a friend, and it was love at first sight.” She laughed. “With decorating, I mean, not the mother.”
“You’d never had an inkling before that?”
“I guess I did without putting my finger on it. I was the prop person for all the plays in high school, which I adored. And I have this funny memory of when I was around ten. My mother took me with her to visit her sister one afternoon, and after the two of them went out to the backyard, I felt compelled to rearrange the entire living room. When they came back inside later, they got these utterly terrified looks on their faces, like that scene in The Sixth Sense when the mother turns around and every one of the kitchen drawers and cabinets have been yanked open.”
“That’s very funny,” he said, chuckling. “That scene nearly made me jump out of my seat when I saw it. Is interior design something you study in school?”
“Uh, that’s one route,” she said quickly. “But you also can work at a firm and more or less apprentice with people far more experienced. That’s the way I did it.”
“I imagine your clients can be difficult at times. People with money are often pretty demanding.”
“My business is just a tiny one, and the clients aren’t what you’d really call wealthy. They have good jobs and nice apartments, and they’re at a point where they can finally hire an interior designer to pull things together better. I guess you could say I’m kind of a starter decorator for most of them.
“But that’s enough about decorating,” she added. Her partner Baby always said that if you wanted to make a straight man impotent, just start gushing about floor plans, poufs, and color palettes. “I don’t want to bore you to tears.”
“I honestly enjoy hearing about stuff like that,” he said. “I studied sculpture in college.”
“Really?” she said, surprised. There was that contrast thing at work again. Rugged and yet also refined. “What kind of medium?”
“Metal mostly. A lot of copper. Not huge pieces, just table size.
“Do you still do it?”
“I’ve just started again. Part of why I got rid of my business was to have time for it. Just for my own pleasure.”
“What kind of business were you in?”
He paused in the way he seemed to have of waiting a beat before speaking. “A tech business. Trust me, if I elaborated, we’d both be bored to tears. It was a way to make money . . . and guarantee some freedom for later.”
They ordered, and over dinner they fell into an easy conversation, talking about art they both enjoyed looking at, and places they’d traveled and loved. He was funny at moments, and a good listener, listening and questioning, in fact, more than he spoke. Was it a seduction ploy? she wondered.
There was, she also decided, an intriguing contradiction to him: self-possessed without being braggy, engaged but at the same time slightly mysterious. He made her a little nervous, yet in a way she liked. It felt good to be on her toes a bit with a man.
She was attracted to him, she realized. Even the damn red hair.
“No, no, dinner’s my treat,” he insisted when the check arrived and she attempted to contribute. He scribbled the tip amount and signed his name. She took a final sip of coffee, and when she looked up, she caught him scanning the patio, his eyes narrowed, as if searching for someone. The waiter to hand back the check to? she wondered. Was he eager for the night to end?
“I’d love to continue the conversation,” he said. “How about a walk along the beach.”
“Sure,” she replied, trying not to sound as ridiculously eager as she felt.
But no sooner had they stepped onto the sand and she’d kicked off her sandals, than it began to drizzle.
“The gods aren’t being very accommodating,” he said, glancing upward. He took her elbow, guiding her back onto the patio. That spark once again. It was lust, she realized, and it was making her pulse race. “How about plan B? We could grab a drink at the bar. Or—there’s bottle of white wine in my room. I have a suite so we could sit in the living room.”
She didn’t want the evening to end. But did she want to sleep with him? Because by going back to his hotel room, she was saying that sex was a possibility. She’d play it by ear, she decided. See where the chemistry led.