Desire by Design - By Paula Altenburg Page 0,20

said. “Why don’t you have a seat in the living room?”

The living room was off the foyer to the left, a comfortable room filled with overstuffed antique furniture. Photos of family littered the tables and walls. It was a woman’s room, and not at all what Matt had expected. He thought of his own sparse condo, with its geometric furniture and early Ellsworth Kelly original artwork. Eve’s tastes couldn’t be more different than his if she’d made a deliberate effort to make them so. Yet, despite Eve’s busy work schedule, her house managed to look like a home, while Matt’s condo looked like…

Like it had been designed by an architect. One who spent most of his time at the office.

An open scrapbook displayed on the coffee table caught his eye, and he picked it up. He could hear Eve rattling around in the kitchen. She returned a few moments later, pausing between the yawning double glass doors.

“The coffee will be ready in a minute. I’m just going to run up and change my clothes.”

Matt’s eyes followed her up the stairwell. Even in coveralls and a layer of sawdust, there was no mistaking that Eve was a beautiful woman. He shook his head. Despite her little idiosyncrasies, he was definitely attracted to her.

Physically, it made sense. It was healthy and normal. What he couldn’t quite figure out was what she intended to do with the baseball bat she was clutching in a white-knuckled hand.

Chapter Five

Eve was glad Matt had happened along while she was still trying to work up the nerve to enter the house. Having him downstairs made it easier to keep calm when the mess in her bedroom left her anything but that.

Tossing the bat onto the bed, she clamped her eyelids shut, then popped them open, but nothing had changed. Her panties still dangled from the lampshade.

The remainder of her clothing littered the bedroom floor, and a large, cedar-lined oak wardrobe sprawled drunkenly facedown on top of her great-grandmother’s antique hooked rug. A copy of Eve’s final divorce decree was skewered to her pillow with a finish nail.

She spun in a slow, incredulous circle and stared at the chaos around her, then curled her fingers into fists. She plucked the nail from the pillow and inspected the antique linen pillowcase. There was a small hole. Blinking back angry tears, she crumpled the divorce decree and crammed it into the back pocket of her coveralls. She stooped to grasp the front end of the wardrobe. One sharp corner screeched against the hardwood floor as she tried to lift it.

Matt’s voice drifted up from the foot of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”

Releasing her hold on the wardrobe, Eve bit her lip. She could ask him for help. She probably should. But they had to work together, and she wasn’t sure she could trust him to keep this to himself.

“Everything’s fine,” she called back, listening until she heard him move back into the living room.

Then she did a quick search of the rest of the upstairs, although she already knew Claude was gone. He wouldn’t want to be caught in the act. He wanted to send her a message, and he knew she’d never been good at his games.

The upstairs was empty, just as she’d expected. She went back to her room, dragged a brush through her snarled hair and, showering wood chips onto the floor, re-fashioned her long, curly ponytail, then changed into shorts and a T-shirt she’d grabbed off the floor. Clicking the bedroom door firmly shut behind her, she pattered down the stairs in her bare feet.

Matt lounged on the flowered sofa right where she’d left him, his massive male presence looking ridiculously comfortable amidst the damask cabbage roses. He was flipping through the pages of a scrapbook that contained clippings of past projects Eve had consulted on—none of which were likely to impress a brilliant architect of his caliber.

Uneasy prickles chased up her spine. Eve quickly was reminded that she knew enough brilliant men to last her a lifetime. Matt seemed harmless enough, but so did they all, at least at first.

“How would you like your coffee?” she asked.

He didn’t lift his head from his reading. “Black, please.”

She carried two steaming mugs back to the living room and placed them on the low pine coffee table, nudging aside a glass trifle dish piled high with more of the family photos her mother kept sending her. Eve then chose an easy chair to sit in—the one farthest