style="font-size:15px;"> “Of course not. It’s an art and antiques gallery. What was I thinking?” she said sarcastically. “At any rate, it’s mine. The building was a disaster when I bought it. I did all the renovations. Did a damn good job of them, too. Ask Cord, if you don’t believe me.”
He regarded her with disbelief. “You did the work yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you hire somebody?” Josh asked.
“Because that’s what everybody expected me to do. I don’t like doing what people expect. I never have. I wanted to prove I could build my business from the ground up, almost literally.”
“How bad was this building?”
“Let’s just say that a lot of people laughed themselves silly when I said I’d bought it. My father almost had a stroke when he saw it, and he’s not prone to overreacting.”
“How old was it?” he asked.
“It had been around since the mid-1800s. The outside was in good shape, but the inside had deteriorated.”
A building that old would definitely have been a challenge, Josh thought. A lot of people would have leveled it and started over. He was impressed that Maggie hadn’t done that. “Did you have Cord take a look at it?” Josh asked curiously.
“He was the first one I called before I signed the papers. He said the building had good bones.”
Josh still wasn’t entirely convinced that she hadn’t exaggerated the transformation. “Mind if I come by to take a look?”
“Did you ask everyone else who volunteered to work on this house to prove their credentials?” she demanded.
Josh waved off the question. “It’s not about that. I’m curious. I’d really like to see it. My expertise is in historic renovation, just like Cord. What can I say? I love old buildings.” If he’d had to explain it, he’d have to say it had some deep-rooted connection to the lack of permanency in his own life, but he didn’t know Maggie well enough to get into all that with her.
She studied him for a long time before nodding. “We can go by there now.”
Josh glanced down at himself. “Like this? I’m a mess. So are you, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“It’s hot as blazes out here. Anyone who’s been outside today is a mess. Besides, the gallery closes at six. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”
Once again, she’d caught him off guard. He’d figured her for a woman who’d want people to take off their dusty shoes on the front steps. Then, again, she could hardly ask such a thing of customers. Maybe running a retail business had forced her to lower her high standards.
“Then let’s go have ourselves a tour,” he suggested, eager to get a look at the place. “You tell me where and I’ll meet you there.”
Maggie gave him the address, which turned out to be not that far from his motel, though he suspected it was light-years away in terms of class.
“Does a half hour work for you or do you have things to finish up here?” she asked.
“A half-hour suits me fine if you’re sure you don’t mind me coming like this. Otherwise I can swing by my place and shower and be there in forty-five minutes.”
She grinned at him. “As long as you don’t sit on the antique furniture and keep your hands off the paintings, you’ll be fine. And before you get all offended, I say the same thing to anyone who comes into the gallery. The ice-cream cones from the shop next door stay outside.”
“I know how to mind my manners in a fancy place, Miss Maggie.”
Maggie didn’t look as if she believed him, but she merely nodded and headed for her car. Josh’s gaze followed her as she settled behind the wheel of a snazzy little Saab convertible—which cost just about half of his annual salary. It suited her, though.
Maggie Forsythe might want him to believe she was as down-to-earth as anyone else, but he recognized privilege in every delectable, pampered inch of her. That meant they were about as suited as corn bread and champagne.
That didn’t seem to stop him from wanting her, though. He wondered just how long it would be before he made the mother of all mistakes and did something about it.
Maggie liked showing off Images, but she hadn’t been this jittery since the gallery’s opening night, when the invitation-only crowd had dressed in black tie and included all her parents’ high-society friends.
She’d driven crosstown as fast as she’d dared—she’d already received warnings from several easily charmed Charleston policemen. The extra speed had given her just enough time to wash her face, brush out her hair and add a touch of lipstick and gloss before she heard Josh coming in the front door.
He’d pulled on a navy blue T-shirt and tucked it into his jeans, but the additional clothing hadn’t done a thing to take the edge off his sex appeal. Too bad. She’d been hoping her reaction, which had centered on his bare chest, would vanish once that chest was suitably attired.
She studied his face as he stood in the middle of the main room and surveyed it from top to bottom. She couldn’t tell for sure if he was looking at the art and sculptures, the antiques or the renovations, but she was on edge as she tried to gauge his reaction to any of it. Why she wanted this man’s approval was beyond her. She doubted he knew anything at all about art, possibly even less about antiques. He did, however, know renovations, so maybe that was why she was so edgy. Then again Cord had said she’d done an excellent job.
“Well?” she prodded when she couldn’t stand it a moment longer.
“Do you have any before pictures?”
“A whole scrapbook full,” she said, leading him over to the leather-bound volume she kept on a desk near the front door. Josh flipped the pages, glanced up several times as if to make comparisons, then slowly whistled.
“Is that approval?” she asked tentatively.
“Well, the place is definitely not what I expected,” he said at last.
Maggie couldn’t interpret the comment or his expression. “Meaning?”
“I’m not exactly an expert on galleries,” he said, turning slowly to take in the rest of the room, “but the ones I’ve been in were a little cold, a little too, I don’t know, impressed with themselves.”
“Yes,” Maggie said cautiously. That was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid.
“I feel at home here,” Josh said. “I felt it the minute I came in the door. This place makes me want to buy something so my home will feel the same way. Those other places just make you want to possess something because someone else has judged it to be great art.”
Maggie was so overwhelmed by his insight that she only barely resisted the urge to throw her arms around him. “That’s exactly what I wanted people to feel when they walked in here,” she said. Maybe she’d have to take back all the thickheaded, macho labels she’d been pinning
