Robin and Marion shared a significant look, hesitated, then Robin walked over and put the baby in John’s big arms. His oldest and dearest friend—his brother from another mother, they liked to joke—laughed nervously, a wondering smile sliding over his face. “Meet John Michael Gavin Sherwood,” Robin told him. “You’ll be godfather, of course.”
John’s eyes moistened and he nodded. “I’d be honored,” he said, his voice thick.
* * *
JOHN SHERWOOD HAD THE TAWNY curls of his father, the ice-blue eyes of his mother and was better with a bow and arrow than anyone in the state of Georgia.
And, as Robin predicted, Marion never lost an argument once she donned her battle dress.
* * * * *
Karen Foley
God’s Gift to Women
For Brenda Chin.
Thank you for your insight, your support and your talent for turning rough stones into polished gems!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Excerpt
1
LEXI ADAMS TRIED TO IGNORE THE sound of hammering from outside her bedroom window, wanting only to go back to the sensual dream she’d been having. She groaned and bunched her pillow around her head, but the incessant racket continued. Cracking an eyelid, she lifted the pillow enough to peer groggily at the bedside clock, certain it was still the middle of the night. But no, it was eight o’clock. On a Sunday morning.
Whack! Whack!
Pushing herself to a sitting position, Lexi blew a tendril of hair out of her face and yawned hugely. Obviously, she wasn’t going to sleep late this morning. Swinging her legs to the floor, she padded across the room to the window and raised the shade, squinting at the bright sunlight. The arts-and-crafts-style bungalow next door had been empty for nearly a year, but the for sale sign on the front lawn had vanished the week before. From the sound of it, the new owner had sent a construction crew over to do some repairs. But really? On a Sunday morning? Was nothing sacred anymore?
A tall plank fence separated the two properties, but from her bedroom window, Lexi had an unobstructed view of the house and the backyard, which boasted a gorgeous in-ground swimming pool and cabana. Of course, the pool was empty and the lawn was mostly weeds, but with some attention, the house really had great potential. And the view was spectacular, situated as it was on a steep hill overlooking Santa Barbara, with the blue waters of the Pacific shimmering in the distance.
A movement behind the house, combined with the sound of renewed hammering, caught her attention and Lexi leaned forward for a better look. The back of the house was cast in shadows and partially hidden by an overgrown shrub, but she could just make out a ladder leaning against the wall, and the figure of a man standing high on the rungs. As she watched, he stepped down and away from the ladder to survey his work.
Lexi’s mouth went dry.
He was shirtless, and a leather tool belt hung low on his hips. His tawny skin gleamed under a light sheen of sweat, throwing his muscles into sharp relief. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen such a magnificent body and she strained for a better look. The brim of a black baseball cap shadowed his features, but his jaw might have been chiseled from stone. Lexi watched, entranced, as he dipped his hand into the front pouch of his tool belt for a handful of nails, and mounted the ladder once more.
“No, no,” she murmured in protest as he disappeared behind the shrub.
Feeling a little foolish, she darted into the adjoining bathroom where a small window afforded her a better view. She devoured him with her eyes. Physically, he was the most amazingly perfect man she had ever seen, and she was certain that his sculpted body was the result of raw, hard work and not a regimen of fitness-center workouts.
Every muscle and sinew in his powerful shoulders and arms flexed as he pounded a section of board into place. His jeans were faded and paint-spattered, but hugged his trim butt and thighs so perfectly that Lexi leaned against the window frame and sighed in appreciation. Her gaze traced the contour of his spine, admiring the play of muscles in his back and along his ribs. She could almost feel the warm, smooth texture of his skin, and her fingers curled into her palms.
Aware of the calluses there, she opened her hands and studied them. For the past two months, she had been working on a classical-Greek sculpture, commissioned by the Santa Barbara Art Association. Despite the fact she had submitted several preliminary mock-ups for the piece, she wasn’t feeling the same inspiration that she had for her last project. The classical sculpture of Poseidon that she had completed six months earlier stood nearly thirteen feet high and would soon grace the new fountain at the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens. She’d been enlisted to create a series of Greek sculptures as part of the new Garden of the Gods exhibit, and was looking forward to this latest project, a statue of Adonis. So maybe he wasn’t exactly a god, but as far as Lexi was concerned, he was pretty close, and the art association had agreed to let her sculpt him. She had finished several clay busts and two scaled-down models. She’d also roughed out the figure on an eight-foot-high chunk of marble, but she wasn’t satisfied. She admitted that she’d hit a stone wall. Literally. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t envision the final work. The sculpture’s face and physical attributes eluded her.
But looking at the gorgeous specimen next door, she realized she’d found her muse. Her hands itched to explore his contours. She could easily envision him nude. His buttocks would be firm and strong and his thighs corded with muscles. And his manly parts would be…manly.
She still hadn’t seen his face, but it really didn’t matter what he looked like. The advantage of being an artist was having the opportunity to create whatever she could imagine. And yes, she wanted to sculpt him. She needed to sculpt him. She suddenly knew that this stranger was the elusive image of Adonis that she had been searching for. Beauty like his was made to be admired, and she was convinced she could capture the essence of him.
Her own reaction to the man surprised her. After watching him for just ten minutes, she was already contemplating how she would refine the roughed-out marble in her studio. The stone would polish well, and she needed to provide an excellent finish in order to do justice to those gleaming muscles. Her classical sculpture of Poseidon had taken over a year to complete, but with the majority of the hard work on Adonis already done, it wouldn’t take her long to fully release him from his marble enclosure, especially when she felt so energized. That’s what surprised her most as she watched the man next door—how invigorated she felt.
Excitement surged through her as she watched the sexy stranger—the same thrill of anticipation that she always experienced when she embarked on a new project. She told herself that the sensation had everything to do with creative inspiration and nothing to do with the man as a person.
Absolutely nothing.
The very idea made her scoff softly, even as she craned her head through the window for a better look at his backside. Nope, she’d sworn off men more than six months ago, after her last relationship had ended in disaster. She had no interest in the opposite sex other than as subjects for her artistic interpretation. To be honest, she had yet to meet a man who could equal the qualities found in any of her sculptures. As conceited as it might sound, no man could measure up to her marble creations. So while she could appreciate this guy’s physical attributes, she had no desire to get to know him on a personal level. Which meant that walking over and asking him to pose for her was out of the question.
“My camera,” she breathed in a flash of insight, and padded quickly back into the bedroom and looked frantically around. Where had she left it? There. On the dresser. Grabbing the digital camera, she returned to the bedroom window, but couldn’t get a clear shot of him through the panes. In frust
ration, she wrenched the window open and leaned out, quickly snapping off several frames of his broad shoulders and back. She preferred to use live models when creating her sculptures, but she could work from a photograph if she absolutely had to.
He climbed several more rungs and the shrubs obscured her view. Lexi was forced to lean farther out until her entire upper body stretched beyond the window frame. But she was unprepared when two more workers came around the corner of the house, one carrying a power saw and the second carrying lumber, which he set down across two sawhorses. The sexy stranger descended the ladder and turned in her direction. Swiftly, she snapped several more photos in quick succession and tried to duck back into the bathroom before he spotted her, but only succeeded in whacking the back of her head on the window sash.
She gave a sharp cry of pain and the camera slipped from her fingers and fell into the dense bushes that separated the two properties. Damn! She pulled herself inside the window, but not before the man lifted his head and looked directly at her. Their gazes collided, and for an instant, Lexi’s heart stopped beating. With his face tipped up, she could see his features clearly beneath the brim of the baseball cap, and her eyes widened in dismay. Sweet mercy! Had she really thought it didn’t matter what he looked like?
The man was a god.
In that brief instant, Lexi was aware that he did indeed have a jaw that might have been chiseled from stone, but his mouth had been fashioned purely from sin. She had a vague impression of haughty cheekbones, a proud nose and unusually light-colored eyes that expressed both surprise and annoyance before she recovered her wits and flattened herself against the inside wall, out of sight. Her heart hammered inside her rib cage and she pressed a hand against her chest in an effort to calm herself.
But the memory of his face wouldn’t recede. And it wasn’t just his face that had been unforgettable; she could still picture those perfect pecs and that cobblestoned abdomen, not to mention the deep, V-shaped groove that extended from his hip bones to beneath the low-slung waistband of his jeans. Every inch of the guy had been layered in sleek muscle.
Gathering her nerve, Lexi peeked around the edge of the window to the neighboring house, but while the other two men measured the lumber and quickly cut it with the power saw, her gorgeous stranger was no longer in sight. Relieved, she closed the window and dragged the shade down and then stared at her hands in dismay. They were trembling. She told herself that it had to do with the embarrassment of being caught hanging out a window, ogling a stranger, but the explanation seemed as shaky as her hands. The truth was, her composure had been rattled by those eyes. Less than five minutes ago, she’d viewed him only as a subject for her next sculpture. Then he had looked at her, and all she could think about was what it would be like to wrap herself around him.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently acknowledging that with just one glance, he’d reduced her to a pile of quivering mush.
She didn’t think he’d seen her actually taking pictures of him, thank goodness. Now she needed to retrieve her camera. Not taking the time to get dressed, Lexi slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and let herself silently out the back door.
The morning air was cool and fragrant with bougainvillea, and the day promised to be beautiful. Beyond the plank fence that separated the properties, she could hear the sound of renewed hammering. She walked quickly across the yard until she reached the narrow space between her house and the fence, where she had dropped her camera. She had to push her way into the dense shrubbery, swearing softly as the branches snagged her hair and scratched her exposed skin. Bending down, she peered through the foliage. She hoped that the thick vegetation had broken the camera’s fall and protected it from serious damage.
The hammering from next door abruptly stopped. Lexi inspected the ground beneath the shrubs, but there was no sign of the camera. She was directly beneath the second-story bathroom window, so it had to be somewhere close by. Crouching down, she let her hand grope along the ground at the base of the shrub, her fingers searching blindly.
“Are you looking for this?”
The masculine voice startled Lexi so much that she jumped up, becoming tangled in branches and leaves. Shoving them aside, she peered through the foliage to see the stranger from next door leaning on the top of the fence. Her camera dangled from his fingers. Up close, he was breathtaking, with chiseled cheekbones and a wide, sensuous mouth. His eyes were a light shade of green, as pure and clear as the waters of the Mediterranean. His lashes were thick and sooty black, making the lightness of his eyes all the more dramatic. Right now, they were coolly amused as they assessed her.
“This was caught in the branches at the top of the bush,” he said drily. “I only noticed because the sun reflected off the lens.”
His voice was deep and smooth, and he spoke with an accent that Lexi found incredibly sexy. Now he studied the camera, and as she watched, he flicked it on and scrolled through the photos she had taken of him. His mouth pursed, either in consideration or disapproval, before he turned it off. The lens retracted with a soft whir.
“You can have your camera,” he said quietly, shifting his attention back to her, “when you come over and ask me for it. I’d like to know why you were taking photos of me without my permission.”
Mortified and more than a little dumbstruck by his looks, Lexi could only stare at him. “Okay.” She nodded, her voice breathless. “Thank you.”
One eyebrow went up, and Lexi wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected a hint of a dimple in his cheek before he stepped down and disappeared. Lexi sagged against the shingles of the house, her heart racing.
Had she really just thanked him for confiscating her camera? She groaned. He probably thought she was a moron. She was a moron! She should have insisted that he return the camera right then, but now it seemed she would have to go next door and face him if she wanted to get it back. Just the memory of his eyes, filled with disapproval, made her cringe. It was as if he could see right into her. There was no way she could face him.
As she pushed free of the shrubbery, she decided he could keep the camera. She’d rather give it up than suffer his censure. There had been something in his eyes that made her regret having taken the photos; something more than just disapproval.
Something like disappointment.
With a mental shake, Lexi told herself to forget it. To forget him. She had no interest in seeing him, or talking to him, or getting to know him on any level.
Even if he was perfect.
2
LEXI STOOD ON THE GRAVEL PATH at the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens and watched as the flatbed truck backed slowly across the grass toward the fountain, emitting a series of strident warning beeps as it approached. The fountain was empty of water, and in the center stood a low, wide pedestal of white marble. On the back of the flatbed, secured with nylon tie-downs, stood her sculpture of Poseidon in all his bathysmal magnificence.
“He really is fabulous,” enthused her friend, Nelda Denali, who owned an art gallery in downtown Santa Barbara. “I’ve become so accustomed to seeing him in your studio that it seems strange to think this will be his new home. By the way, I have the spare key you loaned me.”
Lexi gave her friend a tolerant smile. “Keep it. We both know you’re going to show up at the studio, wanting to store some overflow item.”
Nelda winced, but Lexi saw the relief in her eyes. “You don’t mind?”
“Of course not. It’s a huge studio, bigger than I really need for just myself. I told you to feel free to use it for your extra pieces, and I meant it.”
Nelda gave her a hug, and then looked around them at the assembled group of people. “You have a good turnout for his christening.”
Lexi had kept the sculpture in her studio for the past several months while the fountain was completed, and now the director of the botanic gardens, as well as several local dignitaries and members of the media, watched the workers prepare to transfer Poseidon to his new
home.
“Well, now you can visit him anytime you want,” Lexi assured her, snapping several photos of the sculpture. Half a dozen harnesses had been secured around the figure in preparation for lifting him onto the pedestal in the center of the fountain.
“Why are you using a dime-store disposable camera?” Nelda asked, watching as Lexi fiddled with the settings.
Lexi shrugged. “Because I accidentally dropped my good one out of a second-story window.”
Nelda gasped. “You just bought that camera, and you paid a fortune for it! I hope you purchased an extra warranty.”
They moved aside as the truck stopped at the edge of the fountain.
“The camera is fine, but it’s been confiscated.”
Nelda gave her a curious look. “What do you mean?”
As the workers secured the hoists, Lexi quickly related the story of how she’d been caught taking pictures of the man next door, and his conditions for returning the camera.
“You were taking pictures of him?” Nelda asked in astonishment. “Wow. He must really be something.”
“You have no idea,” Lexi said. “This guy is simply amazing. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s absolutely the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. I want to sculpt him.”
Her hands flexed as she spoke, as if in anticipation.
Nelda smirked. “Is that all you want to do with him? Sounds as if you can’t wait to get your hands on him for other reasons.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lexi scoffed. “The last thing I need is to get involved with some guy I don’t know anything about. He’s part of a construction crew hired to make repairs on the house next door. I’m not even sure he’s American. Did I tell you he has an accent? I can’t quite place it, but it’s crazy sexy.”
“So you want to sculpt him, but you don’t want to get to know him.” Nelda gave her friend a tolerant look. “You’re like a modern-day female Pygmalion, more attached to your stone-cold sculptures than you are to real, warm-blooded men. Let me know how that works for you.”
Blazing Bedtime Stories, Volume IX: The EqualizerGod's Gift to Women Page 10