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CHAPTER THREE
ANNE took a big breath before knocking on the door, her nervousness making her fist land a little harder than she had intended. She took another deep, unsteady breath as the door began to open and then nearly fell over at the sight of Hunter Lewis in a towel.
Much as she hated to admit it, he was very impressive, the bulky, well-defined muscles flowing over his shoulders into a deep chest, the sculpted power of which was evident even through the masking of dense, dark hair. He was certainly every inch a man, she thought as her eyes helplessly traced the inverted triangle of hair that tapered from a broad hand span between his masculine nipples to an enticing narrow line that dipped beneath the white towel insecurely hitched around lean hips. His belly was as taut and tanned as the rest of him and his long legs were strong and sinewy, smothered with the same silky-rough black hair that covered his chest. Patches of water glistened on his bare skin and glinted in his body hair, as if he had been interrupted in the process of drying himself.
‘Seen enough?’
She wondered wickedly what he would do if she said no. Hurriedly she tore her gaze away from the taut pull of towelling across his flanks and summoned all her meagre acting powers. She edged closer.
‘Uh, I made some pasta sauce and I thought you might like some…as a kind of thank-you—for helping me with my shopping the other day. And I have your tie here too, all cleaned and pressed.’ He had said he had wanted it by Friday and she hoped she would get Brownie points for delivering it a day early although his expression wasn’t encouraging.
She gave him a coolly restrained smile that she hoped was unthreatening and lifted the covered plastic con- tainer in one hand, offering his tie with the other. She had no intention of telling him that she had carefully washed and pressed it herself in clear defiance of its bossy care-tag. At the moment a dry-cleaning bill was effectively as far beyo
nd her budget as a new silk tie would have been, so she’d figured she had nothing to lose.
He reached for the tie but made no attempt to accept the pasta sauce, and she took advantage of his sudden need to anchor his slipping towel and ducked under his arm to saunter into his flat.
‘Come in, why don’t you?’ he murmured ironically, turning to follow her.
‘Thanks, I will…just for a moment,’ she said cheerfully, as if he had uttered a gushing welcome and she was merely being polite.
The physical layout of his loft, she discovered to her intense interest, was virtually a mirror-image of her own, but there any resemblance ended. Here lived sinful luxury instead of artful practicality.
There was oatmeal carpet underfoot, so thick and soft that her sandalled feet sank down into it, and the walls were colour-washed a pale terracotta, dappled with either sponge or brush to produce a stippled effect that provided an interesting background for the gilt-framed paintings which lined the walls. Floor-to-ceiling wooden bookcases surrounded the familiar high, arched windows at one end and at the other was a huge, ornately goldframed mirror that took up almost the whole of the wall that backed on to her flat, effectively doubling the apparent length of the room, the reflection of the sky making it seem lighter and airier even now, with rain pouring down outside and dusk approaching. The dancer in Anne coveted that mirror immediately, while the lazy hedonist in her lusted after the butter-soft apricot leather of the squatly over-sized couch and chairs.
His kitchen was larger than hers, cleverly designed to encompass the leading edge of culinary technology, and as she put the plastic tub down on the marble bench Anne had the uneasy feeling that her economical but tasty recipe for pasta sauce might be somewhat out of its element. Rather as she was in her swirling home-made skirt and loose peasant blouse. Then her glance fell on the reason for her generosity and damped down her qualms.
‘All you have to do is heat this for…’ As she turned back from her spying mission she discovered that her instructions were being delivered to empty air. Hunter Lewis had disappeared with the same uncanny quietness with which he was prone to appear. She looked at the telephone on the kitchen wall and wondered if she dared take advantage of his absence, but decided that it would be unwise to antagonise him further than she already had. It was a major achievement just to have got inside his flat.
She moved to take a closer look at some of his paintings. Originals, of course—prints were probably beneath his dignity, she thought wryly—but his selection was an eclectic mix which suggested that they were chosen with the heart and eye rather than the dictates of an investment portfolio.
‘Don’t you like it?’
She jumped as Hunter materialised in the doorway beside the painting which she was studying with a frown. His bedroom, she surmised, and realised with a small hitch of her breathing that his cotton crew-necked shirt and unbleached linen trousers didn’t quite blot out the mental image of him in a towel.
She looked at the painting again. ‘No,’ she said bluntly, before she remembered that she was supposed to be buttering him up and began hurriedly back-tracking. ‘Th-that is, I don’t really know much about art so I really can’t—’
‘I didn’t ask for artistic criticism. I asked whether you liked it.’
‘Does it matter?’ she hedged, wondering belatedly whether he might have painted it himself. She tried to squint at the signature without being too obvious.
‘No, it isn’t mine. I have no skill with a paintbrush whatsoever. So you’re not going to be insulting my talent by telling me you don’t like my taste in art…nor, I hope, my intelligence with polite lies,’ he added silkily as she nibbled at her lower lip.
‘All right, I loathe it,’ she was neatly trapped into admitting sullenly. ‘I can’t make head or tail of it and I don’t like the colours. Satisfied?’ Her eyebrows almost flew off her face as she regarded him haughtily.
‘Completely. Actually, it was painted by my mother.’
Anne closed her eyes. When she opened them again gold flecks were smouldering in the blue irises at the discovery that he was laughing at her. ‘My commiserations to your father,’ she said insultingly.
‘My parents were divorced when I was still at primary school. My father’s dead now, but he shared your dislike of my mother’s art.’
Anne gave up and allowed the vivid blush of remorse that had been lurking under her temper to swallow her up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. Why did her good intentions towards this man always go up in smoke? ‘I’m sure your mother is a very good artist—’
‘The international art world seems to think so,’ Hunter interrupted blandly. ‘She’s very well-known. In fact, I had to pay several thousand dollars for that painting that you find so unlikeable.’
Anne was instantly outraged on his behalf. ‘She made you pay for one of her paintings? Her own son?’
