Never let it be said that Rylan didn’t keep an open mind, but this was pushing it.
Kate’s hand emerged seemingly out of nowhere to settle on his wrist, and he let out a deep breath at the warm touch of soft fingers on his skin.
“Do you mind if I order for the both of us?”
It was a strange, mirrored sense of déjà vu that swept over him. Their second night, at the Ethiopian place he’d taken her to, he’d pulled this very same routine. She’d looked lost, and he’d swooped in, wanting to provide her with an experience. New tastes to try. He’d ordered for her, and when his selections had arrived, he’d fed them to her with his hands, placing bite after bite on her pretty pink tongue. By the end, he’d been fighting every instinct he had so as not to take her right there on the table. A long second passed as he stared at her, remembering it.
But at his hesitation, she faltered. Blinking, she bit her lip and moved to take her hand back. He caught it before she could.
“Be my guest,” he said, voice coming out gruff. He stroked his thumb across the point of her wrist.
She took a deep breath and nodded, looking up at their server. Using her free hand, she paged through the menu and rattled off a couple of things he never would’ve recognized as food. Their server got her choices down, then flipped his notebook closed and tucked it into the décolletage of his dress.
“My eyes are up here,” he said, pointing two fingers in a V at Rylan before directing them back at his own face. He grinned at Kate and then—there was no other word for it—pranced away.
Rylan blinked repeatedly, but he was never going to be able to unsee that. He turned back to Kate, who had a wincing sort of a smile straining her mouth.
“I promise,” she said, “this guy I know from my program absolutely raved about this place.”
In the face of her uncertainty, Rylan forced himself to relax his shoulders. “I’m reserving judgment.” He was trying to at any rate.
This was her night, after all. Already he’d co-opted enough of it, insisting on driving just for the excuse to take Chase’s car. He silently snickered to himself. If Chase could see the sketchy alley they’d had to park his baby in, he’d be spitting nails.
Served him right, after the shitty advice he’d given Rylan. After he’d helped Rylan nearly ruin it all.
And then the house.
God, what it had done to him to see her there. He’d toured a dozen places in the past couple of days, all of them nice but none of them home. The instant he’d walked into the third story of that brownstone, though, all he’d been able to think was Kate. It was so open and airy, and it got such beautiful light.
He’d seen it all. Her and her easel and her paints, him coming up to admire what she was working on before sweeping her into his arms. Carrying her to their bedroom.
He’d been so excited to show it to her, and she’d loved it. She had.
But she hadn’t understood it. She hadn’t known it was for her.
And he’d been too much of a chicken-shit to really tell her.
Mentally shaking his head at himself, he blew out a rough exhalation. He was thinking too far ahead, was the problem. Prior to this past year, that had always been his problem. Fantasies aside, he had five nights left with this girl, including this one. His only chance at securing the rest was to do what she had told him to the moment they’d agreed to this.
He had to make them count.
Refocusing, he brought his other hand to the table, cradling her palm in both of his. He ran his thumbs across the lines and creases of her knuckles; it was there, in the hidden, easy-to-overlook places, that you could catch a glimpse of who she really was.
“I miss the charcoal,” he mused.
Her brow scrunched up. “Excuse me?”
“You were mostly drawing this summer.” He turned her hand over in his. “There was this black dust everywhere. Smudges on your clothes and on your nose.” He shrugged. “Your hands look different now.”
There were colors for one thing. Deep reds and green and blues, stains of pigments that had soaked into the valleys of her fingerprints.
Frowning, she curled her fingers in on themselves. “I swear I wash them.”
“It’s not a complaint.” Hell, it was anything but. “Just shows that you work hard at what you do.”
She made a little huffing noise. “Not hard enough, apparently.”
It was his turn to tilt his head in confusion. From the sounds of it, she worked all the time. She’d filled so many canvases—none of which she let him see, but still.
“I just—” She stopped, pulling her mouth to the side, and then she sighed. “Don’t mind me. I’ve just had a couple of bad days.”
“How so?”
“It isn’t…flowing, is all.” She lifted a shoulder and set it back down. “Sometimes it’s like the images just come together all on their own. Other times…”
Ah. “Other times it’s like slamming your head against a brick wall.”
“Exactly.”
“My brother…” Rylan hesitated, that old instinct not to give away too much of himself rearing up. It was suicide in the boardroom, and even in his personal life…His parents always found a way to twist whatever he told them.
But that instinct didn’t serve him here.
“My brother,” he repeated, “Evan. The artist?” At her nod, he soldiered on. “He makes sculptures, mostly. Back when we lived at home, you could always tell how things were going with whatever he was working on.” A smile played across his lips. “He’d get so frustrated sometimes.”
And moody as hell. But when things were going well, there was nothing better. In that awful, empty house, Evan had carried this spark of life. One Rylan had worked so hard to keep their father from snuffing out.
“Are you two close?”
Rylan’s smile dimmed. “Not terribly.” Not anymore.
Evan had no idea what Rylan had really been trying to do, shipping him off to a boarding school on the other side of the country instead of cutting his check to Exeter like the rest of the Bellamy men. For an instant, Rylan could see it—the way Evan had glanced back over his shoulder before he’d gotten on that plane. The anger that had been in his eyes. The betrayal.
All the times he’d come home after that, brief visits for holidays and breaks. He’d never looked at Rylan quite the same.
“That’s too bad.”
“It is what it is.” Mostly, it was something he didn’t want to think too much about right now.
Fortunately or not, he was saved from having to when their waiter appeared with a basket of vaguely green-tinged bread. Poking at the basket, Kate shrugged and took a piece. Rylan waited, watching her reaction.
Her eyes widened. “It’s actually really good.”
Well, color him surprised. He reached for his own piece. Then hesitated. “Are you messing with me?”
“No. Promise. I—” Her hand and her voice both trembled for a second. But she rallied, determination pushing aside the uncertainty in her eyes. She tore off a corner of the bread. “Here.”
Wonder surged inside him as she took the bite and extended her arm across the table. Heat followed as her intent became clear. They’d done this before, albeit from opposite sides of the table, and the intimacy of feeding her had never ceased to excite him. It had made her cheeks flush, her breath stutter. Made her eyes go hot and dark.
He grasped her wrist, but not to stop her. Steadying her grip, he ducked his head. Kept his gaze fixed on hers as he opened his mouth.
She placed the bread on his tongue, and he closed his lips around her fingertips. He gave them a soft, wet kiss before letting go of her and pulling back.
Licking her lips, she watched his mouth as he chewed, and she hadn’t been lying. Despite its hue, the bread was soft and rich and warm, and he swallowed it with relish.
“Delicious,” he said, voice coming out rough. Nearly as delicious as her skin.
The restaurant around them r
eceded until it was just the two of them—no loud neighbors or eccentric waitstaff or jarring art. Just him and her and this tiny table between them. He slid his leg forward, brushing his calf against hers, and another rush of warmth licked through his bones. The moment hung, heavy and too close. Beyond intimate.
Then she jerked her head to the side and slid her gaze away, and that was all it took. The bubble of space around them collapsed, sending the roar of the crowded room crashing back over them. She heaved in a breath that made her breasts rise, as if she hadn’t managed to fill her lungs in all the time he’d held her stare. As if he’d stolen her breath away.
He was feeling a little oxygen deprived himself.
Mentally shaking his head, he refocused. What had they been talking about? Before he’d gotten lost in the taste of her skin and the depths of her eyes? In the temptation to whisk her away and find out if this place had bathrooms with locks?
Oh. Right. Art.
He cleared his throat. “So what are you working on? Something for a class?”
“It’s, um.” She shook her head minutely, gazing down at her hands. Tearing absently at her bread. “It’s a project. A competition, actually.”
“Oh?”
“Something the department offers. We have to do portfolios on a theme.” She rattled off a couple of the details—the fellowship that was at stake and the idea she’d had for painting churches. Light came into her eyes as she got going, but then it dimmed. A frown marred her expression. “I thought I really had a handle on it when they first announced it. But it hasn’t been going well.”
“No?”
“It’s like I can see what I want to make in my mind, but when it comes time to put it on the canvas…” She shrugged. “It won’t come out right.”
And there was a weight to her tone he didn’t like. She was taking this personally.
He knew that feeling intimately. Pinning your own worth to your success.
Letting your value be determined that way.
He reached out across the table again. With all the gentleness he had, he pulled the torn-up remnants of her slice of bread from between her fingers and set the crumbs down on her plate. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah. I know.” It was dismissive, and he liked that even less.
“No, really. I’m not just saying it.” The way people did. It’ll all be fine, don’t worry. “I believe it.”
That finally drew her gaze back to him. A hope that hurt his heart broke into her voice. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.” With every fiber of his being. “You work so hard and you see so much.” She had drawn those places in Paris over and over and over. Notre Dame Cathedral and the view from the base of Sacred Heart.
She’d drawn him, nude, at least a dozen times. Quick hurried sketches while she worked to find her center. Until she’d found something beautiful and traced it into his very skin.
“You just have to find your connection to it,” he said. “Your way in.”
The space between her brows scrunched tighter as she seemed to think it over. Her gaze went to their hands. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
That earned him a flicker of a smile. “I wish I had your confidence.”
His heart tugged in his chest. “I wish you did, too.” He wished he could give her some. Stroking her palm, he ducked his head, waiting until she looked at him again. “Until you do, I’ll just have to be confident for the both of us.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She sighed, and it was like a layer of her guard peeling down. Like she was letting him glimpse past her walls. “It’s just so embarrassing, you know?”
He didn’t. “How so?”
“I finally figure out who I am as an artist this summer, with—” She bit off her word, but he heard it all the same. With you. “I even decided to go to grad school because of it, and then I get there, and I want to make this great impression, and instead I get stuck.”
Comprehension was a tickle at the back of his mind.
That first night back, when he’d gone to her apartment to convince her to give him a second chance…
She’d turned all her paintings to face the wall. Their second, disastrous night, he’d gone back to her apartment to find them hidden from him again.
He’d thought it was a lack of trust, at the time, and maybe it was. But— “Is that why you didn’t want me to see?” Her gaze darted up, eyes widening. The tickle grew into a chilled certainty. He clarified all the same, “What you were working on.”
She looked away. “Maybe.” It sounded like a concession. “Partly.”
“You know you’ve already made a good impression on me.”
She’d stunned him with her drawings. The talent and the insight in them. The skill and the sensitivity.
He’d been bewitched by her scent and her kiss, by the heat of her body and the brilliant light of her company. By the way she’d looked at him and seemed to see something more than just the money and the name.
But it had also been the things she made. Her art was a part of her—maybe the piece that had dragged him beneath the surface of her deeps.
“I told you,” she said. “It’s hard for me to show people things that aren’t finished.”
And this was important. He squeezed her hand and took a moment to gather his thoughts. They had to come out right.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect.” He swallowed, throat dry. You don’t have to be perfect. “If it’s something you made, I’ll love it.”
I’ll love you.
For a second, he couldn’t breathe.
He’d fought back the thought so many times now. Every time he touched her, it rose unbidden, though, and he’d pushed it down and down. All the ideas of building a future with her and making a home for her to share. All the warmth in his heart and this need to be with her. It had driven him across continents and boroughs and across the threshold of this maddening restaurant.
It would drive him farther still. Because he loved her.
Not the way his parents had loved each other and used that love like a weapon. Not the way they’d loved him, twisting it into a means to control him. Treating his own love like a weakness to be burned out of him.
But with acceptance. With faith.
With a part of him he’d thought he’d lost so long ago.
Chapter ELEVEN
“So where to next, m’lady?”
It sent a little thrill up Kate’s spine to have Rylan looking at her the way he was. As if he were entirely at her disposal, ready for whatever she wanted to throw at him.
And there was something more there, too, some quiet warmth lighting the soft blue of his eyes. It made her chest go all fluttery in a way she had promised herself she wouldn’t give in to. She was sticking to that, goddammit all. But he wasn’t making it easy.
Not with his quiet reassurances or his unwavering belief in her and her art. Not with the heat of his hand where it wrapped around hers.
The door to the restaurant swung closed behind them, the sounds from within going muffled, replaced by the rumble of engines and wind and the millions of people they shared this city with. She took a deep breath and looked away from him, gesturing down the street.
“There are a few galleries having openings tonight. I thought we could check them out? If you’re interested?”
“I told you,” he said, stroking his thumb across the back of her palm, “whatever you want.”
He had. He’d left this entire evening up to her, and she’d thought it would be awkward. She always got nervous making choices for other people. But at least so far, he’d been true to his word, approaching everything she suggested with an open mind, even when it was a crazy restaurant in a part of town he’d probably barely set foot in before.
And he had asked her for a slice of her life, after all.
She tilted her head in the direction of the first place she had in mind. “It’s just a
couple of blocks. Not too far from where we parked.”
“Lead on.”
By the time they got to the first gallery on her list, the opening was in full swing. It was a little independent place, a converted industrial space that had been repurposed for the display of art, and the crowd was mostly people like her. Young and creative and dressed in lots of black, all eccentric, colorful hairstyles and exposed tattoos. She glanced up at Rylan as they made their way through the crush, skirting around a cluster of people who sounded like they’d been hitting the free wine pretty hard.
She faltered. While he didn’t exactly stick out, he didn’t quite blend, either.
“Is this okay?”
“It’s fine.” His eyebrow quirked up. “Definitely interesting.”
Interesting was rarely a compliment. But she’d take him at face value for now. Pushing her doubts aside, she threaded her hand through his elbow and started over to one of the walls.
And it was strange, how similar and yet how different it was to their time strolling through Paris’s museums. Instead of quiet, hush hallways full of old masterpieces, they were in this cavernous, modern space. And the artist, whoever he was, seemed awfully fond of soaking his canvases in images of blood.
“Imagine that in your bedroom,” Rylan said, ducking in close as she stopped to consider one of the paintings.
She grimaced, because he wasn’t wrong. The image was of a body bound up in wire, its heart torn out. Its chest cracked open and its shattered ribs left open to the world. The whole thing disquieted her. Horrified her. Still…“Art isn’t just about being pretty.”
“Didn’t say it was.”
“It’s supposed to make you feel.”
“And what does this one make you feel?”
She took a step back from the canvas and tilted her head to the side.
It certainly evoked something in her. Something that had made her stop to examine it more closely.
Her stomach dropped down to her toes.
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