didn’t mind her stalling; he thought she needed the unwind time. But typically Nik never cut herself any slack, and as if she realized how long she’d been chitchatting, she suddenly set down her fork. “We’re not getting it done,” she said impatiently.
“Getting what done?”
“Both of us are avoiding the subject of babies like it’d bite us. And it’s my fault. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. I do. But somehow I can’t figure out what to say, how to start...”
“There’s nothing to be blaming yourself for. You’re uncomfortable with me—”
“No, of course not. We’ve worked together for months, for heaven’s sakes. Even when we don’t see eye to eye, we trade insults and bicker like old friends. We’ve never really had a problem talking together.”
But there was a difference, Mitch thought, and that difference was her thinking of him as a lover instead of an employee. He pushed back his chair. “Look, how about if we try getting out of the house, take a walk on the beach?”
Her eyes immediately brightened. “Yeah. Fresh air sounds good.” But then she glanced down at her business suit.
“I’ll do the dishes. That’ll give you a chance to change into something warmer and more comfortable than work clothes.”
“You don’t have to do the dishes—”
“It’s nothing, Nik. Go on.”
She hesitated, but then said okay and disappeared upstairs to change. Mitch leveled the dishes in two minutes flat, then wandered into her living room. The night of the Christmas party, the inside of her house had fascinated him as much as the outside—but for entirely different reasons.
The open staircase led to three bedrooms and two baths on the second story. Downstairs, the front door opened onto a massive living area with big bay windows overlooking the ocean bluff. The blue-tiled kitchen was chunked down in the middle, leading down two steps to a dining and sunroom that both faced east. Tucked on like an afterthought was a small wing that contained an office study and bathroom.
The layout was fine—it was the decor that confounded Mitch. At work, he and Nik were a natural team. With his architectural background, he was at home with beams and studs, where she was the pro at color and style and all that female stuff. Hell, she’d built up a thriving business from scratch because her perception was so sharp. Meet a client and right off she tuned into the individual’s personality and all the internal decor ingredients that worked for that person. Get her going on the Feng Shui concepts about balance and harmony and it was tough to shut her up.
Yet the decor in her own place was perplexingly horrible. He wandered around, hands in his pockets, just looking. She’d obviously put time and money into it, but the decorating style was stark minimalist—unrelenting neutrals, taupe carpet, taupe couches, taupe walls. A pale oak table displayed coffee-table art books. Appropriate, pricey pictures hung on the walls. Nobody could criticize a single furnishing. It was all textbook perfect. They’d had clients who’d probably orgasm to achieve the same look, but they weren’t Nik. There were no splashes of colors, no hint of her vibrant creativity or independent spirit.
The living room—the whole inside decor—made him think of a trapped soul. He saw that side of her at work, too. Nik was always proper, hyper about doing the right thing, no bending on standards. Gutsy in her business, but sleeping through life. Restlessly Mitch jingled the change in his pocket, thinking that if he hadn’t glimpsed the other side of Nik, he’d never have this damn fool convoluted problem of being gut-deep in love with her.
But he bad. Memories stirred of another room in her house—the only room where she hadn’t bleached out every stamp of her personality. Her bedroom. He remembered all of it. The thick, soft rose carpeting. The antique sleigh bed. The old-fashioned dressing table with a needlepoint seat, pearls dripping from a crystal bowl, vials of perfume and cosmetic pots and a cloisonné dish heaped with earrings.
The room reflected the Nik he’d always sensed under the surface, exuberantly female, a free-flow of rich textures and sensual colors. But it wasn’t the furnishings in that bedroom that had kidnapped a niche on his soul the night of the Christmas party. It was Sleeping Beauty coming awake in his arms, coming alive, the rigidly careful Nik forgetting all that control in the dark...but abruptly Mitch heard footsteps.
He spun around to see Nicole bounding down the stairs, dressed in skinny jeans and old sneakers and a voluminous threadbare black sweatshirt.
“I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “Who’d have guessed you’d own anything with a frayed collar? I’m impressed.”
“No teasing allowed. It’s a sacred sweatshirt,” she said dryly.
“I understand. I’ve got a sacred tee from college basketball days. When my dad got sick a few years ago, I showed up in the hospital wearing that tee. My mom was disgusted. I didn’t care. I wanted luck for my dad any way I could get it.”
A flash of a smile in her eyes, but then she cocked her head. “Your dad’s okay now?”
“Fit as a fiddle. You ready to head out?”
“I am...but I’m not sure this is such a great idea. You’re still stuck wearing your shoes from work. I’m afraid they’ll get wrecked on the beach. And it’s cold—I could loan you a jacket, but I can’t imagine having anything of mine that’d fit.”
Mitch figured it’d be an uphill job to teach her some selfishness. Typically she was worried about him—even under the circumstances—rather than thinking of herself. But she was also a good head shorter than his six-three. Imagining how he’d fit in anything of hers made him grin. “These loafers have seen sand before. And I’ve got a fleece jacket in the car I’ll grab when we go out.”
“Okay, then. Let’s hit it.”
Outside, the sky had darkened to a deep velvet-blue, the moon just rising to light their way. He fetched his fleece jacket and zipped up, feeling the sharp salt air suck in his lungs, fresh and invigorating. Pale stars illuminated their climb down to the beach from the board steps. The surf was sleepy at high tide. Foam sneaked up the sand, leaving a lacy collar of froth in its wake. Common to this stretch of Oregon’s coast, giant rocks jutted from the water, plunked down like mythical black sculptures of all shapes and sizes. In the darkness they looked like a giant’s play toys.
He let Nicole set the walking pace, which naturally for her was a full-speed charge. They hiked in silence for a bit, both of them savoring the magic of the sea, the night, the fresh air. Striding next to her, he was conscious of his height and her smallness, conscious of how the worn jeans showed off her fanny and long slim legs, conscious that she stole looks at his face...and conscious that no matter how good walking with her felt, it wasn’t getting their talking done.
“I moved here from Seattle,” he said finally.
“I know. I remember from your job application. You were one of the architects for a firm named Strickland’s.”
“I was an architect there, yes. But what I didn’t mention on the ap was that I owned the firm.”
She tilted her face, her eyebrows arched in question. “Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“Because when I started job hunting—for the work I wanted—I got
