Moonlight Over Manhattan(38)

Tearing her gaze away from the big bed, she left the room and found the spare room.

It was spacious and comfortable, decorated in dark forest greens, with a rug on the oak floor. There were cushions and the bed was draped with a warm, velvety throw that invited the occupant to snuggle.

This room was much smaller than his, but large enough to house a desk by the window and have its own small bathroom. It also had another wall of bookshelves.

It was another point in his favor that Ethan was a book lover.

She put her case inside, removed her laptop from her backpack and placed it on the desk by the window.

By the time she’d settled herself down, she’d decided that she was in love with Ethan’s apartment. It wasn’t as big and showy as the one her brother Daniel owned on Fifth Avenue, but it was elegant and comfortable, full of sunlight and character. And books. There were books everywhere. Some of them were stacked in piles on the floor because there wasn’t room on the shelves.

Who couldn’t be happy living here?

Madi watched her from the doorway and she smiled at the dog.

“You picked a nice property for your time away from home. And you’re a good girl. How about a walk? We could drop into a couple of stores and buy something for dinner.”

The prospect of cooking in that wonderfully equipped kitchen excited her as much as the idea of having someone to cook for. She’d been cooking meals for one for the past five months.

Maybe dog sitting wasn’t so bad after all.

ETHAN TOOK THE elevator to his apartment with a sense of trepidation. His head ached. He wanted to take a shower, pour himself a glass of wine and relax with a book.

If he didn’t have houseguests—did the dog count as a guest?—that was exactly what he’d be doing.

It was what he wanted to do.

He was used to coming home and thinking only of himself.

Selfish and single-minded, his ex-wife had called it. Fortunately she’d been wired the same way, which was why their parting had been fairly amicable. They’d both been married to their jobs, which made it virtually impossible to make the other sort of marriage work.

As he opened his front door, he wondered what he would find this time. Disconsolate neighbors? A wrecked sofa? An empty food cupboard?

Braced for all of those possibilities and worse, he opened the door and paused.

The mellow sound of jazz floated through the apartment along with the most delicious smells.

He heard laughter and the sound of Harriet’s voice as she chatted. For a moment he thought she’d invited people round and felt a flash of irritation because the last thing he felt like being was sociable. But then he strolled through to the kitchen and saw that Harriet was talking to the dog, chatting confidently and without a hint of a stammer as she stirred something that simmered on the stove.

“So I need to do the accounts, but it’s something I always put off.” She added a spoonful of something to the pot on the stove, and then a pinch of something else. “It’s one of my biggest failings. Putting off doing the things I hate. Do you ever do that?”

Ethan was about to respond, but then he remembered she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to the dog.

And she was obviously more comfortable talking to the dog than she ever was with him.

Gone was the wariness that was present whenever she talked to Ethan.

“Fliss usually does it, which is exactly why I’ve said I’ll do it.” She gave the pot another stir. “When someone always does things for you, it stops you doing them for yourself.”

He barely recognized his kitchen. Overnight it had transformed from a stark, sterile barely used space into a fusion of color and scent. A freshly baked loaf of bread lay cooling on the countertop.

It was an alien scene.

Medical school had been a nonstop ingestion of fast food eaten at an even faster pace, and his short-lived marriage had consisted mostly of takeout food or meals eaten in restaurants. Early in their marriage Alison had cooked a couple of meals that had ended up in the trash when he was late home. After that, she’d given up. His sister, outspoken, had once told him their relationship had been a recipe for disaster.

Ethan had joked that neither of them knew what a recipe was.

They certainly didn’t have homemaking anywhere on their priority list.

Something niggled in his brain.

He thought back to the conversation when Harriet had told him that she was single and dating.

Was that what this was? Was she playing house? And if so, what exactly was his role in this?

He felt a twinge of unease. What if she’d misunderstood his reasons for asking her to move in with him? What if she wasn’t here because of Madi, but because of him?

He thought back to something Susan had said.

You’re young, single and an excellent doctor, Black. That makes you a catch.

Ethan knew differently. Despite, or perhaps because of, those qualities that made him an excellent doctor, he knew he was a bad deal for any woman.

But what if Harriet didn’t?

What if she thought he was just the person she’d been looking for?

She lowered the heat under the pan and turned and smiled at him. “How was your day?”

How was your day, dear?

He and Alison had never talked about their days. Partly because they’d rarely occupied the same space for long enough to indulge in any kind of conversation, and partly because in the short time they weren’t working neither of them had wanted to talk about it.