“You might consider trimming these things,” he suggested by way of greeting. “I think one of them just bit me.”
Eve waved him inside. “They don’t have thorns. And I keep them that way to remind myself not to let my head swell. You know, with success. They remind me to stay humble.”
Her house wasn’t that big-a dining room and kitchen on the left of the hall, and a parlor and family room on the right, the latter of which had become her office over the past three years. The bathroom and two bedrooms were at the back, but weren’t visible from where he stood.
“I can’t imagine you having problems with that,” he said. “Nice place.”
“Thanks.” She waved him into the parlor. “The furniture is from my aunt and uncle’s attic, mostly. The coffee table was my mom’s. My grandmother in Florida died a year and a half ago, and I got some of her pieces, too, like that sideboard.”
“So you have pieces of your family with you.” His tone was abstract, as if his situation were completely the opposite. “And the piano?” He opened the lid and touched a key with one long finger.
Eve looked away. “My dad’s. He was a big fan of Pinetop Perkins and the old boogie-woogie piano players. My mom used to keep plants on top of it and he could really make them dance once he got going.”
Sure enough, ancient water rings were etched into the finish. Mitch pulled out the bench and sat. “Do you mind?”
“Not a bit. It’s probably out of tune, though.”
“Boogie, huh? I wonder if anyone remembers where that word came from.” He rolled out a walking bass with his left hand.
She laughed, a huff of amazement. “I thought you said you were a trumpet player.”
He began to pick out notes with the right hand. “I started on the piano when I was a kid. Mom was a music teacher. I haven’t done this in a while. I think I’ve lost my knack.”
“Here, shove over.” Eve sat down on the other half of the piano bench and glanced at his bass notes to see the key. The rhythms her dad had pounded out on this very spinet seemed to be embedded in it still-or maybe they were just in her memory. She found a melody she’d learned as a kid and began to embellish it.
Mitch’s bass was as steady as a rock, if you didn’t count the flourishes of syncopation that made her shoulders sway with the rhythm, and suggested skipped beats and notes of her own.
Eve had had years of piano lessons when she’d lived with Nana, who had believed firmly that her dad’s talent slept inside her somewhere, all evidence to the contrary. In about her fifth year, she’d got the hang of it and the piano became pleasure, not work. She’d never played in a band, though, or any kind of ensemble that would prepare her for the sheer organic sensuality of making music with another person.
Melody and bass, rhythm and counterpoint. Line building on line, notes forming chords forming song. Two people bringing their experience together to create something entirely new and different.
The way they might when they made love.
Eve lost her concentration and a straightforward diminished A fumbled into discord. Mitch’s rhythm faltered and stopped.
“Whoa,” she said, summoning a grin and sliding off the bench. “Lost it. I guess I need more practice.”
“Sounded pretty good to me.” He slid off the bench, too, and closed the lid carefully over the ivories. “But then, I imagine there isn’t much you don’t do well.”
Eve mumbled something appropriately self-deprecating and headed down the hall to get her handbag. It wasn’t fair. The relationship gods must hate her. Here she was in a career that depended on the whole world of relationships for its bread and butter. She’d met a gorgeous man who seemed to be as attracted to her as she was to him, and who had voluntarily suggested going to a mall without being threatened with blackmail first.
Why did he have to be the one man she had to hold at arm’s length? In the practical light of common day, she reflected from the safety of her bedroom, she’d been insane to behave the way she had last night. Nana would be so-not shocked, because Eve couldn’t imagine much shocking her-but disappointed. And she’d always hated disappointing Nana. That sad look, that biting of the lip that meant she could be giving the young Eve an earful but was holding it back so as not to hurt…oh, yeah. Very effective. She could have used a shot of Nana last night.
Eve glanced at her tank top and jeans in the mirror, and pulled a gauze tunic off its hanger and slipped it on overtop. There. Much better. Some comfortable sandals in matching green, a green wallet-on-a-string, and she was ready to go.
If only Mitch wasn’t such good company.
As they cruised toy stores, movie tie-in stores and educational stores in search of the perfect dinosaur for four-year-old Christopher, she kept things deliberately on a friendly business-lunch footing. But by the time they’d begun triangulating the mall’s second level for a renewed attack, she’d given up the pretense. How was a girl supposed to keep her distance when he insisted on cracking jokes about passersby or things in the windows? How was she supposed to put last night out of her head when every time she turned suddenly, she caught him watching her? Which wasn’t a problem-lots of people watched her. So far three women had come up and asked for her autograph, in fact.
This was the gaze of a man silently undressing a woman in his mind. Not just undressing, either. He was making love to her behind that innocent, bland gaze, she was sure of it.
Luckily they found the perfect dinosaur in a nature store, and she led the way out of the mall with a sense of relief. She needed to go home and back to reality, and forget he was even in Atlanta, wanting her.
Just the way she wanted him.
No, no. She couldn’t let her thoughts wander that way. It wasn’t good for her peace of mind-and it certainly wasn’t good for Just Between Us.
“It’s four o’clock.” Mitch shook his sleeve down over his watch. “I vote for lunch.”
Eve arranged her face in a regretful expression-which didn’t take much. “I can’t. I really need to get home and get ready to go to dinner. And I should look at that script one more time.”
“Creativity never came on an empty stomach.” He grinned, and her resolve wavered, then straightened up.
“Then where do all the starving artists come from?” she quipped. “I appreciate your helping me out, Mitch. I now know as much about toy dinosaurs as I’ll need to know for the rest of my life. It was good of you to take the time.”
“Come on.” His long stride kept pace with hers effortlessly as they headed back to his car. “My hotel’s across the parking lot. Let me treat you to lunch. Or at least a snack before your dinner. Remember, you agreed.”
“I agreed to breakfast. Maybe it’s just as well we’re out of time.”
He put a hand on her arm to slow her down. “What does that mean?”
“Let’s talk about it somewhere less public, okay?”
She could tell he was holding back what he wanted to say with an effort that lasted through the parking garage, down the street and all the way back to her house. But as soon as she got out and retrieved her package from the backseat, he closed his door with the sound of finality.
“This is less public, wouldn’t you say?”
She opened the front door and dropped the package and her green bag in the hall, then turned in the doorway to face him. Even hunched under the roses, he looked completely masculine and, if not comfortable, then at least in command of himself.
Words failed her. How could she tell him she didn’t want to see him socially when she’d only be lying to herself-and him?
“May I come in?”
“No. If I had any sense, I’d ask you to go back to your hotel and book an earlier flight home to New York.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”