Free Flirting with Disaster by Sherryl Woods

something about it.
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    Maggie liked showing off Images, but she hadn’t been this jittery since the gallery’s opening night, when the invitation-only crowd had dressed in black tie and included all her parents’ high-society friends.
    She’d driven crosstown as fast as she’d dared—she’d already received warnings from several easily charmed Charleston policemen. The extra speed had given her just enough time to wash her face, brush out her hair and add a touch of lipstick and gloss before she heard Josh coming in the front door.
    He’d pulled on a navy blue T-shirt and tucked it into his jeans, but the additional clothing hadn’t done a thing to take the edge off his sex appeal. Too bad. She’d been hoping her reaction, which had centered on his bare chest, would vanish once that chest was suitably attired.
    She studied his face as he stood in the middle of the main room and surveyed it from top to bottom. She couldn’t tell for sure if he was looking at the art and sculptures, the antiques or the renovations, but she was on edge as she tried to gauge his reaction to any of it. Why she wanted this man’s approval was beyond her. She doubted he knew anything at all about art, possibly even less about antiques. He did, however, know renovations, so maybe that was why she was so edgy. Then again Cord had said she’d done an excellent job.
    â€œWell?” she prodded when she couldn’t stand it a moment longer.
    â€œDo you have any before pictures?”
    â€œA whole scrapbook full,” she said, leading him over to the leather-bound volume she kept on a desk near the front door. Josh flipped the pages, glanced up several times as if to make comparisons, then slowly whistled.
    â€œIs that approval?” she asked tentatively.
    â€œWell, the place is definitely not what I expected,” he said at last.
    Maggie couldn’t interpret the comment or his expression. “Meaning?”
    â€œI’m not exactly an expert on galleries,” he said, turning slowly to take in the rest of the room, “but the ones I’ve been in were a little cold, a little too, I don’t know, impressed with themselves.”
    â€œYes,” Maggie said cautiously. That was exactly what she’d been trying to avoid.
    â€œI feel at home here,” Josh said. “I felt it the minute I came in the door. This place makes me want to buy something so my home will feel the same way. Those other places just make you want to possess something because someone else has judged it to be great art.”
    Maggie was so overwhelmed by his insight that she only barely resisted the urge to throw her arms around him. “That’s exactly what I wanted people to feel when they walked in here,” she said. Maybe she’d have to take back all the thickheaded, macho labels she’d been pinning on him.
    He nodded distractedly and hunkered down on one knee beside the baseboards. “These are original?”
    â€œMost of them. I had to replace some.”
    â€œDo you know which ones?”
    She grinned. “Do you?”
    â€œLooks like a perfect match to me,” he admitted.
    â€œCord was able to find me some from the same time period at another site.”
    â€œAtlanta,” Josh said at once, his expression oddly triumphant. “Damn, I knew this looked familiar. We had some old baseboards left over and they disappeared one day. No one would own up to taking them. I never thought to ask Cord.”
    Maggie winced. “Sorry. I hope you didn’t need them.”
    â€œCord wouldn’t have taken them if we had, but it was a mystery that kept nagging at me.” He stood up and met her gaze. “So, did you and Cord have a thing before he got together with Dinah? He said he’s known you practically forever.”
    Maggie was thrown by the out-of-the-blue question. She debated how to answer it, then settled for the truth.