Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 35

Tossing back the covers, he stalked to the master bathroom and jumped in the shower, taking the fastest scrub in history.

He'd had a list of errands three pages long to run today, but those tasks had suddenly narrowed to one all-important goal: find Gwen.

He toweled off, then stood in front of the medicine-cabinet mirror, shaving as quickly as he could without causing major blood loss. As it was, he ended up with a dozen nicks.

After applying aftershave and deodorant, he marched to the dresser for a T-shirt and jeans. Once he'd donned his socks and shoes, he scooped up his car keys and cell phone and was out the door.

He headed straight for Gwen's apartment, using his hands-free cell phone to make a couple of calls on the way. One to his day manager at the club, asking her to take care of the paperwork and errands Ethan had planned to cover, then another to his night manager to let him know he could be reached on his cell.

By that time he was in Gwen's neighborhood. He pulled into the first available s.p.a.ce he could find near her building and took off down the sidewalk at a near jog.

He rang the bell for Gwen's apartment. There was no response, but he wasn't taking no for an answer.

He laid on the b.u.t.ton again, but when another resident came out of the building, he waited for her to pa.s.s out of sight, then deftly caught the door before it could close. Slipping inside, he took the stairs two at a time up to Gwen's apartment and started knocking. A few minutes later he realized she was either avoiding him or she really wasn't home.

"Come on, Gwen," he called through the wooden panel, hoping against hope. "Open up."

Down the hall, hinges creaked, and he turned his head to see a little old lady with tight white curls peering out of her opened door.

"I'm sorry, young man, but Gwen isn't home."

Abandoning his post at Gwen's apartment, he took a few steps in the older woman's direction. When he saw her shrink back, he slowed his gait, not wanting to alarm her.

"Do you know where I can find her?" he asked. "It's important."

She eyed him up and down warily, never poking more than her head out into the hallway. "Well, I suppose she's at work, same as every other day."

Work. d.a.m.n. She was probably driving all over creation, looking for new and unique clothing designs for her job as a buyer.

"Do you have any idea where she might be, exactly? Or how I can reach her?"

"Sure, she just works down the street at the library. Do you know where it is?"

Ethan blinked, trying to process the woman's words. "The library?" he questioned aloud.

Gwen had said she was a fashion buyer for several of the more upscale stores in the city and some of the boutiques in town. What would she be doing at the local library?

"That's right. She should be there, unless she's out to lunch already."

He glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock in the morning was awfully early for lunch. Good, then maybe he could catch her.

"Thank you." He lifted a hand, waving in appreciation before he turned and hurried down the stairs.

Rather than move his car and risk not being able to find another parking spot, he walked the several blocks to the Georgetown branch of the D.C. Library.

Come to think of it, Gwen had been descending the steps of the public library that first day he'd spotted her and followed her back to her apartment building.

He didn't know what was going on, exactly, but he honestly didn't care. The important thing was finding Gwen and telling her how he felt about her.

Not to mention figuring out how she felt about him.

It took him under five minutes to reach the colonial redbrick building. A white cupola loomed above him, with towering pillars marking the entrance. He took the wide front steps in two strides and yanked open the door, holding it for a moment so that another patron could exit.

The silence inside was deafening. He was used to the pounding, ear-splitting environment at The Hot Spot. Even when he was working alone in his office or driving in the car, he usually had some kind of music on in the background.

But this was the type of quiet he only experienced in the first thirty seconds after arriving home, or entering the club before opening-the lull before flipping on the television or sound system.

He stood inside the main entrance, staring at rows upon rows of high shelving, cluttered with books. At tables with four or six chairs around each, an a.s.sortment of people were reading.

Along the far wall, individual carrels held large, funny-looking machines that he thought he remembered being used for microfiche.

And then there was the waist-high circulation desk, with a librarian behind it. A librarian who wasn't Gwen.

This middle-aged woman had her dark hair up in a bun and wore a light blue sweater over a flowered blouse. She was trying to look busy, while at the same time watching him through large-framed gla.s.ses.

He hadn't seen Gwen during his quick perusal of the library, so he stepped up to the counter and smiled when the librarian pretended to finally notice him.

"Can I help you?" She smiled politely, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes, I need to speak to someone, and I was told she might be here. Her name is Gwen Thomas. She has beautiful chestnut hair that hangs to her shoulders in waves. In a word, she's hot. Does she work here, by chance?"

The woman's eyes, he noticed, had gone wide behind her plastic-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"Um...we do have a Gwen Thomas who works here," she said, sounding decidedly uncomfortable. "But I'm not sure she's the same person you're looking for. Our Gwen is a pretty girl, though."

His heart sank. He didn't know how many Gwen Thomases there were in the world, let alone the Georgetown area, but he felt certain that if his Gwen worked here, the woman behind the desk would know it.

There was no way his Gwen could ever be mistaken for anyone else, and she definitely couldn't be confused with simply "a pretty girl." His Gwen was a knockout.

"Oh, here she is now," the woman announced suddenly.

He swung around, coming face-to-face with Gwen. His Gwen.

She wasn't dressed as he'd come to expect from her, but she still looked good. d.a.m.n good, and as s.e.xy as always in a formfitting, daffodil-yellow knit dress with short sleeves, a scoop neckline and a hem that hit her about five inches above the knee. A large, painted daisy pin decorated the s.p.a.ce between shoulder and left breast, and in her right arm she carried a stack of thick, well-worn hardcover books.

"Ethan." Her face went three shades paler when she saw him, her voice cracking over his name. "What are you doing here?"

A thousand questions of his own raced through his head, starting with What are you doing here? and I thought you were a fashion buyer, not a librarian. But none of those were nearly as important as his real reason for tracking her down.

"Looking for you."

He tapped his palm on the oaken countertop and offered the older librarian a hasty "Thank you" before moving to stand directly before Gwen.

"Why did you leave this morning?" he asked pointedly, but low enough that no one else could hear, even in the dead silence surrounding them.

She blushed slightly and juggled the books she was holding, which must have been growing heavy. He took them, three at a time, and set them on the nearest tabletop until her arms were empty.

"Is there someplace more private where we can talk?"

He didn't know about her, but he wasn't eager to have his personal life play out in front of everyone in the Georgetown Public Library.

There were more people here than he'd have expected on a weekday morning. Of course, he hadn't been in a library since high school, so he wasn't exactly an authority on the subject.

She glanced around and then nodded, turning to lead him to a small, gla.s.s-paneled room hidden behind the stacks. Once they were inside, she closed the door with a quiet click and drew the blinds to hide them from curious onlookers.

He leaned back against the edge of a cluttered metal desk and crossed his arms over his chest. She didn't look any more comfortable about his sudden appearance when she faced him again.

"Are you going to answer my question?" he asked calmly.

"What question?" She ran her hands down the front of her dress nervously, refusing to meet his gaze.

"Why did you leave this morning?" he repeated.

"Was I supposed to stay?"

"If you had to go to work or something, you could have woken me to let me know or left a note saying what time you'd be back. Otherwise, I sort of expected to wake up and find the woman I'd gone to sleep with the night before still in my bed."

It hit him, not for the first time, that he never usually expected to wake up beside the woman he'd gone to bed with the night before. But then, being in love with Gwen changed everything, didn't it?

"I'm sorry," she said. "I wouldn't have known what to say."

He eyed her warily, getting a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. "You never intended to come back, did you? Or call me, or see me again."

Taking her silence and the nervous licking of her lips as answer enough, he balled his hands into fists to keep from rubbing the painful spot directly over his heart.

"That's great. Just great," he ranted. "I've spent these last weeks thinking about you constantly, dreaming about you, coming to terms with the fact that I'm finally over my ex-wife's betrayal and falling seriously in love with you, while you were using me for nothing more than a momentary amus.e.m.e.nt."

Gwen's heart froze in her chest, then picked up its beat with a vengeance, pounding against her rib cage as though it was trying to break free.

It had been startling enough to walk out of the stacks and find him standing in front of the circulation desk, looking drop-dead gorgeous-as usual-in a pair of worn jeans and a rusty orange T-shirt that molded to his chest and biceps like a second skin. But now he was standing in front of her, complaining that she hadn't been there when he awakened this morning and...telling her he might seriously be falling in love with her?

Was she hearing him correctly? Had he just said what she thought he'd said?

No. She had to be mistaken. He couldn't have just said he was falling in love with her. Men like him didn't fall in love with women like her.

But her brain was telling her those were the words he'd uttered, and she had to know for sure.

"What did you say?" she asked breathlessly, her diaphragm tightening with fear that he might deny it.

He rolled his eyes in annoyance. "You used me for your own amus.e.m.e.nt-"

She shook her head violently, taking a tentative step toward him. Her lungs didn't seem capable of drawing air.

"Before that. Did you say...Did you say you were falling in love with me?"

"Yeah," he admitted reluctantly, his eyes narrowing. "But I'm sure as h.e.l.l not going to say it again. I've had enough humiliation for one day, thanks very much."

Ignoring his rant, she moved closer, fighting the urge to reach out and touch him.

"Do you still feel that way?" she asked in a voice smaller than she'd ever heard herself speak before.

"What do you care? You sneaked out this morning so you wouldn't have to face me in the bright light of day."

She swallowed hard. "You're right. That's exactly why I left. But only because I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again. I know the kind of guy you are, Ethan. You own a nightclub. You meet hundreds of gorgeous women every night. I'm sure any number of them jump at the chance to go home with you."

"What's your point? I met you at my club, and you came home with me the same night."

"I know that. I didn't mean to sound critical."

If anything, his s.e.x appeal was exactly what had drawn her to him. She'd wanted a man to make love to her without asking a lot of questions or expecting more from the encounter. But somehow she'd still gotten too deeply involved, too emotionally attached to the man she'd chosen. Or, more accurately, the man who'd chosen her.

"To be honest," she continued, "I didn't think you'd want a woman like me hanging around too long. I thought you'd be just as happy to be rid of me."

He watched her intently for several long seconds, and then he kicked away from the desk, where he'd been perched ever since they entered the room.

"What do you mean, 'a woman like you'?"

"A woman like me. A plain, boring librarian who had never set foot inside a nightclub before my birthday."

"I thought you were a fashion buyer."

"I lied. I didn't think you or your friends would be very impressed if you knew I spent my days shelving books and helping students with their research."

"Why the h.e.l.l would I care what you did for a living?" he demanded. "I'll admit I'm surprised, but more that you felt the need to lie about your job than by the job itself. And where the h.e.l.l do you get off saying you're 'plain' and 'boring'? We haven't been seeing each other long, but I've never known you to be either of those things."

"That's just it, Ethan. You don't know me, not at all. Everything about me-everything you know about me-has been made up. That night I walked into your club for the first time, I'd had my hair colored and bought a new outfit completely different from my usual style because I was depressed about turning thirty-one and wanted to do something wild and outrageous for once in my life. You were my chance to be uninhibited and spend the evening with a fun, handsome man who wouldn't think twice about me the next day."

She gave a little laugh that came out more like a huff and ran her fingers through her hair in agitation.

"But you weren't at all what I expected. You were sweet and kind and didn't just use me for s.e.x. You actually tracked me down at home and asked me out again. You acted like you wanted to get to know me better, when I expected to be nothing more to you than a one-night stand."

Ethan shook his head, looking bewildered. "You're telling me you ran off this morning because I was paying too much attention to you? Because I wasn't a first-cla.s.s heel and treated you like a woman I was in a relationship with rather than someone I'd used for a quick lay?"

"No. No, you don't understand. There's nothing wrong with you. You were wonderful, just not at all what I'd expected or planned for."

She sighed in frustration. "What I'm saying is that the woman you met that night at your club isn't me. And when you showed up at my apartment and invited me to dinner, I had to keep pretending that I was worldly and confident. I had to buy more s.e.xy, revealing outfits, and make up another occupation so you wouldn't know I spend my days here, surrounded by books."

Ethan thought he'd been confused this morning when he suddenly realized he was in love with Gwen. Now, though, he was truly perplexed. She seemed to think that the woman he'd been spending so much time with and the woman she was on her own were two different people.

But he knew different. He knew that even if she'd been pretending to be someone else at the club the first night they'd met, there was still some part of that s.e.xy, vibrant woman inside of her now. He knew that just because she was a librarian by profession didn't mean she was boring or dull. And he knew that what she did and how she saw herself had nothing to do with the woman he'd fallen in love with.

Frankly, he was relieved to discover she'd run out on him only because she didn't think she could live up to his expectations or his lifestyle. For a while there, he'd been afraid she didn't really care for him.

He supposed he should be angry that she'd lied to him at all, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to care about that right now. Not considering the bigger issue.

Reaching out, he stroked his hands down her bare arms, feeling the nervous shudder that rippled through her pet.i.te frame.

"I only have one question," he told her, keeping his tone low but solemn. "Did you lie about this?"