all the rage.”
“Tear it down, you mean?” He laughed, delighting in her mischievous smile. “I’m about ready to sell it and move outside the city. Or maybe to Presidio Heights, I’ve seen a couple of places I like there. Let’s go in.”
After he’d unlocked the front door, Katrin entered ahead of him, preceding him into the living room with its sparse, modern furniture. “The view is wonderful,” she said spontaneously.
He could see all the way from the Golden Gate Bridge to Fisherman’s Wharf; the island of Alcatraz loomed above the cold, choppy waters of the bay, where sailboats bobbed like white-painted toys. “Can I get you a drink?”
“I need to clean up,” she said.
He took her past the dining room and the library up a short flight of stairs to the guest wing. Her bedroom also had a wide view of the bay, and came with its own balcony. “My room’s upstairs,” he said briefly. “You’ll be entirely private here.”
She slid her feet out of her Italian pumps. “I might have a nap,” she said evasively, “I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’ll need my wits about me tomorrow. Will you call me whenever you want dinner?”
“I went to the deli, got a bunch of stuff we can reheat in the microwave.” His smile felt stiff. “I’m no cook.”
“That’ll be fine…I just need to be alone for a while.”
Her body language was easily read: keep your distance. Luke nodded coolly, closed her door and walked back to the living room. He was the one who’d run away from her so he wouldn’t make love to her again; but right now he’d have given his eyeteeth to have been in bed with her.
Go figure.
Cursing himself under his breath, he changed into shorts and a tank top in his room and spent an hour in the fully equipped gym on the upper floor. Then he heard Katrin moving around downstairs. He ran down in his bare feet; she’d changed into white cotton pants and a pink shirt. “Ready to eat?” he asked.
Her lashes flickered. “Whenever you are.”
“You don’t have to be so polite!”
“How else are we supposed to deal with this?”
“We slept together, Katrin—or are you forgetting that?”
“I slept. You left.”
He flinched. “Okay, okay…come on through to the kitchen.”
“I wish you’d put some clothes on first,” she said irritably.
“I’m wearing clothes.”
In a deadly quiet voice she said, “Why did you leave in the middle of the night, Luke?”
“Why did you say on the phone that we wouldn’t make love again?”
“I don’t see why I have to answer that.”
“Fine. That can work both ways.”
She glared at him. “I have yet to see a single photo in this house. Or anything personal. It’s like a house in a magazine, perfect and soulless. Don’t you have any photos of your parents?”
“Obviously not,” he said shortly, and went on the attack. “Are you pregnant, Katrin? We didn’t use anything that second time.”
“No. I’m not.”
His chest tight with a mixture of emotions he couldn’t possibly have sorted out, although relief and a sharp regret were certainly among them, Luke marched into the kitchen. Which did indeed look perfect and soulless. “Let’s eat…I thought we’d go out on the balcony.”
He reached into the refrigerator. “The salads can go on plates from the cupboard over the sink. I’ll heat up the chicken and the garlic bread.”
The kitchen was large. But as he took out a platter for the chicken, he bumped into Katrin as she turned to ask him something. The platter landed on the counter. He put his arms around her and kissed her with a blatant and smoldering sensuality that, after the briefest of hesitations, she more than matched. His body on fire with need, he found her breast under her pink shirt, its warmth and weight so well remembered, so greatly desired.
She yanked her head free and struck at his hand. “Don’t, Luke! We can’t do this.”
“Why not? We both want to,” he said with infallible logic.
“We agreed we wouldn’t.”
“Agreements can be renegotiated.”
“I can’t take this anymore,” she said incoherently, “it’s all too much!”
Remembering with compunction the reason she was here, Luke said slowly, “You’re right on the edge, aren’t you?”
“You got that right. Don’t you see? I made the biggest mistake of my life when I married Donald. Who was a very rich man. And now here I am back in the same city involved with another rich man.”
“I don’t do shady deals,” Luke grated. “And I’m not asking you to marry me.”
“How true…you’re not, are you?” she said in a peculiar voice. “I’ll be here three days…so are you suggesting we have three successive one-night stands? Is that it?”
“That sounds so damn crude!”
“I call it like I see it.”
Her cheeks were now as pink as her shirt; but there was real desperation in her blue eyes. Luke said carefully, “Look, you’ve got a heavy-duty day ahead of you tomorrow, Katrin. Why don’t we call a truce? At least until you’re done with the police and the fancy lawyers.”
“And then we’ll pick up where we left off?” she snorted.
“Why not?” He grinned at her. “It was a very nice kiss.”
“I could think of several words to describe that kiss. Nice isn’t one of them.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
Hands on her hips, she glowered at him. “You’re one heck of an infuriating man, Luke MacRae…do you have a middle name, by the way?”
“Where I come from, they didn’t go in for middle names,” Luke muttered; then could have bitten off his tongue.
“And if I were to ask you where that was, you’d shut up tighter than the proverbial clam.”
He raked his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “Supper. On the balcony. Isn’t that what we came out here for?”
She grabbed a white dish towel from the rack, waving it in front of him. “And the truce—don’t forget the truce.”
He suddenly started to laugh. “You won’t let me.”
Her lips curved in an answering smile. “You’re getting the picture. What kind of chicken did you buy?”
Fifteen minutes later they were seated on teak chairs amidst the tangle of vines and flowering shrubs on the balcony; the bay and the distant hills were topped by a pearl-gray evening sky. Luke filled Katrin’s wineglass with a California Chardonnay. “To better days,” he said.
“I’ll drink to that.” She tore off a chunk of hot garlic bread, licked her fingers and said with a sigh, “I feel much better. Let’s talk about movies and Paris and whether you’re afraid of snakes.”
“It’s spiders that do me in,” he said solemnly, and obligingly asked her what movies she’d seen lately, buried as she was in Askja. One thing led to another, until Luke found himself telling her stories about some of his jaunts into mines ranging from the Arctic to the tropics. Her questions were intelligent, her interest genuine: encouraged, he talked far longer than was his custom, revealing