by Nora Roberts
“Aren’t you supposed to say something about how you’re not hitting on me, but that this is all for the sake of art?”
“It is for the sake of art.” The back of his fingers skimmed her thigh as he fussed with the lie of the material. “But I’m hitting on you, too.” He slid the strap of her top off her shoulder, studied the result, nodded.
“Relax. Start with your toes.” He rubbed a hand over her bare foot. “And work your way up.” Watching her, he ran his hand up her calf, over her knee. “Turn your head toward me.”
She did, and glanced over the paint supplies he’d set up by his easel. “Aren’t those watercolors? I thought you said you wanted oil.”
“This one’s for watercolors. I’ve got something else in mind for oils.”
“So you keep saying. Just how many times do you think you can persuade me to do this?”
“As many as it takes. You’re having a quiet afternoon by the water,” he told her as he began sketching lightly on the paper. “A little sleepy from wine and reading.”
“Am I alone?”
“For the moment. You’re just daydreaming now. Go wherever you want.”
“If it were warmer, I’d slide into the river.”
“It’s as warm as you want it to be. Close your eyes, Dru. Dream a little.”
She did as he asked. The music, soft, romantic, was a caress on the air.
“What do you think of when you paint?” she asked him.
“Think?” At the question his mind went completely blank. “I don’t know. Ah . . . shape, I guess. Light, shadow. Jeez. Mood. I don’t have an answer.”
“You just answered the question I didn’t ask. It’s instinct. Your talent is instinctive. It has to be, really, as you were so clever at drawing so young.”
“What did you want to do when you were a kid?” Her body was a long, slim flow to him. Shape.
“Lots of things. A ballerina, a movie star, an explorer. A missionary.”
“Wow, a missionary. Really?” The sun slid through the leaves and lay softly on her skin. Light and shadow.
“It was a brief ambition, but a profound one. What I didn’t think I’d be was a businesswoman. Surprise.”
“But you like it.”
“I love it. I love being able to take what I once assumed was a personal passion and a small talent for flowers and do something with it.” Her mind began to drift, like the river that flowed beside her. “I’ve never been able to talk to anyone the way I seem to be able to talk to you.”
“No kidding?” She looked like a faerie queen—the exotic shape of her eyes, the sexy pixie cap of dark hair. The utter female confidence of the pose. A faerie queen drowsing alone in her private glade. Mood.
“Why do you think that is?” he wondered.
“I haven’t a clue.” And with a sigh, she fell asleep.
THE music had changed. A woman with a voice like heartbreak was singing about love. Still half dreaming, Dru shifted. “Who is that singing?” she murmured.
“Darcy Gallagher. Some pipes there. I caught a show she did with her two brothers a couple years ago in County Waterford. Little place called Ardmore. It was amazing.”
“Mmm. I think I’ve heard—” She broke off when she opened her eyes and found Seth sitting beside the blanket with a sketchbook instead of standing behind the table. “What’re you doing?”
“Waiting for you to wake up.”
“I fell asleep.” Embarrassed, she rose on one elbow. “I’m sorry. How long was I out?”
“Dunno. Don’t have a watch.” He set the book aside. “No need to be sorry. You gave me just what I was after.”
Trying to clear her head, she looked over at the table. The watercolor paper was, frustratingly, out of her line of sight. “You finished?”
“No, but I got a hell of a start. Watch or no watch, my stomach’s telling me it’s lunchtime.” He flipped the lid on a cooler.
“You brought a real picnic.”
“Hamper was for art, cooler’s for practicality. We’ve got bread, cheese, grapes, some of this pâté Phil swears by.” He pulled out plates as he spoke. “And though I had to debase myself and beg, some of Anna’s pasta salad. And this terrific wine I discovered in Venice. It’s called Dreams. Seemed to fit.”
“You’re trying to make this a date,” she said warily.
“Too late.” He poured the first glass, handed it to her. “It already is a date. I wanted to ask why you took off so fast yesterday, when you came by the boatyard.”
“I’d finished my business.” She chose a chilled grape, bit through its tart skin. “And I had to get back to work.”
“So you want a boat?”
“Yes, I do. I like to sail.”
“Come sailing with me. That way you can check out how seaworthy a boat by Quinn is.”
“I’ll think about it.” She sampled the pâté, made a sexy little sound of pleasure. “Your brother Phillip has excellent taste. They’re very different, your brothers. Yet they hang together like a single unit.”
“That’s family.”
“Is it? No, not always, not even usually, at least in my experience. Yours is unique, in a number of ways. Why aren’t you scarred?”
He looked up from scooping out pasta salad. “Sorry?”
“There’s been enough information dribbled through the stories I’ve read about you, and what I’ve heard just living in Saint Chris, to tell me you had a very hard childhood. You told me so yourself. How do you get through that without being damaged?”
The press articles had barely skimmed the surface, Seth thought. They knew nothing of the young boy who had hidden from or fought off more than once the slick, groping hands of the drunks or druggies Gloria had brought home.
They didn’t know about the beatings or the blackmail, or the fear that remained a hard kernel lodged in his heart.
“They saved me.” He said it with a simple honesty that made her throat burn. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that they saved my life. Ray Quinn, then Cam and Ethan and Phil. They turned their world around for me, and because of it, turned mine around with it. Anna and Grace and Sybill, Aubrey, too. They made a home for me, and nothing that happened before matters nearly as much as everything that came after.”
Unspeakably moved, she leaned forward and touched her lips to his. “That’s for three. For making me like you. You’re a good man. I don’t know just what to do with you.”
“You could start by trusting me.”
“No.” She eased back again, broke off a small hunk of bread. “Nothing starts with trust. Trust develops. And with me, that can take considerable time.”
“I can probably guarantee I’m nothing like the guy you were engaged to.” When her body went rigid, he shrugged. “I’m not the only one who gets written about or talked about.”
And when she’d touched on a personal area, she reminded herself, he hadn’t frozen up. “No, you’re nothing like Jonah. We never had a picnic with his sister’s pasta salad.”
“Dinner at Jean-Louis at the Watergate or whatever tony French place is currently in fashion. Openings at the Kennedy Center. Clever cocktail parties inside the Beltway, and the occasional Sunday afternoon brunch with copacetic friends.” He waited a beat. “How’d I do?”
“Close enough.” Dead on target.
“You’re way outside the Beltway now. His loss.”
“He seems to be bearing up.”
“Did you love him?”
She opened her mouth, then found herself answering with complete honesty. “I don’t know anymore. I certainly believed I did or I’d never have planned to marry him. He was attractive, brilliant, had a deadly sarcasm that often posed for witty—and sometimes was. And, as it turned out, the fidelity of an alley cat. Better I found that out before we were married than after. But I learned something valuable about myself due to the experience. No one cheats on me without serious consequences.”
“Bruised his balls, did you?”
“Oh, worse.
” She nibbled delicately on pâté. “He left his cashmere coat, among other items, at my place. While I was coldly packing up his things, I took it back out of the packing box, cut off the sleeves, the collar, the buttons. And since that was so satisfying, I put, one by one, all his Melissa Etheridge CDs in the microwave. She’s a wonderful artist, but I can’t listen to her today without feeling destructive urges. Then I put his Ferragamo loafers in the washing machine. These acts were hard on my appliances, but good for my soul. Since I was on a roll, I started to flush my three-carat, square-cut Russian white diamond engagement ring down the toilet, but sanity prevailed.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I put it in an envelope, wrote ‘For His Sins’ on the front, then dropped it into the collection box at a little church in Georgetown. Overdramatic, but again, satisfying.”
This time Seth leaned over, touched his lips to hers. “Nice job, champ.”
“Yes, I thought so.” She brought her knees up, sipped her wine while she looked out over the water. “A number of my acquaintances think I left D.C. and moved here because of Jonah. They’re wrong. I’ve loved it here since that first time we came with my grandfather. When I knew I had to make the break, start fresh, I tried to imagine myself living in different places, even different countries. But I always came back here in my head. It wasn’t impulsive, though again, a lot of people think so. I planned it for years. That’s how I do things, plan them out. Step by step.”
She paused, rested her chin on her knees as she studied him. “Obviously, I’ve missed a step somewhere with you or I wouldn’t be sitting here on the grass drinking wine on a Sunday afternoon and telling you things I had no intention of talking about.”
She lifted her head again, sipped wine. “You listen. That’s a gift. And a weapon.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Healthy people don’t step toward a relationship with the intention of hurting each other. Still, they do. Maybe it’ll be me who ends up hurting you.”
“Let’s see.” He cupped a hand at the back of her neck, rubbing lightly as he bent down to lay his lips on hers. “No,” he said after a moment. “No bruises yet.”
Then shifting, he framed her face with his hands to lift it until their lips met again.
Very soft, suddenly deep and wrenchingly gentle, his mouth moved on hers. With silky glides he teased her tongue into a dance as his fingers trailed down the line of her throat, over the curve of her shoulders.
She tasted of the wine that spilled unnoticed when her hand went limp on the glass. He found the quick catch and release of her breath when she drew him closer as arousing as a moan.
He laid her back on the blanket, sliding down with her as her arms linked around his neck.
She wanted his weight. She wanted his hands. She wanted his mouth to go on and on taking from hers. She felt the brush of his fingers on her collarbone, and shivered. They skimmed over the thin material of her top, then slipped down to dance over her breast.
He murmured her name before he grazed his teeth over her jaw. And his hand, so beautifully formed, so rough from work, molded her.
Heat flashed through her, urging her to give and to take. Instead, she pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Wait. Seth.”
His mouth came back to hers, hungrier now, and with the dangerous flavor of urgency. “Let me touch you. I have to touch you.”
“Wait.”
He bit off an oath, rested his forehead on hers while his blood raged. He could feel her body vibrating under his, and knew she was just as needy. “Okay. Okay,” he managed. “Why?”
“I’m not ready.”
“Oh, sugar. Any more ready, you’d be past me.”
“Wanting you isn’t the same as being ready.” But she was afraid he was right. “I didn’t intend for this to happen, not like this. I’m not going to make love with a man who appears to be involved with someone else.”
“Involved with who? Jesus, Dru, I just got back home, and I haven’t looked at another woman since the first time I saw you.”
“You’ve been involved with this one long before you saw me.” He looked so blank, so disheveled, so frustrated she wanted to giggle. But she stayed firm. “Aubrey.”
“What about Aubrey?” It took him several jolting seconds to understand her meaning. “Aubrey? Me and . . . Christ on a crutch, are you kidding?” He’d have laughed if the idea hadn’t left him so shocked. “Where do you get that?”
“I’m not blind.” Irritated, she shoved at him. “Move, will you?”
“I’m not involved with . . .” He couldn’t even say it, but he sat back. “It’s not like that. Jesus, Dru, she’s my sister.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Niece.”
“Nor is she that. And maybe you are oblivious to what’s between you—though you don’t strike me as a dolt—but I doubt very much she is.”
“I don’t think about her that way.”
“Maybe you haven’t, on a conscious level.”
“At all.” The very idea had panic dancing in his throat. “None of the levels. Neither does she.”
Dru smoothed down her skirt. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah.” But the seed had been planted. “Yes. And if you’ve got some insane notion that me being with you is somehow cheating on Aubrey, you can forget it.”
“What I think,” Dru said calmly, “is that I’m not going to have an affair with a man who I suspect is attracted to someone else. Maybe you should work this out with Aubrey before anything goes any further between us. But for now I think we’d better call it a day. Do you mind if I take a look at the painting?”
“Yes.” He snapped it out. “I mind. You can see it when it’s finished.”
“All right.” Well, well, she mused, artistic temperament rears its head. “I’ll just pack up the food for you. I assume you want at least one more sitting,” she said as she began to pack the cooler. “I should be able to give you some time next Sunday.”
He stood, stared down at her. “You’re a case. Some asshole cheats on you so that means we’re all cheats?”
“No.” She understood his temper, and since it seemed a reasonable conclusion for him to make, she didn’t lose hers. “Not at all. In fact, I think you’re as honest as they come. I couldn’t consider being with you if I thought otherwise. But as I said, I’m not ready to take this step with you, and I have reservations over your feelings toward someone else—and hers toward you.”
She looked up then. “I’ve been the clichéd victim of the other woman, Seth. I won’t do that to anyone else.”
“Sounds like instead of you asking me about scars, I should’ve asked you.”
She rose now, nodded. “Yes, maybe you should have. Since you’re going to sulk, I’ll leave you to it.”
He caught her arm before she could breeze by, whipped her around so fast she felt fear burst like a bomb in her throat. “You keep taking those steps one at a time, sugar. It might take you longer to fall on your face, but you’ll fall just as hard.”
“Let me go now.”
He released her, turned his back on her to pack up his gear. More shaken than she wanted to admit, Dru made herself walk slowly into the house.
It was, she admitted, still a retreat.
NINE
WOMEN. SETH TOSSED the cooler into the trunk of the car, heaved the hamper in behind it. Just when you thought you understood them, they turned into aliens. And those aliens had the power to change a normal, reasonable man into a blithering idiot.
There was nothing a man could do to keep up with them.
He tossed in the blanket, kicked the tire, then yanked the blanket back out again. He stared over at her house and gave it a satisfactory snarl.
His mutters were a combination of curses, pithy remarks and considerable blithering as he stomped back for his folding table and watercolor paper.
And there she was, sleeping on the red blanket in the dappled sunlight. All lon
g limbs and color, with the face of a sleeping faerie queen.
“I ought to know who I’m attracted to,” he told her as he carefully lifted the painting-in-progress and carried it to the car. “One guy turns out to be a putz, and damns us all?” He laid the paper on the blanket, scowled at it. “Well, that’s your problem, sister.”
Sister, he thought and felt an uneasy jittering in his gut. Why the hell had she put that in his head about Aubrey? It was off, that’s all. It was way, way off.
It had to be.
He loved Aubrey. Of course he did. But he’d never thought about . . . Had he?
“You see, you see?” He jabbed a finger at the painting. “That’s what your kind does to us. You confuse everything until we start questioning our own brains. Well, it’s not going to work with me.”
Because it was more comfortable, he switched back to temper as he finished loading his car. He had nearly made the turn for home when he swung the car around, punched the gas.
“We’ll just settle this thing.” He spoke aloud and nodded at the painting. “Once and for all. And we’ll see who’s the idiot.”
He pulled up in the drive at Aubrey’s house, leaped out of the car and strode to the door with his outrage and temper still leading the way. He didn’t knock. No one would have expected him to.
The living room, like the rest of the house, was picture-pretty, cluttered just enough to be comfortable, and ruthlessly clean. Grace had a knack for such things.
Once she’d made her living as a single parent cleaning other people’s homes. Now she ran her own business, a cleaning service with more than twenty employees who handled homes and businesses on the Shore.
Her own home was one of her best advertisements—and at the moment it was also entirely too quiet.
“Aubrey?” he shouted up the stairs. “Anyone home?”
“Seth?” Grace hurried in from the kitchen. In her bare feet and cropped pants, her hair pulled carelessly back from her face, she looked entirely too young to have a daughter some wrong-headed woman thought he was attracted to.
Jesus, he’d baby-sat for Aubrey.
“Come on back,” she told him with a quick kiss. “Ethan and Deke are out back fixing the lawn mower. I was just making some lemonade.”