The faint ding of the chime in the back room greeted her when she opened the door, but Noah didn’t need the alert. He was behind the desk in the gallery, talking to an elderly gentleman who wore his hair in a wispy silver ponytail.
Noah glanced up, and his eyes widened before creasing with a warm smile. “Evelyn,” he said. “Good afternoon. I’ll be with you in just a moment.”
The older man turned to nod his head in greeting, and Evelyn smiled far too happily at him before she wandered toward one of the walls of paintings to feign interest.
Feigned, because she couldn’t pay attention to anything except Noah. He was only a dozen feet from her, and she wondered if he was watching as she moved idly along the wall, her shoulders back and chin up, breasts outlined by the soft black sweater. She wondered if he liked the way her heels tightened the muscles of her calves and made her curves more prominent. Was he paying attention in a way he hadn’t before? Was there a new current of interest in the room? There certainly was in her body.
“Thank you, Henri,” Noah finally said, coming out from behind the desk to clasp a hand to the man’s shoulder. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got it shipped. Two days at most. Have a safe trip back to California. I’ll see you when you’re back in town in July.”
Evelyn kept moving along the wall, pretending she wasn’t hyperaware of Noah walking the man to the door. She heard the door chime, a few more words exchanged, and the door whooshing slowly shut. Evelyn stared hard at the mixed-media piece in front of her.
“Did you bring something to show me?” Noah asked, his voice much closer.
She shot him a coy look over her shoulder and found he’d stopped only two feet from her, one eyebrow raised in question and his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. Even with the heels she wore, he was taller. Six one, maybe.
“Something like what?” she asked.
His eyebrow twitched a little higher before he grinned. “Let’s start with a painting.”
She watched him for a moment, as if she were still considering it. “Not here,” she finally said. “I don’t want you comparing me to the competition.” She walked past him, brushing lightly against the sleeve of his shirt as she headed toward the back. He followed, and her neck prickled with the knowledge that his eyes were on her. She could feel him watching.
“Did you make a sale?” she asked.
“In fact I did. The Beckenbauer in the front window.”
She gasped and shot a wide-eyed look over her shoulder. “Really? Already?”
“That doesn’t sound like excitement.”
“No, I’m happy for you, of course. It’s just . . .” She pushed open the back door, and the sound of her heels echoed to the metal rafters. “I don’t know. I thought it would be here a little longer.”
“Yeah. I’ll miss it too.”
She smiled sheepishly as she stopped and turned toward him. “Not that it belonged to me.”
“Not legally, no. But it got under your skin, right?”
She nodded. So had Noah. She had no true claim to him either, but here she was. His voice had gone softer in those last few words, and she had to hold back a shiver at the way he’d mentioned her skin. A turn of phrase, but still a thought that had passed his lips.
They watched each other for a moment before he tipped his head toward her hand. “Do I see two canvases there?”
Now that it was time, the nervousness was back. Evelyn cleared her throat and lifted the oversized tote a couple of inches. “I couldn’t decide. One of them is better but . . .”
“But what?”
“But the other is my favorite.”
He moved toward the framing table. “Let me guess which is which.”
She couldn’t back out now. She’d look foolish and weak, but worst of all, she’d miss the opportunity to show him this part of herself. That would be an unbearable regret.
He waited at the table until she finally took the four steps forward to join him. “All right,” she breathed, and laid her bag carefully across the grid lines of the surface.
The tote was oversized, but five inches of both canvases still stuck out over the top. She wrapped her fingers around one edge. “You won’t laugh?” she whispered, her role as confident artist slipping slowly away.
“Never.”
Evelyn took a deep breath and pulled the canvas carefully free. It was her favorite. The nude model. She laid it on the table, excruciatingly aware of the woman’s rose-brown nipples and black pubic hair. Aware, but also . . . excited. She’d known when she’d slipped it into the bag that she’d be showing him this. A titillating image—if not for the visual of the woman, then for the fact that Evelyn was the one presenting it to him.
After she laid it down, carefully squaring it with the grid line closest to the edge of the table, she pulled the other painting from the bag. She’d done this two years after the nude, and the brushwork was more confident, more daring, though the subject was modest. An older woman, her white hair wild around her head as she looked out a window toward an unseen view. The colors of both were cool and calm.
Noah didn’t say a word as she laid the second painting even with the first. He stared at both canvases, eyes moving back and forth between them. Evelyn nibbled the edge of her thumbnail, trying not to demand an immediate opinion. What did he see? She’d looked at them both far too many times to understand their impact anymore.
He reached one hand slowly toward the first painting, and those long, blunt fingers of his touched the edge of the nude woman’s hip before stroking up. His fingertips dragged softly over the woman’s waist, then along the curve of one breast. Evelyn watched, her lips wet against the tip of her thumb.
“This is your favorite,” he said. He glanced toward her, his gaze falling to her mouth until she pulled her thumb quickly away.
“Did you guess that because the other is better?”
“No.” He turned back to the table. “There’s more feeling in this. Fear. And excitement.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Is it?” She felt weak. Shaky.
“Yes. They both are. And not what I expected.”
Pressing her hand to her chest, she felt the thump of her heart against her knuckles. “What did you expect?”
“Something more careful, I guess. Restrained.”
“Oh.” She nodded, a nervous bobbing of her head.
“There’s wildness here.”
Yes. There was. Or there had been. Fear, excitement, lust, and wonder. That had all been part of her, but the most important part must have been her need for security, because she’d abandoned everything else for that.
But the wildness was back now. She could feel it moving. Changing her. Pushing her toward things she shouldn’t do.
“How old were you when you did them?”
“Twenty,” she whispered. “And twenty-two.”
“Wow.” His finger stroked the woman’s hip again, this time sliding all the way down to her thigh, his finger hovering so intimately near the dark triangle of pubic hair. “That’s a lot of potential in a twenty-year-old.”
“Now you’re just being nice.”
“Not true. They’re wonderful.”
“They’re nothing a gallery would sell. Nothing you would sell.”
“No, but I’d have wanted to see how your style developed after a few more years.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She wasn’t sure what she felt at that. Pride, certainly. It swelled beneath her skin. But a sick, hot wash of regret moved through her too. “I thought I was good, but there were so many powerful artists in my classes. People who channeled their anger and passion and disgust into huge works.”
“Even professionals sometimes mistake loudness for skill. Your work is quiet, but it’s deep.”
“Maybe.” She stared at his hand, the way he’d spread his fingers over her painting.
“P
romise me you’ll get back to it?”
“Yes,” she answered as his hand slipped off the woman’s skin.
“Evelyn . . . I mean it.” And now he was touching her instead of the painting, his fingers curling around her elbow as if he needed to get her attention. She raised her eyes slowly, over the glinting hair on his forearm and the dark-blue cotton of his work shirt, up his throat and over his chin and mouth until she was looking into his eyes, drowning in their depths, like a heroine in some romantic movie.
He looked worried, serious, passionate, all of it for her.
“Try it again,” he urged. “See how it feels. Find out who you’ve become.”
Painting, he meant, but maybe he meant more than that, because surely no one cared that much about a stranger’s oils and brushes. “What if I’ve forgotten how?”
When she spoke, his gaze fell to her mouth, and suddenly she remembered. How this all worked. The nervous dance. The terror and hope. The emotion pushing up and out, needing to emerge through fingers and mouths and skin. Passion was the same, whether for art or sex, and she was feeling it for the first time in so long, and the way it mixed up with this sudden triumph over another woman only made it sweeter.
“Look at you,” he murmured. “You haven’t forgotten.”
He bent his head slowly, unsure of how she’d respond or maybe unsure of what he was doing. She felt too shocked to move, but she shifted closer without realizing, moving into him, lifting her head. She watched his mouth, but somehow still didn’t believe he meant to kiss her until his lips brushed hers.
At first it was just that. A brush of skin against skin. Nothing startling about it. But his mouth touched hers again, pressing more firmly, and she realized she was kissing someone. Someone new. A man who wasn’t her husband.
Her heart thundered to life, shaking with alarm, punching so hard against her ribs that the vibrations spread through her bones. She sucked in a deep breath, a gasp really, and then his mouth settled against hers, and she could smell him, taste him. A stranger.
His hand slid to her shoulder and she found herself touching him too, wrapping her fingers around his arms to steady her weak body.
But her touch seemed to startle him. His mouth left hers. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t . . . I shouldn’t have done that.”
He shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t have. But their mouths were still only inches apart. Did he want her to stop him? If so, he should have picked an average middle-aged woman who wasn’t falling apart, because right now she needed something to hold on to, and his arms were warm and solid under her hands.
She rose up on her toes and kissed him.
He went as still as she had when he’d kissed her, but that moment of silence lasted only an instant. A short, quiet moan rumbled in his chest, and then his lips parted and his hands spread over her shoulders. His tongue touched hers, and she gasped in shock even as she welcomed him deeper.
She’d missed kissing, she realized then. And he was a good kisser. His hands slid up her neck to frame her jaw as he tasted her mouth. He’d turned her body with his, and now her back was against the edge of the table, his legs between hers so he could get closer.
Then he was closer. His tongue inside her, his fingers spreading over her neck, chest and hips pressing into her as they kissed.
He broke the kiss and ducked his head. When the wet heat of his mouth touched her neck, she groaned and arched up, baring her whole throat to him. His teeth on her neck was all it took to flash lust through her whole body. The sucking pleasure of his mouth stirred up blood that had long ago sunk into useless pools inside her. Now it coursed through her, waking dead nerves.
She panted like an animal, needing more oxygen for that new blood. Her arms wrapped around his waist and spread over his back to pull him closer.
It was as exciting and uncertain and dangerous as a high school make-out session, yet it was so much better. Because when she felt him grow hard against her, she wasn’t embarrassed or worried; she was thrilled. Thrilled to her very bones that she could make this handsome, hot, forbidden man hard for her. She wanted him hard. Wanted him so wild and hot that he had to apologize for it. Because he wasn’t only a stranger. He was a spoil of war, and Evelyn was claiming him.
When he picked her up, Evelyn felt sure she was observing a scene from someone else’s life. This woman wore tight skirts and black pumps, and she kissed strange men and arched her neck for more and let herself be lifted onto tables so he could spread her knees and force her skirt higher.
Oh God, Noah’s hips were between her thighs now, the high table lining up their bodies perfectly. They were kissing again, hands roaming. His palms framed her hips, then her waist while she explored the wide strength of his back, and then her skirt was higher and his hardness was pressed against her. Her panties were soaked, and she knew she should be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. She was proud. She wasn’t some used-up, soul-dead mother and wife. She was alive, and she needed this.
Would she let him fuck her if he tried? Let him unzip his pants and take her right here on his worktable? She didn’t even know. It felt as if the choice were beyond her, something larger than herself. Fate or kismet or whatever people called it these days.
Old Evelyn would never have been capable of such a thing. She would have been too worried about morality and responsibility and the wrongness of it all. But for new Evelyn, this felt right. She’d earned this. Damn the consequences. This was hers.
Noah’s hand gripped her bare thigh, and she had to turn from his kiss to draw a shuddering gasp of air. Unfortunately, that seemed to break the spell. Noah’s hand pressed hot into her skin, but it didn’t rise higher.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped against her temple. “I’m sorry, Evelyn. I’ve never done anything like this.”
“Never?” She realized then that she’d begun to assume that this was something he did. That maybe he was to blame for Juliette’s trespass.
But he shook his head, rubbing his chin against her hair, and she dared to press a kiss to his neck and breathe in the strange new smell of him. “Never,” he repeated.
“Me neither.”
He drew back a little to look at her, though his hand stayed on her leg, a torturous connection. “Really?”
“Yes. You’re the only man besides my husband I’ve touched in . . . God. Over twenty years now.”
“Jesus,” he sighed. “What is this?”
She could have given him an answer. She could have said it was her own obsession driving this. But that couldn’t be true, could it? Yes, her obsession with his wife had brought her here, but Noah didn’t know anything about that. If he felt it too, then it was real, wasn’t it? It was something deeper than this awful thing that had happened. It was good.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Are you? Truly?”
He looked into her eyes, and his thumb stroked slowly along her inner thigh. When she shivered, his eyes closed and he inhaled sharply. “I don’t know. Are you?”
“If I say I’m not, will you think I’m a horrible person?”
“No.” He must have meant it, because he kissed her again, more slowly, though. More gently. He took his hand from her leg, leaving a spot that felt cooler than the rest of her body. With a sigh, he rested his forehead against hers. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“I know.”
“I love my wife.”
She nodded, but bitterness filled her mouth and chased away the taste of him. He didn’t know the truth about his wife. That wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t know that every time he brought her up, Juliette stuck a knife in again.
Evelyn didn’t bother proclaiming any love for her husband. She wasn’t sure of it anymore, and Gary didn’t belong here between her and Noah.
Noah sighed one more time, then pressed a quick peck to her lips before he stepped back. “God, you’re sexy,” he groaned, running a hand through his hair.
Evelyn laughed in delight. “I am?�
��
“Yes.” His gaze swept down her body, and she realized she was still sitting there with her legs open and skirt hiked up to her black panties. She didn’t close her legs immediately. She let him look for another few seconds before she scooted off the table.
He thought she was sexy. What utterly perfect revenge.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She hadn’t known before, at least. She’d wanted to flirt with him, and boy, she’d pulled that off. But now . . . now she wanted to do so much more. She had a free pass. So did Noah, but he didn’t know it, so she’d have to give him a little space. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
“No, I don’t. That’s the problem. I’d like to set you back up on that table and . . .”
Evelyn smiled, charmed by his desire for her. It was more power she’d never expected to have. “And what?”
“God, Evelyn,” he said on a laugh. “Don’t make me think about it.”
“I want you to think about it.”
He ran a rough hand over his face and shook his head. “Yeah, I think that’s pretty inevitable at this point.”
“Good.”
“If this is—” Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by the door chime. They both swung toward the monitor and watched two women walk through the door. “Stay here. I’ll see who it is.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding. She knew his wife was off work by now. What if Juliette had walked in with his two young children? Evelyn had no idea what she would have done. Her mind rocked unsteadily between guilt and hatred.
Noah’s voice drifted back to her, the courteous tone indicating the women were customers. Evelyn slumped against the table and drew a shaky breath. Her exhalation broke into a laugh, and she had to cover her mouth to hide the sound.
This was insane. She’d made out with Noah Whitman. Noah Whitman. If this had been her idea, she’d say it had been a terrible one, but it hadn’t been an idea. It had just happened.
And God, she’d loved it. Was that what Gary had felt with Juliette? That beating, driving, joyful feeling of just being alive? If that was what he’d felt, she could almost forgive him.
Evelyn, After: A Novel Page 10