Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [17]
She was afraid she was on the verge of doing something incredibly stupid, and she had the unnerved feeling he knew it too.
After they'd eaten dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, Morgan left him watching an old movie on television while she went to take a shower. She had gone out of her way to be conservative in her clothes, wearing mostly oversize sweaters and shirts with jeans and, at night, a pair of oriental-style black pajamas and robe that covered her decently by anybody's standards.
It didn't seem to help.
When she returned to the living room, clad in her oriental pajamas and a robe, the television was turned down low, only one lamp burned, and Quinn was standing by the front window—the same one through which he'd entered wounded—gazing out at a chilly, foggy San Francisco night. He was wearing jeans with a button-up white shirt, the collar open and cuffs turned back loosely on his tanned forearms. The bandage on his shoulder didn't show, and he didn't look as if he'd ever been wounded.
“Is something wrong?” she asked immediately, wondering if he'd been alerted by anything he heard or saw.
“No, I was just thinking . . . it's a good night for skulking around out there.” He turned, but his face was still in shadow.
Morgan felt oddly breathless and swore at herself silently for it. She was being ridiculous. And stupid. Let's not forget stupid. “Oh. Is this the kind of night you like? For—skulking, I mean.”
He didn't answer immediately, and when he did there was a thread of tension in his voice. “It's the kind of night I'm used to. The kind of night I've seen a lot of. When the line between black and white blurs in the darkness.”
She went slowly toward him, halting no more than an arm's length away. His size always surprised her when she was this close to him, because there was something so lithe and graceful about the way he moved she tended to forget the sheer physical power of broad shoulders and superbly conditioned muscles. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“Is that all you find nights like this good for? What about when you're inside, like this?”
He drew a short breath and let it out roughly. “Something blameless, I suppose. Read a good book, watch television. Play cards.”
“Strip poker?”
“A game you wouldn't play,” he reminded her.
“Maybe I've changed my mind.” She heard herself say it and couldn't believe the words were coming out of her mouth. I'm out of my mind. Absolutely, unconditionally out of my mind . . . Quinn reached up with one hand to brush a strand of her long black hair away from her face, his fingers lingering for just a moment to stroke her cheek. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his mouth sensuous, and she could feel a slight tremor in his long fingers as they touched her.
Then, abruptly, he turned away and crossed the room to the hallway leading to the bedroom. “Good night, Morgana,” he said briskly over his shoulder. Seconds later, the bedroom door closed softly.
. . . and not much of a vamp, apparently.
There wasn't much a woman could do when she had been rejected except wrap her pride about herself and try to put the rebuff behind her, so that's what Morgan did. She even managed, after a couple of glasses of wine, to drop off to sleep somewhere around dawn.
When she woke up Tuesday morning, Quinn was gone.
It was just after nine when Max met Morgan in the lobby of the museum as she came in.
“Keane's due here in about an hour to talk to you,” Max said after greeting her. “How's your houseguest?”
“Gone,” Morgan replied succinctly, proud of her matter-of-fact tone. “He was up and dressed most of yesterday, and gone when I got up this morning.” She paused, then added dryly, “While I was getting ready to leave, a florist delivered a lovely vase of flowers. No card.”
“Well, at least he said thank you.”
“He did say it once or twice while