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

by Tracey Alvarez

  “Rough night?” she asked.

  Harley glanced down, tracking her gaze, and swore. He hooked the back of his tee shirt and tugged it over his head. Bree tried not to stare; she really did. But she remembered the taste of him as she’d kissed her way down all that hard-packed muscle. The pebbled bump of his nipple under her tongue. The rough trail of hair on his lower stomach as she’d traced it with her fingertips, following that happy trail down and down…

  “Get any sleep, Harl?” West wandered out of the kitchen, a tea towel draped over his shoulder.

  “Enough to function on.”

  Harley wrenched his arms through his tee shirt—now turned in the correct way—and yanked it down. He cut the baby and Bree a guarded glance, which told her Harley probably hadn’t slept much at all. Being woken out of a deep sleep to the shrill cries of a hungry baby when you weren’t used to being around them was a guaranteed recipe for being wrecked the next day.

  Baby Michaela gave an enormous yawn, and her almost translucent eyelids fluttered open. Somehow, she’d managed to wriggle one of her arms out of the blanket, and it waved in the air until Bree caught the tiny fingers. They wrapped tightly around hers.

  “Awww. She’s woken up just in time for Uncle Harley to have his first hold.” Piper appeared behind Harley’s shoulder and gave him a shove forward.

  He stumbled to a halt. “Pipe, I’m not good with babies.”

  The oh-dear-god-no expression on Harley’s face would’ve been hilarious in other circumstances. In the circumstances of Bree carrying his baby, due in May next year? Not so damn funny.

  “You don’t want to hold her?” A sliver of hurt crept into Piper’s voice.

  “Of course I—but she might—or I might…”

  Piper simply raised her eyebrows and fisted her hands on her hips. “Are you telling me you’re scared of an itty-bitty eight-pound bundle of cuteness?”

  With a patented male sigh of resignation, Harley walked man approaching the gallows slow over to Bree and held out his hands, palms up.

  “She’s not a bomb about to explode, mate.” West chuckled, perhaps the only person in the room who didn’t recognize the tension pouring from Harley’s rigid frame.

  “Like this.” Bree bypassed Harley’s outstretched hands and snugged the baby against his chest. “Hold her here”—she guided one of his big hands under Michaela’s bottom—“and here.” She moved his other palm to cup the baby’s head and neck. “You must’ve held your cousins or second cousins when they were little?”

  She met his gaze above Michaela’s head, and the smoky-grey of his eyes disguised any scrap of emotion he might be feeling.

  “Not when they were this small. I avoided them. Babies don’t like me; they usually end up screaming their heads off.”

  “She seems to like you just fine,” Bree said. “And it’s different when it’s your own.”

  Harley craned his neck back to stare down at the baby now cooing and snuffling against his shirt. Was he thinking, like Bree was, about what their child would look like? Was he worried if he could convince himself to meet the child growing inside her, that the babe would take one look at its father and howl in protest?

  “So I’ve heard.” His voice couldn’t have been more neutral.

  The man may as well have been standing there holding a sack of flour dressed in a pink-and-white, teddy-bear-patterned onesie. It sliced like tiny razor blades at her ice-coated heart. And she bled hot.

  Michaela, either oblivious or uncaring of the indifferent hands holding her, just blinked her huge, dark-blue eyes and let out a loud, rumbling fart.

  “Sounds as if it’s time for a nappy change, dad,” Harley said with forced joviality and strode over to West. “Here you go.”

  West took his daughter from Harley with a crinkled brow.

  Harley spun on his heel, not quite meeting Bree’s gaze but looking in her direction. “I’ll be at the studio Monday morning to do some preliminary sketches when Jean can take over minding the gallery.”

  Bree nodded numbly. With a brisk goodbye, Harley ducked around Piper and left the living room. His footsteps thudded down the stairs as the three of them exchanged glances.

  “What the hell’s gotten into him?” Piper said as the downstairs door slammed. Her gaze landed on Bree and stuck, turning from baffled to piercing. “You’ve broken him somehow, haven’t you? What’s happened?”

  Warm droplets leaked from Bree’s eyes, and her stomach dropped. Oh, crap. It was as if she had zero control over her tear ducts during the last week. Bloody hormones. She flexed her facial muscles in an attempt to hold back the waterworks, but nope. Piper swore, and then she was across the room with her arms around Bree in a fierce hug.

  “Dammit, it’s the other way around, isn’t it? He’s broken you.”

  “I’m not broken,” Bree whispered into Piper’s shoulder, and before she could hold it back, a hiccupping half-sob followed. “I’m pregnant.”

  Because Piper was Piper—as she’d said, the one person who wouldn’t shove optimistic bullshit down Bree’s throat—her friend hugged her tighter and said, “Holy shit. You’re in for a rough ride, Queen Bee. But you’re strong enough to ride out those bumps in the road, trust me.”

  “What if he’s not?” Bree said.

  Piper pulled back and squeezed Bree’s arm. “Then you’ll have to love Humpty-Dumbass enough to crack him open and set his demons free.”

  Chapter 14

  There were many reasons why Harley chose to avoid portrait work—the long hours spent with a model, trying to coax the perfect pose combined with the perfect expression, just one of them.

  “Take a break.” He turned away from Bree, who was draped over an armchair that he’d muscled downstairs from her apartment earlier.

  She breathed out a soft groan and arched her back, breasts shifting under her stretchy Lycra sports bra.

  Damn.

  He’d been sketching her for the better part of the afternoon now. Pose after pose—standing, sitting, reclining—his pencil raced over the page. Light, shadow, the curve of her upper arm, the delicate bones in her fingers, the tightening of her hamstrings and the flexibility of her spine as she twisted to look over her shoulder at him.

  Except Bree never really looked at him.

  She was the perfect model—silent, complacent, didn’t murmur a word of complaint when he asked her to hold a pose for another two minutes, although her muscles must’ve been screaming. But she might as well have been a store-front mannequin, drained of everything that made her human—made her uniquely Bree. The spark of life that’d turn his sketches from Bree to Hineahuone.

  Harley flicked through his sketchbook at the workbench. While he’d nailed proportion, contrast, negative space, and line of gravity, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t kindle a fire in his gut, and without that all-important spark to create from, he had nothing.

  Hineahuone was elemental and raw. Bree was—understandable, considering the tension between them—stiff and emotionally guarded. Harley narrowed his eyes at the spots of rain still splattered on the studio’s windows.

  In a typical Stewart Island one-eighty, low-clustering clouds had gobbled up the sunshine at midday, and it had rained steadily all afternoon. But about thirty minutes ago, the sun had fought back and punched through the clouds again.

  Which gave him one hell of an idea.

  “Go put on some clothes over the bike pants and bra,” he said. “And sneakers. You’ll need something covering your feet.”

  “What? Why? Where are we going?”

  The most she’d said to him in three hours. Bree inside her comfort zone, in her studio—in control—was a locked fortress. Nothing he’d said to try to bust her out had worked.

  “It’s a surprise.” He gathered up sketchpad and pencils, slipped them into a plastic bag and put them into a backpack. “Be waiting out front in ten minutes.”

  Bree fisted her hands on her hips. “Am I going to like this surprise?”
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  He allowed his gaze to skim over her Lycra-covered breasts, which gave her mono-boobs, to the clingy bike shorts that perfectly showed off her peachy ass.

  “I’ve changed my mind.” He dragged his gaze away from her smoking-hot body to find a pretty pink blush had stained her cheeks. “Ditch the sports bra and wear a bikini top.”

  “Like hell. I’m not one of your swimsuit models.”

  He grinned at her. “You give me too much credit. Andrea was a lingerie model.”

  She arched her chin, gaze spitting a silent challenge—first sign of the real Bree since he’d arrived. “I don’t own a bikini.”

  He shrugged and headed for the door. “Improvise. Or topless works for me, too.”

  “Perv.”

  But there was a hint of laughter in her tone. And she’d sure as hell need a sense of humor for what he had in mind.

  Ten minutes later, he sat outside the gallery, revving the throttle of Ford’s trailbike. He narrowed his eyes through the visor of the borrowed safety helmet as Bree strolled out the gallery door in a pair of cargo shorts and a checked flannel shirt—a man’s checked flannel shirt.

  “Really?” She halted in front of the bike with a curl of her lips. “You think this is a good idea? What with you being a New Yorker used to riding around in limousines?”

  Harley grinned, though she wouldn’t see his smile behind the helmet’s mouth guard. “I’m still a Kiwi boy, woman. I rode a bike before I could walk.”

  “A plastic, push-along three-wheeler.” But she took the other helmet he offered her and tugged it onto her head. “And if this is your idea of seduction, it’s unoriginal. Del already tried the trail bike trick with Shaye.”

  Something Ford had pointed out to him when he’d strode into the workshop and asked to borrow his twin’s pride and joy.

  He passed her the backpack, and she shrugged it on.

  “Seduction is not part of this afternoon’s activity,” he said. “Hop on.”

  Bree snorted and slid her long leg over the bike’s seat, shuffling into position snug against his back.

  Not in the first part of the afternoon’s planned activity, he amended. Because if she kept wriggling her breasts against him, all bets were off. He gunned the throttle, and the engine responded—and so did Bree, by wrapping her arms around his stomach.

  He had a sudden thought and froze, his grip slipping off the throttle so the engine returned to a throaty rumble. “Uh. Riding on a bike won’t hurt the baby, will it?”

  A stiffening of the warm body behind him.

  “No,” she said after a few seconds, her voice muffled by the helmet and the engine. “The baby’s very well protected.”

  “Good.” And then, because he’d accidentally revealed that maybe a tiny part of him had formed a connection with the peanut inside Bree, he added louder, “Glad to hear that vigorous sex won’t be off the table later then.”

  As predicted, she smacked a palm against his stomach and muttered something starting with, “Hell will fr—” and he didn’t catch the rest because he opened up the throttle, and they were off.

  Harley kept to a Grandma-driving-a-scooter speed past Russell’s and Due South then couldn’t resist opening up the throttle as they hit the main road out of town—which was really only a narrow country lane—but damn, it felt good to be back on a bike.

  “When’s the last time you took a ride on the wild side, Queenie?” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

  “I haven’t been on the back of a bike since I was seventeen,” she yelled back.

  Harley grinned behind his mouth guard. Seventeen…and with him in almost the same position. Except that time, she hadn’t been holding on to him like a spider monkey. He and Ford, Ben, and West, on their crappy old motorbikes, with Piper, Erin, and Bree riding pillion, loaded up with junk food and two six-packs of beer since Ben and West were the first to turn eighteen and could legally buy alcohol.

  They’d ridden out to Deep Bay beach and had spent the day lazing on the sand, shooting the shit and splashing around in the water like kids. He’d been the one to suggest asking Bree to come, even when the others bet imaginary cash she’d turn them down. They made the mistake of underestimating her, of not seeing beneath Bree’s chilly surface to the warm currents swirling like the tropics beneath. They hadn’t noticed how badly she’d wanted to be a part of them, but the persuasive fear of rejection had forced her to keep her emotional distance. He’d noticed, because somehow, he’d trained himself to notice the little tells that gave her away.

  But today they weren’t going to Deep Bay.

  Harley pulled the bike into a small clearing near the signs for the Rakiura Track. Tourists who came every year to hike the thirty-two kilometer walk often started at the other side of Oban, by Lee Bay, under the shadow of the enormous chain sculpture, where the first part of the track took them along stunning beaches and wide-open spaces. If they completed the whole three-day loop, the hikers ended up here—amongst ferns and towering trees and endless native bush.

  Harley killed the engine, and Bree slid from the bike. She tugged off the helmet and placed it beside the back wheel.

  “We’re walking the track in reverse?” The ponytail she’d tied her hair into listed wonkily to one side.

  He should enjoy the cuteness and her pretty blonde hair while the moment lasted.

  Harley yanked off his helmet and set it next to hers. “Just fifteen minutes or so down the path.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing fifteen minutes in except trees.”

  “Scared of going into the woods with me, Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Bree shrugged her arms out from his backpack of supplies and held it out to him. “The light will be terrible in there,” she said with a sharp upturn of her nose.

  “Don’t care.” He guessed the nose-bleed-angle she maintained while giving him a deliberate I’m ignoring your juvenile attempt at banter stare meant she likely did have some reservations about what he had planned.

  His inner wolf howled.

  “After you, then.”

  She folded her arms, and his gaze zipped down to breast level. Not that there was much to see since she’d buttoned up the check shirt to her chin. As if she’d known he planned to enjoy the short walk behind her, studying the sway of her hips and the play of muscles from her ass to ankle. Yeah, he was a perv, after all.

  Harley pulled on the backpack and strode toward the signposted track. For the first ten minutes of the walk, the track was firm underfoot, and where there were known boggy sections beneath the trees, a wooden boardwalk spanned the path. A fantail swooped and dived, chattering as they hiked along, fluttering its pretty grey-and-white tail feathers.

  Then they came to the spot he’d overheard a couple of hikers complain about in the pub the night before. An area of the track where repair work on the wooden boardwalk was being carried out. An area where the previous two days of on-again off-again torrential rain had transformed the bush floor into a wide, impassable-without-getting-filthy patch of churned-up mud.

  Perfect.

  He turned to find Bree three paces behind him with her hiking boots planted firmly on the still-solid path, her hands fisted on her hips and an oh, hell no expression on her face. Something else he’d always admired about her…the woman’s mind was wicked sharp, stitching together the picture of swimsuit plus art supplies plus mud in an instant.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “You want me to frolic around in that?”

  Harley shrugged out of the backpack and placed it by a tree—careful to keep it away from the beginning bogginess. “Frolicking’s optional. In you hop.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s mud. Totally organic. Women pay a small fortune to get that stuff slapped on their skin in a spa.” He withdrew a small, collapsible stool from the backpack and opened it. Parked his ass on it and leaned on the tree trunk. “And Hineahuone was created from mud. I need to see you covered in it t
o get any further with this painting. Be my Hineahuone, Bree.”

  She continued to stare at him without moving an inch, as if horns had erupted from his forehead, and a forked tail had slithered out of his shorts. Removing his sketchpad from the backpack, Harley drew his mouth up into a smirk, trying to communicate a challenge with every insolent movement.

  “You think I won’t?” She lifted her hands to the top button of her shirt. Unbuttoned it. “That I’ll pitch a fit about getting muddy and tell you to go to hell?”

  He rolled a shoulder and flicked open the pad to a blank page. Three more buttons popped open, revealing a leopard-print bra—the animal print he’d been dreaming about for months—and her breasts, pale and beautiful, spilling over the top of the cups. So there were some good things about a woman carrying your baby. He shoved the thought aside, concentrated on the taut outline of her nipple under the fabric.

  “You’re always telling me to go to hell in one way or another,” he said mildly. “But you know it’s in your best interests to get dirty for me.”

  Bree flicked open the last button of the shirt and peeled it off her shoulders. She threw it at him, and he caught it with one hand. Then, bending over and giving him an eyeful of cleavage that sent his system into overdrive, she unlaced her boots and peeled off her socks.

  She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow when she caught him staring. “You better not be thinking this is a striptease.”

  “I’m about to stuff some notes into your bikini top.” Pretty sure he was drooling, Harley slid a hand into his bag to retrieve a pencil. He rummaged around without taking his eyes off her.

  “I told you, I don’t own a bikini.”

  She unzipped her shorts and shimmied out of them, leaving her in just her bra and damn—she’d left on the bike shorts instead of switching them for a tiny bikini bottom. Bree tossed him her shorts, and he caught those too, stuffing them along with her shirt into his backpack.