Hidden Riches

unlocked her own door and let Andrew in.
    “He seems remarkably . . . physical.” Frowning, Andrew shed his London Fog overcoat, folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “Does he live alone?”
    “Yep.” Too frustrated for tidiness, Dora tossed her mink, circa 1925, toward the couch on her way to the kitchen.
    “Of course, I know how important it is to keep an apartment tenanted, Dora, but don’t you think it would have been wiser—certainly safer—to rent to another female?”
    “A female what?” Dora muttered, then paused as she poured beans into her old, hand-cranked coffee grinder. “No.” While she ground beans, she glanced over her shoulder where Andrew was standing behind her, lips pursed in disapproval. “Do you?”
    “Certainly. I mean the two of you do live here, alone.”
    “No, I live here, alone. He lives there.” Because it annoyed her to have him breathing down her neck while she worked, Dora said, “Why don’t you go put on some music, Andrew?”
    “Music?” His blandly handsome face cleared. “Of course. Mood.”
    Moments later she heard the quiet strains of an old Johnny Mathis recording. She thought, Uh-oh, then shrugged. If she couldn’t handle an accountant who wore Brooks Brothers suits and Halston cologne, she deserved to pay the price. “The coffee’ll be a few minutes,” she said as she walked back into the living room. Andrew was standing, hands on his narrow hips, studying her new painting. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
    He tilted his head right, then left. “It’s certainly bold.” Then he turned to her to take a moment to admire how she looked in the short black dress covered with fiery bugle beads. “And it suits you.”
    “I picked it up at an auction in Virginia just a couple of days ago.” She sat on the arm of a chair, automatically crossing her legs without giving a thought to the way the movement urged her skirt higher on her thighs.
    Andrew gave it considerable thought.
    “I thought I’d enjoy living with it awhile before I put it in the shop.” She smiled, then catching the predatory look in his eye, popped off the chair like a spring. “I’ll go check the coffee.”
    But he caught her hand and swung her, in what sheimagined he considered a stylish move, into his arms. She barely avoided colliding her head with his chin. “We should take advantage of the music,” he told her as he glided over the rug. His mother had paid good money for dance lessons and he didn’t want to waste it.
    Dora forced herself to relax. He did dance well, she mused as she matched her steps to his. She smiled and let her eyes close. She let the music and the movement take her, laughing softly when he lowered her into a stylish dip.
    He wasn’t such a bad guy, she mused. He looked good, he moved well. He took care of his mother and had a solid portfolio. Just because he’d bored her silly on a couple of dates didn’t mean . . .
    Suddenly he clamped her hard against him, shattering her mellow mood. That she could understand and certainly overlook. But, as she pressed a hand against his chest, she felt the unmistakable outline of a toothbrush he’d slipped into the inside pocket of his jacket.
    As conscientious as she knew Andrew to be, she sincerely doubted he carried it with him to brush after every meal.
    Before she could comment, his hands had streaked under the hem of her dress to grab her silk-covered bottom.
    “Hey!” Furious, she reared back, but even as she managed to free her mouth, he was slobbering kisses over her neck and shoulder.
    “Oh, Dora, Dora, I want you.”
    “I get the picture, Andrew.” While she squirmed, one of his hands snuck up to tug her zipper. “But you’re not going to have me. Now pull yourself together.”
    “You’re so beautiful, so irresistible.”
    He had her pressed against the side of a chair. Dora felt her balance going and swore. “Well, resist, or I’ll have to hurt you.”
    He only continued to mumble seductive phrases as he tumbled with her to the floor. It wasn’t the indignity ofbeing sprawled under a crazed accountant that bothered her so much. It was the fact that they’d rammed against the coffee table and sent several of her treasures crashing to the floor.
    Enough was enough. Dora brought her knee up between Andrew’s thighs. Even as he grunted, she popped him hard in the eye.
    “Off!” she shouted, shoving at him. Groaning, he rolled, curling up like a boiled shrimp. Dora scrambled