Pink Satin (5 page)

Not one of them had threatened her. Not one of them had given her a single reason to believe she couldn’t control the situation if she wanted to.

And not a damn one of them had known what he was doing, but she hadn’t realized that until now. Ryan took her mouth the way a storm hit on a summer day—languid sunshine one minute, lightning the next. Restlessly, Greer stirred, uncertain what to do with a suddenly cloud-fogged brain. The barometer of her pulse kept dropping, and then his tongue slipped between her parted teeth. Her skin heated up wherever he touched.

Hands slid up and down her back, soothing, gentle. One set of fingers of one hand stole into her hair, cupping her head. Another slid languorously down her spine to the curve of her hips. His touch said
mine,
as if he were identifying every vertebra that belonged to him, slowly, as if it were a secret. His secret.

He’d set a match to dry tinder. She couldn’t in a thousand years have explained her response. She felt protected in his arms as she’d never in her life felt protected. It wasn’t just a sexual sensation, she told herself. And knew darn well it was the sexiest sensation she’d ever felt in her life.

Ryan’s lips lingered and then gradually lifted. When she finally raised her eyes she found his staring down at her. Blue. A firelit blue. He wasn’t breathing well. “Just a simple thank-you between neighbors,” he said gruffly. “The same thing you offered me yesterday. Just…a natural expression of affection. Right, Greer?”

“I—”

“You need sleep. I’ll bring the cat.”

His arms were suddenly gone. She was just standing there, weak in the knees. Thirty seconds later, he dropped a cat in her arms. A purring cat.

That man, she thought dizzily, was…tricky.

***

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Hmm. Your cold sounds much better,” Greer said from the depth of the white velvet chair in Marie’s office. The chair was in a safe corner, which was important during one of Marie’s tirades.

“You think I’m joking?” Marie’s office looked as if burglars had just left. Fabrics were strewn over the floor. Papers lay where they had been tossed. And the diminutive blonde was pacing, bunching papers in her hands, and pelting them into the air, her French accent thickening with her fury. “I will leave him and get a divorce and join another firm.
That’s
what I will do. He thinks my design is not good enough for his catalog cover?” Marie whirled and shook her finger at Greer. “You thought I would blame
you,
didn’t you?”

“Your negligee was beautiful, Marie—but
I
was the one who didn’t feel it belonged on the cover. Grant really had nothing to do wi—”

“I
don’t
blame you. I blame
him.
And killing is too good for him. Divorce is too good for him. I know exactly what he deserves.” Marie collapsed in the chair behind her desk, her golden eyes fiery with rage as she glared at Greer. “
You
look at my husband and you see a small, very proper man, who doesn’t even swear so much.
Hah.
He is not so polite between the sheets. You don’t think of Grant as a tiger, do you?”

Greer crossed her legs. “Ummm…” Not that the question hadn’t been raised before, but it was still difficult to answer tactfully.

“Well, he is. A
tiger.
Even two nights and he can’t stand going without. We’ll see,” Marie said fretfully. “We’ll see what a little abstinence does for him. We’ll see how long he lasts. He won’t
dare
ax one of my designs again. Wait a minute.” She bolted out of her chair and skimmed across the debris toward the door. “
You.
Wait here,” she called back to Greer.

Alone for at least a minute, Greer yawned. Marie had been ranting for the better part of an hour. For days after her first experience with one of Marie’s temper tantrums, Greer had been distraught, disturbed that Marie so freely sputtered private secrets to her, fearing that Marie and Grant were on the verge of a divorce.

Now she was used to it, and absently picked up Marie’s new teddy design from the floor where it had been jettisoned. It was simply white…only Marie had the talent to make simply white look wicked. And next to it lay a basic pair of pajamas…in a luscious coral silk, with coral satin piping on the hem and cuffs and a mandarin collar. Basic, yes. But utterly luxurious next to the skin.

When Marie didn’t instantly return, Greer automatically started to straighten up the office—at least until a whoosh of satin was plopped over her head. Gingerly, she pushed back enough of the fabric to see out.

Marie was smiling. “For you,” she said magnanimously. “You think I want that anywhere around here? Take it home and keep it out of my sight. It will fit you to absolute perfection. You know I can look at any woman and know her size. Your figure was made for it.”

“Mmm,” Greer murmured and divested herself of the pink satin and cream lace. For a moment, she stared at the negligee that had caused so much trouble, thinking vaguely that the lovely thing had been created to cause trouble. Of one kind or another. “Marie, you know I’m not the type to wear this sort of thing.”

Marie muttered something in French, which Grant had one time translated loosely as “horsefeathers.”

“Regardless, I don’t want you to give this to me, Marie. The design is wonderful, and if we could use a less expensive fabric—”

“I will
never
use the design again.
Never.
Oh, that
man.
”
 
Marie, huffing, flopped back in her chair, five feet two inches of steam and energy.

“Grant loved the design,” Greer mentioned.

“He does not appreciate me. He has never appreciated me. I sent all the way to Bordeaux for that lace…”

“Which you knew ahead of time would make the negligee impossibly expensive.”

“And I told Barney I wanted
satin.
Not
this
—” She picked up the white camisole that Greer had placed on the desk and pushed it to the floor again. “Not
like
satin. Not
wash-and-wear.
I am so tired of wash-and-wear fabrics I could scream. I
hate
fake. Real satin must be treated like a baby; it requires a lot of trouble, a lot of time, but then!
Then,
when you see what it does next to a woman’s skin…”

“But that also brought up the price,” Greer reminded her gently.

Marie wasn’t paying attention. “I wanted to create something it would take courage to wear. A little daring. Real élan.”

“Would you wear it yourself?” Greer questioned.

Marie glanced at Greer in surprise. “Of course I would not wear it myself. I would look flat like a wall if I put that on. It would trail on the floor after me as if I were a little girl playing dress-up. You think I am stupid? You think I’ve kept Grant in my life by being stupid? He knows what he’s got when the lights are out, but when they’re still on, my darling, he can’t be sure. A little subtle padding, a few carefully sewn tucks, a flounce here and a bow there to distract him from what I don’t have.”

“That’s exactly why your designs are so brilliant, Marie,” Greer said soothingly, tactfully not mentioning that one didn’t divorce a man for whom one was willing to resort to such deviousness. “You have a gift for hiding a woman’s worst points and accenting her best. Exactly why we’ve been so successful. Grant was just telling Barney that yesterday.”

“Grant,” Marie scoffed. “My husband knows nothing.
Nothing.
”
 
She hesitated. “He said that, though?”

“He said that.”

“I am
not
forgiving him for that negligee not being on the cover.”

“Of course you aren’t.” Greer unconsciously fingered the pink satin negligee before carefully placing it on the chair and moving toward the door. “He was upstairs with the girls yesterday. There was something wrong with one of the sewing machines; Rachel said it was usable, but Grant told her to forget it—that you’d find one stitch out of place. He told her you were a perfectionist…and that if she didn’t feel the same way, the door was available to her.”

“I
am
a perfectionist,” Marie said proudly.

“Of course you are.”

“That Rachel…she can be careless if I’m not looking right over her shoulder every minute.”

“I think that’s why Grant made a special trip up here while you were out with that cold.”

“Hmm.” Marie’s eyes narrowed as Greer took another step backward. “Take the negligee, take it, take it. Stop fussing. You know I meant for you to have it.”

“Marie—”

“Take that thing. Immediately.” Marie waved at the negligee, and then briskly stood, picked up the garment and pushed it into Greer’s arms again. As an afterthought, she reached up to press a kiss on both Greer’s cheeks in the French way. “You are a good friend. I want you to have it, and wear it for a very special man, yes? It suits you exactly. I knew the minute I thought of the design.” She added, “And when I divorce Grant, I will start my own business and you will come with me. We will make our own firm. All women. No men. Not
one.”

***

Later, Greer was working in her office on ad copy, the negligee folded carefully and out of sight, when Grant paused in her doorway, nervously tightening his tie.

“Safe,” she said shortly.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Twenty minutes after that, Marie and Grant passed her office on the way out. Greer suppressed a grin. It was only three in the afternoon, yet she knew the two were leaving for the day, and not for business. Their arguments inevitably ended the same way, and Greer had no doubts that they would both come in yawning the next day.

She returned to her work and barely lifted her head again until five. The ad copy was done, and sales figures took the rest of the afternoon. She’d started a study months before on colors related to sales in lingerie. Women assumed men considered black and red sexy, and yet the men who bought lingerie for their wives invariably picked out white. Pastels appeared to confuse men so that they had difficulty choosing, but women always had a favorite soft color they adopted for their own. Putting that all together and making recommendations to Grant was part of Greer’s job.

By the time she’d cleared her desk and grabbed her raincoat and purse, she’d almost convinced herself she’d forgotten the negligee. She hesitated and then pushed open the cardboard box, fingering the delicate satin and lace wistfully.

How many studies had she done on lingerie in the past five years? And all of them had led to the same conclusion: Women bought beautiful lingerie to make a statement for them: Hold me, warm me, I
need to
be touched. A woman had a secret wish to be pampered, a wish that she couldn’t say out loud and that she didn’t
want
to say out loud.

The negligee would have been all wrong for the cover of Love Lace, but not for reasons Greer could have explained to the men. The pink satin whispered,
I am a strong sexual woman, and I don’t mind singing it from the rooftops.
Wearing this negligee would require confidence. Confidence in one’s own sexuality, confidence and enough courage to flaunt one’s sexuality, to entice, to boldly seduce. Few women had that kind of confidence.

Or is it you, Greer?
she thought absently.
Maybe you were expressing your own insecurities when you rejected that design for the catalog cover. Maybe other women feel perfectly free to play the aggressor in a sexual relationship. This is hardly the nineteenth century…maybe the problem lies in
you.

She closed the box, slid it under her arm and picked up her purse again. She would tuck the negligee away in a drawer at home. She took it anyway.

Ryan’s embrace had preyed on her mind all day. His
neighborly
embrace. The man disturbed her. Cream lace on pink satin disturbed her.

Going home to clean out the cat’s litter box was the best method she knew of clearing the mind of disturbing fancies.

Following that, she had a date with Daniel. Come to think of it, Ryan had been listening when she’d made that date, the first night she’d met her neighbor.

Greer banished Ryan from her mind. Thinking about Daniel was safer. Daniel was a sweetie. And Daniel wouldn’t arouse pink-satin daydreams in anyone’s mind.

The bra felt just a smidgen tight around her left breast. Greer sucked in her ribs on an inhale, and twisted on the exhale. It helped. Peering at her reflection in her dresser mirror, she was relieved to see that the lopsided fit of the bra didn’t show. Her dress was a sheath of royal blue with a mandarin collar and gold embroidery from neckline to hem in back. The Chinese style made her figure look almost petite. Beneath the dress, she was wearing a violet half-slip and a new bra that was one of Marie’s best-selling designs—except for this particular castoff. The seamstress had made one cup slightly smaller than the other.

If she’d guessed ahead of time how strangely it would fit, she would have changed bras. Unfortunately, she could already hear Daniel’s knock. She picked up her glasses. As expected, when she opened the door, Daniel was wearing his. Though she rarely wore her glasses except for driving, she knew Daniel felt more comfortable when she had them on.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Greer. Really sorry. My boss did it to me again—just at five, he came in with a mound of work…”

Daniel was blond, tall and lanky, and he had trouble deciding what to do with his long arms when he was nervous. Greer gave him a quick hello kiss, then rushed into the kitchen to fill Truce’s dish before leaving. “I’ve told you before, you know,” she called back gently. “Nothing’s going to happen if you simply tell him you’ll do the work first thing in the morning, Daniel. He’s not going to fire you; you’re too good at what you do. You’ve got the right to say no when he makes unreasonable demands.”

By the time she returned to the living room, Daniel was running a hand through his hair. “I try.”

“I know you do.” She smiled reassuringly at him.

“You’re not irritated that I’m late?”

“Of course I’m not irritated.”

Tucking her key in her purse, she opened the apartment door, still chattering to Daniel…until she saw the slim, svelte blonde coming out of Ryan’s apartment.

The woman was pretty. Not beautiful, not voluptuous, not overly made up, just…pretty. And she was one of those small-breasted women who could wear anything. In this case a loose silky dress draped from shoulder to hip and caught casually at the waist with a double belt. The style would have made Greer look like a hooker. On the blonde, it was casual, attractive and stylish.

She was laughing.

So was Ryan, just behind her. His chest wasn’t naked today, but clothed in crisp white linen and a tie, which he fussed with until he noticed Greer.

“…anyway, Ry, I appreciate your getting me out of a bind this evening,” the blonde was saying.

“I thought—that is, if you wanted to, Greer, we could go to Lombardi’s,” Daniel suggested.

Why
was Ryan tying that tie as if he were just getting dressed? Jealousy pierced Greer as if she’d just walked barefoot over a bed of nails.

Ryan took one long look at Daniel and felt every muscle stiffen.
Endearing.
The dude had that
endearing
look women loved, and he had a tiny glaze of lip gloss on his cheek. Fresh. Greer looked edible in royal blue to the neck, the soft fabric draped subtly over her figure in a way that hinted at luscious mysteries. Her hair was sleeked back, giving her an air of sophistication, showing off her profile. He hadn’t seen her wearing glasses before and immediately took a dislike to them. The oversized frames did not detract from her looks, but they hid the expression in her eyes. All he could see were huge brown mirrors, reflecting back, giving nothing away.

“Lombardi’s?” Ryan said smoothly. “We’re going there, too.”

Daniel’s head whipped around to stare at Ryan in surprise, and he found himself facing Ryan’s outstretched hand. “Ryan McCullough here. Greer’s neighbor. I just heard you mention Lombardi’s. We’ll probably see you at the restaurant.”

Ryan’s blonde looked momentarily disconcerted, and then chuckled, a low, musical sound. “Ry, I thought you said—not that it matters.”

After shaking Daniel’s hand, Ryan stepped back with a hand at his date’s back. “This is Leigh Neuman. Laughlin’s personnel manager. She has the unenviable job of wining and dining new employees. Like me, poor woman.”

“Nice to meet you, Leigh,” Daniel said politely.

“Leigh—Greer—” In the middle of that introduction, Ryan snapped his fingers. “If we’re all going to the same restaurant, we may as well share the drive. It’s a little distance, isn’t it?” He added quickly, “Not, of course, that I would want to interrupt a private dinner.”

Daniel had a stricken look that Greer knew signified a bad attack of insecurity around strangers. “Well…” he started nervously.

“I understand it’s nearly a half-hour drive. I haven’t been there before, and I was a little worried about getting lost. My car’s right outside, if you’re familiar with the directions, Dan? We can always separate when we get there, if you like.”

They didn’t separate at the restaurant. By the time the four of them had piled into a booth, they were all chattering away like long-lost friends. Daniel was talking to Ryan as if he’d never had a malefriend he could share interests with before, and Leigh was bubbling on to Greer about her fiancé and about how Ryan had been kind enough to switch their arranged business dinner on the spur of the moment so she wouldn’t miss a date with her fiancé on the following Thursday.

“It’s foolish, the company policy of taking new people out to dinner. With Ryan, of course I don’t mind, but I’ve gotten into some fair pickles in the past, trying to make conversation with a few stuffed shirts who couldn’t figure out what they were doing in the company of a strange woman. It’s supposed to be a welcome to the company, but right now it just doesn’t make sense. The new building’s not completed; we’ve got tons of new people running around; and Norm doesn’t appreciate my spending half my evenings with strange men…”

“I can understand that,” Greer said. Leigh was all bubbles and laughter, impossible not to like.

Why Lombardi’s served Chinese food, no one could figure out. The atmosphere was strictly Italian, with a foaming fountain in the center of the restaurant, candles on the tables and a trio of musicians in one corner trying to coax people to the dance floor with everything from polkas to rock.

The four of them drank rice wine and ate egg rolls until the entrées were served, and then dishes and arms rapidly crossed as they sampled each other’s dinners. It was only when Greer was perfectly stuffed and had slipped off her shoes under the table that she realized she was sitting next to Ryan. She was also sitting next to Daniel, of course, but they were in a semicircular booth, and she really didn’t remember Ryan climbing in next to her. Nor did she know exactly why his thigh happened to be touching hers.

Particularly when Daniel was a polite six inches away, his face flushed with wine. It took a great deal for Daniel to shed his inhibitions and join a gathering of strangers, and Ryan had made that happen.

Ryan. Her friendly neighbor. The only one at the table who had miraculously avoided conversation with her for the past two hours. He’d talked to Daniel and he’d talked to Leigh, just not directly to Greer. After the waitress served an after-dinner saki, Ryan turned to his date.

“That trio’s going to get depressed if someone doesn’t take up a little space on their dance floor,” he told her.

Leigh laughed. “No problem.”

The dance number was slow. Daniel looked uncertainly at Greer, and she almost sighed. Most of the time Daniel’s shy ways were appealing. “Let’s,” she agreed, and they followed the others to the dance floor.

Actually, Daniel was an excellent dancer. Like other introverted people, he came into his own when not threatened with a verbal situation. He’d learned to dance properly, one hand at her waist, the other holding hers loosely—which didn’t distract in any way from his rhythmic skill. “He’s nice, your neighbor,” Daniel said quietly.

“Yes.”

“I rarely feel that comfortable with people on a first meeting, but then most people don’t seem that interested in accounting systems.”

“Yes,” she echoed.

“I’m glad we came with them.” Daniel’s face took on an immediate soft flush, as if aware he might have said something tactless. “Not that I wouldn’t have preferred an evening alone with you—”

Greer was running out of patience. Daniel’s palm was getting damp, annoying her. The left cup of her bra was also annoying her. Having a totally pleasant dinner was, for some unknown reason, also annoying her. She had removed her glasses at the table—she didn’t need them for the dance floor. But she couldn’t see over Daniel’s shoulder to Ryan and Leigh.

The number ended and an old-fashioned fox-trot began. Daniel smiled, automatically changing rhythms, when Ryan touched his shoulder.

“You don’t mind if we switch for a dance, do you?” Ryan asked. “I can see you know what you’re doing on the floor, and I thought I’d give Leigh a break.”

Which really wasn’t very flattering, Greer thought vaguely, but Daniel was already steering Leigh around the floor. She caught a quick glimpse of Ryan’s face before his arms came around her, but the dance floor was dark, and she could have misread that innocent expression.

A minute and a half into the dance, and she knew the devil should be so innocent. She also figured out rapidly that Ryan had never learned to dance the fox-trot and that his feet were size twenty. Actually, she was fairly amazed at his clumsiness.

Not that he didn’t compensate for his lack of expertise, and promptly. Very slowly, he slid his arms around her waist, which would have left her own waving in midair unless she put them around his neck. Just as slowly, he pulled her close and started shuffling. The combo was playing another fox-trot. Ryan was playing love songs. Lazily erotic love songs.

His muscled thigh nudged between her legs and simply moved back and forth in a rhythm that was slow, erotic and intimate. Deliberately intimate. Greer was strongly inclined to take him over her knee and certainly wished his mother had done so when he was younger, but for at least a few moments she couldn’t do much of anything. Rippling, sultry waves of desire were clogging her brain. The mold of hip to hip was bad enough, but he kept…rubbing. In rhythm. A primal mating rhythm. And his hands started making slow-moving circles somewhere low on her spine. Very low on her spine.

Daniel and Leigh seemed to be on the other side of the dance floor.

Greer’s throat was suddenly dry. “Ryan.” She tried to lift her head. His palm gently pushed her cheek back to his chest. Her eyes were on a level with the shadowed length of his throat. She could see the beat of blood in the veins just below that smooth flesh.

“Sssh, Greer.” Then he whispered with counterfeit nervousness, “For heaven’s sakes, don’t move. I don’t know how to do this kind of dance, and I don’t want to step on your feet.”

“Ryan.”

“Hmm?”

She whispered close to his ear, “I can be made a fool of once. Maybe even twice. But if you’re trying to pass this off as more neighborly affection, I just wanted to warn you up front that you’re very close to a kick in the shins.”

His eyes glittered down at her, full-of-nonsense blue. Dangerous blue. “Now, Greer. Don’t tell me simple affection isn’t possible between two people of opposite sex. Isn’t that what you were trying to tell me the night we met?”

“This is
not
the same thing.”

“Maybe not for you, but
I’m
feeling extremely affectionate right now. And since the song just ended, I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around for another. Walking back to the table in this particular physical condition wouldn’t bother me, but I’m afraid it might be obvious to your Daniel.” He shook his head gravely. “He might get the wrong impression. That I want you like hell, for instance.”

Greer flushed, tried to pull away but failed to escape from arms that suddenly held her with gentle but unmistakable firmness. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked helplessly.

“Wake you up, love.” He said it so low he was almost certain she hadn’t heard it. She was fighting hard to keep her body a distance from his. So hard.

Ryan had felt a moment’s guilt where her Daniel was concerned, but not too much. He’d watched the two interact over dinner long enough to be certain he wasn’t poaching on another man’s territory, and long enough to evaluate Daniel as an intelligent man, not bad-looking and not unkind. But physically, he clearly stirred Greer about as much as used dishwater. Ryan wasn’t stealing anything that belonged to anyone else.

Greer’s heart, pressed against his shirt, seemed to be doing somersaults. Her nipples were hard and hot, and he could feel them through two layers of fabric—her clothes and his. She jumped every time his thigh touched just so between hers…and then she couldn’t jump, because he held her too close to give her the chance.

If she’d seriously argued, he would have released her. Maybe. He wanted to believe that a speck of honor was alive and well in him somewhere, but her closeness was having disastrous effects on his principles.

And when she suddenly and totally relaxed, he doubted very much that he could ever let her go. Her body went supple and pliant in his arms; her cheek rested in the furrow at the base of his throat; her fingers slowly climbed above his shirt collar and into his hair and then stiffened, as if she’d suddenly become aware of what she was doing.

“The dance is almost over,” he whispered casually. Tentatively, she relaxed again, as if reassured. He had the fleeting sensation of taming a wild creature. So unwilling, so wary, yet her body had turned warm, meltingly warm. One finger again traveled up into his hair. Just one. Very slowly, he caressed the curves of her back, down again to her hips, and he heard her let her breath out in a rush. Gently, he pressed a butterfly kiss on her temple.

She liked that. She murmured something. Not a word, more a helpless purr of pleasure. His hand roamed slowly up her side…and then—the devil made him do it— his thumb strayed to the underside of her breast. Her head jerked up instantly, her face flushed and her eyes sleepy with arousal, dark, almost wild.

“We
have
to sit down,” she said frantically.