Right now she was lying on her back in their bed watching him dress, naked and sensuously squirming around to tease him with her usual mischievous antics, knowing that he was watching her in the mirror while he knotted his tie. He reflected a trace of a smile in the glass but his heart wasn't in it. He was thinking of the fruitlessness of this appointment with the wealthy Brendells. He entertained no great expectations from the meeting. People of their caliber preferred architect-builders with a reputation and money behind them, not some half-assed fly-by-night with nothing but ambition going for him. Nevertheless, he'd agreed to try after she'd gotten it all set up for him, and try he would…

"You act as if you were going to a funeral," Toni St. Clair remarked from the bed, raising both of her deeply tanned legs ceilingward, her feet together, then lifting her gently rounding hips onto elbow-braced hands, presenting her full, soft white buttocks to him as she pumped her legs in a bicycle exercise.

"Afraid I can't get enthused, Toni," he said, going to the closet for his lightweight summer jacket. "This is about the twentieth set of plans I've burned the midnight oil over, and got nothing but a thanks for letting us see them, Mr. Lewis. We'll call you when we decide…"

"Nothing good comes easy, darling… even me," she said, smiling impishly across the room at him as she continued her nude, provocative calisthenics, her feeling for the handsome, slender-faced, tall young man with the thin-lipped mouth and deep brown, almost ruthless, eyes, obvious in her every glance and gesture toward him.

Jeff grinned back at her as he ran a comb quickly through his long, wavy black hair.