One Touch of Moondust (2 page)

She walked into a narrow kitchen with peeling wallpaper and yellowed linoleum and came to a halt, her mouth dropping open. “I hope that's a planter,” she murmured, staring at the large, claw-footed ceramic tub in the middle of the room, then at her guide. He was laughing.

“Nope. That's the tub all right. It's more convenient to the stove in here.”

“The stove?” she repeated weakly.

“In case the hot water runs out and you…”

“I get the picture. Where's the rest of it?”

“It?”

“The bathroom.”

“Through that door.”

Deciding it wouldn't be wise to take anything else for granted, Gabrielle peeked
through the door. Thankfully there were no more surprises. The sink and toilet appeared old, but functional—she checked just to be sure—and the room was clean.

Now she was the one hesitating. She had finally accepted the idea that her current budget wouldn't allow for luxuries, but a tub in the kitchen? Still, she thought of the long list of depressing, unsatisfactory apartments she'd already seen. With all its flaws—and she wasn't minimizing them—this was still far and away the best.

“Okay,” she said eventually, if reluctantly. “I can live with this.”

“There's one other thing.”

She felt her heart sink. The way he'd said that told her it was even more ominous than having to take her bath in the middle of her kitchen. “What?” she said with a weary sigh.

“If you're in a hurry to move in, you might have to deal with a roommate.”

Her eyebrows shot up. She gave him a hard stare. He looked decidedly uneasy again, which was unnerving in a man of his apparent self-confidence. “A roommate? You mean it's already rented?” She felt oddly disappointed.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, it's either rented or it's not.”

“Actually it's just temporarily occupied.”

“Does this have anything to do with the sleeping bag I saw rolled up in one of the bedroom closets?”

He nodded. “It's mine.”

That was definitely a problem. “When will you be moving out?”

“In a couple of months, as soon as I can get the apartments downstairs finished, but it's okay. We could share the place until then. It has two bedrooms and I'd promise to stay in mine.”

He crossed his heart dramatically, then treated her to that wide, high-voltage smile. Obviously he meant it to be friendly and reassuring. He had no idea that it set her pulse to racing in a way that normally indicated such crises as imminent stock market crashes or a dramatic fall in the value of the dollar. If there had been a chair in the room, she would have collapsed into it. She refused to sit in the tub.

“This isn't such a good idea,” she said. It was an eloquent understatement. It was a horrible
, impossible, not-to-be-considered-for-an-instant idea. “I'll have to keep looking.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don't know. Someplace.”

“Can you stay where you are?”

“Not after Saturday.”

“Is there a friend you can move in with?”

She thought of several who'd offered, all of them part of the fast-paced, well-heeled world she was leaving behind. “No.”

“Can you afford a hotel?”

For the first time she heard a note of compassion in his voice. She sighed. “No.”

“Then think about my offer. Come see the garden before you decide,” he encouraged, holding out his hand. Gabrielle ignored it and he jammed it into his pocket. The snub didn't faze his upbeat mood as he enthused, “It's a little ragged now, but in the spring with tulips and crocuses and forsythia in bloom, it'll be magnificent. At least that's what my father says and he's got a green thumb that's known all over Long Island.”

Gabrielle felt a ridiculous twinge of doubt. She was a sucker for a garden. Always had been. The Clayton house in South Carolina had
been surrounded by azaleas and roses with an extravagantly colorful and overgrown English country garden in back that had been her personal domain.

“I'll take a look,” she said finally. “But I don't think it will change my mind. I've never had a roommate, not even in college.”

Left unspoken was the fact that she'd never lived with a man under any circumstances. Where she came from it still wasn't considered proper, especially for the daughter of a highly recognizable politician. Goodness knows, her relationship with her former fiancé had been proper. Which, she admitted ruefully, was probably part of the problem. With Townsend Lane she hadn't even been tempted to commit a casual indiscretion, much less have a sizzling affair.

She followed her prospective roommate downstairs, through a narrow hallway and onto a tiny stoop. What she saw made her smile in a way that she hadn't smiled in a very long time. A bit of sunshine stole into her heart.

The tiny, walled-in area had flower beds along the fringes. Now they were jammed with a haphazard display of chrysanthemums, marigolds
and zinnias in yellows and oranges and reds. A wrought-iron table and two chairs fit tidily into the middle. The whole garden was shaded by a huge maple tree next door, its leaves already turning to the fiery shades of autumn. It was charming, utterly and irresistibly charming.

“What's the rent?” she asked finally. Perhaps if she concentrated on the business aspects of the transaction, she wouldn't be quite so vibrantly aware of the fact that she was committing herself to living with a man she'd met less than an hour earlier. It would be a practical decision under the circumstances, a way to stretch her remaining savings. She waited for his response to see just how far she could make those last dollars go.

“We can work it out.”

“Will I have to sign a lease?”

“What for?” he asked. “You've already told me you have every intention of breaking it.”

It was an unexpected plus. There would be no arguments when the time came for her to move back out.

“And we're strictly roommates? You have
your own room. I have mine. We share the kitchen. Right?” An image of the tub popped into mind. “We have a schedule for the kitchen,” she amended.

Apparently the same provocative image lurked in his mind, too, because he grinned. “If you say so.”

She took another look around the garden, then held out her hand. “Then I guess we understand each other Mr.…?”

He enfolded her hand in his much larger one and held it just long enough for the calluses and warmth to register against the chilled softness of her own flesh.

“Reed,” he said in a slow, deliberately provocative way meant to emblazon the name on her memory. “Paul Reed.”

She swallowed hard. “And I'm Gabrielle Clayton.” It came out sounding disgustingly breathless.

“Gabrielle, huh? Quite a mouthful for such a little bit of a thing. Why don't I call you Gaby?”

She felt her control slipping away and inserted the haughty edge back into her voice.
“Gabrielle will do just fine. Ms. Clayton would be even better.”

“So, Gaby, when do you want to move in?”

She gave him an icy stare. It was going to be a very long month. Or two. “As soon as possible.”

“Will Friday be okay? I should be able to get the basics taken care of by then.”

She supposed if she was about to walk straight into danger, it was better to get it over with. “Perfect,” she said without the slightest tremor.

“One last thing,” she said as she went to the foyer. “For as long as we're sharing the place, we split the rent fifty-fifty.”

“That's really not fair. I'm inconveniencing you. I'll take care of the first month. After that you pay the full rate.”

She toyed with the temptation, then dismissed it. Being in this man's debt could lead to all sorts of potentially explosive misunderstandings. “Fifty-fifty.”

He shrugged. “If that's what you want.”

“And the same with the utilities.”

“Okay.”

“And you call me Gabrielle.”

He grinned. “We'll have to work on that one.”

He followed her onto the front stoop and watched as she started down the steps. She felt his gaze burning into her.

“Have a nice week,” he said just then. The husky note in his voice sent a delicious shiver down her spine before he deliberately taunted, “Gaby.”

Paul Reed, she decided as she marched off to the subway station, was a very irritating man. Since that was the only real certainty to come out of the morning, she was stunned that she'd put up so little fuss about living with him even on such a temporary basis. She was not an impetuous woman. While working on Wall Street had demanded a certain amount of risk-taking, her decisions were always well-informed, not reckless. So why on earth had she agreed to move in with a man like Paul Reed, a man who made her usually sensible head spin? During the subway ride back to Manhattan, she told herself he'd caught her in a weak moment, with little money and a lease that was about to expire. She even blamed it on the zinnias.

Now, after a blast of cool air and a little distance, she was thinking more clearly. That knot of uncertainty in her stomach was sending a message. She ought to listen to it. She would call and cancel their agreement. No, forget calling. His voice would sizzle across the phone lines and she'd agree to something else ridiculous. It was far more sensible not to show up. It would teach him a valuable lesson about good business. He should have insisted on a lease. He should have asked for references, a deposit. Quite possibly he'd considered the fox coat adequate. If only he knew. It was the last thing of value she owned and she could very well be forced to hock it if things didn't turn around soon.

Pleased with her decision to forget all about the apartment in Brooklyn and about Paul Reed, she pulled the classified ads out of her purse and began to search for another, more suitable apartment, one with a tub where it belonged and no overwhelmingly masculine roommate. But before the subway even crossed into Manhattan, her spirits sank. She could not bear the thought of looking at another dump. The brownstone which, like her, was at a turning
point in its life seemed increasingly attractive. And Paul Reed, she decided, she could manage.

“How bad could it be?” she murmured under her breath, hoping for a stronger sense of conviction. It was only for a month after all. Four weeks. She'd handled stock portfolios worth millions. She'd dealt with avaricious, rakish men. She could handle anything for four weeks, even a man like Paul Reed. Starting Monday she'd double her efforts to find a new job. Within a month or two at the outside, she'd be back on her feet and back in Manhattan.

An image of Paul Reed's bold, impudent smile danced across her mind. The subway suddenly seemed much warmer. Doubts flooded back more vividly than ever.

It was the balance in her checkbook that took the decision out of her hands. When it came right down to it, there was no choice at all. It looked as though Friday would be moving day. She'd just buy a very sturdy lock for the bedroom door.

* * *

Now why did you go and do a stupid thing like that? Paul asked himself repeatedly after
Gabrielle had left. Oh, sure, he needed the money if he was to keep this restoration on schedule and make the monthly payments on the brownstone, but he could have insisted that she wait another month before moving in. He could even have volunteered to move downstairs with his sleeping bag. He'd lived like a vagrant amid the rubble up here for weeks now anyway. Instead he'd managed to manipulate her into sharing the place with him. Was he suffering from some need to torment himself? Hadn't he learned anything about the unbreachable differences between the classes while he'd been growing up on Long Island? He'd been the housekeeper's son on an estate the size of a country club. It had kept him on the fringes of high society all of his life. The women he'd met had been vain, shallow and spoiled. He'd learned the hard way that they were unsuited to anything but the most pampered way of life.

He slammed a nail so hard it shook the door. Gabrielle Clayton belonged in a place like this the way diamonds belonged in the Bowery. She probably wouldn't last half as long as diamonds
did in that neighborhood, either. It would give him a certain perverse satisfaction to watch her try to adapt to a life-style she quite obviously considered beneath her.

He'd seen the way she looked at him, too, as if he were no better than a lazy, unambitious handyman. Too many people had looked at him just that way. It was about time he taught one of them a lesson about quick judgments and superficial values.

But why Gabrielle Clayton? a voice in his head nagged. He grinned ruefully. That answer was obvious to anyone who took a good, hard look at her. With her honey-blond hair, delicate bone structure and slight Southern accent, she was a sexy bundle of contradictions wrapped in fur. Scarlett O'Hara and the ice Maiden all rolled into one. She had the kind of wide, dangerous eyes that could tempt a man to the edge of hell. There wasn't a healthy, competitive male alive who wouldn't want to explore the possibilities, to try to ignite a flame that would warm that cool exterior, that would put laughter on those sensuous lips.

All he had to do now was make sure he wasn't the one who got burned.

CHAPTER TWO

H
er parents!

What on earth was she going to tell her parents about this move? Gabrielle thought with a dawning sense of horror as she listened to her mother cheerfully rattling on about the tea party she'd attended the previous afternoon in one of the gracious old houses overlooking Charleston Harbor.

“I do so love that part of town. I don't know why your father won't consider moving. I suppose it's because this old house has been in his
family for generations. I'm all for preserving family history, but is it necessary to live in it? Oh, well, if he won't, he won't. Did I mention that Townsend was there?”