Deep Autumn Heat (43 page)

How utterly humiliating. How utterly Cath.

But no, that was the
old
Cath. Bad Cath. New Cath had been doing pretty well before last night’s cocktail had knocked her flat on her ass. What had the Blind Date said it was? Some kind of energy drink thing with tequila and gin and triple sec and she didn’t know what-all else. The sort of cocktail undergrad girls with low self-esteem downed by the pitcher on spring break in Florida. Had she not been half stoned on wine and pain and Patsy Cline, she’d never have let it
past her lips.

You did, though. And how many mistakes does that make, Mary Catherine?

She counted, pushing her fingers into the mattress one at a time.

One. You agreed to the blind date
.

Two. You had too much wine
.

Three. You didn’t flee at the first sight of the cross-dressing Patsy Cline
.

Four. You drank that nightmare of a cocktail
.

Five. You took public transportation home instead of a cab
.

Six. You hooked up with City and then, what? Passed out?

On four drinks?

No, dumbass. On four drinks and two antihistamines
.

Oh, hell. The twenty-four-hour allergy medicine she’d taken yesterday morning wouldn’t have mixed well with alcohol. After City had rescued her from the Canary Wharf train platform, she must’ve conked out on him.

She took it back. City wasn’t a mistake. He was her guardian angel.

A guardian angel who’d seen her in her underpants.

Cath took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Time to find a bathroom, locate her clothes, thank City for the safe harbor, and get the hell out of Dodge.

The bedroom door opened onto the hallway of a modest flat. The main entry was at one end, and that had to be the kitchen at the other. Which left two rooms with open doors and the third directly across the hall from the bedroom with the door mostly closed. Cath crossed her fingers.
Let that be the bathroom
.

It was. She peed for approximately nine years and then splashed some cold water on her face, working up the courage to look in the mirror. Ugh. At least when she’d been a bad girl, she’d had spiky hair dyed black to match her clothes, and she’d been able to do the goth thing on hangover days, accentuating her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes with heavy eyeliner and lipstick the color of dried blood. Now that she was playing it straight, she just looked like
Tinker Bell coming off a bender. After scrubbing her mascara off as best she could with cold water, she ran damp fingers through her chin-length, wispy brown hair in a futile attempt to restore some semblance of a style.

She spotted a new toothbrush still in its package on the back of the sink and eyed it covetously. Even after a drink of water, her mouth tasted like … There were no words. And the toothbrush couldn’t be City’s, because his was on the wall in a holder with his toothpaste. Unless there was another woman lurking around here somewhere, he must have put it out for her.

Had any of the guys she’d actually slept with ever been so considerate?

No, definitely not. Rating a toothbrush of her very own was a first. She picked it up and smeared some of his toothpaste onto the bristles.

How strange to be in City’s neat little bathroom, using his toiletries. Her favorite stranger. Silly as it seemed, she retained a vivid impression of the relief that had flooded through her when she saw his face on the train platform last night. It had felt like she’d known him all her life rather than just observing him from afar for the better part of three seasons. Her intuition told her she could trust him.

Given how bad her instincts were, he’d probably turn out to be a serial killer.

She spat and rinsed out her mouth, beginning to feel almost human. What she really needed was a hot shower. Glancing with longing at the claw-foot tub, she noticed a towel neatly folded over the edge. Another one was draped on the radiator. She poked it with one finger. Still damp, so it had to be City’s. The towel on the tub was for her.

A clean towel and a toothbrush, and he hadn’t even gotten into her pants. What a guy. No wonder she hadn’t slept with him.

She paused a moment before stripping off the T-shirt. New Cath didn’t get naked in strange men’s apartments. On the other hand, New Cath had made six significant mistakes since dinnertime yesterday. How likely was it that mistake number seven would be the one that sank her?

Cath shook her head. If City had planned to assault her, he’d have done it last night.
Instead, he’d put her to bed and set out a toothbrush and a towel for her. He was a regular Boy Scout. She’d known that already.

The shower felt heavenly, the water nearly hot enough to scald—just how she liked it. She stayed under the spray for a long time, wishing she could wash the shame away along with the grime. Smoothing City’s spicy, man-smelling soap over the tattoo that wrapped around her lower back and one side of her stomach in a wide band, she reminded herself she’d done worse things and managed to get over them.

This thing, whatever it was—this oops, this slipup that had landed her in City’s shower—did not have to mean that New Cath had slid off the rails and plowed into a hedgerow. This could be a blip. Two years without a blip was pretty good. If she went right back to New Cath with no further blippage, she might manage to forget this had ever happened within, say, six months. Blips did not count on one’s permanent record.

After drying off with City’s plush towel, Cath pulled on her underwear and shrugged back into the T-shirt. Mostly headache-free and heading toward hungry, she ventured out in search of her host and, she hoped, her own clothes.

The unmistakable odor of bacon wafted through the flat, but the kitchen was quiet, so she peeked in the door next to the bathroom. An empty office. She moved toward the remaining door, which had to be the living room.

Wrong. It was a studio. Canvases were stacked four and five deep along the walls and in front of shelves that were neatly arrayed with paints, paper, and other supplies. The artist was in residence, his body turned three-quarters away from her, utterly absorbed in the large painting on his easel.

Disoriented, Cath leaned against the doorjamb and watched him for a while. She never would’ve figured City had an artistic side. The painting on the easel in front of him was nearly finished, showing a woman working at a desk in an office. He must have painted the picture in his bedroom, too. The style was unmistakable.

He was talented.

Damn, and now her skin was doing that tingling, goose-bumpy thing it did whenever she got the hots for an artist. What was it about painters, anyway? The play of the lean muscles in his forearms, the precision in his fingers as he wielded the brush over the canvas—the whole scene just turned her crank.

It was a purely situational attraction, of course. Meaningless. This was
City
, for heaven’s sake. She’d never once gone melty over him before. It was just that in faded jeans and a paint-smeared red T-shirt that clung across his shoulders, he looked like a completely different man.

His ass wasn’t helping. The man had a really tidy ass.

Ashamed of the randy teenager who had overtaken her brain, Cath pushed away from the door and crossed the room. “You’re pretty good.”

He turned and looked at her, his face momentarily blank. His short blond hair was tousled as if he’d been running his hand through it, and there was a streak of red paint on his cheek.

Then he smiled, and Cath temporarily forgot how to breathe. City didn’t look like City when he smiled. It was still his face, though with nice teeth and a boyish dimple in one cheek. Pleasant surprises, but there was something else, too. An I’m-going-to-eat-you-up something. Smiling, City didn’t appear altogether safe.

To her dismay, he lit her up like a pinball machine.