Homeport by Nora Roberts Page A

work.”
    Before she could calculate how to free her hand, he’d tucked it comfortably through his arm and headed for the door.

six
    S he didn’t know why she’d agreed to dinner. Although, when she thought back over the conversation, she hadn’t actually agreed. Which didn’t explain why she was getting dressed to go out.
    He was an associate, she reminded herself. The Boldari Gallery had a glossy reputation for elegance and exclusivity. The single time she’d managed to carve out an hour when in New York to visit it, she’d been impressed with the understated grandeur of the building almost as much as the art itself.
    It would hardly hurt the Institute for her to help forge a relationship between one of the most glamorous galleries in the country and the Jones organization.
    He wanted to have dinner to discuss business. She’d make sure it stayed in the business arena. Even if that smile of his sent little sparks of undiluted lust straight to her gut.
    If he wanted to flirt with her, fine. Ping or no ping, flirting didn’t affect her. She wasn’t some impressionable mush brain, after all. Men who looked like Ryan Boldari were born with fully developed flirtation skills.
    She liked to think she’d been born with an innate immunity to such shallow talents.
    He had the most incredible eyes. Eyes that looked at you as if everything but you had simply melted away.
    When she realized she’d sighed and closed her own, she muttered under her breath and yanked up the zipper in the back of her dress.
    It was only a matter of pride and professional courtesy that she chose to be particular about her appearance this evening. The first time she saw him she’d resembled a scruffy student. Tonight he would see she was a mature, sophisticated woman who’d have no problem handling a man over a meal.
    She’d selected a black dress in thin, soft wool scooped low at the bodice, low enough so that the swell of her breasts rose firmly over the straight edge neckline. The sleeves were long and snug, the skirt narrow and fluid to the ankles. She added an excellent, and unquestionably sexy, reproduction of a Byzantine cross. Its ornate vertical stem rested cozily at the hollow of her breasts.
    She yanked her hair up, jamming in pins at random. The result was, if she said so herself, carelessly sexy.
    It was a good look, she decided, a confident look, and a far cry from the too tall, socially inept nerd she’d been all through college. No one who glanced at this woman would realize she had nerves in her stomach over a simple business dinner, or that she worried she’d run out of intelligent conversation before the appetizers were served.
    They would see poise and style, she thought. They—and he—would see exactly what she wanted to be seen.
    She grabbed her purse, craned her neck to study her butt in the mirror and assure herself the dress didn’t make it look too big, then headed downstairs.
    Andrew was in the front parlor, already into his second whiskey. He lowered the glass when she walked in, and raised his eyebrows high.
    â€œWell. Wow.”
    â€œAndrew, you’re such a poet. Do I look fat in this?”
    â€œThere’s never a correct answer to that question. Or ifthere is, no man has ever found it. Therefore . . .” He raised his glass in toast. “I abstain.”
    â€œCoward.” And because her stomach was far too jittery, she poured herself half a glass of white wine.
    â€œAren’t you a little slicked up for a business dinner?”
    She sipped, let the wine cruise down to dampen some of the butterfly wings. “Aren’t you the one who lectured me for twenty minutes this afternoon on how beneficial a relationship with the Boldari Gallery could be to us?”
    â€œYeah.” But he narrowed his eyes. Though Andrew didn’t often see his sister as a woman, he was seeing her now. She looked, he thought