noticed his hands, and now she wondered why. Their shape was beautiful, with the beauty of strength, like Michelangelo’s David, long-fingered and sinewy. She saw the roughness of calluses, a few scars, manicured nails. Senator McMillan had been a fool to pit his strength against this man’s.
She chuckled at the memory. “I’ll bet the senator won’t try to squeeze your hand again,” she said with relish.
Bold dark eyebrows slanted upward. “You saw that juvenile stunt?”
“Um. It was fun. His knuckles turned white, then yours did, and he broke out in a sweat. I almost cheered.”
He laughed. “You wear your civilization very lightly, don’t you? I never noticed before.”
“I wasn’t the one in the pissing contest,” she pointed out, a little irritated that he obviously thought she was a savage. She considered herself a very civilized person. She’d never squeezed anyone’s hand, because she was afraid of hurting her own hands. Maybe that wasn’t the same as not wanting to hurt someone else, but the outcome was the same, so surely she got points for that.
“No, you weren’t.” He was smiling again, very faintly Glancing up, he saw that they were almost at her apartment building. “The trip didn’t take very long,” he noted, and didn’t sound pleased.
She didn’t tell him why all the traffic lights had turned green or traffic mysteriously detoured out of their way
“Will you have dinner with me tonight?” He turned back to her, and somehow he was closer than he had been before, his shoulder touching hers, his left leg against her right one. She felt his body heat like a lodestone all down her right side, triggering an insane impulse to get closer and see just how warm he could get her. Plenty warm, she bet. On fire. Melting.
“Good God, no!”
He laughed. “Please, don’t spare my feelings.”
Sweeney blushed like a teenager. One day, maybe when she was ninety years old, she might learn the art of the polite lie. She had done well enough with the McMillans, but obviously that was her quota for about a year.
“I didn’t mean . . . It’s just that you’d be a big complication, demanding time and sex and things like that, and I have all I can handle right now.” Great. He was laughing again, and when she realized what she had just said, she wanted to bury her face in her hands. Instead she doggedly plowed on. “And then there’s Candra. She’s been good to me, promoting me when a lot of other gallery owners wouldn’t. Even though you’ve been separated for almost a year . . . Anyway, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just watched her with a completely unreadable expression on his face. “I’ll ask again,” he finally said.
She wasn’t sure how those three words could sound almost like a threat, but they did. Richard Worth wasn’t a man who was used to being turned down “You do that,” she said, as the Mercedes slid to a stop in front of her apartment building. “And I’ll turn you down again.” She removed his coat and gave it back to him, and reached for the door handle.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, staying her hand. “There’s no point in getting wet. I have an umbrella, and I’ll walk you to the door.”