too easily for her peace of mind, Kelsey capitulated. “I can’t very well tell you to come in, because you already did. The dining room’s through there. I’ll get a couple of placemats from the kitchen.”
He walked down the narrow hall into a small room containing a scarred oak table, four chairs and an old-fashioned sideboard; beyond it was a living room in a barely controlled state of chaos. Cardboard packing boxes, piles of books, clothing and sportsgear… Men’s clothes, he thought. Hockey and soccer gear. What was going on?
Looked like she’d just booted her husband out, and his stuff was following him out the door at the first opportunity.
He studied the scuff marks on a pair of skates, his brain in high gear, his curiosity intense. Kelsey wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; he always paid attention to that particular detail. Married women had never been on the cards for him. Too complicated. Particularly when there were so many single ones all too ready to play.
Then Kelsey marched into the dining room and put two placemats and a dish of butter on the table. “Cutlery’s in the drawer,” she said. “I’ll get the wine glasses.”
He put the bag of food down on the table. Knives, forks and spoons were jumbled together in the drawer. All sterling silver, he noticed, and all badly in need of polishing. As she came back in with the glasses and a corkscrew, he said lightly, “Do you spend so much time organizing other people’s stuff that you don’t get around to your own?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind. I’ll get some serving spoons.”
As she moved past him, the overhead light caught her hair, streaking it copper and bronze. Her hips moved delectably in the tight denim. He heard himself say, with a bluntness that dismayed him, “Why the brown tweed suit? Which should, in my opinion, be tossed in the nearest garbage can.”
“Open the bag, Luke. Let’s eat.”
As she sat down across from him, he said blandly, “I see your train of thought—from one bag to another.”
A smile twitched her lips. Those eminently kissable lips. “The suit belonged to my mother,” she said rapidly, watching as he put a bowl in front of her and removed the plastic lid. “She was a very pretty woman with the clothes sense of a rhinoceros. Mmm…the soup smells luscious.”
“Have some sour cream on it. Do you always wear that suit to work?”
“Only for unattached men with a reputation.”
“So there’s been gossip in the village about me as well as my mother?”
She took a sip of borscht and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Not unfounded, in your case.”
“I like women. So what?”
“In the plural.”
“One at a time,” he said, rather more sharply than he’d intended.
“Serial fidelity?”
“Is there anything wrong with that?”
As she shrugged, shadows lingered in the little hollows under her collarbones. He wanted to press his lips into those hollows, find out if her skin was as silky smooth as it looked, smell her hair, trace the slim line of her throat to that other hollow at its base.
Dammit, Luke thought, he needed to bed someone like Clarisse or Lindsay. Hot, slick sex, with no entangling emotions. Too bad he’d cooled both those particular relationships in the last year. Out of—he had to be honest—boredom.
He could always find someone else.
“Serial fidelity must be very convenient,” Kelsey said. “For you.”
Luke dragged himself back to reality. “The women I date always know the score, because I spell it out for them. If they don’t like the rules, they don’t have to play the game.”
“How sophisticated,” Kelsey said in a brittle voice. “Why don’t we change the subject? I’d hate for a discussion of your sexual standards—such as they are—to ruin this delicious soup.”
There were pink patches high on her cheekbones; her skin swept in creamy curves to the corners of her mouth. But he wasn’t going to think about her mouth. “So what are you wearing to work tomorrow, Kelsey? Now that I’ve found you out.”
Her thick dark lashes hiding her eyes, she said calmly, “Jeans, I guess. What were you doing in Hong Kong last week?”
Agreeably, he began to talk about his latest real estate deals along the Pacific Rim. He didn’t elaborate on the side trip to Cambodia.
As Kelsey got up to remove the soup dishes and bring some plates from the kitchen, Luke pushed back his chair and wandered over to examine the painting on the far wall. A quite astonishing painting, he realized, his interest quickening as he tried to read the signature. It was an abstract, seething with subdued energy, color escaping from an overwhelmingly dark background in small explosions of delight.
Hearing her come back in the room, he said, “Who painted this?”
“I did,” she said reluctantly.
“You did?”
She raised her brows. “The dinner’s getting cold.”
“Recently?” he rapped.
“Six months ago.”
More and more he was inclined to believe in an ousted husband. “Do you have more?”
She had a roomful of them upstairs. “A few. Oh, look, asparagus. I adore it. And the wild rice looks scrumptious.”
Clarisse had the appetite of a sparrow, while Lindsay was allergic to just about everything. It was fun, Luke thought in faint surprise, to share a meal with someone who appreciated it. Smoothly, he began describing his latest visit to the Guggenheim.
As Kelsey swallowed the last mouthful of mousse, she sat back and said spontaneously, “That was a wonderful meal—the bistro only opened last summer, and I’ve never eaten there. Thank you, Luke.”
She was looking right at him, her eyes the glossy brown of melted chocolate. The warmth in them hitched at his breath.
“You’re welcome,” he said. She wasn’t his type. She was from the backwoods, all excited about a takeout meal. Get real, Luke. He added casually, “Can I see more of the paintings?”
She said grudgingly, “There are three others in the living room. I’ll put on some coffee.”
Picking his way past a mesh bag of soccer balls and a heap of well-worn cleats, he checked out the other paintings, and felt again the stirring of excitement that genuine creativity called up in him. Each of the three gave that same sense of something desperately striving to burst its bonds. Untutored paintings, yes, but full of raw talent.
Forgetting to watch where he was going, he knocked over a pile of textbooks. A signature leaped out at him, written in an untidy masculine scrawl: Dwayne North.
Kelsey’s husband. The reason she painted pictures
