“You’ve got the ring on,” he said. He felt a jolt of shock seeing it there. And then a ridiculous sort of pride. What a splendid woman to be wearing it!
“I figure I should get used to it for a little while,” she said, her tone teasing. Her right hand propped up her jaw. “Even fake engagements have certain protocols to follow.”
They were creating this crazy story together. He supposed it was quite hilarious. A sort of meaningless caper. If he had to do anything silly with anyone, he was glad it was with her.
But he focused again on the work. He had to work fast. He was afraid she’d disappear, like a beam of light covered by a cloud.
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“How intense you look,” she said. “Sorry—it’s actually not funny. I laugh sometimes when I’m nervous.”
“That’s fine.” He grinned. “I do tend to get carried away.”
“Should I not interrupt you by speaking?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I chat all the time when I sketch and paint.”
“I’m assuming you didn’t paint Serena in the nude.”
“No. Her mother commissioned the portrait. She was barely out of school.”
“Did you get to know her well through conversations while you worked?”
“I think so. I understand her.”
“Can you explain? Or is that a private thing? You mentioned at The Rooftop that she had a rough childhood.”
“A whole ten years have gone by since I painted her, and she’s never told me I can’t talk about her history. She does herself, every once in a while, and doesn’t seem bothered.” He made a quick stroke of the charcoal pencil. The sketch was promising. “She had a very unhappy home life,” he told Greer. “Her late father was an alcoholic, and they had to pretend he wasn’t. Simple as that. The entire family covered for him until he died in his fifties of pancreatic cancer.”
“How sad. When was that?”
“When she was in boarding school in London. It was why her parents sent her. They didn’t want her to see him decline.”
“But what if she wanted to be with him during his last days.”
“I know.”
Greer sighed. “Wow. That helps me understand why she’s so relentlessly cheerful. She probably had to keep up appearances, pretend nothing was wrong.”
“I think so. And she knows I relate. She’s met Rupert and my parents. They came over one day when she was sitting for me. After they left, I told her we always kept a stiff upper lip about Rupert’s issues. But it’s difficult sometimes.”
“I can imagine.” Greer looked contemplatively at him. “There’s nothing difficult going on in Wesley’s family, as far as I know. They’re all-American. Two parents, three boys. Wesley is the oldest. Everyone has done well for themselves. No one has been left behind. It’s a wholesome story. The only thing that went wrong for them is when I turned down Wesley’s proposal.”
“I wonder what sort of ripples occurred in their household after that happened?” Ford asked.
“I wonder, too,” said Greer. “But I’ve never really asked. It’s something I’ve lost the privilege to know. And I’m okay with that. The ripples in my own home were enough to deal with.”
“Understood.” She wriggled a little, and immediately, he grew rock hard. He was glad the easel protected her from seeing him aroused. He wished it hadn’t happened, but nature would have its way, no matter how much he willed himself to be immune to her sensual charms while he worked. He’d simply have to work through it.
But he couldn’t find it in himself to speak. He would focus on sketching. He’d already finished the first. He was now on the second—same pose but a more energetic pencil stroke.
She was quiet, too. The vent overhead ticked comfortably, and the air came on. The cigar factory building was vast and empty at that hour, save for his little studio. Outside the night sky over Charleston was inky black, the stars obscured because of lights glowing from homes crowding the crisscrossed streets of the peninsula.
But if he looked out toward the harbor and the vast Atlantic beyond that, he could see the stars, perfect little points of light. The sky was nature’s canvas.
His own measly works … Would they ever amount to anything beyond clumsy attempts at human expression? He was good, he knew. He had expertise with oils. But his work wasn’t memorable. There was something he couldn’t break through. Some veil. Was it merely that he’d reached the pinnacle of his ability? And he was pounding on a door that was forever shut to him?
Or should he keep trying to open it?
It was a frustrating question.
It was eleven forty. She’d been so helpful, and now her eyes drooped. She was probably very tired after the night she’d had.
He put his charcoal pencil down. “Time to call it quits,” he said.
Her eyes widened slightly. “Already?”
“Said the sleepyhead.” He opened a drawer and tossed the pencil inside. “Come, let me get you home.”
She smiled and sat up. “It’s funny. I feel entirely comfortable now. And I’m not sleepy. Only relaxed.”
Relaxed.
He had to suppress the spike of lust that rose in him when she said that. She was like a sleek cat there on his chaise lounge, warm and vital. He came over to the small table, picked up the black silk robe, and tried to hand it to her. “I’m very glad,” he said.
She stood in front of him and purposefully gave it back. “Seems a little silly, now that you’ve seen me.” Her voice was soft. “It’s only a few steps to the screen.”
“Fine,” he said, amused, turned on. “If you’re comfortable, go right ahead.”
She walked away from him, a barefoot goddess. The curve of her bottom made him jet a breath too loud.
She looked back at him over her shoulder, her gaze like a banked fire.
Whoa, he thought. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you.” She smiled.
And that was when he stopped being a painter who commanded his studio and was only a man again, one who’d fallen under the spell of an extremely sexy woman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Greer saw that Ford couldn’t break his gaze away, and she was glad. She’d been nervous when she’d first disrobed. But as they’d talked, she’d grown more and more comfortable reclining on the chaise lounge with its plump silk pillows and letting Ford’s gaze roam over her. She’d admired the planes of his face, taken in the thoughtful way he’d gazed at her—as if she were something mystical and marvelous to behold—and everything changed.
She became a woman on a mission: she wanted to seduce the English painter.
In the Dewberry ballroom he’d had her back under trying circumstances. He’d saved her chance to win Royal Bliss. And at the studio, hot as he’d looked in his white tuxedo jacket and the black bow tie, which he’d untied and carelessly draped around his neck, he’d been nothing but sensitive and kind.
Watching him paint, she couldn’t help but sense beneath his cool composure the hot, masculine tension in him that he’d generously unleashed to the world when he’d kissed her on the stage as if he were her man.
Hers.
“Greer—”
“Yes?”
Everything in her rejoiced when he took the two steps that separated them and cupped his hand over her bottom. She turned slightly to face him, leaned into him, and closed her eyes while he caressed her.
Bliss.
“I want you,” he said, his voice sounding the worse for wear.
She smiled into his shoulder. “I want you, too.”
He continued caressing her.
“You were a good egg tonight at the Dewberry.”
He chuckled. “I was, wasn’t I?”
“What if this … what we’re doing now—”
“This?” he asked, and kissed her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered, and let him knead her bottom and kiss her deeply, thoroughly,
her bare belly pressed up against his tuxedo. She pulled back for air, and knew she was about to wreak havoc with her own plan to sleep with him, but that was how she was—it was her nature to be honest, to get everything out on the table. “We’re getting to be real friends now. What if this complicates things, and we stop helping each other? You need this portrait for your career. I need that gown—for less obvious reasons, I suppose. But they feel real to me.”
He brushed a thumb over her lip, back and forth. “What’s wrong with complicated? When it feels so good? Give me that over simple and sex-deprived any day.”
She laughed. “You have a point.”
“You’re like a lush flower,” he said in her ear. “A peony, I’d say. Blush pink at the moment. And so delicately beautiful.”
He kissed her again, his hand caressing her nipple. She gave a tiny moan and wrapped her arms around his waist. She lifted her thigh ever so slightly and pressed up between his legs. It was his turn to groan. She loved the sound.
“We don’t have much time,” she said.
“Midnight.” He picked her up and set her on the edge of the counter under the transom window, opened it to let in a great warm gust off the harbor. “You’ll be in bed by then.”
“The fresh air feels so good,” she said.
He kissed her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He moved to her breasts, lavished them with kisses, and reached behind to break the grip she had on his waist with her ankles. He spread her legs open, kissed her belly, moved to her thighs. And then he nuzzled her center with confident attention until he pulled her bottom close to the edge and began a more intense yet playful game, teasing her until she scooted even farther forward of her own accord so as not to break contact. Her spine arched over his head and she moaned, almost oblivious with pleasure. But she remembered to at least run her fingers through his hair. He used his fingers then, deep inside her, and she let herself go.
Wave after wave took her. He stayed with her. And when she was done, she literally fell back on the counter, dazed and weak. “So much better than crème brulée,” she gasped.
He laughed. “I hope so.”
She laughed, too, and curled into a fetal position. “That was exquisite work.”
“It was entirely my pleasure.”
“I could go to sleep right here, right now.”
“Good.”
He was petting her hair. She shut her eyes and let him. She reveled in the attention. What had she done to deserve it? She didn’t know. And she didn’t care. Some things you shouldn’t have to earn.
The best things in life were free, she saw with a new clarity.
She forced herself to sit up. “Hey,” she said. “Let’s not forget about you.”
“Let’s forget about me,” he said back, his eyes teasing and warm. “You’re exhausted. Let me get you home. And we can take up where we left off next time.”
She yawned. “Are you always this nice?”
“No,” he said, with a wink. “So enjoy this enlightened, thoughtful version of me while you can. Plenty of times I make my own sort of demands.”
His message was unmistakably sexy.
“Oh,” she said, and kissed him. “I look forward to that.”
True to his word, he had her back to her apartment by eleven fifty. She was in bed with the lights out at midnight.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next evening, Greer sat down at La Di Da, where Royal Bliss was back in the front window, feeling more relaxed than she had in years. It had to have been her sexual shenanigans with Ford. An utterly delicious torpor had overcome her and stayed with her all night and the next day at work. She’d had such a hard time focusing at Two Love Lane, she’d had to drink an extra cup of coffee. She also took a lot of breaks from the phone and computer to walk out to the front porch and stand with her face in the sunshine, breathing the sea air. But everything she did reminded her of the night before at the studio, when she’d sat beneath the transom window and let Ford have his way with her. It made her weak in the knees remembering. Each time she did, a bolt of desire shot to her lower abdomen.
Could anyone tell? It was a little embarrassing. Even at lunch with Miss Thing and a mutual friend, she couldn’t stop daydreaming about Ford. She’d had to cross her legs, but then she’d uncrossed them—nothing was working! She could hardly wait to see him again that night for a few more sketches … and whatever else would come afterward.
But meanwhile, she had to win the wedding cake bake-off. She had no points from the first challenge. So she had to go big or go home.
Chatting with all the brides the day after they’d been chosen as finalists was fun. There wasn’t a mean one in the bunch. And she didn’t feel at all guilty about being in the contest.
Henny disappeared in the back room to take a few phone calls and said she’d return in a jiffy. “Get to know each other,” she said.
Fine, they said. They would. Each one of them looked around a little warily.
“Hi,” said Greer, realizing she could be in the hot seat, and sure enough, someone immediately pounced.
“Do you think you two will actually stay together?” asked one bride, who was a yoga instructor. Her name was Carol.
“I don’t know,” Greer said. “I mean, it was pretty crazy. I was already in the contest, but having a partner helps, and hey … if he’s willing to be my partner, I’ll take it.”
“That’s not very romantic,” another bride said. She was Toni, a cashier at Target.
Greer recognized her because Target was her favorite store. She was there way too much buying random kitchen gadgets, cute tops, sandals, books, and chocolate. “I’m not going to lie,” she said, “and pretend to be in love with him. Do you think I should? I just met him.”
“No,” Toni said. “I like you, and I appreciate your honesty, but I don’t think it’s fair or right that you’re in the contest. You’re not in love, and you aren’t getting married, and you don’t have a real soul mate.”
“Wait,” said the military bride, Lisa. “She does, too, at least a potential one. I heard him ask her to marry him. No guy does that without meaning it at some level.”
“How could he mean it?” Toni asked. “They met the day before. She admits she doesn’t love him.”
“You ever hear of arranged marriages?” Lisa asked. “Sometimes they work. And my own best friend got married on her first date. Seriously. In Vegas.”
“Did they stay together?” Serena asked.
“No,” Lisa said, her cheeks pink. “But they lasted six months!” she added. “That’s pretty darned good.”
Greer wanted to be patient. “Someday I’d like to get married,” she said for the umpteenth time. “Why shouldn’t I look for my dress now? Especially one that will bring true love into my life? Weddings don’t—”
“Just happen by themselves,” Toni and Serena finished for her at the same time.
“They don’t,” said Greer, feeling exhausted. And small. And confused.
Serena shrugged and smiled. “Greer, you have a point. Marriage was on my mind for years, way before I met Wesley.”
“Thanks for telling me that, Serena.” Greer honestly appreciated it. She also hoped no one would find out Serena’s groom was Greer’s old boyfriend, which would make things even more awkward around the other contestants.
Carol smiled. “This is a special group of women. I feel it. And even though Greer is in a slightly different boat from the rest of us, I can’t fault her. She’s been honest the whole way through this contest. She hasn’t broken any rules, and a lot of women start planning their weddings before they even have someone to marry. I say let’s all just enjoy the experience together.”
“I want to do that,” Toni said wistfully. “But I still wish you’d drop out, Greer, because everybody likes your story. They want to see if you two fall in love. So they’re going to vote for you, and I want that dress.” Her voice cracked just a little.
“I wish we all co
uld win Royal Bliss,” Greer said. “Honestly.”
“I have high hopes for you and your new man, Greer,” said Lisa. “When he put his hand over his heart, it made me cry.”
“It was sweet,” Greer said. “I was very touched.”
“Sorry, Greer, but we all know he was totally faking it,” Toni said.
“There’s such a thing as faking it ’til you make it,” Carol said. “I’ve done it myself.”
“That’s what I mean about shopping for my gown now,” said Greer. “I want to fake it until I make it.”
“I think you make a lot of sense,” said Carol.
“I kind of do, too,” said Serena.
“Me, three,” said Lisa.
“Thanks so much.” Greer was grateful for their support.
Toni sighed. “I guess your ‘fake it until you make it’ idea is okay, but I’m still not happy. But don’t mind me. If you’d been one of my best friends doing this, I’d be all for it, probably.”
“Thanks for giving me a chance,” said Greer.
There was a comfortable silence. At least they were getting along.
And then she got an idea. “If I win,” she said, “cross my heart, every one of you is welcome to wear Royal Bliss on your wedding day. As long as you return it to me in my size so I can wear it, too, when I get married.”
“Like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?” Lisa asked.
“Exactly,” said Greer.
The rest of them started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Would you ever share Royal Bliss?” Toni asked the other women. “Think about the history associated with it! It’s one-of-a-kind.”
“A treasure,” Serena agreed. “No way. I’d never share it, except with my future daughter.”
“Same with me,” said Toni.
“I wouldn’t share it, either,” added Carol. “Sorry. Plus, what if you spilled red wine on it?”
“Um, dry clean it?” Greer said.
“As if!” Serena said. “It would never come out.”
“Okay,” Greer said meekly.
“Your idea won’t work for me,” said Lisa, “but thank you for the offer. I’m so tiny, there’s no way we could alter it down for me without cutting out some fabric, so I couldn’t get it back to you in your size.”
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