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He looked as if he might go to the passenger side to open the door for her, but she beat him to it with a couple of determined strides. She didn’t want him standing there just inches from her while she climbed inside. He went around to the driver’s side instead, without breaking that easy stride of his.
He paused at this point, leaned his forearm on the warm roof of the car and looked at her across the dark-blue expanse, sure of himself as always. “Is that important? That what we find should be valuable?”
She looked back at him, passenger door open, one shoe tip resting on the metal rim beside the seat. “Oh, no, no, I’m not talking sell-it-on-eBay valuable. It’s less tangible than that.”
“Yeah?”
“I…I can’t really explain.”
“Try,” he invited her, and she realized how much he’d gotten her to talk over their meal, rather than talking himself.
He was still doing it. Not over a meal, this time. Over a car roof.
He rested his chin on his arm and watched her, his eyes hidden by sunglasses, while she struggled to find the words. “You know in movies, it’s always about gold, isn’t it?” she said.
Gold… The sun glinting on his hair, reflecting off the sunglasses, darkening the golden tan on his arms and face. He was way too good-looking, even when he frowned.
“Chests of jewels and coins,” she went on, fighting the way he distracted her. “Things that anyone and everyone can see are a treasure, at first glance. But sometimes there’s value in a piece of paper or a chunk of gray rock or a handful of pottery shards, and not everyone sees that. So many people are blind to it.”
“Some things have value purely because you choose to see them that way, you mean. Sometimes you have to look below the surface.”
“That’s right.” She couldn’t tell if he was really interested. “That’s part of it.”
The car roof was pleasantly hot, after the chilly and powerful restaurant air-conditioning. She stroked the gleaming blue metal without thinking too much about the action, just enjoying the warmth, suit jacket still hanging over her free arm.
“Or because they tell a story, maybe.” He was still looking at her, his expression impossible to read.
“That, too,” she said. “I love those kinds of stories. The questions you can’t always answer. The mysteries you can sometimes solve. Who made this? Who broke it? Why is it here?”
“Stories that you yourself can read and understand a little better because of your specialized knowledge, where someone else might toss the item in a garbage pile and never know.”
“Yes.”
“Which only makes the treasure worth more to you, because its value is your own private secret. Like a little girl seeing fairies when no one else can.”
She looked at him in sudden amazement. So few people understood this at all, let alone managed to explain it better than she’d ever explained it herself. “How come you get that?” she blurted out. “Nobody seems to, when I say it, not even my twin sister. But then, I’m not that fluent sometimes. You know, I’m an intelligent woman, I have a Ph. D., so you’d think, wouldn’t you? But no. When I’m nervous, or—”
“Like now?” he said, unexpectedly gentle, because she’d begun to gabble. She could hear it herself. “Why are you nervous now?”
“I wasn’t a minute ago. But you’re making me self-conscious.”
“Not that difficult to do, from what I can work out.” He gave a cynical grin. “I’ve been trying very hard to get you to relax all through lunch.”
“Oh.”
“And you do, for a while, when you talk about the things that really interest you. And then something sets you off again, and we’re back to square one.”
“Me. I set myself off. It’s not your fault.” She slumped one shoulder against the curve of the car roof, disappointed in herself, embarrassed because Ben Radford saw through to the flawed heart of her so easily. Saw through to the awkward, self-doubting, thirty-one-years-old-and-never-been-kissed heart of her being.
She had been kissed.
Of course she had.
She’d been taken to bed, too, a couple of times, but…but…
It had been wrong. Both of those men had been wrong. The wrong guy, the wrong feelings, the wrong time and place in her life. She wondered what it would take for her to get all those things right, and couldn’t see it happening right now.
“Get in the car, Dr. Madison,” Ben told her softly, seeing too much, as usual. “You’re getting car roof dust on your arm.”
Chapter Four
“No, I’m going to love it.” Dr. Madison’s eyes shone. Her gaze darted about, taking in the detail of the newly refurbished guest wing. “You kept the original door. That old wood is so wonderful. I love the colors you’ve chosen.”
Ben hadn’t gone for his decorator’s initial suggestion of classic Southwestern earth tones, and the two of them had done some polite-yet-steely negotiation—“You’re the client, Mr. Radford”—and ended up choosing a mix of white and turquoise and gold.
“I love the coolness and silence,” Rowena finished.
“Because if you truly would prefer a motel…” he said, deliberately leaving the sentence hanging, just to see what she would say.
He could already tell that she wouldn’t prefer a motel, and without wanting to be, he was intrigued by the way her instinctive appreciation for beauty and history changed her face. Her eyes widened. Their deep, beautiful blue went even darker. Her mouth softened. Her lips parted.
She forgot the nervous tension and shyness that seemed to wrap around her like a cloak too often, tightening the angles in her limbs and stripping away their natural grace. The tension and shyness made him angry with her at times. There was no reason for her lack of confidence, and he had a low tolerance for people who let their own flaws hold them back.
Well, her flaws weren’t holding her back right now.
She wasn’t quite smiling, but the expression was better than a smile. Radiant he would have called her, if he wasn’t the cynical survivor of a recent divorce, who didn’t go anywhere near any word that had the slightest association with brides.
She gave a gasp of pleasure at the sight of the nineteenth-century mission-oak hall seat in the entranceway, trailing her fingertips lightly across its waxy patina on her way toward the bedroom. “Oh, this is gorgeous! And this!”
She looked at the painting on the wall—a splash of vibrant colors in a landscape by a modern Italian artist who didn’t really belong here, if you were going to be strict about it, but somehow the painting had seemed to fit. Ben refused to be a purist about such things.
On an impulse that he didn’t examine too closely, he said to Rowena, “Come to the exhibition opening at my gallery tomorrow night, if you like art.” She hesitated, and he added quickly, “I’m serious. You’d enjoy it.”
“But I’m here to work.”
“Not in the evenings. Anyway, your profession is so much about visual appreciation. You should go to galleries. You should gorge your senses whenever you can.” She looked alarmed at his prescription, but he ignored her, impatient with her again. “And don’t tell me you’ll be too tired. It’ll be easy. Just a hop in the helicopter, there and back.”
“Helicopter…”
“Yes. I charter them out here quite a lot. I don’t always feel like driving into town.”
“Oh. Nice not to have to deal with the traffic.” She was looking as if out of her depth again.
“So it’s a deal? Dinner afterward, if we’re hungry. You’ll need to be ready by five-thirty.”
“I…I… Okay.” She spread her hands and gave a helpless kind of laugh, as if she couldn’t believe he’d really been serious.
Ben wondered about the spontaneous invitation, too. What had he saddled himself with for tomorrow’s event? Serial awkwardness, or a really nice night? He had no idea.
The two of them put her bags down on the handwoven rug, and she paused for a moment to assess the queen-size bed, the adjoining bathroom and the other furnishings.
“Thank you,” she said. “I mean, for the suite. It’ll be perfect.”
“Your sitting room needs something, though,” Ben said. “My decorator tried a rolltop desk in there and it looked terrible, but you do need some more surface area to lay out your work. You can use my secretary’s office when she’s not around.” He had some loose arrangements with his staff these days, and people came and went between here and his large office suite in San Diego on an ad hoc basis. “And my conference room when you have something to show me, but I imagine you’ll be wanting to work in here quite often.”
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