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“Really, Blake, I—”
But he was already moving, dragging her with him, talking nonstop with teasing nonsense intended to keep her off balance. He steered her through a frilly, peach-and-mint bedroom and into a closet that was bigger than Tara’s entire bedroom in Atlanta. She stopped in her tracks, her jaw dropping.
She’d never seen so many clothes in her life. Silks, satins, sequins. Casual clothes, sporty clothes, evening clothes. What appeared to be hundreds of pairs of shoes neatly arranged in a wall full of cubicles. Clear plastic drawers stuffed with scarves and other accessories. Hatboxes stacked on the upper shelves.
“Your, er, friend likes clothes,” she said weakly, aware of the inanity of her understatement.
Blake was already rummaging among the racks. “Comes with the career. She’s a model.”
Of course she was, Tara thought grimly. “Still, Blake, we can’t just help ourselves to her clothing. That’s going beyond the bounds of simple hospitality.”
“Trust me, she won’t mind. Would you like me to call her and let her tell you personally?”
“No! I mean—”
He turned away from the clothing and took both her hands, held them in front of him and gave her a melting smile. “Sweetheart, I really don’t have time to go shopping again right now. Just wear something of Stephanie’s th
is evening and we’ll try to pick you up some more things tomorrow, okay?”
He made it sound so logical. As if it would be completely childish and unreasonable of her to refuse. And the way he was holding her hands and looking so deeply into her eyes scrambled all her mental circuits, making it impossible to remember her reasons for arguing with him.
Tara sighed. “All right. Just for tonight.”
He brushed his lips across her knuckles, sending a tingle all the way to her toes. Their gazes locked over their linked hands, and Tara’s breath caught in her throat. Her lips parted involuntarily, waiting for a kiss that seemed inevitable.
And then Blake dropped her hands and turned briskly back to the clothing. “Okay, we’re looking for something nice but not overly dressy. A pantsuit is probably out, considering that her legs are about a mile longer than yours—”
Still breathless from that moment of purely sexual awareness, Tara winced at this reminder of where they were, and why.
Blake extracted an emerald-green knit dress from the crowded rack. It would probably be a mini on longlegged Stephanie, but it looked to be about average length for Tara. And the stretch-knit fabric made size less important.
She nodded reluctantly. “It’s pretty.”
“Steph wears a lot of green. It looks good with her red hair.”
Tara told herself it was incredibly petty, catty and immature of her to dislike a woman she’d never even met. Especially one who had opened her home to them and was sharing her wardrobe—whether she knew it or not. The fact that her dislike was caused by the undisguised affection in Blake’s voice every time he mentioned the woman only increased her self-disgust.
Blake was already rummaging among the shoes. “You wear a seven-and-a-half, right?”
He should know, since he’d bought the sneakers she was now wearing. She nodded.
“Hmm. Steph’s got a big foot. A ten.”
“I have my own shoes,” Tara said quickly. “The black pumps I wore last night are in your truck.”
“I’ll get them while you change. Take a shower if you like. Everything you should need is in the bathroom.”
When she stepped into the peach-and-mint bath attached to the master bedroom a few minutes later, Tara was overcome by a sense of rather reckless expectation that startled her. Who’d have thought she could actually be excited about going out in borrowed clothes to investigate an art theft that might be connected to a murder?
Living on the run, cut off from her friends, family and all her possessions, never knowing what was going to happen next—she should be hating every minute of this. It surprised her that she wasn’t She felt more alive than she had since she’d been cut adrift from the law firm where she’d expected to be until retirement. And she knew that at least part of that exhilaration was due to Blake.
She wondered half-seriously if everything she’d been through lately had affected her reasoning. Because where Blake was concerned, it was becoming increasingly difficult to be the cautious and sensible woman she’d always considered herself to be.
7
WEARING the borrowed green knit dress and her black pumps—without stockings, since hers had been ruined and she’d refused to delve into Stephanie’s lingerie—Tara followed Blake into a small, but expensive-looking Italian restaurant later that evening. He still hadn’t explained exactly who they were meeting. When she’d pressed him, he’d said only that it was an old friend who might have some information for them.
Blake’s friend wasn’t there when they arrived, so he obtained a table for them in the very back of the dim, candlelit room, informing the hostess that they were expecting someone to join them. He ordered white wine while they waited.
