Sadie made a face. “I’ll think about it.”
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to do it. I said you were doing it.”
Sadie sat back as the waiter delivered their dinner. After he’d left, she picked up her wineglass. “Only if you give me the details on the Viking. I’ve never seen you so blushy about a man before.”
* * *
THE VIKING. LENA paused as she entered the church. A fairly large crowd was milling around, looking at the art, but her gaze went immediately to Matt. Sadie had that right. Tall, blond, broad shouldered, he did look like a Viking, especially with his long hair tied back with a length of leather and that beard. He was dressed in poor-artist chic. Khaki pants, a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up over those very nice forearms. Her hand went to her chin and a hot rush raced through her as she remembered the burn that beard had left on her skin.
The heat intensified when he turned and looked directly at her. Even from across the room, she could see the hot spark in his eyes. With a grin that seemed almost feral, he headed straight for her, his eyes never leaving her.
“Thank God, you’re here,” he whispered in her ear as he looped an arm around her waist, sending a delicious thrill through her. “Save me.”
“Save you from what?”
“These people. Inane blither. All of them trying to remember enough Art History 101 to pontificate properly.”
Lena snorted out a laugh, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Looking around the room, she laughed again. A much more ladylike laugh though. Because it was true. The crowd was ever so properly dressed and ever so properly discussing the art. They all looked so serious.
“These are your people, Matt. You should know how to talk to them.”
“I don’t want to talk to them. That’s the problem.”
She swayed, lightly bumping against him. “Let’s get out of here then.”
His eyes were hot and his bad boy grin at full power when he looked over at her. “And go where?”
“Anywhere.”
He sighed. “As much as I want to, I can’t right this minute. I need these people.”
She matched his sigh. “I understand.” Snatching a wineglass from the tray carried by a passing server, she showed him she had a bad-girl grin of her own. “Let’s booze, schmooze and vamoose.”
“Is that your strategy?”
“Watch me.”
* * *
WATCH ME. AS if he could take his eyes off her. Grabbing his own glass of wine, he followed. She moved around the room with a precision that awed him. Her instincts were perfect. First she chatted up the wives of the men with the deepest pockets. Then she played coquette as some of the old goats flirted with her. She made it look easy. Effortless. He chatted halfheartedly with a few of the other artists while watching Lena work the room.
It only looked like she was casually perusing the displayed art. She turned her dark eyes in his direction and made a discreet motion with her hand that he interpreted as “give me a minute, then come over.” He nodded.
“Ah,” she said a moment later as he approached the small group clustered around his painting. “Here’s the artist. Matt, I was just telling everyone that you’re about to become the next Pollock.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said slowly as the others turned to stare at him. What had she been telling them?
“Well, you might not, but I do,” Lena said brightly. She smiled at the three couples standing with them. “So humble, but look at this. It’s almost alive.”
Matt almost choked on his wine. He managed to keep from laughing. She was spreading it on rather thick, but from the look in their eyes, they were buying it. All of them were glancing between him, Lena and the painting.
“Lena!”
Everyone turned as Dr. Rutledge approached them.
“Eliot,” Lena practically purred, an evil little glint appearing in her eyes. “I was just telling these wonderful people about Matt’s work. How he’s about to explode in the art world.”
The doctor turned an appraising glance at Matt, one corner of his mouth lifting in a quick smile. He caught Lena’s verbal pitch as smoothly as if they’d planned it. “Indeed. I’m trying my best to leave some of it for others, but it’s difficult.” He motioned to the painting. “Every new piece I see, I like more than the previous one. My wife is going to take away my checkbook soon.”
“You’ve been very generous in your support,” Matt said.
“I’ve been very selfish in my support,” Eliot said. He lifted a finger at the others. “I only invest my money in a sure bet.”
“Do you have a card?” one of the men asked.
* * *
“THAT WAS A thing of beauty,” he said.
Lena sipped her reward—a blush martini at Kaminsky’s—and winked at him. “I know a thing or two.” She dipped a finger into the whipped cream on the slice of key lime pie Matt was eating and licked it off.
His eyes followed her movement, and then met hers. “You can’t be doing things like that in public.”
She held his gaze as she slowly, deliberately, reached out and scooped up another fingerful of cream and, this time, sucked it off her finger. “Do what?”
“You’re killing me here.”
“Torturing maybe, but not killing.”
He pulled the plate closer and placed a protective arm in front of it. “I offered to buy you a pie but you said no.”
“Greedy.”
“But really. Where’d you learn to work a crowd like that?”
She shrugged. “Watching. Listening. You rich people are amazingly predictable.”
He gestured at himself with his fork. “I am not rich.”
She rolled her eyes. “Rule number one, you all pretend like you aren’t rich. Rule number two, you’re all afraid if you don’t do or say what other rich people are doing and saying that they will think you aren’t rich like them. Rule number three, don’t ever be the first one to do something new. Only the richest white male with the most influence is allowed to do something new first. Then everyone has to do it because he did.”
Matt stared at her, forkful of pie midway to his open mouth. She reached out, closed her fingers around his wrist and guided the fork to her mouth. She closed her eyes. May have moaned a bit. He was still staring at her when she opened her eyes.
“What?”
“That’s...that’s brilliant,” he stammered.
She laughed. “I swore you were going to say bullshit.”
“No. It’s dead-on.”
“I know. This is why you, Charles Beaumont Matthews the Fifth, make me curious. How did a long-haired, bearded artist fall out of your family tree?”
A look crossed his face. Not quite annoyance, not quite anger. It was gone as quickly as it appeared. That grin came back. “I don’t want to talk about my family. I want to talk about where we can find a can or two of whipped cream at this time of night.”
She lifted her eyebrow and finished her martini in a few long swallows. “I believe I have a can in my fridge.”
He put down the fork. “Then why are we still here?”
“IT’S COLD OUT HERE,” Matt said as he stepped out on the balcony. Lena had slipped out of her bed, and when she didn’t return, he’d gone looking for her.
“Winter’s coming,” she said. “Or it’ll be in the nineties next week. Never can tell with Charleston weather.”
He put his arms around her, pulling her against him. “What are you doing?” he murmured in her ear. Their lovemaking had been as amazing as the first time but she seemed a bit distant now.
“I like to watch the ships go by in the harbor,” she said. She lifted her hands to his arms and tilted her head back against his chest.
“Do you want me to
leave?”
She turned in his arms. “No. I mean, I don’t expect you to stay if you don’t want to...” Her words trailed off. “But, hell, Matt. What are we doing?”
“That’s not a discussion to be had out here freezing. Come back inside.”
He took her by the hand and led her back inside. Sliding the door shut, he felt something sharp on his foot. Lena’s cat dashed through the closing door to hide under the couch. Which was better than the cold death stare the thing had been giving him since they arrived. Which was a shame because he liked cats.
Back in the warm bed, with Lena curled up in his arms, he felt both at peace and a bit nervous. What are we doing? It sounded suspiciously close to an initial approach of a the-sex-was-great-but-goodbye-now speech. A speech he did not want to hear.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m getting to know a fascinating woman and discovering more amazing things about her every minute.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Getting to know each other? Are we dating? Sex buddies? What?”
“What do you want us to be?”
She rolled away from him and stared up at the ceiling. “It’s just complicated. I’m not very good at the dating stuff.”
“Then we won’t date. We’ll just go be in the same places at the same time a lot.”
“You are just full of solutions.”
He turned on his side and brushed her hair away from her face. “If that was true, I wouldn’t be going back home this weekend. I’d be somewhere at the same time with you.”
That got her attention. “You don’t want to go home?”
“I want to see my nieces. But I’m not going home. I’ve been ordered home.”
She propped up on an elbow. “Ordered?”
“Something like that.” He didn’t want to talk to her about his family. It didn’t show a good side of him. It showed the bitterness he was still trying to work out of his system. He wanted her to see the Matt he was trying to be. Not the Matt he had been.
“Something like that? What does that mean?”
He rolled onto his back and put his forearm across his eyes. “My family and I don’t see eye to eye on my life choices.”
“Oh, that’s better. Except that it isn’t. What’s the truth?”
He moved his arm and looked at her. “My family hates me.”
A puzzled frown appeared on her face. It was so genuine it made his heart ache a little bit. She shook her head.
“I don’t understand. Hates you?”
“Okay. Hate might be a strong word. They don’t like me. And I’m not overly fond of them. Except my older sister, Charlotte. We get along great.”
Lena sat up and propped the pillows on the headboard behind her. “How can you not like your family?”
He craned to look over at her. Sighed. “Everything you’ve said about me is true, Lena. Spoiled, rich, trust-fund brat. But those things come with expectations. And I didn’t meet their expectations.”
“How?”
He sat up and pulled her into his arms. “Lena, I could start listing those right now and not finish until the sun comes up. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The look she gave him, long and speculative, sent a flicker of worry through him. She was close to her family. He’d seen that at the hospital. And as annoyed as she said she was with them, she loved them. What must it have been like? To be raised with such support and love?
“I’d like to meet your family,” he said impulsively. Then laughed as her expression turned into one of incredulous horror.
“That’s not funny,” she said, pulling the sheet up over her breasts and tucking it under her arms.
“Why? Because I’m white?”
“That’s the least of my worries.”
“What then?”
“That they’ll think we’re serious. They’ll have the church picked out and have you enrolled in conversion classes—you aren’t already Catholic, are you?—before the lunch table is even cleared off.”
“Sorry. Not Catholic. Worse, one of those starchy Methodists. So, your family is doing the Hispanic-guy setups because...?”
She scowled at him, so he gave her his baddest bad-boy grin. “Because they are stuck in their ways.”
“Come on, Lena, take me home to meet your family. I’ll be good.”
“Not yet,” she said.
“Progress,” he replied.
Sass hopped up at the end of the bed and they looked at her. She sat down and stared. Lena held a hand out. “Come here, Sass. It’s okay.”
“I don’t think she likes me,” Matt said.
Sass’s head swiveled to him and her ears went high and pointed forward. She took a tentative step forward.
“It’s not you. She’s a spoiled-rotten feline, that’s all. Come here, Sass.”
Matt turned to look at Lena, who made a quiet beckoning sound. Sass took another step and he looked back at her. She froze. He looked at Lena again. “Pretty sure it’s me.”
“No, she’s coming.”
He turned to see the cat marching up the bed now, her eyes intent on him. “She’s not going to kill me, is she?”
“She’s a cat, Matt. Not a tiger.”
“Whoa. Okay. Hi there, Sass,” Matt said as Sass stepped up and sat on his stomach, staring at him. He looked to Lena. “Does she like ear scratches?”
“Of course.”
“Ow!”
“Oh my God! Sass!”
Lena leaned forward and grabbed the cat from his stomach as he clamped his hands over his beard. “She attacked me!”
“She was playing with your beard.” Lena let the cat go and fell forward, laughing. “She thought it was a toy.”
“Your cat attacked my face!”
“Your beard. You kept whipping it around so much swiveling your head like that, so it probably looked like a new toy.”
He cast a doubtful eye at Sass, who was sitting back at the bottom of the bed. She lifted a paw and licked at it delicately. “Does that mean she likes me?”
Lena sat up and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Yes. She likes you. I’m sure your family likes you too, Matt. Have you tried to talk to them? I mean, it’s been a while since you left home, right? Maybe they are regretting things they did also?”
He smiled at her earnest tone of voice. Little did she know. “Maybe.”
“Talk to them when you go home. Maybe they are. You won’t know until you try.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SATURDAY MORNING, MATT leaned against the window at the Charleston Airport, losing a battle with his mother. “I don’t want you to send the car. I can take the metro. It’s faster.”
“Nonsense. I won’t have you dragging up the drive like some homeless bum.”
He rolled his eyes. “Have the car pick me up at the metro stop then. What are you afraid of? That the neighbors might realize we know how to walk?”
“The driver will be waiting to meet your flight. Today is about your grandfather, not how much you hate us all.”
“I don’t hate...”
But she’d already hung up. He threw his backpack in an empty chair and slumped down next to it. Next time, just pull a Nancy Reagan. Just say no. Turning his phone over in his hands, he thought about calling Lena. Just to hear her voice. A smile touched his lips. He was already learning so much about her. Like how when she was completely relaxed, a tiny tinge of an accent appeared in her words. And that she could swear in Spanish raunchily enough to make a priest faint. She could make him laugh until his ribs hurt. And kissing her was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Being with her was like a refuge. Even with that crazy cat of hers trying to rip his face off.
He tucked the phone away. No. Calling her now would
be a bad idea. Dealing with his family didn’t bring out the best in him. And he wasn’t blameless in the situation.
He didn’t hate his family as his mother frequently accused; he just didn’t like them. Except Charlotte. His oldest sister had been away at college for most of his bad years and she was a little more understanding and forgiving. She’d had a lot of pressure placed on her as the firstborn. She had been required to be perfect, to be pretty, to be properly refined and to catch a suitable rich husband and begin providing grandchildren. She’d done those things, but on her own terms.
Susanna, the middle child, was worse than his mother in some ways. Of course, she’d been front and center at his rebellion and being only two years older, they’d been in high school together. He’d embarrassed her too many times for her to forgive him. He sighed. High school had been a long time ago and as much as he wished they’d let go of the grudges, it didn’t seem like they would.
The phone vibrated in the outer pocket of the backpack. He pulled it out. A text from Lena.
Safe travels. Have fun. Talk to them.
Reading the words, he felt a heavy sadness press down on him. Have fun. Had he ever had fun with his family? How could he ever explain this to Lena? He’d seen her family. In droves, they showed up to visit her little cousin in the hospital. Loud, loving, warm. He typed out a few replies, deleting them all before settling on a simple lie.
I will try. Thanks.
* * *
OF COURSE THERE was a driver waiting for him. Holding a sign. For God’s sake. The only thing surprising was that he wasn’t dressed in a black suit. It crossed his mind to just walk by and get on the metro but he slowed his steps. Part of the reason he’d agreed to this trip was to try to make amends.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m Charles Matthews.” The driver looked him over, clearly skeptical. “I can show you my ID if you’d like.”
“No, sir, that’s quite all right. Do you have baggage to claim?”
Matt smiled. Yeah, he had baggage. “No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Very good, sir, if you’ll follow me.”
Boss Meets Her Match Page 17