Chapter 3
After ringing the doorbell three times, Devlin decided Gabrielle must have been held up at the jail or had gone back to the office. The door jerked open just as he started to turn away. She didn’t say anything, but stood in the doorway and stared at him.
Dark brown hair caught in a topknot with the ends sticking straight up, no lipstick, mascara smudged under gorgeous green eyes. The features were the same, but . . . Who the hell was this woman? What had happened to Ms. Buttoned-up Dressed-for-success Gabrielle Rousseau?
His gaze dropped from her face to a baggy white T-shirt with the logo of a man holding an alligator guitar. “We be jazzin’,” it read. Bare feet, cutoffs, and long, gorgeous legs completed the picture. And judging by her bewildered expression, she didn’t have a clue why he was there.
“Hi. I brought Chinese.” He held up a plastic carton and a paper sack. “Hope that’s okay, but you didn’t say what you wanted.”
“What I . . . ” Laying a hand aside her head, she continued to stare as her voice trailed off and her brow furrowed in bafflement.
“You forgot,” he said, a little amused to find his pride bruised.“You’re hard on the ego, did you know that?” Women didn’t forget dates, even working dates, with Devlin. They might break them, but they didn’t totally forget them. Gabrielle, apparently, had.
“You’ll live. I can’t imagine your ego suffering for long.” She stepped aside to let him in, obviously having regained her poise.
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
Her mouth curved upward. “Take it whichever way you want. But if it makes you feel better, I didn’t forget. I just didn’t realize what time it was.”
He let that pass, but he knew she hadn’t remembered their working dinner.
It piqued his vanity, especially since he didn’t think the sexual pull between them was all on his side.
Yet even more than insulting him, her forgetfulness aroused his curiosity.
An attorney with Gabrielle’s reputation wouldn’t forget something like the Sabatino case.
Could she really be a space cadet? He seriously doubted it.
More likely, she was playing some kind of game.
Stepping over a pair of tan pumps lying drunkenly beside the front door, he walked inside and glanced around.
The dining room and living room were combined.
Instead of a table in the dining area, a black baby grand piano filled the entire space.
A book stood open on the music tray over the keyboard and a piece of sheet music lay on the bench with another on the floor beside it. Not for looks. Obviously, she played.
The rest of the room was an odd mixture of tastes, ranging from a gorgeous Oriental rug covering the hardwood floor, to a piece of modern metal sculpture standing in a corner, to a well-used sofa and easy chair that denied any claim to fashion.
On the coffee table a glass lay turned over beside an open bottle of wine.
That could explain her spaciness except it didn’t look like more than a glassful was missing from the bottle.
A small horse stood beside the low glass-topped table, wagging its tail and lapping at the pale gold liquid dripping steadily onto the expensive rug.
No, not a horse. A large, ugly brown and black curly-haired dog.
“Rocky! Stop that!” Gabrielle tugged on the dog’s collar, but it ignored her and simply swiped at the wine until it was gone. With a plop, the dog sat, its pink tongue darting out to lick the last lingering drops from its snout. “You sot,” she accused.
Devlin laughed. “What is he? Besides a lush?”
“A pain in the rear. And he’s a she. Come on,” she said, picking up the wine bottle and glass and starting out of the room. “We’ll eat in the kitchen.”
Great legs, Devlin thought as he and the dog followed her. Long, shapely—but he shouldn’t be thinking about her legs, however fantastic they were. He needed to think about business. Law, not legs.
Trouble was, he kept getting distracted.
From the moment she landed at his feet in the lingerie shop, Gabrielle had intrigued him.
Satin and lace underneath an ultraconservative business suit.
The more he learned about her, the more curious he grew.
Normally, he didn’t allow a woman to distract him.
Gabrielle did it without even trying. He thought about that for a moment.
Maybe she was trying. It was a unique approach, if so.
The dog went out the back door along with Gabrielle’s admonition not to dig. “She ate my sprinkler system last week,” she said by way of explanation. “Puppies.”
“Puppy?” He took the wine bottle from her and set it on the kitchen table along with the food. “That’s a puppy? You mean she’ll get bigger?”
Her smile softened the angles of her face.
“Not exactly, but she’ll fill out. We had a rash of burglaries a few months ago, and I decided to get a dog.
The people at the shelter said she’d be a great watchdog.
I must have sucker written on my forehead.
So far she’s been worthless. She sleeps like the dead and barks at everything in sight. ”
“You don’t look like a sucker to me.”
“Only for certain things,” she said.
He wondered what those were, besides animals. “Maybe she’ll improve with age.”
“I suppose there’s always that hope.” She sounded doubtful. “Do you want a glass of wine?” Opening a cupboard, she looked over her shoulder at him.
“Sure. Here, let me get it.” He reached toward the top shelf at the same time she did. Their hands collided, and one of the glasses fell, shattering on the white tile floor.
“Damn.” Surrounded by a field of glass shards, she grimaced as she surveyed the mess.
“Sorry.”
She shrugged his apology aside. “It wasn’t fine crystal. Just one step up from jelly jars.”
“You’d better let me clean it up. You’re barefoot.”
“Don’t be sill?—”
He picked her up in mid-sentence and set her on the counter.
Enjoying her startled gasp, he let his hands linger at her waist. Tension shimmered, stretched tightly between them as they stared at each other.
Slowly, he became aware of the soft feel of her beneath his hands, of her scent, faintly sultry, luring him closer.
His gaze dropped to watch her tongue dart out and moisten her lips. Was it an unconscious gesture? He couldn’t be certain, but it sure as hell tempted him.
He leaned closer, until their mouths were only a few inches apart, and purposely lowered his voice to an intimate level. “Where’s your broom?”
“My . . . ”
“Broom,” he supplied, watching the dazed expression leave her face.
Her eyes flashed with a murderous gleam. “In the pantry.”
He grinned and began to think seriously on the merits of seduction.
* * *
“So, we’re clear on the initial division of the research,” Devlin said some two hours later. He sifted through the papers spread out over the coffee table, sticking a few of them in his briefcase.
“Yes.” Gabrielle picked up one of the heavy law books from the floor in front of the couch and thumbed through it. “I’ll tell my team tomorrow to start checking out the eyewitnesses.”
When they first sat down to work, Gabrielle had pulled out a pair of brown horn-rimmed glasses.
With that action, all traces of a space cadet had disappeared.
Devlin decided she used that air-head attitude to throw people off guard.
It was an effective strategy and heightened his curiosity about what made her tick.
“Take a break,” he suggested. “We’ve done everything we can for tonight.”
“Talked me into it.” She took off her glasses and laid them on top of the papers on the coffee table, then groaned and rolled her shoulders.
Devlin stretched his arm across the back of the couch, brushing his fingers over the nape of her neck. “You’re the jumpiest woman,” he said at her start of surprise. “Are you always that way?”
“I’m not—” She shivered when his fingers found a tight muscle and squeezed gently. “Jumpy. What are you—Hmm?” She stretched like a cat as he massaged her neck. “Don’t . . . I don’t think you should do that.”
He smiled and continued flexing his fingers into the soft skin of her neck and shoulders. If she were as indifferent to him as she pretended to be, she wouldn’t sound so wary.
“Relax. It’s only a neck rub.”
“Sinclair, this is a business meeting,” she said, but she didn’t move away. Her eyes drifted shut and her head bowed as she relaxed beneath the subtle pressure of his fingers.
“We’re through for the night, remember?” The tension started to ebb from her muscles. His gaze lit on the piano, reminding him of a question he’d meant to ask her earlier.
“What kind of music do you play?”
“Bach, Beethoven . . . Mozart.” Her voice sounded dreamier.“Schubert, Handel . . . ”
Classical. That suited her. He found the image of her playing the piano surprisingly erotic. Maybe it was the idea of her hands gliding over the keys. “Do you play other music, as well?”
“Some.” She paused and added, “But I like classical best. It’s the most satisfying to me.”
“Are you any good?”
She tilted her head up, shooting him a challenging look over her shoulder. “What do you think?”
He smiled and shifted closer, keeping his hands on her shoulders.“I think you wouldn’t play if you weren’t any good.”
“Probably not,” she said, and laughed softly. “When I was younger I wanted to be a concert pianist.”
“What changed your mind?” She was almost fully relaxed now, and the feel of her smooth skin was tempting the hell out of him. He told his hands to stay put. “What made you choose law instead?”
Her shoulders tensed. “I grew up. It’s hard to make a living as a pianist. Law seemed safer.”
Safer, he thought. An odd choice of words. “Do you ever regret it?” His hands skimmed down to her back, kneading as they talked.
“No. I still have my music. Only now I’ve got a law career as well.” She was silent a moment. “That’s not my neck.”
“I know. Your back’s tight too.”
She turned to face him.