A Perfect Stranger

“I’m a writer,” said Nick.

“He’s a pest,” said Joe.

Syd smiled uncertainly and forked up a bit of limp lettuce. When she shot a stealthy glance in Nick’s direction from beneath her red-gold lashes, another story angle teased and tickled through him, and he realized the reason for this inconvenient fascination.

She was a muse.

His muse, anyway. For the next several days.

SYDNEY LEANED against her hotel room chair after dinner and wrapped her fingers around the phone cord with a smile.

“Miss me?” asked Henry.

“Yes.” It was so reassuring to hear Henry’s steady voice, and to tell him what he wanted to hear, and to really mean it. If only life could always be this uncomplicated. “Yes, I do. In fact, I was thinking exactly how much I miss you, right before dinner.”

“How’s the food over there? As bad as they say?”

Her smile dissolved. “It’s not that bad.”

Henry didn’t appreciate foreign cuisines—not that this evening’s roast beef, potatoes and peas qualified as exotic. Still, he always managed to don a patient smile and gamely taste all her spicy, impulsive culinary experiments. The fact that he was such a good sport about it made it easier, somehow, for her to sacrifice the exciting foods she loved and prepare the basics he preferred.

She glanced at her watch and stood. “I’d better go. I haven’t finished dressing yet, and Gracie’s waiting for me in the lounge.”

“All right.” He paused. “I love you, you know.”

“I know.” She just hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet. Marriage was such a monumentally frightening commitment that even her normal impulsive responses—weaklings that they were—had flown the coop.

But this wasn’t the moment to reflect on the situation. And far too many moments had passed as she’d sucked in a breath and prepared to make the expected and logical response. “I love you, too.”

“Sydney?”

She winced. Her hesitation hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Got to run, Henry. Bye.”

She slipped the receiver back into its spot and reached over her shoulder to nab the elusive zipper pull in the back of her dress. No luck. The navy knit sheath was a favorite, but the fastener had been designed for a yoga fanatic. She twisted toward the mirror to improve her aim and relaxed her shoulder joint to gain a fraction of an inch. This time, she caught the zipper—and immediately snagged it in her hair.

“No. This is not happening.” She angled her head to check the damage in the mirror and winced at the tug on her nape. The dress gapped above her shoulder blades, and a hunk of her hair kinked up in a rollercoaster loop.

One of her students quietly rapped at the door—maybe one of the girls, who could fix the problem. Sydney scrunched her neck, tugged at the front of her dress and pulled the doorknob. “Boy, am I glad—”

Nick Martelli lounged in her hotel room doorway. His gaze swept from her blushing face to her bare toes. “The feeling’s mutual,” he said.

“I wasn’t expecting…I mean, you’re not…” Cool air danced over a bit of bra strap exposed in the tangled mess in back, and goose bumps—and other bumps—popped out in inconvenient places.

Why did this man always have to catch her at a disadvantage? So far he’d seen her deranged, clumsy, obsessive and uptight—and now this. And to make matters worse, he seemed to find it all very amusing.

“That’s okay, teach,” he said with one of his wry grins. “No explanations necessary. That’s my assignment. I came to deliver another apology, and a peace offering.”

“Another apology?” She hadn’t collected the first one. Somehow he’d managed to wiggle his way over and under anything incriminating, in spite of all the traps she’d set for him during dinner. “Now what did you do?”

“Nothing naughty since dessert, I swear.”

She clung to the door, wondering how to get rid of him. She had no intention of engaging in a conversation with Nick Martelli, not when she looked like a cross-dressing Quasimodo. And not in her hotel room, not after she’d forbidden her students to entertain members of the opposite sex in theirs.

He held up two soft drink cans. “May I come in?”

“Gracie isn’t here, and—”

“Good. I only brought two.” He brushed past her in one lithe move and crossed the room to set the cans on a table. She couldn’t help admiring his long-legged saunter or the way his shoulders filled out his leather bomber jacket. And she couldn’t ignore the disconcerting tightness in her stomach, or the heat that seeped through her. That’s all I need, she thought. A physical attraction to the playboy of Student Tours International. The man is pure trouble.

She opened the door as far as she could and then pressed her back against it, her arms crossed like a shield as he approached.

“Glasses?” he asked.

“Thank you for the gesture, and for the soda, but I really don’t have time for this right now. I need to finish getting ready, so if you’ll excuse me, I—”

“Looks like I got here just in time.” He gently tugged her away from the door, and then he nimbly, neatly untangled her hair and closed her zipper. “That mess looked a little hard to reach,” he said as he turned her to face him.

She gazed into eyes as dark as night and framed by smile-crimped lines at the corners, one of them daubed a sickly green beneath a thick, straight brow. He was standing too close, and his hands were too warm on her arms, and his leather and soap scent was too tantalizing for her peace of mind.

The door slipped shut behind them.

“You look completely ready to me,” he murmured. “In fact, I can’t imagine what you could possibly improve on.”

He ran long, lean fingers through her curls, casually combing one forward over her shoulder. Her pulse hammered, too hard, too fast. She needed to get things back under control.

Control. She took a deep breath—and realized how quickly she’d fallen under the spell of his practiced moves and smooth lines. “Thanks for the help,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You certainly seem to know your way around women’s zippers.”

His hands dropped to his sides. “Sisters.”

“Pardon me?”

“Sisters. Just Joe and me holding out against hordes of ’em.”

He wandered about her room, snagging a crumpled towel from the floor and folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “I got lots of practice. Buttons, laces, skate keys—I’m a pro.” He sorted through the clutter on the dresser, picked up her cologne and sniffed.

“Oh,” she said. His casual tour of her personal items was playing havoc with her nervous system, just as his dinner interrogation—and the keen focus of those dark eyes—had played havoc with her appetite. All those questions had seemed intensely personal, not mildly conversational.

She cleared her throat. “Didn’t I hear you mention an apology?”

“Yes, you did.” He set the bottle down, and his cocky grin snapped back into place. “I should have checked with you first before skipping the museum. I’m sorry for that, and for getting back so late.”

“Thank you for…” She frowned. “For understanding.”

“Does that mean I’m forgiven?” He slipped his hands into his pockets and scuffed a shoe against the carpet, with no attempt to disguise the fact that he knew he was overplaying the boyish chagrin bit.

She sighed. “Yes, you’re forgiven.”

“Good.” He stepped closer. “Then you’ll consider having dinner with me again tomorrow night?”