He needed a change, but he needed to move forward, not back. His motorcycle days were over long ago, and with them, his reckless youth. Instead of high-speed alcohol consumption followed by high-speed driving, his social life consisted of low-key evenings with friends, work-related outings or charity events, an over-thirty soccer league and occasional dates. In short, he’d grown up.
When he left the city, he’d leave it for a commuting suburb, maybe in Connecticut, his home state, a big friendly house with a loving wife and a bunch of kids to play in the green backyard. That would be his next journey. And if his increasing restlessness in Manhattan was any indication, he was due to be starting it soon.
A taxi screeched to a halt near him, horns blared, people shouted.
Very soon.
He reached home, a typically New York nineteenth-century brownstone on Bank Street, and got into the elevator with a middle-aged woman and her yappy little dog who lived a floor above him. The woman looked, as usual, as if she’d just had a horrible fight with a loved one. The dog was one of those jittery bug-eyed ones that always looked as if they were about to explode. Hostility. Suspicion. Stress. Daily facts of life. He’d had enough.
On the fourth floor, he got off the elevator, calling out a good-night that wasn’t returned, and strode down the narrow cool hall. The second his key hit the lock of 4C, the door to the apartment across from his opened.
“Hey, Ryan.” The soft throaty voice filled the hallway.
Christine. He turned and nearly dropped his key. Christine? Wearing the kind of negligee he’d only seen in the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogs.
Er, not that he ever wasted time looking at those. Of course.
“Hi, there.” He suppressed his cave man reaction and grinned, glad to see a friendly familiar face after the strained evening. Christine would have been a welcome addition at dinner tonight. He’d bet she could have chatted easily with the Baxters, as she seemed to be able to do with everyone. The tone of the evening and the outcome would have been decidedly different. He’d probably still have a chance at their participation in the fund.
“Just home from work?” She hefted a small bag of trash, her apparent reason for being out in her nightgown. She worked in the office suite next to his firm’s and had asked him six months ago, shortly after she started, if there were any vacancies in his building. He’d hesitated when the first one that came open was across the hall. Did he really want to invite a stranger he’d see fairly regularly at work to be his neighbor?
But something about Christine brought out his protective side—maybe that she was relatively new to the city and Manhattan could batter people who weren’t used to it—and he’d given in. A few weeks later, she was his neighbor, and had proved to be as friendly and sweet as she seemed, with a knack for baking—and more importantly, sharing what she’d made—that made his eyes roll back into his head with pleasure.
His suburban-house fantasy crystalized. A harborside mansion in Southport, Connecticut. His lovely wife, Christine, not only at his side wining and dining clients, but beside him at home as well, the beautiful, gentle mother of his kids. The picture was pleasant, comfortable and logical. If her face weren’t so innocent, the outfit—and the fact that she often appeared when he was either coming or going—would make him wonder if she’d had similar thoughts herself.
Maybe Fate had put her in his path tonight, when he’d been thinking about settling down.
“Yes, I’m just back. I had a dinner with prospective investors.”
“Oh, how’d it go?” She appeared all wide-eyed interest and he managed to keep himself from visually exploring her generous cleavage, displayed by cream-colored material that looked delicate enough to snag on his hands. Her blond hair had been twisted up into a clip with just enough strands loose to make her look soft and vulnerable and…luscious.
Luscious? That was a new one where Christine was concerned. Everything about her seemed different tonight. Was it how she looked? Or how he was seeing her?
“It…went.” He gave in and examined the negligee and the body in it, not at all sorry once he started. She was tall, five-seven or eight, with endless legs, one of his favorite female traits—physically speaking. “Did you wear that to work?”
She laughed, blushing, and clutched the semitransparent robe closer. “You caught me. I was hoping to sneak to the trash chute and back before anyone saw. I was trying to play it cool when you appeared, but frankly, I’m mortified.”
He chuckled, and in deference to her discomfort, dragged his gaze reluctantly back to her eyes, hazel and luminous, looking at him with something primitive he’d never seen there before. His body reacted; he moved backward toward his door. He needed to think this through before he let his other brain take over. “I didn’t mean to embarrass—”
“It’s okay. Really.” She spoke hurriedly and he stopped his retreat.
Was he nuts? Was she sending him a yes, please signal? Or was she only being her usual cordial self and her outfit had turned him into a testosterone-driven beast?
“Well, good night.” He turned resolutely away, put his key in the lock, jiggled it slightly while twisting and opened his door. Dating someone who worked and lived so close to him could turn into disaster.
He kept the door open with his foot, reached in and flipped the light on in his entrance hall.
Or it could turn out great.
He’d gotten a pretty good sense of Christine over the past few months. He’d helped her out here and there, recommending restaurants, hardware stores, auto repair places, giving her directions and advice. He’d also helped with a few heavy-lifting and handyman chores in her apartment, which he had a feeling would have been done better by Fred Farbington, the building super. Several times they’d found themselves leaving the Graybar building at the same time on their lunch hours and had joined forces. He liked her. A lot. And with the sudden sexual zing in the air tonight, he wanted to get to know her better. A lot.
She didn’t strike him as a complicated person, but far from dull, she seemed intelligent and ambitious, already earning herself a promotion at the insurance firm where she worked. And anyone who could move to Manhattan without knowing a soul and appear to thrive had strength in spades. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a mean-spirited bone in her body. She was calm, beautiful and elegant, but didn’t come across as snobbish or—
Okay, he’d convinced himself.
He went back into the hall, found Christine at her door again, having gotten rid of her trash. “Christine.”
“Yes?” She turned and smiled, not blushing this time, not clutching the robe closed, and he saw again, more distinctly, that flash of awareness that she looked good and she knew he noticed and was glad he had.
Well, well. The fantasy house in Connecticut suddenly acquired a detailed master bedroom.
“Do you do any needlework?”
She laughed, a sudden nervous burst he didn’t blame her for. She probably thought he’d lost it.
“What kind?”
“Tattooing, piercing…I want to get my nose done.”
She started to look horrified and he grinned to show he was kidding. “I meant craft needlework.”
“Oh.” She put a hand to her chest and his eyes followed it enviously. “Sure. I used to sew a lot. I still knit occasionally, when someone in the family has a baby. I never did needlepoint or embroidery—”
“But you know what they are.”
“Yes.” She gave him a “you-feeling-okay?” look. “I know what they are.”
“I could have used your help tonight.”
“You’re stuck on a knitting project?”
He