No, no, he thought, rejecting the idea almost immediately. Hell. That was why he’d left Houston, wasn’t it? To get away from all that carousing? He’d been partying too hard. The closest he’d get to a woman for the next few weeks was through his fantasies. And Miss Ramsey was the only one around who was near his age. His choices were limited, so why not let a few fantasies about her play around in his mind? They were harmless.

He had no doubt that she was feminine to some extent, even if she was no more approachable than a barbed-wire fence. Confusion had been written all over her face when she’d stepped into the hallway and accidentally encountered him doing his calisthenics.

He could have made room to do the push-ups in his own apartment, but he had perversely hoped she might stumble across him in the hallway. The poor dear had probably never seen a man that close to naked before. Did she know what male sweat looked and smelled like? Probably not until this morning. Certainly she had seemed flustered. Trent had to suppress a chuckle even now at the memory of her shocked face. But she had liked what she saw. He’d stake his reputation as a Casanova on that.

“Anything for me?”

His breath struck the top of her head. Only then did Rana realize how close to her he was standing. “No,” she said, hurriedly sorting through the rest of the envelopes. She tossed the mail back down on the table. When she did, the cover of one of Ruby’s fashion magazines fell open.

Rana gasped.

There she was, svelte and sexy, reclining on a white sheet. Her mahogany hair was spread like a fan behind her head. It had taken the hairdresser and photographer a full hour to get it just right. Her cheekbones stood out prominently, and above them her eyes were sultry. Her lips glistened, sulky and suggestive, in a half smile.

She was wearing her trademark white. That was Morey’s stipulation; he would agree to let her do the underwear ad only if it was met. “Rana only wears white, you know,” he had told the advertising men. They had wanted her, and they had been willing to meet any condition and pay the exorbitant price she demanded.

In the ad, one of her knees was provocatively raised. She had had a bruise on her thigh from banging it on a taxi door the day before. It had been a challenge for the makeup artist to cover it up, but eventually he’d made her skin look like it had been polished with oil, then buffed. Looking at the photograph, one could almost feel the silky texture of her olive skin.

The bikini panties she wore sliced well below her prominent hipbones. In the photograph her tank top was being pushed up to the undercurve of her breast by a man’s hand. The man, lying beside her but out of the camera’s range, had had a face like a potato, but the hands of a poet. He made his living doing everything from patting babies’ be- hinds in disposable-diaper commercials to opening cans of beer so they would foam over the top.

The ad was captioned, “Softness has never felt this soft.”

It had been chilly in the studio. Her nipples had contracted and were plainly defined against the cotton-knit tank top. The ad-agency rep had been ecstatic over the effect. His client had asked for sex without lewdness. The photographer was interested only in the focus and lighting. His assistant joked that the hand model was taking secret gropes of Rana’s breast while no one was looking. Susan Ramsey took offense and began to virulently protest his “lecherous” humor. Since the assistant was also the photographer’s lover, he took offense at her name-calling and threatened to have her evicted from the studio if she didn’t shut up.

Through it all Rana had lain there, bored, tired, her back aching from holding the pose so long and her stomach growling from perpetual hunger.

“Nice.”

The deep male voice rumbled close to her ear, bringing her back into the present. She slapped the magazine cover closed.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t you like it?” Trent asked, obviously amused by her prudish reaction to the erotic ad.

“Yes… no… I-I’ve got to get back to work.”

She shoved her way past him and virtually ran up the stairs. After shutting herself in her apartment, she slumped against the door, gulping for breath, expectantly waiting for him to come chasing after her, waving the magazine, his mouth agape now that he recognized her.

Then she realized that her fear of discovery was ridiculous. Neither Trent nor anyone else would recognize her from that ad. Miss Ramsey matched the woman in the picture about as much as the hand model’s face matched his beautiful hands. There was no apparent connection between the two.

Eventually she pushed herself away from the door and went back to work on the wrap skirt she’d been painting when she’d decided to take a break. It seemed like centuries ago.

She had had two shocks. First, seeing Trent Gamblin during his workout, and then seeing herself in that magazine. For six months she had lived her reclusive life without any real threat of discovery. Even when she had notified Morey and her mother of her new address, she had warned them that if they badgered her into returning to New York, she would disappear again and never let them know where she was.

Now, with Trent living in the house, detection suddenly seemed imminent. Her private sphere had been invaded. Ruby’s vanity prevented her from wearing eyeglasses, even though her vision wasn’t too keen. So despite the fact that she read her fashion magazines faithfully, she had never connected her dowdy boarder with the dazzling Rana.

Would her nephew be more astute?

Rana’s contemplation of her problem was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Out of habit, she wiped her hands with a cloth before answering her extension.

“Hi, Barry,” she said happily when the caller identified himself.

“I hope you’re hard at work. You’re in demand.”

“I am?” She was pleased; their arrangement was proving to be as lucrative for him as it was for her. Rana had met Barry Golden in New York, where he worked as a fashion coordinator for a major department store. He loved the fashion industry, but hated the city. When he’d come into a small fortune left to him by his grandfather, he had returned to his hometown of Houston and opened an exquisite store that catered to wealthy socialites.

He had told Rana when he left New York that if she ever needed anything, she should let him know. She had taken him up on that offer six months ago. If it was blind luck that had brought her to the Galveston boardinghouse, it was Barry who had brought her to the Houston area originally.

Her idea of hand-painting articles of clothing had captured his imagination, and he had enthusiastically agreed to put some of her designs in his store on consignment. They had sold immediately, and his clientele began clamoring for more. She now worked almost solely on commission.

“Your designs are the hottest thing since tamales,” Barry told her.

Smiling, she could just imagine him drawing deeply on one of the thin black cigarettes he chain-smoked. He was irascible, brutally frank, and often downright rude. But his rudeness was in direct proportion to his affection for the person to whom he directed it. The more outrageous he was, the better his customers liked him.

Beneath Barry’s abrasive veneer, Rana had detected a caring human being whose affectations were a defense mechanism. She thought he was probably fulfilling everyone’s expectations of him, just as she had done until six months ago.

“Was Mrs. Tupplewhite happy with her hostess gown?”

“My darling, when she saw it, she almost burst the seams of this really tacky dress she was wearing. It was the most hideous plaid I’ve ever seen.”

“Did you sell it to her?”

“But of course.” He cackled. “Some of my customers may have no taste, but I’m not stupid.”