Downstairs, someone knocked at her door.
Dayne opened one eye and squinted at the clock across the room.
"Noon?" she muttered. "It's noon?"
Paige hadn't been kidding when she said they were going to be up late over at her place. Dayne hadn't gotten home until nearly four A.M.—but she'd had a wonderful time. The man they'd had over for her to meet had been very nice and very funny, and if neither of the two of them were at all interested in each other, everyone had still had a great time.
And the steaks had been delicious.
Porthos stood on the edge of her mattress, glaring at her. He took doors very seriously, and obviously felt she damned well ought to go downstairs and answer this one.
Another polite rap, then whoever was out there tried the doorbell.
Dayne rolled out of bed, pulled on the robe that lay across her reading chair, and peeked out her window.
"Oh, my God," she murmured. The man on her landing deserved to be in the Babedom Hall of Fame. He had great shoulders and a narrow waist. He had long, lean legs. He was young. He was handsome.
He was leaving.
"No-no-no-no-no!" she yelped. She fumbled with the latch on her window, and pulled out the nails to either side that pegged it in place, and pounded with one fist all around the frame until the blasted thing unstuck, and shoved it up, and leaned out, panting slightly.
The racket she'd made trying to get the window open had alerted the gorgeous stranger, and he stood just off the landing, waiting, looking up at her.
"Hi," she said, feeling rumpled and rather silly leaning out her window in her bathrobe. "Can I help you?"
He smiled up at her, and her heart did a skittering little tap dance against her ribs. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
It was that obvious? She winced inside—her hair was probably sticking up in a hundred directions. "I should have been up ages ago," she said, praying that he wouldn't feel so guilty about bothering her that he'd leave. Then she considered . . . it was noon on a Saturday. Maybe he was going door to door selling something.
She shrugged. She hadn't bought anything lately. Maybe she should. She smiled encouragingly. "What did you need?"
His eyes had been fixed on her face, and she realized he was watching her lips move. "Um . . ." he said, and she saw him start just a little. "Oh." He looked into her eyes and—Lord have mercy—he blushed. "My car broke down." He pointed back over his shoulder, and she looked behind him.
A forest-green Porsche convertible with a tan interior sat beneath the willow oak in front of her apartment, its hood up. A thin trail of black smoke curled up from the engine. Black smoke, Dayne knew, tended to be a lot more expensive than white smoke where cars were concerned. "That looks pretty bad," she told him.
He nodded. "I was hoping you wouldn't mind making a call for me. My auto club should be able to send someone right out to get it."
"I'll be happy to," Dayne told him. "Have a seat on the bench—it will take me just a minute, but I'll be right down."
"Sure." He nodded, and smiled again. "Thanks."
Dayne closed the window and beat her head gently against the wall a few times. Usually she got up with the sun. Actually, she frequently beat the sun out of bed by an hour or more.
"Why did I have to be a slob today?" She could have been up, showered, dressed . . .
She rummaged through the clean clothes she'd bothered to wash and fold and carry all the way up the stairs—a small subset of the clothing she owned. She found some clean jeans and a V-neck T-shirt that always made her eyes look bluer, and threw them on. At barest minimum, she had to brush her teeth and her hair—she ran to the bathroom and groaned at her first sight of herself. Her hair, shoulder-length, blunt-cut, and black, had that definitely lived-in look.
"Lived in by rodents, maybe," she snarled, bending over and yanking her brush through it at top speed. She brushed her teeth in high gear, scrubbed her face without even letting the water warm up from doing her teeth—so that at least she was much more awake afterward than she had been before—and with one more disgusted look at herself in the mirror, she ran down the stairs.
She snagged the pepper gas off her shelf—paranoia was the better part of virtue, after all—and opened the door.
He stood when he heard it open, and turned and smiled at her. He was even better-looking up close. "This is very nice of you," he told her. He handed her a slip of paper. "This is the number to call. This is my account number. My name is Adam D'Agonostis."
"Dayne Kuttner." Dayne held out her hand, and Adam shook politely. He had a firm grip, but not so hard it was obvious he was trying to prove something. His palm was warm and dry and slightly rough. Sexy. He had the most fascinating eyes she'd ever seen. She'd bet his driver's license said brown, but his eyes were brown the way the sun was yellow. They were, she decided, more of a honey gold that shaded to black at the edge of the iris; they were fringed by thick black lashes. She thought she would find it easy to get lost staring into those eyes. She looked away, down at his car. "No problem. So what happened?"
"I wish I knew. I was driving along this street, I heard a `pop' and suddenly the dashboard lit up like a pinball machine and black smoke poured out from under the hood." He sighed. "What a way to start my first day in town."
Dayne looked back at him—he was laughing slightly at his trouble. At himself. She doubted she would be either so cheerful or so charming if her car had died on her in the middle of a new city on a Saturday.
She looked down at the paper in her hand. "Let me call these folks and get you some help." She took a deep breath. "I'll have to ask you to wait on the porch. . . ."
He grinned. "Sensible of you. And I don't mind a bit. It's beautiful out today."
She nodded. "Can I get you some tea?"
"I'll be fine," he assured her. "I'm just going to go see if I can get some idea of what blew."
Dayne watched him bound down the steps, and all she could think was, "He's perfect." As she turned to go inside and make his call for him, she became acutely aware, for the first time in years, of precisely how long it had been since she'd last been kissed.