must be really rich, she thought. He looked as if he’d never heard the word no before. He gave her a playful scowl and came even closer, so close it made the hair on her arms stand up and tingle.
Cripes. Maybe she should go back to the Goth style she’d adopted in high school, the unflattering, chopped-off purple hair and the black, slouchy clothes. Passes from boy-men had never been such a nuisance back then.
“But I’ve been looking forward to it,” he said in a throaty voice. “I’m eager to get to know you better, Suzie. You’re such a talented young woman.”
Oh, man, she really, really didn’t like people invading her space, and this guy was so close she could see the tiny broken veins around his nose. If she were painting his face, she’d need a whole tube of cadmium red.
A drinker. Great. She needed that.
She tried one last time to be smart, to remember the mortgage payments. Would it kill her to ride in the car with the guy one time? Her town house was only ten minutes away. She thought of the red short-shorts and the screaming kids who puked up tartar sauce on the tables. She thought of the way she had come dragging home every night, too tired and angry to paint.
He touched her arm. Still smiling, he ran his index finger slowly up, until it disappeared under the little cap sleeve of her T-shirt. She shivered in disgust, and she saw his gaze slip to her nipples.
Oh, no, you don’t, buddy. Waaay over the line.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kuspit. I guess I didn’t understand exactly what you wanted. The portrait is forty-five hundred. But if you’re expecting to have a thing with me on the side, that’s going to cost extra.”
He blinked once, but then his grin twisted, and his fingers crept up another inch. They found her shoulder and cupped it. What an incredible sleazeball! He thought she was playing games.
“Oh, is that so?” He raised one eyebrow. “How much extra?”
She scrunched up her mouth and made a low hum of consideration. “Let’s see,” she said. “I’d say…oh, about…no…well, let’s see…”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Oh, yeah, now I remember. There’s not enough money in the world.”
His brows dived together. His hand tightened on her shoulder and pulled her in, and his other arm started to come up. She didn’t stop to find out what he had in mind. She swung out with the camera as hard as she could.
He was so close she couldn’t get much leverage. Still, the camera connected with his cheek and made a nice little thump, followed by a grunt of shocked outrage.
“Shit,” he said, recoiling. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She didn’t bother to answer. He was holding his cheek, looking at her as if she’d broken his jaw, which she definitely had not. She knew what that sounded like. She’d broken a bone once, the left radius of a university teaching assistant who’d thought he could teach her something more than algebra and had to be set straight the hard way.
This guy wasn’t hurt. He was just a big baby.
She reached out, lifted his hand from the cheek and eyed it calmly, pleased to see she’d drawn at least a little blood. He’d have a nice colorful bruise there tomorrow.
She felt like blowing smoke from the tip of her camera, gunslinger style. But that would have been gloating.
Still, she was pleased to discover that, even after ten years of learning to play nice and conform, she hadn’t lost her touch entirely.
It wasn’t until she was halfway home in the cab that she realized what she had lost.
She leaned her head against the cracked vinyl seat and let out a groan.
Blast it. She’d lost four-and-a-half thousand dollars.
DEBRA PAWLEY DECIDED to go over to the Millner-Frome mansion a couple of hours early so that she could make sure everything was spiffed up and gleaming for the open house at noon.
She was by God going to sell this house today.
Tuxedo Lake was one of the most desirable communities in this part of upstate New York. It was about thirty minutes northeast of Albany, just close enough to be considered a bedroom community…if you didn’t plan to sleep late.
The lake itself was big and elegant, with sandy shores you could get away with calling a beach in your brochures. A picturesque ring of low granite cliffs nearly circled the lake, and if a sailboat drifted by at the right moment, your brochure illustration looked dynamite.
The mansion itself was gorgeous. A 6,462-square-foot French château jewel, complete with marble vestibule, formal library, swimming pool with central fountain and Jacuzzi. Nanny quarters over the four-car garage.
Debra didn’t often let herself envy the houses she listed. But she envied this one.
When she sold it, she’d make a bundle in commission.
If she sold it. The house might be perfect, but the house’s history was a mess. Justine Frome had mysteriously disappeared two years ago and had never been heard from since. The police suspected foul play, and so did her parents. Justine’s father had dragged the lake and jackhammered up the swimming pool looking for her, but no body had ever been found.
That was the problem in a nutshell. Debra didn’t mean to be insensitive, but who wanted to pay a couple of mil for a beautiful lakefront home if they were always going to be wondering when a body might bob out of the lake, or start stinking up the basement?
She left her car out on the street, planted her Open House sign in the most visible spot and then hiked up the long, showy entry to the mansion. She liked to let the buyers drive into the main portico. It tempted them. They loved the look of their own cars under that elegant, shady arch.
Please, God, let there be buyers today. Her last open house had brought in half a dozen gawkers and only two legitimate lookers who had scurried out of the house like cartoon mice when they heard the Where’s Justine? story. Legally, she had to tell it.
Debra propped her bag of cleaning and cooking supplies against her shin while she fumbled with the front door keys. Off to the right, she heard the growl of Richie Graham’s hedge clippers. He was probably shaping the boxwood hedge, which surrounded a glorious garden of White Persian Lilacs. They probably would be in full bloom thanks to all the rain.
Richie…well, that was a good news–bad news situation. Richie had been the gardener for this house, and many of the Tuxedo Lake mansions, for about ten years now, and he created some spectacular lawns. He’d lived in the nanny quarters, serving as caretaker for the mansion ever since Justine’s father, Alton Millner, had moved out a few months ago.
He was as scruffy, rugged and sexy as Lady Chatterley’s lover, which was the good news. Debra had watched the female prospective buyers watching Richie, and several times she’d been tempted to hand them one of the Chinese lacquer bowls to catch the drool.
The bad news was that he was terrible about tracking mud all over the marble floors, especially when
