Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7)

by Tracey Alvarez

  “Want to know what my muse looks like?”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  Harley had been photographed with many stunning women over the years, and although she could guarantee he hadn’t slept with all of them—he was many things but not a man-whore—her ego couldn’t take hearing him describe a beautiful and stop-your-heart-sexy female who wasn’t her. “What I want to know is why you’re here.”

  “Needed to set a few things straight.” He edged around the workbench, and suddenly, her eight-by-six darkroom got a whole lot smaller.

  Bree held up a back the hell off hand. “Don’t come any closer; you’ll get in my way.”

  She didn’t need the safelight to know he was grinning—a smug grin that said he knew just how uncomfortable she was trapped with him in this cramped space. Uncomfortable and yes, a little turned on. Even though she was still steamed at both him and herself.

  Harley stopped at the end of the bench, leaning a hip against it and folding his arms. Awareness goose pimpled her skin as she realized that one, he was perfectly positioned to spot the close-up shot of himself rinsing in the water, and two, her body was shooting off please do me subliminal signals every which way. Talk about sending mixed messages.

  “So, talk,” she said, mirroring his own curt instruction from earlier.

  “I was yanking your chain,” he said. “Letting you think I was talking about you posing naked.”

  The way he said the word naked sent all sorts of sexy images spinning through Bree’s mind—Harley’s body sculptured into perfection by an unfair God who’d given the man good looks, a to-die-for physique, and an overdose of charisma.

  “I wasn’t,” he continued. “And the offer to lend you money wasn’t dependent upon whether you posed for me, or as a bribe for sex.” His voice had lowered but not softened.

  She’d offended him, and she felt as tiny as the two-dimensional people in her newly-developed photographs. “I may have overreacted,” she said. That was almost an apology, right? “And it was generous of you to want to help.”

  Harley remained silent, and the seconds ticking by on the darkroom timer quickly became unbearable. She didn’t dare check the last photograph in case it drew his attention down.

  “So. You don’t want me to pose naked for you?” she asked.

  He gave a soft snort. “Hello, don’t you know me at all? Of course I do. But it’s not a prerequisite. Lycra shorts and a sports bra would be fine.” He moved from the end of the workbench until he was standing at her side. “I’ll need to hire out your studio to work in; West’s place is not ideal.”

  Bree’s fingers tightened around the tongs. “Hire my studio?”

  “Triple the going rate.”

  “Double,” she said. “I’m not accepting charity.”

  “No, that would be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse.” He sighed. “You could, of course, just accept my initial offer of a loan.”

  “Would you allow me to pay it back with normal lending criteria and a four-percent interest rate? Or, after a while, would I find the monthly repayments being redirected back into my bank account, like you did that time you helped the Russells out of a tight spot?”

  “Losing the Russells’ homemade pies would’ve been a crime against humanity.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “What’s wrong with wanting to help out my family and friends because people will pay crazy prices for me splashing oils around on a canvas?”

  With anyone else, his comment would’ve grated on her nerves as false modesty. But with Harley? Her mind flicked back to their high school years and the genuine shock and slow dawning of pleasure on his face when his art portfolio received an award of distinction.

  He’d truly had no idea just how talented he was.

  Others had seen it, been smacked upside the head with it once he’d started applying himself at art college—including Bree, herself. But two time-bombs had ticked quietly beneath the surface, and it’d been a race to see which one detonated first…the talent time-bomb, ready to propel him from a small, New Zealand city to the big wide world, or the emotional time-bomb, where Harley would realize they were in a relationship and freak out. As it happened, both blew together.

  “Nothing. But I won’t accept a gift of that much money from you.”

  While Christine hadn’t hesitated to grab everything her husband generously gave, Bree couldn’t stomach being beholden that way. She’d never be able to look the locals in the eye if she allowed Harley to bail her out of a tight spot. It was one thing, having all of the four-hundred year-round residents know she and Harley had a child together; it was another to tolerate the speculation that she was his kept woman or a gold digger.

  “Then dial back that fierce resolve.” Harley moved behind her, his hands settling lightly on either side of her waist. “Let me paint you as Hineahuone, and you can sell the painting at your show. Hmmm?” Warm lips traced the curve of her neck and paused by her ear.

  “We need to maintain a professional relationship.” How her words managed to sound so stiff and formal when inside she was melting like a snowball dropped into an active volcano, she didn’t know.

  Harley, of course, called her on it. “We’ve never had a professional relationship, so how the hell can we maintain one?”

  True. Professional relationship was just no sexy-fun-times. Because sexy-fun-times ran the risk of turning into sexy-emotional-times and sexy-I-want-to-be-with-you-forever-times, and Harley, by his own admission, wasn’t a good bet in those stakes.

  “If I’m going to pose for you, we need to try,” she said.

  “Why? Because you’re afraid to explore this attraction between us?”

  A tug on her earlobe with the tiniest hint of teeth. Full concentration was required to keep her breathing steady and even. His long fingers flexed on her waist and then skimmed over her hip bones.

  “I’m not afraid.” A bald-faced lie, considering her voice trembled slightly on the last word. “But this attraction between us is unhealthy.”

  “Really?” Harley crowded her closer to the workbench, his chest bumping her shoulder blades, his hips nudging her bottom and removing any doubt that one part of his anatomy was keen to explore.

  A soft moan escaped. She clamped her mouth shut, but it was too late, he’d heard and responded by pressing closer, pulling her hips tight against him.

  “Because it feels pretty damn healthy to me.” His breath fanned along her neck, and he dropped a damp kiss on the hollow of her shoulder.

  “I mean,” she gasped, “that we only seem to have sex when you’re hurting.”

  Harley stopped kissing her neck. Ah. She’d nailed it. Yet being right for once didn’t come with any satisfaction. Having her suspicions confirmed felt like an icy bowling ball had taken up residence in her stomach.

  “That time after you met your father when you were nineteen,” she continued, “then when your mother died. Both times you were messed up.” And she’d never been able to stand seeing Harley in pain.

  “You’re right.” He leaned his forehead on the back of her head, his nose brushing her nape. “You’re not my damn security blanket, and I’m sorry for treating you as one. But I want you, Bree. I want you so badly, I forget how to speak civilly, how to act like a gentleman trying to seduce a lady instead of an asshole desperate to get his hands on you.”

  Amber light swirled around them, and she shot a glance down at his hands still resting on her hips. His fingers didn’t hold her; she could’ve easily slipped away, and yet she didn’t.

  The wanting wasn’t one sided.

  “So the next move is yours, Queenie. If you want me as much as I want you, if you need me like I need you, you’ll come to me.” He took his hands off her hips and stepped aside, heading for the door.

  A snarky, “You’ll be waiting a long time then,” nearly slipped off her tongue, but she snatched it back, a little meme quote she’d seen on the internet popping into her brain: Ju
st like in a game of chess, the queen always protects the king.

  And like it or not, she didn’t have it in her to deliberately cut the man down when he offered her, for the first time and probably unwittingly, a sliver of vulnerability.

  ***

  Telling the woman he craved that he’d wait for her to make the next move wasn’t one of his better ideas. Three days had passed, and Harley had only caught glimpses of Bree through her studio windows as he and Ford, and sometimes Ben and West, stopped for smoko out the rear of the nearly completed salon.

  A delay with the interior paint not arriving until the late-afternoon ferry meant he couldn’t apply the first coat until tonight—actually, in the early hours of the morning, when the streets of Oban were deserted, and Due South had closed its doors hours ago. He’d tackle the undercoat now, and with any luck, it’d be dry enough to start the first coat of water-based enamel later in the day. The little town was silent as Harley strode down the hill from West’s. He couldn’t sleep yet, anyway, wired from blocking out sketch after sketch of ideas around Hineahuone now Bree had agreed to pose.

  Yeah, she’d agreed. She’d come out into the back yard yesterday at lunchtime while he and the guys cooked sausages on the tiny portable grill, coolly informing him of the cleared space in her studio for his equipment. That spelled agreement to him, anyway.

  Harley let himself into the salon. The small room at the shop’s rear was crammed with two hairstyling chairs, one shampoo basin and reclining chair, mirrors and cabinets and all the other crap they’d install once the interior paint was dry. He couldn’t wait until the big reveal when Holly would finally be permitted to see what he and the guys had achieved in less than a month. Ford would get so much sex, Harley wanted to kick his younger-by-six-minutes twin’s ass twice as hard.

  Jealous of sex-on-demand with a woman who looked at Ford as if he were her earth, moon, and whole fucking galaxy?

  Hell, yeah.

  Not jealous when he’d spotted Ford at Russell’s the other day trying to sneak a box of tampons into the bottom of his grocery basket. Poor bastard. Remembering how he’d accidentally let that slip to the remaining single guys, Noah and Joe, Harley grinned and got down to business.

  Fifteen minutes after setting up, he got into the swing of it. Paint around the doorframe with a brush, load up his nine inch roller, start from the ceiling and work down keeping the strokes of the roller smooth and even. God, it was hypnotizing and more effective than a sleeping pill.

  He’d never in a million years admit it to any of his art world peers, but he enjoyed the hell out of house-painting. Not that he was the same hungry teenager who’d go from local to local, asking if they needed any work done to help pay his way through art school, but something about filling a wall with nothing but plain color, with no need to worry about light and shape and perspective or any other technique—

  A scuff in the doorway behind him.

  Harley whipped around and came face to face with a wide-eyed Bree. She held her mobile phone in one hand and brandished a little black box thingy in the other. He couldn’t identify the box because, fuck, she was clothed only in tiny, lipstick-print boxer shorts and a white tank top. Two very perky nipples poked through the top and looked very happy to see him, even if their owner didn’t.

  Then there were her silky thighs, slightly paler than her slender calves, and the splash of color on her toenails, a saucy, hot pink that matched the print on her boxers. Hell, he wanted nothing more than to drop to the floor by those pretty pink toenails and press his mouth to every one of those lip-prints.

  The blood that had been thundering like a thoroughbred around a racetrack in his veins from being scared shitless at two in the morning suddenly veered south.

  “You,” she squeaked.

  “Uh,” he replied with a distinct lack of intelligence since, uh, his brain had shrunk in direct proportion to his engorging cock.

  “What are you doing here? It’s quarter past two in the morning.”

  “Painting.” Harley glanced at the roller in his hand, a drip of white paint now forming on the edge, ready to splatter on the floor. Yep. Painting. He shook his head to clear the lust-fog and returned the roller to the tray. “What are you doing here?”

  Bree lowered the phone and whatever-the-little-black-box was and folded her arms. She gave a little cough, her gaze darting to his groin area. “I heard noises over here. I thought it might’ve been a break in—Noah had to give a warning to a group of teenagers loitering around Russell’s a few days ago.”

  “So you decided to challenge a pack of teenage boys in your pajamas at two in the morning?” He didn’t put much credence behind her little story, which was why he kept his tone incredulous rather than I’m-going-to-kick-someone’s-ass overprotective like he would’ve if Bree really had intended to walk into a dangerous situation.

  She tipped up her nose. “I had my phone and personal alarm in case there was any trouble.” She waved the little-black-box-thing at him. “All I have to do is press the little red button on it, and it’ll shriek loud enough to wake the dead.”

  “Like that’ll help on an island with one cop who’d take at least five minutes to drag himself out of bed and get over here to save you. That’s if you really thought teenage thugs were breaking into an empty, half-finished salon with nothing of easy resell value to steal.”

  Harley took a step toward her, and her eyes narrowed, but she held her ground.

  Good girl. Because if she’d turned tail and run, he would’ve chased her. And caught her.

  “The door was wide open. It could’ve been anyone in here.”

  He edged another step closer. Bree’s gaze zipped sideways to try to see past her shoulder to the rear door.

  “You knew it was me. Here. Alone,” he said.

  “Uh.” The first spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Did not.”

  Three more steps and Harley backed her up against the wall—fortunately, a section of the wall he hadn’t applied undercoat to since her lipstick-printed ass smacked against it. Without facing resistance, he removed the mobile and personal alarm from her hands and laid them on the floor. Then he pinned her to the wall again with nothing more than a smile and his palms loosely braced on either side of her shoulders.

  “Did too.” He dropped his forehead to hers, and the tips of their noses touched. “Now you’ve got me here alone, what are you going to do about it?”

  Wide blue eyes stared into his. If he’d a dollar for every conflicting emotion flickering across Bree’s gaze, he’d have enough for a bang-up breakfast with all the trimmings at Due South later that morning.

  When she hesitated another five heartbeats, her breathing speeding up through her pouty, slightly parted lips, Harley said softly, “You came here for me. I know it. You know it. So take what you want.”

  Fingertips landed lightly on his ribcage and then fisted in the cotton of his tee shirt. She angled her jaw, her breath a puff of spearmint on his lips. He couldn’t hold back a grin. His little liar had recently brushed her teeth before venturing downstairs to tackle the big, bad burglars next door.

  Then she pressed her soft, lush mouth against his, which not only wiped the grin off his face but blitzed a few thousand brain cells in one fell swoop. Her tongue flicked out and demanded entry with sweet insistence. Harley submitted gracefully and sank body, mind and probably his whole damn soul into the kiss.

  Bree uncurled her fingers from his shirt and slid them into his hair, keeping them locked together, kissing him relentlessly until he was pretty sure his eyes were crossing with pure, unadulterated lust. Tongues, teeth, lips, smoking-hot heat—Harley returned her kisses with a need tenfold. He ached for her in a way he couldn’t explain. Or cared to examine too closely.

  So he shunted the feels aside and concentrated on getting them both naked. ASAP.

  He wedged his thigh between hers and hauled her closer. Breasts to chest, his cock cradled in the hollow of her hipbones. Major restrai
nt was necessary to prevent himself from grinding against her. Restraint tested after he’d bunched up her tank top and gotten his hand on the satiny skin of her waist.

  Bree arched back, letting out a soft moan as his fingers traversed her ribs to the underside of her breast. He traced the lush curve, brushing his thumb over the tightened bud of her nipple. He gently rolled the tip between his finger and thumb. Her breathing hitched.

  As torturous as it was, Harley released her breast and got a grip on his tee shirt. He broke the kiss long enough to haul his shirt over his head, luxuriating in the erotically stunned glaze in Bree’s eyes. She got with the program real fast and fumbled with the hem of her tank top. Being a gentleman—when it suited—he assisted.

  As her top crumpled to the floor somewhere at their feet, Harley sucked in a shuddery breath. He hadn’t seen her naked in daylight for ten years. When he’d crashed on her doorstep after his mother’s tangi they’d made love in the semi-dark of her bedroom. An intense but brief encounter with no time to argue how he wanted to see every inch of her. He hadn’t cared about anything other than his desperate need to lose himself inside her, and he’d been politely but firmly evicted from her bed before the sun rose the next morning.

  His gaze skimmed over the full swell of her breasts. Her nipples were slightly larger and darker than the pretty pale apricot color he remembered. Now they were a juicier shade, like sun-ripened peaches, and he couldn’t wait to taste.

  Before he could get his hands, or mouth, on all that sweetly-scented skin—yeah, he could smell the fruity scent of her soap—she’d crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “Don’t hide from me.” He traced a fingertip from her shoulder blade down to the rounded top of her breast squished deliciously into her folded arms.

  She gave a delicate shiver but didn’t uncross her arms. “I’m not one of the perky, bra-less brigade now. And I have stretch marks.”

  “You really want to compare imperfections with me?” He kept his voice gentle but firm. “Maybe before I make you forget your own name you should check out the twisted scar on my leg from a run-in with a stingray while spear-fishing in Hawaii? Or the red birthmark on my ass. Maybe you’ll change your mind about wanting me if you see the start of my love-handles from one-too-many Russell’s pies.”