Until You

It was a stunner, especially if you were into gilt cherubs and red velvet, which she had been a couple of years ago. The guy who'd designed it for her had kissed his fingertips and pronounced it the best thing he'd ever done. Nita had figured the best thing he'd ever done was probably some leather-freak with a shaved skull but she got the general message. And he'd been one hundred percent right.

The room was spectacular, kind of over-the-top rococo meets braggadocio baroque with maybe some high-priced brothel tossed in for good measure. Her southern ancestors would spin in their graves if they'd seen it, but Marie Antoinette would have been thrilled. Nita had been, too, but now the look was wearing thin.

Oh yes, she thought, plucking a pair of ruby earrings the size of hummingbird eggs from the table and screwing them into her ear lobes, it was definitely time for something new. Something along the lines of what Miranda had done with her place, all whites and beiges and blacks, lots of indirect lighting and simple lines.

Nita fastened a ruby choker around her long, cafe au lait neck and slipped a matching bracelet on her wrist. She could still remember the first time she'd seen Miranda's apartment, how surprised she'd been by the laid-back, almost Spartan design which just didn't suit Miranda's party-girl image. But as the friendship had grown, she'd begun to think that maybe the decor wasn't so out of sync, after all.

Crazy as it seemed, she suspected the inner Miranda might not have a whole lot in common with the outer one.

A pair of red sequined sandals with skinny four-inch heels sat on top of a scarlet-covered chair. Nita tried not to wobble as she stepped into them.

How could you be friends with somebody all this time and still have the weird feeling that you didn't really know her? This thing Miranda had going with Jean-Phillipe, for instance. Nita walked to a gilt-framed mirror on the far wall, her steps tiny and mincing to accommodate the figure-hugging lines of her ankle-length, red jersey gown. He was always sending Miranda flowers and hugging her and she was always hanging on to him and sighing, but for all of that, there was something missing. Nita couldn't put her finger on it but she'd sensed it right away, from the time so long ago when the friendship between Miranda and Jean-Phillipe had suddenly seemed to turn into a hot-ticket item.

"You really gettin' it on with the Frenchman?" Nita had asked, deliberately couching the question in her phoniest down-home drawl.

Miranda had laughed and said yes, of course she was—but there'd been a couple of seconds when her eyes had said something else.

Now, with Conor O'Neil in the picture, Nita was more puzzled than ever. Miranda was blunt about disliking the guy but anybody with a functioning brain could tell that the temperature went up a couple of hundred degrees whenever he came near her. He was an investigator, Miranda had said, making a face; she said there'd been some trouble at her apartment and some similar stuff involving her mother in New York, that her mother had bought and paid for O'Neil to play bodyguard until it was cleared up, and that he was about as welcome in her life as the plague.

"Mmm-mmm-mmm," Nita had said with a sexy grin, "that man can guard my body any time he wants."

Miranda hadn't even cracked a smile.

"That's only because you haven't had to deal with him. O'Neil is a thickheaded, chauvinistic, egotistical, judgmental—"

"Sounds good so far," Nita had answered, batting her lashes.

"He's a bully with an over-active libido," Miranda had snapped, "and the quicker he's out of my life, the better."

Miranda had spent the last few days trying to lose him, but O'Neil stuck like Crazy Glue.

Sooner or later, you just knew there were going to be old-fashioned, Fourth of July fireworks between those two.

"Nita?" Miranda's voice floated out from the bathroom. "Is our cab here yet?"

Nita went to the window again. The snow had stopped and a full, perfect moon had risen. A cab was just pulling up to the door... and there, across the road, Conor stood leaning against his car, arms folded.

She whistled soundlessly through her teeth. What a gorgeous man he was, with that tough-but-beautiful face and that terrific body. He was all gussied up, too, in a black tux that showed off all his assets—the wide shoulders, the broad chest, the narrow waist and hips and those long, very masculine legs.

"Well? Is it here?"

Nita cleared her throat.

"Yeah. It is. You ready?"

Miranda stepped into the room. One look, and Nita knew that she'd definitely had it with crimson and gilt.

Miranda was a study in simplicity. Her gown was a long, demure column of heavy white silk but Nita had seen her model it at the showing; she knew that its innocent appearance was an illusion. The silk would take on the warmth of Miranda's body and, as she walked, it would cling to her breasts, her hips, her legs. Even the neckline wasn't what it at first seemed; it was high in the front but it dipped to the base of her spine in the back. Her hair was loose, drawn back from her face with a pair of antique silver combs. The only other hewelry she wore were the silver slave bracelets that adorned her wrists.

"How do I look?" she asked.

Nita smiled. "Like the Fourth of July."

"Huh?"

Nita strutted across the room and plucked her sable cape from where it lay across a red velvet chair.

"Trust me," she said. "It's gonna be an interesting evening."