Jane Sullivan - Risky Business

She pulled open a kitchen drawer and grabbed a coupon. “Go ahead. Order pepperoni. Extra cheese. Stuffed crust. And why don’t you get a bunch of those bread sticks while you’re at it? The ones that you dip in garlic butter? That ought to really send the old cholesterol through the roof.”

He smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

She rolled her eyes with disgust. Slapping the coupon on the counter, she went into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Jack sighed and shook his head. He knew at heart she was a pepperoni pizza eater, but now was not the time to push the issue. He grabbed the phone, dialed the number of the pizza place and ordered a vegetarian supreme.

By the time the pizza got there and they ate, it was approaching eight o’clock. No matter how often he tried to start a conversation, Rachel rebuffed him at every turn. If she couldn’t stop him from coming to the resort with her, she clearly intended to make their time together as unpleasant as she possibly could. That was okay. He wasn’t blessed with an excess of virtues, but patience was one he had in spades.

After they finished eating, Rachel sent him to the living room, then cleaned up the kitchen. She then disappeared down the hall, brought back sheets, blankets and a pillow and lay them on the sofa. She returned to her bedroom. A moment later, he heard a shower running.

Well. So much for an evening of pleasant conversation. Or great sex.

Okay, the “great sex” thing had been a real long shot. But a guy could always hope.

Figuring he’d seen the last of her tonight, Jack located a TV behind the doors of an armoire. He pulled out the remote, ran the dial, stopped on a few things that he thought might be interesting only to find he really didn’t give a damn.

Finally he flipped the TV off, then got up and inspected her bookshelves, where he found all the latest titles of the day—Oprah picks, up-to-the-minute nonfiction, a few classics, a pristine coffee-table volume of modern architecture. On a wall next to the bookshelf hung two diplomas, indicating that she had both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in architecture from an institution he recognized as a prestigious women’s college.

Women’s college. He’d often wondered what kind of people went to a place for four years where they spent all day without ever setting eyes on a member of the opposite sex. He’d had a nightmare like that once. It wasn’t pretty.

Then he glanced down the hall and noticed a second bedroom. Guest room? Probably not, since he was sleeping on the sofa. Then again, she was out to punish him.

He walked quietly down the hall. The door was ajar. He pushed it open and peered inside.

A desk sat along one wall, a drawing board in the corner. More bookshelves. But the books they contained were hardly literary masterpieces or full of contemporary buzz. Most of them were history texts and books on architecture of all periods—ancient, medieval, eighteenth and nineteenth century—mostly used books with ragged covers. And the balance of the titles were fiction, mainly mysteries and romance.

Yes. This was more like it. He had the distinct impression that the books in the living room with the unbroken spines were the ones she showed to the world, while these tattered ones lived in her heart. Then he turned and got another surprise.

That day in San Antonio, they’d browsed through the Alamo gift shop, where he’d bought her a poster of an 1830s map of Texas. Here it was, matted, framed and hanging on the wall.

He remembered so clearly the time they’d spent there, perusing every document, every artifact. To find a woman with that kind of knowledge of the historical periods that fascinated him had pleased him to no end. That he was attracted to her in every other way possible made him feel as if he’d found the perfect woman. A soul mate, and he didn’t even believe in such things.

And then she’d disappeared.

“What are you doing in here?”

He spun around. Rachel was standing behind him, wearing a blue terry-cloth robe that gave a new meaning to the word frumpy. He knew a really hot body lurked under there somewhere, but he sure as hell couldn’t see it right now.

He shrugged. “Just looking around.”

“Well, don’t.”

There it was again. That crimson flush on her ivory cheeks, as if somehow he’d embarrassed her.

“The poster,” he said. “It looks good.”

She turned instantly and left the room. He followed. She started to go into her bedroom, but he caught her arm and pulled her back around.

“Hey, hold on. What’s the matter?”

She looked up at him, her pale blue eyes brimming with annoyance. “It’s bad enough for me to look up and find you standing in my office this afternoon. Then you beg your way into my house. And now you’re snooping around.”

“I wasn’t snooping.”

“Then what do you call it?”

“The door was open.”

“That room is private!”

She looked genuinely angry. “Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in there.”

“That’s right. You shouldn’t have.”

“But I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want me to. The rest of this place isn’t you. That room is.”

She ducked her head, the color still hot on her cheeks. “You don’t know anything about me.”

He inched closer to her and placed his palm on the wall beside her head, dropping his voice. “Yes, I do. Maybe a whole lot more than most people do. That day in San Antonio, and then that night, I found out all kinds of things about you.”

“You have to stop this.”

“What?”

She closed her eyes. “Reminding me.”

“You don’t want to be reminded?”

“I did a very dumb thing that night, something I’d just as soon forget.”

“So that’s the way you remember it? As something you want to forget?”

“Yes.”

“You even want to forget how we met? The time we spent together that afternoon?”

He saw the indecision on her face. Was she going to acknowledge the truth, or continue to act as if their entire encounter had been the biggest mistake of her life?

“No,” she said finally. “That was nice.”

“Ah. Finally something we agree on.”

“But I wasn’t looking for a relationship then, and I’m still not looking.”

“I didn’t know we were talking about lifetime commitments here.”

“I don’t even want a four-day commitment from you. I don’t want anything from you. In fact, if you’d just go back to San Antonio and leave me alone, I’d be the happiest woman alive.”

“No, Rachel. I know what would make you the happiest woman alive, and it has nothing to do with me going back to San Antonio.” Slowly he dropped his head and placed a gentle kiss against her neck, then brought his lips up to brush against her ear. She was tense—so tense—and he wanted nothing more than to kiss all that tension away, for her to melt in his arms again.

“Let her out,” he whispered. “Right now. Show me that woman I knew in San Antonio.”

“Jack—”

“She’s in there,” he said. “I know she is. A beautiful, sexy woman I can’t wait to touch. We can be together again the way we were before, just the two of us, for hours on end—”

“No!”

She twisted to the left, then ducked beneath his arm and strode back down the hall.

Damn.

He thought about stopping her, then thought again. More than anything, he wanted to follow her into her bedroom, slip that frumpy robe off her shoulders, kick it aside, then make love to her until daybreak. But even if he managed to accomplish that tonight, he had the feeling she’d only wake up tomorrow morning as wary as she’d been in San Antonio, and he definitely didn’t want that. If he pushed her too hard right now, he could end up odd man out for the next four days, and there was no way he was going to let that happen.