“Jesus.” She reached over and hugged Erica. “I’m an idiot. I’ve had too much champagne. Let’s change the subject, ’cause I haven’t seen you in so long and when I spotted you across the room, I couldn’t wait to get over here.” She finished off the rest of the fresh glass, deposited it with another tray-bearing waiter and gave a big sigh. “I meant it when I said you’re looking fantastic. And it’s great your label is taking off big-time. I saw one of your quilts in a house a year or so ago. This gal had it hanging on the wall of her den, Erica. God, it was stunning, a piece of art in fabric. And those fabulous jackets you’re designing are all the rage. I’m gonna have one, I swear.”
“Come by the shop,” Erica said, smiling. “I have a couple that would look wonderful on you.”
Lisa cocked her head with a bemused look. “But I thought painting was your forte, not fabric design. I read the Zest article in the paper, but I didn’t see any evidence of your art from the pictures they took of your shop. Which reminds me, when do you have time to paint?”
“Actually, I don’t.” She managed a smile and gave her stock answer to the familiar question. “What with the shop and keeping up with demand, I’m just too busy.” Painting had once been as vital to her as the air she breathed, but that, too, was nine years past. She had discovered then that only a very few things in life were really vital for survival.
Suddenly, Lisa paused and looked about curiously. “Where’s your date? You didn’t come to this thing stag, did you?”
“No, he’s around somewhere mingling, as he calls it.” She turned, scanning the floor trying to find Jason in the crowd. And then her heart skipped a beat. Threading his way through the crowd—and the object of more than a few admiring female glances—was Hunter McCabe. Even half a ballroom away, she could see that he was heading directly to her. What was he doing here? She knew—knew—this was not Hunter’s kind of thing.
“Well,” Lisa said, following Erica’s gaze, “I don’t think I’d let that one mingle any farther than two feet from my side. Are there any more like him? I’m available.”
“He’s not mine,” she murmured, but Lisa was right. He did look good in a tux.
“Then if I were you, I’d do whatever it took to remedy that.”
Erica watched him with the eye of an artist, thinking he looked almost as good as he did in that battered bomber jacket and jeans. The truth was, he was a man who was so comfortable in his skin that he’d even look good in nothing. At that thought, she caught herself up short, because it was too incredibly easy to imagine him wearing nothing but confidence and that rakish grin.
“Hey, there.” Before she realized his intent, he’d caught hold of both her hands and pulled her toward him in a move so natural that she never thought of resisting. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said after kissing her cheek.
Flustered, she inhaled subtle aftershave and not-so-subtle male. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.
“And I may not last much longer,” he told her, looking over the crowd with something in his face—a subtle twist of his mouth—that told her she’d been right. This wasn’t his kind of thing. So what in the world was he doing here? He glanced then at Lisa. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Not a bit,” Lisa said, extending her hand with a speculative look in her eye. “I’m Lisa Johns, an old friend of Erica’s.”
“Hunter McCabe,” he said. Then, after a beat, he recognized her. “Joe Crenshaw’s defense attorney, right?”
“That would be me, yes. God bless cable TV.”
He was shaking his head, smiling. “Crenshaw’s something else. I can’t wait to open the sports page to see what he’s been up to next.”
“Me, too.” Lisa took a healthy swallow of her drink. “But, unlike you, I pray his antics are confined to the sports page and not the headlines.”
“I hear you,” Hunter said, still smiling. “I suspect you’d have to lock him in his room every night to keep him out of trouble.”
“I keep thinking he’ll grow up,” Lisa said, “but when will it happen? He’s thirty-four.” She glanced beyond them and made a face. “Uh-oh, I see I’m being summoned.” She flashed a smile at Hunter, then gave Erica a warm hug and whispered, “If he’s not your date, sweetie, he should be. Bye now.”
Erica watched Lisa make her way across the ballroom toward a tall man with iron-gray hair and an air of authority. She turned away, putting a hand over her tummy.
“What’s wrong?” Following her gaze, Hunter frowned, looking over the crowd.
“It’s nothing.” The man who’d summoned Lisa was the firm’s senior partner. And David’s mentor. If Edward Kerr realized she was here, he’d probably feel honor-bound to speak to her. She couldn’t allow that.
She turned to look at Hunter. “I’ve been circulating, as Jason calls it, for an hour. I’d like to get away from the noise for a few minutes. Would you excuse me?”
“A break sounds good to me, too. Let’s try the mezzanine. C’mon.” He settled a hand at her waist and made a startled sound as he encountered bare skin. Her dress had long sleeves and a boat neckline that came up to her throat in front, but in back it plunged almost to her waist. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack,” he said, eyeing the enticing line of her spine.
She knew the dress was a bit risqué, but Jason had persuaded her to wear it. This was her first appearance in public, he told her. She should make a statement. In fact, it had been Jason who had chosen the dress for her in a chic little boutique in River Oaks, telling her that if she refused to wear one of her own designs, she needed to wear something equally stunning.
Apparently, Hunter thought it was stunning.
Without another word, he guided her toward an area at the edge of the room. Several people recognized him as they wove through the crowd, but other than brief nods and even briefer smiles, he didn’t stop until he reached the wide stairs that led to the mezzanine.
She sighed with relief as the noise of the party receded. “I can’t go far,” she told him. “The auction is due to start in a little while.”
“I know,” he said, pulling her behind a huge column. “I’ve spent the last hour talking to people I don’t particularly like and listening to enough cocktail chitchat to remind me why I avoid these things. I need a minute to breathe something besides expensive perfume and hors d’oeuvres too pretty to eat.”
She smiled and decided against resisting. “If it’s that bad, why did you come?”
“I came because I knew you’d be here.” His gaze drifted over her, lingering long enough to make her skin tingle. “You look fantastic in that dress…what little there is of it.”
“I have a shawl to cover—”
He touched her lips with a finger. “Don’t even think it. I thought you’d probably wear something you designed, but now I’m glad you didn’t.”
The way he was looking at her renewed her misgivings about him. Not only was he an extremely attractive man, but he was stirring feelings in her that she hadn’t felt in years. She’d met many men and had had many opportunities to begin new relationships in the years since losing David, but she’d never been even remotely tempted. It shook her that Hunter threatened those defenses.
“Something upset you back there,” he said, studying her face. “It was when Lisa left. Want to tell me about it?”
She’d already told him more than enough about herself. “It was nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m a little tense over the auction. I know it’s a wonderful opportunity to promote the Erica