by Libby Rice
Instinct said Cole’s hiatus hadn’t been a simple creative drought. Whipping around, she aimed her brush up at him like a weapon. “You had been making a name for yourself. I recalled your successes when you approached me with this proposal back in New York.” Maybe she should say that again. “When you asked me to come aboard, I accepted based on your reputation. You’d become a slightly stale star, mind you, but hey”—she shrugged—“I gave a guy a break.”
Turning back to the easel and the chair beyond, Lissa continued to apply the yellow in broad strokes, starting from the dark lines of the chair and tracing outward. “I spent much of yesterday digging deep into your last year.” Deeper, even, than her initial research. Cole hadn’t passed the time entirely holed up at Melina, eating ice cream and pandering to his grief like she’d assumed. “The fact that you were working wasn’t a big surprise. You’ve come a long way, and not in the ‘Congratulations, you’re a badass’ sense.” Nope, Cole had transitioned from documenting active volcanos from the skies of Iceland and piranha feeding frenzies from the waters of Brazil to something else entirely.
“Tell me your former glory was merely buildup to interviewing aging hookers in dingy hotel rooms,” she cooed. “‘Jewel,’ was it? Your other projects were equally impressive—drag-racing cars in Denver, even some pictures of a prized steer at the National Western Stock Show.”
Long moments faded away after she lapsed into silence. Eventually, she thought he’d refuse to respond. Then he said, “Her name was Ms. Jewel.”
Lissa’s lips curled at that, only because he couldn’t see the concession. “By all means, let’s maintain formalities.” Anything if he’d admit she was right. “But you see? We’re not so different, after all. You need me as badly as I need you.”
She worked like a fiend but only saw dividends when she gave in and let her family help. Cole had been moving up, but he’d fallen out of play after Kate’s death. The man had been working for the past year with nothing to show for it, and he could only skate on his aging rep for so long.
In other words, she wasn’t the only semi-loser on the mountainside.
“Tedious pictures of tiresome things aren’t going to save either of us.” Lissa was the half of their duo who could spice things up. If he’d concede to each of them doing their individual best—Cole documenting the world as he saw it, with her giving his reality a little spin—they could be truly great.
The last color to grace the canvas was a bright white she used to trace the chair’s skeleton in thick, almost textural lines that ran together. The final effect brought a watery sunrise rising from a dark, desperate pit. Light opposed shadow and implied a hard-won freedom. Not American-flag or death-to-Al-Qaeda-type freedom, but freedom from self-inflicted limitations, from “I can’t” and “I won’t” and “You can’t make me.”
Still, the “middle” she’d promise hadn’t been forgotten. If Cole looked closely and used some imagination, he would see that his silly camp chair formed the sun. He would know that he could provide the inspiration, even pick the subjects, but he couldn’t—and he shouldn’t—hem her in.
Because Lissa had long-ago learned that fences were easily jumped.
She grabbed the edges of the painting and stood. Slowly she turned, ready for judgment, hoping like hell he’d see reason.
Or at least recognize his chair.
On sight, Cole’s eyes flared, then narrowed to sharp pinpricks of blue—like lasers he’d summoned to burn holes through her work. He took a step, edging forward until they stood chest to chest with the canvas pressed between them.
He glanced down, eyes swirling and ominous. “You’re pushing me, trying to see if I’ll break.”
“N-no. That’s the last—”
“In the past, I was gentle and caring, always giving more, never taking too much. Now I’m jaded enough to know better. Go ahead and fuck with me, Lissa”—he stroked a finger over her lower lip—“but expect me to fuck back.”
Oh, God, please do. A flash of want branded her frontal lobe. Attraction had been seething beneath the surface, but she’d snubbed the signs, calling the twinges and pulses nothing more than a rampant desire to see the project succeed.
Complications were piling up on top of his artistic quirks… and now this. Expect me to fuck back. At least she’d gotten the rampant desire part right.
He leaned in, to where his lips grazed hers when he spoke. “Wouldn’t that be interesting? The woman who doesn’t admit to having any demons falls under the thumb of the king of them.” Pulling away, he met her eyes. She could take a guess, but she’d never truly know what made him suddenly step to the side in a quick reversal of the last few minutes. Lips parted, he started to talk. “Don’t…” His mouth worked for a moment, and his gaze fell to the painting pressed between their bodies. Finally he bit out, “Drivel, like all the rest.”
With that, he scooped up his camera case and started down the mountain. Refusing to watch him go, Lissa flipped the painting to face her, manipulating the canvas in measured degrees, dreading what she’d see. Sure enough, the colors had been spread and smeared into a nonsensical mess instead of the careful message she’d crafted. Surely a matching imprint—and one he’d purposefully taken—stood out on the front of Cole’s shirt.
This was a gauntlet, pure and simple. Her drive to finally be accepted as an artist in her own right insisted she meekly trail behind Cole and proceed to follow his instructions to the tee. That same need said the respect she’d earn imitating another wouldn’t be worth a damn. The rich kid who’d been found undeserving by her peers had grown into a woman who received unmerited hype as the daughter of an overly generous—and supremely connected—industrialist. If she yielded to Cole, she’d become the cheater who crested on another’s coattails, content to receive accolades despite a distinct lack of vision.
Smoke from burning dreams curled at her feet, and in the hidden recesses of her psyche, where she was allowed sadness and fear, she screamed in anguish. Years ago, when her peers’ taunts had escalated to physical abuse, she’d known the problem hadn’t been rich versus poor, but different versus the same. Recognizing a remedy for her torment had cracked her resolve, and a quest to fit in had taken over—cheap clothes donned in the convenience-store bathroom before first period, lies told to prevent the drop-offs at school, a quiet day face that concealed her charmed homelife, and an opposing boisterousness at home that masked her daily shame from old private-school friends like Scarlet and, most of all, family.
Her parents had transferred her to public school in good faith, hoping the bout of financial insecurity might ultimately strengthen her character. Lissa had changed all right. She’d lied to ease her way by pretending to be like the others. But the guise hadn’t worked then, just like changing to meet Cole’s ideals wouldn’t work now.
Never sell out again.
Privilege doesn’t obviate talent.
Despite the mental pep talk, defeat laced her fatigue, teasing her with visions of changing Cole’s mind with her superior logic, but mostly reminding her of the subtle differences between stalwart and stupid. The former would move her forward. The latter would move her back to New York and another gallery where her dad bought all her paintings while the “real” artists laughed behind their hands.
She pushed out a weary breath, gathering her supplies with shaky movements. An ounce of self-preservation, Lissa, not a pound.
The dose of reality, however small, gave her the guts to plaster a fake smile on her face. Staring at Cole’s retreating figure, she studied the long, stubborn strides of a man who obviously meant to get his way, by fair means or foul.
Tsk, tsk, she thought. Never issue a challenge you don’t want me to accept.
“How about a wager?” she bellowed after him. A friendly bet she wanted to lose.
******
Cole halted his wavering descent down the mountain. He might have continued to the bottom, but her yell gave him an excuse to wait.
A racket sounded behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see her clipping along with that dilapidated equipment bag, her easel, and the wet canvas. She’d left his chair behind.
Not surprisingly, Lissa didn’t wait to start talking. “You want me to paint what I see, exactly as I see it?”
He acknowledged the non-question with a slight nod. They could only revisit the requirements so many times. He’d laid them out in the beginning and repeated them practically every five minutes since.
“Well,” she said tartly, “I want our works to mean something, not to simply show something.”
They would. “Funny how you think I care.”
“Testy, testy.” She caught up to him and gruffly thrust the painting that now looked a lot like the front of his shirt into his hands. “I have a solution.” A pause. “For both of us. Call it a bet or a wager or a dare—whatever you want. Each time you manage the challenge, I’ll paint exactly what you photograph. No deviations.”
He’d believe that the day Sasha stopped craving bacon. “Continue.”
She reached down for a chunk of rocky debris, a remnant of retreating glaciers. Holding it up, she aligned the rock with the sinking sun. “Had the light been lower, the ground darker—maybe dotted with moss or wet leaves—and the chair more precisely positioned, the picture you took today would have looked a lot like the one I painted.”
Keeping her arm extended, she slinked to his side, still holding the rock chip high in the air. Inch by inch, she moved the stone into the path between the two of them and the sinking afternoon sun. For one second when the rock moved through the perfect arc, light fractured around its edges in a bright flare. “Had you waited until the sun was in this position and then angled your shot to catch the rays as they backlit the chair and obscured its lines, we would have produced similar images.”
The tang of peppermint rose up from beneath her shirt collar, and Cole checked the urge to lean down and nuzzle into her neck. “Clearly you’re reaching—”
“Not so, pho-tog. Clearly I’ve come up with an answer.”
With that, she shot him an aha! look, and his resistance wilted. Keep looking at me like that. He knew Lissa assumed he’d purposefully ruined today’s painting. In reality, the instant her breasts had brushed against his chest, his mind had blanked and he’d blindly pressed into the sensation until he’d mashed the canvas and those delectable curves between them. In that moment, only one thing had come to mind.
Fucking back.
Her eyes had nearly swallowed her face, and he’d gotten the impression that no matter how deft her verbal thrusts and parries, she liked the idea. That quick flare of invitation had made his situation so much worse. Rather than ignore a fantasy, he now had to resist a possibility.
A daunting task since he was harder than the granite she held in her elegant hand.
Pitching his voice low, he sought a distraction. “Details, Lissa. So far you’ve faked a solar eclipse with a piece of rock.”
She beamed. “Just the beginning.”
“Of what?”
“So glad you asked.” The stone dropped to the ground and bounced. “We’ll do more of these… exercises. I”—she clamped her mouth shut, then started again—“make that you, will come up with an idea for a scene to play on something ordinary or, if not that, at least familiar. Today would have been a chair, the sky, and a mountain. Using your start, I’ll consider ways we can twist the backdrop to convey a more powerful message, and I’ll instruct you regarding the staging, taking into account your input regarding photography logistics, of course. Then when you take your pictures, they’ll reflect exactly what the two of us see, though what we see will actually be a skewed reality.”
When he didn’t immediately oppose the plan—he was working up to it—she rushed on. “Sometimes we’ll work side-by-side, but in instances where the ability to get the scene right is fleeting, like today with the light, I’ll work from your pictures offline. Each time you come up with a meaningful subject—and by that I mean sufficient fodder for interesting, emotive images that keep people guessing—I’ll paint exactly what you photograph.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then,” she said, “and because you obviously require inducement, I’ll paint what I want.”
Talk about circular logic to circumvent his plan on a technicality. Kate, too, had been a master. Since he’d never been interested in timid women, he’d found his wife’s clever schemes sexy. How the hell else had he ended up with a plantation home in the Rocky Mountains? Christ, tracked-in snow constantly threatened the parquet floors, and he had to keep a humidifier near the fragile mahogany banisters to keep them from cracking in the dry air. “Who decides if I’ve provided ‘sufficient fodder’?”
“Me.”
Her confident answer reverberated down the length of his erection. That would be a “check” on the enduring allure of clever scheming. “An example?”
Lissa arched both brows and looked around, as if to say, I’m waiting… yup, stiiiill waiting.
He frowned, refusing to reveal his intrigue. “All right, how about the firehouse in Nederland?” Not exactly the Taj Mahal, but it was the first thing to come to mind.
Her breath skated over his sternum, warm in the cutting fall air, reminding him she hadn’t stepped away after her pet rock demonstration. “Wow, you are a wild one. First a camp chair, and now this.”
Definitely the firehouse.
“Feeling any particularly strong emotion?”
Lust. “Frustration.”
“Funny,” she shot back immediately, slapping a hand to her forehead. “Frustration comes to my mind as well. Deal?”
He eyed the pulse pounding at the base of her throat, wondering if he’d given himself away so clearly when telling the same lie. “Yes, Lissa, you have a bargain.”
Chapter 9
After a week of earnest effort, Lissa laid her fork on her plate and eyed Kent across the dining room table. He’d come knocking with more frozen food, this time with Trevor and Trevor’s striking red-headed wife in tow. The defrosted meatloaf tasted like toasted paper shavings, and Lissa swallowed against the smell of roasted animal fat, forcing tiny bites in an effort to appear engaged.
After ten days at Melina, seven of them spent experimenting with her bargain and ways to fend off Cole’s dry, flammable temper, she was ready to do violence. Tie-him-to-the-bed-and-take-it-out-on-his-body-until-he-begged-for-Jesus-or-mommy violence.
The only thing keeping her from exacting her sensual revenge was the fact that she hated his guts. And she had principals. And she didn’t want to ruin her career reboot by BDSMing a grieving widower into a coma. Plus, she’d never actually tied anyone to a bed or done anything remotely sexually dominant.
Oh, and while he seemed to know exactly how much she wanted him—“You plainly can’t wait to paint me,” he’d taunted—he demonstrated a keen ability to resist. Too much brooding and too little ogling.
Tonight Cole hadn’t seen fit to grace Melina’s guests with his presence. In fact, Lissa hadn’t seen Cole since they’d completed a scene featuring his deer feeder earlier that morning. Sexy stuff, those deer feeders.
She wondered where Cole went when he disappeared. Taking pictures. What did he photograph on his epic walkabouts, and how did he employ the results?
Though Lissa found the meatloaf revolting, Kent appeared to have it worse. He dug into a plate of lettuce with a marked lack of gusto. Fork poised over the pile, he reached for a basket of bread sitting in front of Trevor. The butter came next.
“Saw that,” Trevor said the moment the butter left the table.
“Just a little.” Kent’s whine came dangerously close to sounding like Gollum out for his Precious. At least he didn’t pet the butter.
Without looking up, Trevor calmly took the plate from his uncle’s grasp and set it in front of Rhea, out of reach. “No butter.”
Rhea snorted but stayed quiet. Her green eyes rested casually on each
diner in turn, but she’d yet to utter a word. Even Trevor’s introduction had prompted only a nod. Lissa found it hard not to stare. Tall and broad shouldered for a chick, Rhea was model beautiful and marathon fit. She wore workout clothes and hardly any jewelry. A woman like that didn’t need diamonds or platinum. The flashing red hair curling around her shoulders set off pale skin and bright eyes, providing adornment aplenty.
Kent cast Rhea an assessing look, but he didn’t give up. “My cholesterol is barely high.”
“No butter,” Trevor added implacably before biting into a slice of thickly slathered bread.
Resembling a naughty child who’d had his cake taken away only to ask for a brownie and actually expect to get one, Kent began to slowly slide the salt and pepper shakers his way.
Lissa was smiling long before Trevor intercepted. “No salt.”
Kent’s eyes shot wide in mock surprise. “It’s lettuce,” he groaned, drawing out the last plaintively.
“Spoken like a sixty-year-old man waving hello to his second heart attack.”
A scowl tried to form on Kent’s swarthy face, but he was too good-natured to pull it off. “You used to threaten me, you know, telling me I’d better buy you a bike or football cleats—with Cole it was always another camera—because you’d be picking my old-folks home.”
Trevor chuckled. “Count yourself lucky, then. Those nursing-home people would be Nazis about salt.”
Rhea ignored the back-and-forth but finally opened her mouth. “Kent raised the boys,” she explained absently around a bite of bread. No butter for her either, presumably by choice. “When they were young, their father suffered a massive heart attack. Mommy dearest was a passenger in the car when it happened. Kent took over from there.”
Trevor’s look issued a warning, but all he said was, “Without Kent, it would have been foster care for both of us.”
So Uncle Kent had a habit of stepping in after a tragedy.
“Don’t you worry, m’dears.” Kent patted the front pocket of his shirt, where Lissa could detect a round outline—probably a pill case—pressed against the fabric. “I’m armed.”