Cutting Loose

“You shouldn’t be going through her cabinets,” Trish said faintly, but she accepted the iced water that he pressed on her.

“I think she’ll forgive me.”

The feel of the cold glass in her fingers made her shiver.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What the hell did he say to you?”

Trish shook her head and took a deep breath. “Nothing much. It’s okay.” A woman like Delaney or Kelly would have told the cowboy to go to hell and gone about their business with no more than a passing thought. Why was it she’d never learned how? Don’t think about it, she ordered herself, and with conscious thought dropped her hands back to rest on the edges of the counter at her sides. “Thanks for not making a scene.”

“Fights tend to lead to broken furniture and unhappy hostesses,” he said mildly. “I try to avoid them.”

“You’ve been very nice.”

“You make it easy.” His eyes had glints of gold in them, she saw, as they looked back at her from behind the mask. The seconds stretched out. He cleared his throat. “There really is a Warhol over in the dining room. Do you want to see it?”

Trish gave a shaky laugh. “Sure.”

“SO I NEVER KNEW Warhol did abstracts,” Trish said, sitting on the kitchen counter and dangling her legs. “I just knew the pop art stuff.” She took a drink of her water.

The Marquis had taken his frock coat off and tossed it over a chair in the breakfast nook. Now he leaned against the counter next to her. “Yep, Michelangelo gets remembered for the Sistine Chapel and old Andy gets soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. There’s a legacy for you—soup.”

“It could be worse,” she explained, watching him roll up his sleeves over sinewy forearms. Watching him in his mask. “George Borden’s claim to fame was evaporated milk.”

“And then there was the toilet designer, Thomas Crapper—”

“Who we remember for obvious reasons,” she finished with a laugh. It was good to be talking idle foolishness. The memory of the drunken cowboy was disappearing, replaced by the easy presence of the Marquis.

“I suppose it would be worthwhile to leave your name behind on something you did,” he said thoughtfully. “What would you want to be remembered for?”

“You first.”

He pondered it. “Self-mowing lawns, I think. I’d gold plate my lawn mower and put it on a pedestal as yard art.”

“Not big on yard work?”

“Summer afternoons should be for drinking beer and sitting in a hammock, not for going at the grass with a freakishly loud machine.” He took a sip of his water. “And what about you?”

Watching him swallow scattered her thoughts for a moment. “Um, I don’t know…never-ending hot water,” she threw out.

“The endless shower?”

“Exactly. It would stay hot long enough for anything. You’d have time to condition your hair or scrub your back or…” The sudden visceral image of rubbing up against a slippery, soapy male body stopped her short.

She glanced up to find the Marquis’s eyes on her. “Or?” he prompted.

“Just get really hot,” she managed, then flushed. “I mean…” She cast about for conversation. “So how do you know Sabrina?”

His laughing eyes were trained on hers. “Oh, we’ve known each other since we were kids.”

“Really? Does that make you another rich Hollywood baby?”

“Not at Sabrina’s level. How do you know her?”

“College. We met working on a play.”

“What was your role?”

Trish snorted. “Me, an actor? No way. I’m happier behind the scenes.”

“You’re center stage in that outfit.”

“Don’t believe everything you see.” And she had to remember that she wasn’t her alter ego, that she’d be going back to plain old Trish after the party was over. That she wouldn’t have a sexy man dancing attendance on her and making her laugh.

“So what did you do on the play?” He pulled at his complicated cravat, untying it.

“Script doctor. You’re losing your look, you know.”

“Yeah, but I’m much more comfortable.” He pulled off the cravat and unbuttoned the top buttons on his shirt so that she could see the strong column of his throat.

“I know, I know, image isn’t everything.” With his shirt loose he looked amazingly sexy, like the lord of the manor just before he set about seducing the scullery maid.

“Hello?”

She’d drifted off, Trish realized. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Is that what you do now?” he repeated, rolling up his sleeves. “Write scripts?”

“In my dreams. I work for my sister. She’s got a home concierge business. You know, grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaning, you name it.”

“We do it all?”

“That was our old motto. Now it’s Amber’s Assistants: Servicing the Stars.”

He laughed, seemingly before he could help himself. “Can’t you get arrested for that?”

“I know, I know,” she said ruefully, “but once Amber gets an idea in her head, she’s hard to stop. Anyway, ever since the anesthesiologist from Boston Memorial signed on, she’s been hot for the Hollywood vote.”

“If you’d go to work dressed like that, Hollywood would probably be hot for you, too.”

His appraising look made a little pulse of arousal surge through her. “Oh, yeah. I can just see myself dropping by the vet’s office dressed like this.”

“You could tell them you were doing a show.”

She shrugged. “It’s a living until I find something better. What about you? What do you do?”

“What do I do?” he repeated. “That’s a good question.”

“I know you’re not a professional Marquis de Sade.”