Sinful Temptation

by Christopher, Ann

  Gloria gave her a wide-eyed look of incomprehension. “What’s going on in your life, exactly?”

  Talia lost it, which was probably the whole point. “I’ve got things to accomplish! You know this! I’m taking time off to travel, and I—”

  “Is this about Paul?” Gloria interrupted quietly, ignoring the tirade.

  “What? No! Of course not!”

  “He broke your heart.”

  Talia tried that on for size and decided it didn’t fit. “No. I was hurt, but he didn’t break my heart. Actually, he did me a favor by bailing on me before things went any further, right? So let’s just call it a lesson learned.”

  “What was the lesson?”

  Talia thought about Paul, and this, naturally, bled into thoughts of her father. He was a prominent surgeon who’d walked out on their mother for the greener pastures of his twenty-two-year-old medical transcriptionist. These experiences had led Talia to one inescapable lesson: “Men can’t be counted on when the going gets tough.”

  “I knew it!” Gloria’s eyes gleamed bright with triumph. “Don’t lump all men together with Paul—”

  “And Dad,” Talia reminded her.

  “Right, right—forget Dad. My point is that Tony seemed like a good guy. And he seemed like he was really interested in you. So give him a chance. Go out for drinks. See what happens. Have some fun. I’m telling you, I’ve got a good feeling about him.”

  Talia couldn’t believe her ears. “A good feeling? Is this the same kind of good feeling that led you into your ongoing two-year affair with a married man?”

  Talia regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, especially as Gloria winced and turned the vivid purple of a beet. Talia tried to backtrack.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  A ghostly smile flickered across Gloria’s face. “You meant it.”

  Talia put a hand on Gloria’s arm and gave her a sympathetic squeeze. “Look. I guess the bottom line is that we both want the best for each other. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on what the best is.”

  Gloria never went down without a fight. “Tony might be the best for you. I know Aaron is the best for me.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Talia smacked her own forehead in frustration, wondering why Gloria needed the same blast of brutal truth over and over again.

  “If Aaron wanted the best for you, he wouldn’t be smuggling you to Brooklyn hotels every time he wanted to see you, and I’m guessing he probably wouldn’t have kept you dangling for two good childbearing years with promises to leave his wife.”

  This clear-eyed analysis, predictably, made Gloria furious. “He’s leaving her over Memorial Day weekend,” she shouted. “You know he is! Why do you keep—”

  Talia held up her hands and surrendered to the queen of denial. “Fine. You win. You win! Subject dropped.”

  Gloria, who wasn’t quite ready to forgive and forget, got up in Talia’s face. “You’ll be eating those words soon, and I’ll be expecting an apology.”

  “I’ll be happy to apologize,” Talia reassured her. “What I can’t do is stay with you and hold your hand through another night of crying over that bastard.”

  Wrong choice of words. Again. Gloria’s eyes welled up and overflowed, and she swiped angrily at the tears. “I don’t need you to—”

  “Sorry. One of the other tenants let me in, so I came on up.”

  The male voice made them both jump, and they whirled around to discover Tony peering around the ajar door. His concerned gaze went directly to Talia and latched on, and his cheeks flushed with what looked like the kind of heightened awareness that she was feeling. If he knew Gloria was also in the room, he gave no sign of it.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Flustered more by his unexpected arrival than by her argument with Gloria, Talia shrugged and tried to look okay. “Of course.”

  They stared at each other for a lengthy beat, during which all of Talia’s nerve endings sparked to attention and her lungs emptied of air. She waited, reminding herself that this unholy reaction to Tony’s presence was the number one reason why she needed to stay the hell away from him. Despite what Gloria had said, this wasn’t a man with whom one had fun. This was a man a woman could fall for and love until her dying day.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Unsmiling, he came inside the studio, bringing all of his laser-sharp intensity with him. “But I need to talk to you for a minute, Talia.”

  Oh, no.

  “Talk?” Talia echoed stupidly.

  “It’s important,” Tony added.

  Talia stared at him, all her mental wheels spinning at top speed. Any more talking was out of the question, clearly. What good could possibly come of it? They’d talked already, and her heart was still achy from the experience. Plus, every time she saw him, it got that much harder to focus on why starting a relationship with him would inevitably lead to disaster. So the answer was clear: no more talking. Talking was bad.

  She opened her mouth to tell him he needed to leave.

  “Talk? Sure,” she said.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Gloria stifle a triumphant grin behind a tiny cough, which only added to Talia’s discomfort. She so did not need comments from the peanut gallery right now. Trying to be subtle about it, Talia shot Gloria a sidelong glare. Gloria, thankfully, took the hint and bustled around with a couple of boxes, trying to look busy.

  Talia noticed she kept her ear cocked, though.

  Filled with grim dread and making a mental note to clean Gloria’s clock at the first opportunity, Talia faced Tony again and discovered him studying the top of her head.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  Caught, he didn’t deny staring. “Your hair’s, ah, purple.”

  His unabashed interest made Talia feel self-conscious, and that, in turn, made her defiant. Glowering, she smoothed the nape of her pageboy bob, which had flat bangs and sharp angles that framed her cheeks.

  “You don’t like purple?”

  His mouth eased into a smile that was both crooked and appreciative, and his teasing murmur was for her alone. “I love purple, but the blue worked for me, too. I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.”

  Yeah, okay, she thought, flushing until she felt her skin sizzle.

  That was not the kind of thing she needed to hear if she wanted to keep her wits about her and her feet on the ground. That was the kind of dizzying compliment guaranteed to make her foolish heart flutter, and her willpower was at an ebb so low she couldn’t do much to protect herself.

  Still, she tried.

  “Thanks.” Squaring her shoulders, she strove for a tone that was crisp and direct. This was her territory, right? Which meant that she was in control here, even though her innards had turned to lukewarm Jell-O. “What brings you back so soon?”

  He wasn’t listening.

  With growing dismay, she watched as he turned back to the door and waved two men into the studio from the hallway. Being in the army had given him a decisive air she couldn’t hope to match, or maybe he’d been born that way. Whatever the reason, none of them seemed to have any doubt about who was in charge.

  So much for her being in control of this little visit, she thought sourly.

  “Talia Adams,” Tony said, “I’d like you to meet my cousins, Marcus Davies and his brother, Cooper. They’re my partners in the auction house.”

  Two of the biggest names in the New York art world? Here? In her unworthy little studio? No. Freaking. Way. This could not be happening.

  Scraping her jaw up off the floor, she arranged her lips into what she hoped was a casual smile, as if this sort of thing happened to her so often it was yawn worthy.

  She knew who they were, of course, although they’d never met. As a working artist, it was her business to study the local players, and she’d seen countless photos of them in local magazines over the years. They wined, dined and traded in the art world the way Martha Stewart made her way around a kit
chen, and here Talia was, trying to cobble together a cupcake or two. She was up and coming, yeah, but she’d figured she had to work, at the very least, several more years before these two would know she existed.

  What the heck was going on? Had Christmas come early this year?

  It didn’t help that they were, next to Tony, two of the hottest men she’d ever seen in person. Marcus had a deep olive complexion, short, sandy hair sun-streaked with gold, amber eyes and swooping brows. He had the kind of sexy mustache and stubble that suggested he only shaved when the mood struck, which wasn’t very often. His smile was easy and he was dressed in the black-on-black outfit—dress shirt with expensive jeans—that a lot of New Yorkers favored.

  Cooper, Marcus’s adopted brother, on the other hand, wore frayed camouflage cargo pants, a plain white T-shirt, and had an explosion of silky blond curls ringing his head like a halo. His hard jaw and thinned lips gave him the look of a man you didn’t want to piss off, and his glittering blue eyes were rock hard, as though they’d been chiseled straight from sapphires.

  They looked, in short, like models escaped from the pages of GQ and Soldier of Fortune magazines, respectively.

  Marcus stuck out a hand and shook Talia’s in his firm grip. “Talia. I’m familiar with your work. We thought it was time to take a closer look.”

  He was familiar with her work? Really? She knew she had talent, of course, but this was the equivalent of a freelance magazine writer getting a call from the head of G.P. Putnam’s Sons offering to buy a manuscript from her. She had the undignified urge to squeal with delight and spin in gleeful circles, but then she got suspicious. She shot Tony a questioning look, but his bland expression gave nothing away.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “It’s great to meet—”

  But Marcus’s attention had already wandered, and he was heading off to study some of her paintings. “I’ll just have a look around,” he said vaguely, producing a pair of edgy black-rimmed glasses from a pocket and slipping them on.

  O-kay, then.

  That left her to greet Cooper, the surly one. She shored up her courage, praying he wouldn’t kill her for saying hello.

  “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  It took him a minute to shake because he’d been distracted by something over her shoulder. Snapping to attention, he took her hand, said, “Pleasure,” in an indifferent voice, and then looked past her again.

  Bemused, Talia followed his line of sight to discover Gloria still working on packing boxes.

  “And you are…?” Cooper asked Gloria.

  “The sister,” Gloria told him. “Ignore me.”

  With that, she finished taping a box closed, swung it around and headed to the studio’s back room, giving Talia a suppressed smile and a wink as she went.

  Cooper stared after her, a vague frown marring his brow. “Excuse me,” he finally said to Talia, and then wandered off to join his brother as they studied the paintings.

  Which left Talia semi-alone with Tony.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, not bothering to hide her open suspicion.

  Shrugging, he took his time answering, and her nerves stretched accordingly. He had to know that she was freaking out and overwhelmed in the presence of a couple of men who could give her career a huge boost with little more than a snap of their fingers.

  “We told you. We wanted to take a closer look at your work.”

  “Why? Slow week? Did you run out of Picassos and Monets to buy and sell?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly, then?”

  “A couple things. First, a wall in my Hamptons estate was damaged in the storm a few months ago.”

  “And you decided to come down here and share that news flash with me?”

  “Not that news flash, no. This one—a huge mural depicting scenes from The Odyssey was destroyed. My mother, who was a Greek professor, commissioned that mural, and she loved it. Therefore, it means a lot to me, and I’d like it to be replaced.”

  Talia blinked, letting all that information sink in.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, no.

  Freezing her poker face into place, she waited for the rest, although she already had the terrible feeling that this conversation was going to culminate in a Godfather-esque offer she couldn’t refuse, no matter how much she knew she should refuse it.

  “Is that so?” she murmured.

  They seemed to be locked in an impromptu game of chicken, each trying not to waver or show weakness first and undermine their own bargaining position.

  He watched her with narrow-eyed interest for a beat or two, waiting for some further reaction, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. For reasons she couldn’t identify, it felt crucially important never to reveal weakness of any kind to Tony. If she did, she feared he’d swallow her alive in a single gulp.

  When she didn’t say anything else, his lips curled with what looked like reluctant admiration, as though he’d realized that, like him, she was a player.

  She tried to look bored, which was hard given the way her heart thudded with the strain of waiting.

  “Additionally,” he continued, now studying the tips of his neat fingernails as he crossed his ankles and leaned against the table, “we’d like to commission a mural for the lobby of Davies & Sons. The main building over on—”

  “—Madison Avenue,” she finished for him. Like she hadn’t had her nose pressed to the sleek glass windows of the auction house millions of times, desperate for a glimpse of the artwork inside.

  One heavy brow rose, mocking her. “You’re familiar with it? Excellent. We thought that would be a great place to showcase an edgy new painter. We want something that’ll make people stop and stare when they walk in the building. You feel me?”

  Oh, she felt him, all right. She also couldn’t breathe.

  “We figure we could unveil the new lobby mural at our fiftieth-anniversary gala the week before Labor Day. The artist we choose will get a tremendous amount of exposure. Of course.”

  Of course. Bastard.

  Finished dangling his rotten little carrot in front of her starving face, he looked up and straightened his posture. There was a glint in his eyes that looked suspiciously like amused triumph, but, to his credit, he didn’t smirk.

  “Know anyone who might be interested?” he wondered.

  Interested? She was damn near frothing at the mouth.

  It took everything she had to shrug and keep her face blank.

  “I couldn’t say,” she lied.

  “Really?” That quirked brow of his rose higher, and her fingers itched to rip it off his amused face and stomp it beneath her foot like a fuzzy caterpillar. “Why don’t you think about it for a minute.”

  Oh, she was already thinking about a lot of things.

  First of all, there was a silky and disconcerting note in his voice that glided across her skin like a feather’s touch and made nerve endings zing to life all over her body. Second, she’d been so sure that her path for the foreseeable future was set. She’d made her list of priorities, with no room for last-minute deviations.

  She’d been working too hard, she’d thought.

  Life was short and she didn’t want to miss a second of it, so she’d planned to get off the merry-go-round and travel while she could. Choose different, better goals than merely being a successful painter.

  She wanted, in short, to live.

  Third, her superlative deductive skills had led her to one inescapable conclusion: this mural commission was a gambit to get around what she’d told him yesterday. She’d lied and said she felt nothing romantic for him, he knew she was lying, and now he’d manufactured a reason to throw them together.

  He was betting he could wear down her resistance if they spent more time together.

  He was right.

  “Talia?”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, low.

  Like magic, the intensity burning behind h
is brown eyes died out, and his expression became as bland as a bowl of infant rice cereal with milk.

  “Doing what? Proposing something that could benefit both of us?”

  “You don’t really need me.”

  His lips tightened into a grim line. “Is that so?”

  “You’re trying to uproot my life, Tony.”

  “I’m merely making a business proposition to you.”

  “I’ve told you I’m planning to travel for a while.”

  “Then tell me no,” he said flatly.

  She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She closed her mouth.

  He watched her, unsmiling. This moment—this decision—had somehow become too important for petty things like winning or losing, and he seemed to take no pleasure in her struggle.

  “Why me?” she asked finally. “There are a million other artists who’d be—”

  He edged closer, more firmly into her space. There was something predatory about him now, threatening in a way that had nothing to do with her physical safety. It excited her almost as much as it—he—terrified her.

  “Well, now you’re raising an interesting point, Talia. This is a good offer. Lots of other artists would snap it up in a heartbeat. So why are you acting like I’m serving you a plate of nuclear waste?”

  “You’re not answering my question. Why me?”

  “Why not you?”

  “I don’t want to work with you.”

  “Because…?”

  Was he trying to force her to say it? Again? Well, fine. “Because we have different expectations about our—” her cheeks flushed “—relationship.”

  He frowned, looking baffled. “No, we don’t.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am serious. I told you I had feelings for you, you said you don’t have feelings for me, so that’s it. We’re friends only. End of story.”

  Standing there with him, close enough to see the sparks of black-and-gold in his brown eyes and feel the heat from his body, it didn’t feel like the end of any story.

  It felt as though their story was just beginning.