themselves were as tightly clasped as her fingers.
Most changed of all was her hair. The glorious tumble that had rippled with life after her dunking in the pond was now tamed into strands as straight as a Young Republican. She'd clipped them behind her head in a no-nonsense, no-fun style.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
No. But he resisted the urge to tell her that truth, because no matter what, it was time to go forward. Getting close to her, and through her, close to her family, was his plan, after all. By buying the house and making contact with the designer, he'd anted-in. The game was already under way.
It didn't change a thing that he had the sudden, disturbing idea that Tea Caruso might have even more secrets than he.
Chapter Six
"Quiet Village" Martin Denny Exotica (1957)
By some stroke of luck, Tea had a second chance to make a good first impression and this time she wasn't going to blow it. As she walked with Johnny through the dusk to her car - it seemed more businesslike for her to chauffeur the potential client than the other way around - she glanced over at him. He was awfully quiet.
"Would you prefer to go back to your house for our meeting?" she asked.
His steps faltered, his sudden stillness reminding her of that odd moment in her doorway a few minutes before. Then he shook his head. "I'd rather save that for daylight."
When chances were slimmer that she'd end up in an open body of water and make a further fool of herself, Tea finished for him, stifling a sigh. The man must have serious doubts about her now. He had to be wondering just what kind of woman he'd approached for the design job.
But by the time they finished their drinks he would know, she promised herself. He'd see her as a cool, consummate professional, because she'd make sure she acted like one.
Inside the confines of her car, however, doubts washed over her again. She drew in a breath, but that only drew in him, his heat, his scent, the maleness that was so... so other to her. Of course, that was only natural, right? Though she'd grown out of her adolescent puppy-love for beautiful boy jocks, in her line of work she didn't often deal with straight men. If roped into a meeting by his wife, a male client would make it brief. He wanted to be assured of only two things: one, that the designer wouldn't go over budget, and two, that she wouldn't undersize the couches and the chairs.
"Tea?"
She started, realizing they were still in her driveway. "I'm sorry," she said, with a hasty turn of the key, "I was lost in my own thoughts."
"Not second thoughts, I hope. It occurs to me I might have interrupted plans you already had for the evening."
"Oh, no." She reversed the car then put it in forward gear for the short drive to Stellar, the restaurant/bar she'd decided upon. "This is fine."
"No date with a boyfriend?"
"No." Not that she'd share it with him, but dates and boyfriends were rare in her life, again, to some degree, because of the very few eligible men she met in the design business. Of course, her clients could never resist fixing her up. But that pool of potentials was filled by sons, grandsons, and great-nephews whose prevailing characteristic was their inability to say "no" to the female relatives in their lives.
It might sound like a wonderful quality until you understood that it also meant they were the kind of men who trusted older women to make so many of their decisions for them. They tended to wear Arnold Palmer golf sweaters in
Easter egg colors and flip-on sunshades over their glasses. They drove Lincoln Continentals with back seats roomy enough for Aunt Elizabeth's or Nana Mae's entire bridge foursome. They knew the early-bird specials on every menu in town.
They were nothing like Johnny Magee.
He shifted in his seat, redoubling her awareness of him. She sucked in another breath of his scented male warmth. No, they were nothing at all like Johnny Magee.
He watched the gypsy girl with impassive, sea-colored eyes. Then his masculine hand reached toward her flesh, flesh that was trembling despite the warmth of the fire. Fingertips curled over the edge of her filmy peasant blouse and drew it down, down, down -
That hard male hand shot out to cover hers on the wheel, and jerked left. "Watch out."
She braked, just as a car pulled from