London Lace #1 (3 page)

She slipped down under the bath water fully immersing her shoulder-length locks.  She rubbed at her nipples, trying to calm them back to their relaxed state, but she only made matters worse because she now felt a tingle in her groin.

She moved her hands to her hair, swirling it thoroughly, but decided not to wash it. She scooted up from her prone position and lathered herself up with her favorite jasmine scented soap from Paris. She cleaned herself properly, but did not give any extra attention to the body parts calling out for more. She was done with Todd Montgomery. She had even drunk-dialed him. Maybe she didn’t have as much dignity as she thought.

She drained the bath, toweled off, combed her hair and slipped into the turquoise silk robe she had found on sale in China Town last year. It felt delicious against her skin. By the time she brushed her teeth she had forgiven her nipples and was realizing that the tingle between her legs was a personal invitation to a pleasure she hadn’t given herself for a few weeks. After all, she could fantasize about an imaginary, polite, passionate version of Todd Montgomery (but she wouldn’t, she promised herself, go so far as to imagine Tatum instead—she always felt so guilty when she did that).

As she opened the door to the bathroom, a cloud of steam escaped with her. She padded across the second-hand Persian carpet to get her sketch book. She’d only glanced at one page when she heard banging from the street. A powerful knocking. She looked at the clock. It was one AM. The alleys of Soho used to get rowdy at this time most nights, but this particular street in Piccadilly, with its high-end boutiques and daytime coffee shops, was tame by comparison. She tiptoed to the window to assess the commotion, picking up the phone on the way in case someone was trying to break into the shop. The noise sounded that close.

Just below, someone was banging on a door. Eliza’s door. Not the one to the shop, but the one leading to the stairs to her apartment.

“Miss Keating! I know you’re in there.” The man wore a tweed blazer. He looked up now, his dark hair falling over one eyes. He saw her looking down from the window.

“Please let me in,” he said a little more quietly. Eliza was just about to shake her head to say no—what kind of nutcase would come over in the middle of the night?—but then, for the first time, he smiled. And to say her knees buckled under her would be close to accurate. She staggered back, catching herself on her reupholstered Queen Anne chair, the only thing from her mother that held any remote value. She considered dropping into that chair to recover, but he was banging loudly again. He’d wake up the whole neighborhood. Or rather, the handful of people like her who kept apartments over their shops.

She was stunned and needed the support of the railing to make her way down the stairs as much as she had needed it to make her way up just a little over an hour ago.

The light was unflattering, her hair was wet and stringy and making a wet patch down her back, but she ignored all of this as she made her way to the outer door trying to figure out what to say to this handsome, rude intruder. It didn’t help that Stella’s words from earlier in the evening came flooding back to her. “Those ones tend to have a lot of pent up passion once you get them between the sheets….”

He was on the other side of the glass looking back towards the street. Perhaps he sensed her movement because he turned all of a sudden. He was still smiling. It was a cross between a smirk and a genuine smile, but it was close enough to a smirk for Eliza to get her bearings (mostly) and remember who this was and why she had hung up on him forty-five minutes ago. But when his eyes locked on hers she forgot whatever she thought she remembered just a moment before. The tingle between her legs ignited into a small flame.

“What are you doing here?” she said after unlocking the door.

He held up a metal cylinder that looked like a small take-out cup, but a little different. She’d seen something like that before, in a Paris sex shop. It was a device designed for men and meant to capture their come when they jerked off as they went about their day, because, as the product stated, “why not do what men are designed to do in a cup designed just for you?” She had been curious and fascinated while in the store (fascinated that people would design, sell, and buy just about anything these days) but at the moment she was completely appalled.

“I brought this too,” he said, pulling something out from behind his back. It was the riding cap she’d left at the coffee shop.

She had a sudden flash of the fiasco with Taylor Attford. Had Tori told him about it? Was Todd Montgomery here to humiliate her? Was he going to empty his man-cup into her riding hat to get back at her for waking him up in the middle of the night?

“How dare you!” She grabbed at the hat before he could ruin it.

He frowned. “Most people would say thank you. You left it at the coffee shop when you stormed out in a huff, right after threatening to accuse me with assault.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Actually, you did leave the hat on the table and you did storm out in huff. Perhaps the bit about assault was an embellishment on my part.”

He winked.

Then he smiled.

Eliza went wobbly again and put a hand on the railing behind her.

“You’re teasing me,” she said narrowing her eyes. She noted now that his eyes were indeed blue and perfectly matched the faded blue jeans he was wearing. Under his open tweed jacket he wore a simple white T-shirt.

When she looked back at his face, she was chagrined to see he was still smiling. His features, while still handsome, looked harsher when he frowned, but when he smiled, revealing perfectly straight, white, not-typically-British teeth, his eyes seemed clearer, bluer, and more intense. His lips looked full and soft and in need of kissing.

“Thank you for bringing my hat.” She swallowed and looked warily at the metal container. “What’s in there?”

He glanced at it, assessed it, as if he had forgotten what he was carrying.

“It’s hot, creamy…”

Eliza closed her eyes.

“…coffee. That and some serious conversation is the only antidote to a martini-drunk-dialing hangover.”

“Serious conversation?”

“Yes.” He stopped smiling but didn’t exactly frown. He looked somewhat expectant, and this look was so similar to that one brief moment when they’d made eye contact in the coffee shop, that Eliza relented, and decided, more physically than consciously, because of the blue jeans, T-shirt, smile and coffee, to give him just one more chance.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I was a complete wanker this afternoon and I’d like to apologize.”

“Fine. Apology accepted.”

“Miss Keating. Don’t let a man off that easy.”

“I’m not.” She took the thermos of coffee from him. “But there’s no reason for you to come inside to say that.”

“I wasn’t planning to. Proper apologies should be made on the thresholds of doorways.” He took a step back, laid his right hand across his heart.

“Miss Eliza Keating. I humbly offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness and arrogance and perceived violence toward your person. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for being ‘insulting, argumentative, unfriendly, arrogant, and intolerable’ and…oh yes ‘infuriating’?”

“Are you teasing me again?”

“No.” He looked genuinely hurt. “Do you want me to do it again?”

“No. That was adequate groveling.”

He offered a smirking smile and a low chuckle.

“Thank you for the coffee.” She was about to close the door.

“Actually, it’s enough for two,” he said taking a step forward. “I was hoping I could share it with you. I owe you a civil sharing of cups after today.”

“It’s after one in the morning.”

“Don’t you find me better company at this hour?”

“I suppose I do.” She smiled.

For a brief moment, he had the same look as that first un-frowning expression at the coffee shop. Was that the effect of her smile on him?

“How did you know where I live?”

“Tori mentioned you had a live-work atelier when she first told me about you. Plus the doors are painted the same shiny crimson, with the same style of numbers indicating the address of shop and apartment, and I’ve noticed all the other shops on this street have a unique color and number typesetting, as if you all got together to create this neighborhood style.”

“How observant. In fact we did.”

“Are you convinced I’m not a stalker?”

“Mostly. You really are related to Tatum Montgomery?”

“Distantly, yes.”

“You look quite alike.”

“That Montgomery gene is a bully. Anything else, Miss Keating?”

“Why did you presume I take milk in my coffee?”

He smiled again and Eliza had to straighten her knees to keep them from turning to jelly.

“You were practically swooning into your latte foam this afternoon. It was an educated guess.”

It was the word
swooning
that decided it for her. She opened the door wider.

“Do come in.”

Eliza was still feeling a little unstable, what with the martinis, the soak in the tub, and the unexpectedly-dashing-when-smiling Sir Todd Montgomery following her up the steps to her apartment this very minute. It wasn’t any wonder she lost her balance and missed a step. Immediately, she felt his hand on her, warm and firm through the silk of her robe. The tingle between her legs flared. She didn’t even have on any panties to soak up the moistness triggered by his touch.

“Steady now, Miss Keating. Are you all right?” He chuckled again, almost too low for Eliza to hear.

She cleared her throat to cover her embarrassment. “Actually, I’m very familiar with these steps, but less so when I’m followed up by a man in the middle of the night.”

“That is quite the confession,” said Todd. “So not very many men have followed you up these stairs in the middle of the night?”

There was no proper way to answer that question, and thankfully, she had reached the landing. She turned to him, one step below her, and noticed his eyes were focused on the dipping V of her silk robe, tied loosely at her waist and offering an ample view of the inner curves of her breasts.

She cleared her throat and his eyes shot up to meet hers. She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed, and then, in a low, husky voice, he said,

“Can I kiss you?”

Eliza surprised herself—at least the tingly part of herself located between her legs—by saying, “No.”

She pushed the door open to the flat, followed by a frowning Todd. She took two small mugs down from the open shelf above the counter and poured out the hot coffee. It smelled delicious. She handed him a mug.

“I don’t suppose you have any wine?” he said.

She laughed. “I thought you came over to sober me up?”

“Only enough to let me in the door.”

He smiled again, but this smile was different—sexy, daring, invitational, and accompanied by a searing gaze. Eliza felt a fluttering in her belly. That smile, that look, had a more sobering effect than the coffee. But only for a second. Because the implications of that look, once combined with Eliza’s imagination, were entirely intoxicating.

Todd shrugged out of his tweed coat. “Do you mind? It’s warm in here.”

It was more than warm. It was hot with him in the room.

“I just had a bath.”

“Yes. The wet hair gave it away. Plus it smells good. You like fancy soap.”

He was observant, especially from the way he described finding her apartment, and Eliza liked that, but it also worried her. Good observers noticed the good and the bad, and the inadequate. She pulled her robe closer to her chest.

Setting her coffee mug down, she retrieved a wine glass and pulled the cork out of a recently-opened bottle of Italian Chianti. She poured him a glass and exchanged it for the coffee mug.

“Thank you,” he said. “May I?”

He sat down on the couch even before she nodded.

Somewhat sarcastically, she said, “Sure, go ahead. Make yourself at home.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “You’re a tough one to crack, aren’t you?”

“Takes one to know one, I guess. I’m still not sure why you’re here.”

“Are my motives not transparent enough?”

She shook her head, downed the rest of her coffee and then poured herself a glass of wine. Why not? Apparently, the night was still young.

“Well, let me summarize. Firstly, I wanted to apologize.”

“I thought you wanted to sober me up.”

She dropped onto the other end of the sofa, a safe distance away, and covered her crossed knees with the longest section of her robe.

He said, “That was secondary, and came after you called me. I was quite worried about you actually, because I couldn’t be sure how many others you had called before me or who else you might call after.”

“Hey! I didn’t —”

“—I was only kidding.” He grinned. “But that was my second motivation for coming here. I’ve been wanting to apologize since you stormed out of the coffee shop this afternoon.”

“I was across the street all afternoon. I also have a phone. Or you could have waited until tomorrow.”

“That’s what I was planning to do before you called me and reamed me out. Clearly tomorrow was going to be too late.”