Nauman was enchanted. His artist's eyes moved from the fugitive, darting colors to their source, then widened as he really saw her: narrow feet bare on the tile floor, the boy-slim body made graceful by the clinging red robe, the tilt of her head that sent long dark hair swinging as she plugged in the percolator.
In an exuberance of delight at the picture she made, he turned her to him, lifted her chin with his strong fingers and placed an impromptu kiss on her startled lips.
He'd meant nothing more serious than his usual homage to unexpected beauty; but as she tried to pull away, something made him tighten his hold and kiss her again. She wrenched herself from his arms, gray eyes blazing with anger as she searched for the cutting insult.
"You- You must be at least sixty!"
"Which still makes me thirty years younger than you!" he retorted. The thought made him grin unrepentantly. "Never kissed an older woman before, but it's experience worth repeating."
She glared at him, speechless as he moved toward her purposefully, then fled from the sunlit kitchen, taking all the rainbows with her. A moment later and her bedroom door banged shut. Thoughtfully Nauman broke eggs into a bowl and began beating them with a fork.
She doesn't know she's a woman, he decided at last, and found that the thought both disturbed and intrigued him.
Sigrid leaned against her closed door and drew a deep steadying breath as the clink of metal upon glass reached her ears. Mind and reason warred with unfamiliar, muddled emotions as she stripped and headed for her bath. She turned the shower on full, and jets of water streamed down upon her body until the convulsive turmoil was sluiced away and her equanimity was almost restored. Then the bathroom door opened, and she heard Nauman's voice above the water.
"Your coffee, Lieutenant."
"Will you get the hell out of here?" she cried angrily.
He was gone when she turned off the water and peered around the curtain, but she snapped the door bolt anyhow before toweling herself dry.
The coffee that he'd left on the lavatory was more welcome than she wanted to admit, and she took a big swallow, then tackled her damp hair. A few minutes sufficed to plait it into a thick braid and secure it at the nape of her neck, and usually she didn't bother to wipe off the steam-fogged mirror. Today she polished it clear and examined herself closely to make sure every hair was pinned in place. She noticed that her cheeks were flushed an unaccustomed pink and splashed cold water on them until the color subsided.
Another prudent look from the doorway revealed that her bedroom was also empty, so Sigrid crossed the fern green carpet to her open closet. Normally she would have worn the next dark pantsuit in line, a dull gray with another white silk shirt like yesterday's; but nothing was normal this morning, and she flipped past it, finding nothing in her closet to fit her unsettled mood until she reached the far end of the rack where she kept what she called her Carolina wardrobe.
From time out of mind all Lattimore females (if one could believe her grandmother) had been captivating fillies who left a trail of broken hearts behind them on their single-minded trek to the altar. All had made brilliant matches to the most eligible bachelors of their seasons, and it was bad taste for Sigrid to remark on the ones that had ended in divorce. After all, what sort of marriage did she expect to make? Such an unfeminine career, police work. Interesting, no doubt, but didn't one have to guard against becoming coarsened? Thus, Grandmother Lattimore.
Over the years Sigrid had found it easier to wear clothes of Anne's choosing for her annual duty visit south than to listen to her Grandmother Lattimore's complaints that she really wasn't trying.
Most of the clothes were too bright or too fussy for Sigrid's taste, but she paused at one that wasn't completely objectionable: a brushed cotton suit of soft moss green and a cowl-necked silk shell in rich jewel tones of purples and blues. Even Grandmother Lattimore had approved of the way she looked in that one. But the only shoes that went with the outfit were frivolous green sling-back heels, and the matching bag could barely accommodate a wallet and lace handkerchief; there was certainly no room in it for a regulation pistol, badge and note pad.
All of which brought her to her senses with a grim smile. Dithering over clothes as if Oscar Nauman were Rhett Butler and she Scarlett O'Hara instead of a New York cop! As if ugly ducklings really could become swans. What had got into her?
Without pausing to analyze the question, Sigrid flipped back to the shapeless gray pantsuit and dressed with rapid efficiency. Her chin was high, and all her defenses were in place when she emerged from her bedroom.
To find him gone.
Only dirty dishes in her sink, and a note on the counter to advise that he'd eaten his breakfast with relish, thank you, and hers was in the oven. She opened the oven door and took out a tender omelet and buttered toast, still warm on a plate.
Toast, yes, she thought, but the eggs are going down the garbage disposal.
Curiosity made her try a bite.
It was delicious.
Bemused, she poured herself another cup of coffee and perched on a step stool to eat the whole thing. Anchovies on her steak last night. And now jam with eggs.
To cap it all, the little squares of red that she'd been trying to puzzle out last night lay in perfect alignment on the counter-from the darkest red to the lightest pink in nine even steps. Damn the man!
13
ACROSS town Andrea Ross was-like Sigrid-deliberating carefully over her choice of clothes but with a difference. Impractical shoes were very much a part of the picture she wanted to create. She was going to stage a deliberate and full-fledged retreat into femininity, and the morning sunlight was an innocent conspirator. It promised a spring day warm enough for shoes that were nothing more than delicate straps of braided straw and matched a straw-colored gather skirt that fluttered softly around her legs. She topped the cotton skirt with a heavily embroidered Mexican peon shirt and studied the total effect in her mirror. Getting there.
Next she skillfully manipulated a styling wand to transform her sensible short brown hair into a crown of ringlets, then made up her eyes to look as wide and appealing as a fawn's. A faint touch of blusher to her cheeks and another critical examination of her reflection.
Perfect!
She looked cool and poised enough to deliver scholarly lectures yet soft and womanly. Not helpless exactly but with no hard career edges showing. No single-minded ambitions, either, and certainly no vengeful thoughts.
Must watch the lips though, she decided, knowing that her lips looked too determined in repose, her eyes too shrewd.
Think soft, she told herself.
But her thoughts kept slipping away to the raise a promotion would mean. The grueling debts of her post graduate years were almost repaid. There was beginning to be enough money for clothes, a decent apartment, books. The promotion she had expected-had earned, damn it-would have meant enough at last to spend a summer in France. As a true art lover; not a penny-pinching student. A summer to lie in fields of red poppies if she wished and drink in the soaring lines of Chartres Cathedral until that abiding thirst for perfection, unsatisfied since childhood, was finally slaked. She wanted to experience at last a direct response to what she saw with no worries of dates, theories or the pressures of a doctoral dissertation to come between herself and the art.