Looking Inside

“But you said dinner. Maybe the place you want to go to is dressy?” She glanced down at him. “You look really nice.”

“I’m wearing jeans and boots and a coat, just like you,” he murmured humorously, nipping at her lower lip.

“You manage to make it look a lot more sophisticated than I do.” She shifted on her feet. “I think I’ll change.”

He grabbed her shoulders, making her an immobile target. He seized her mouth in a hard, swift kiss. By the time he lifted his head, she wore that dazed, flushed look that always gratified him to the core.

“Plans should change, not you. You’re perfect,” he said with a pointed glance. He pulled her toward the front door.

Once they were outside walking south on the inner drive, he didn’t even bother to button the coat he wore. “It must be in the forties. It’s even warmer than it was yesterday,” he said to Eleanor.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask you: how is your brother?”

“He’s okay. He left for New York this morning. It wasn’t anything life-threatening that was bugging him. Life-altering, maybe,” he added under his breath.

He saw her questioning glance and explained about his playboy big brother falling hard for a woman, and being pretty torn up by it.

“He’s forty-three years old and never been in love before?” Eleanor asked after he’d finished.

“I know. Hard to believe, but true.”

“That’s a really long time to go without ever being in love,” she mused. He studied her profile as they crossed Division Street. What was she thinking? He opened his mouth, intending to ask her how old she was, and if she’d ever “fallen” yet. But she cut him off.

“Oh look. They have the lights up,” she said, referring to the Christmas lights on all the trees lining the shopping district on Michigan Avenue.

“They’ve had them up for at least a week,” he said, both relieved and irritated by her changing the subject. Why did he feel compelled to ask her such an intimate question? It was the kind of topic he usually avoided with women. Her wistful smile snagged his full attention.

“I love Christmas in the city. I usually walk over for the lighting parade,” she said, referring to the annual event that inaugurated the beginning of the holiday season.

“How come you didn’t this year?”

A shadow fell over her face. “Too busy, I guess. And my work is in the opposite direction, so I just hadn’t noticed they’d decorated already. I missed it.”

“I would have thought a fashionista like you treaded a beaten a path to Michigan Avenue.”

“Fashionista? Oh, well I guess I do like clothes.”

“For their performance value?” he asked quietly, casting a sideways glance her way.

She gave a small grin. “I know that’s what you like my clothes for. Are your offices in the Loop?” she asked him.

“Yeah, on South Wacker Drive,” he replied, highly aware she’d changed the subject yet again. He reached for her hand. It seemed like a natural thing to do on his part, but she gave him a startled glance at the familiar gesture.

“What? I can’t hold your hand? After everything we’ve been through?” he teased her.

“No. I mean . . . of course you can,” she muttered, flustered. It was dark out, but the streetlights gave off enough luminescence for him to see that she blushed. She’d given him mind-blowing displays of exhibitionism. They’d had scorching sex, not once, but several times, and by all available evidence, she’d loved every bit of it.

But she’d started and blushed when he held her hand.

They paused with half a dozen other pedestrians at the light on Oak Street. He leaned down and spoke quietly near her ear. “I’m going to figure you out, Eleanor.”

Her big eyes looked anxious when she looked up at him. Alarmed?

“What do you mean? What’s to figure out?”

He frowned down at her. “Some kind of mystery,” he muttered darkly before the light changed, and he pulled her out into the street.

—