by Shelby Reed
“Hmm. I think he likes you too much to mind his own beeswax.”
Silence again. She made two rotations on the merry-go-round and had nearly passed him again when he stopped the ride with his foot.
She studied his clothing. He was still wearing the same brown Doc Martens oxfords, jeans, a long-sleeved maroon T-shirt advertising some restaurant in Virginia Beach, and his open leather jacket over that. She’d seen every inch of him naked tonight, and yet for some reason his appearance in that nondescript outfit seared her just as much. As always, her mind slid a paintbrush across the canvas, capturing him, half shadow and half man. How ironic, and frustrating, that in the few days she’d had him standing before her as a model, she hadn’t even finished a single sketch of him.
He shifted his weight and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “I sent Cherise home.”
Warmth curled through her veins, but she kept an impassive expression. “That’s nice.” Then, because she couldn’t help herself, “I thought you might have a date.”
“No,” he said.
He was probably planning to get with her later. But if Colm was the gentleman he seemed and did take Cherise out for a real date instead of a late-night booty call, where would they go? To a midnight movie, then home to his place in the city? She tried to envision his bedroom and came up with an imperfect image of an unmade bed with wrinkled sheets, khaki walls, books or magazines scattered on the floor by the bedside table. An empty beer bottle on the windowsill. Condoms in the bedside table drawer.
She wanted him, but he could never know what she was thinking, sitting here before him while her existence, her life as she knew it, dangled dangerously close to the edge of destruction.
“What are you doing, Sydney?” His voice came gentle, as though he read her mind. “Here? Alone?”
She swallowed and looked past him at the empty swings swaying gently in the cold night. “Thinking about my secrets,” she said finally. “I have a lot of them.”
“I know.”
He knew because in a mere five days, he’d looked into her and torn off her defenses in slow, bleeding strips. She rubbed a hand across her eyes and tried not to meet his gaze. He was deadly.
His foot, braced on the edge of the merry-go-round, gently swayed the steel structure on its axis, back and forth, while it squeaked like a cranky child. “I have them, too, Syd.”
The diminutive nickname sounded sweet to her ears. His scent floated on the breeze, warm skin and lime.
And out of nowhere, slicing brutally through her desire, welled an unbidden wave of tears.
“I’m a really damaged person, Colm.”
He didn’t comment on the choked quality of her voice. He lowered his foot and held out his hand. When she took it, she thought he meant to help her climb off the merry-go-round, but instead he urged her to scoot back on its diamond-plated expanse. “Lie down on your back.”
Her brows lowered, but she did as he instructed, bracing herself on her elbows so she could read his intentions. The metal seeped cold through her coat, chilling her butt and spine, and she felt awkward with her legs dangling off the side.
“Put your feet up so they don’t touch the ground,” he told her. When she obliged, he moved to lie beside her, separated from her only by the steel handlebar. He braced one foot on the platform and used the other to push the merry-go-round into rotation again.
After a moment, Sydney glanced at him. He didn’t look back, so she watched his profile, so finely sculpted against the glow from the playground lights. He had one arm tucked behind his head, his gaze fixed on the sky. The moon was high, an ivory crescent sliver, the shadow of its dark side a blacker promise than the night could offer. She finally laid back, too, and let her head rest uneasily on the metal platform. The stars radiated in all their glory, so many they looked like pinpricks on the surface of heaven. She thought of a long-ago man named Greg, first her mother’s lover and then her own. Rage squeezed her throat again. Rage and shame and grief for lost innocence.
Colm’s foot pushed them a little faster. Now the stars blinked and blurred. A silken breeze raised goose bumps on her naked arms beneath her coat sleeves, dried the moisture trickling from the corners of her eyes and down her temples.
“Truth or dare?” he said.
Shock and amusement assailed her at the same time. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Do I have to do this?”
“You’re chicken.”
“I’m not chicken.” She sighed. “Truth.”
He thought for a moment. “What’s the worst thing you ever did as a kid?”
So many things. Too many to count. She searched for something safe, circumvented the greatest sins of her life. “When I was fourteen, my mother went out of town and made the mistake of letting me stay by myself for a night. I took the car and drove it around the city.”
“Did you get busted?”
“No. She never knew the difference.”
She sensed his amusement but didn’t check for his smile. The last time he’d smiled at her, in the midst of something Garrett had said earlier tonight, a spear of desire had caught her right in the stomach. Then he’d laughed, and the sound of his laughter, warm and genuine to her ears, suited him perfectly. Every part of him was designed in the image of something so much more beautiful than anything she’d known.
If he smiled again, she would reach for him.
“Truth or dare?” she asked instead.
“Truth.”
“Same question you asked me. Worst thing you did as a kid.”
“There’s a long and distinguished list.” He considered, then said, “I broke into my high school on a dare and got caught. Arrested. My parents let me rot in jail for twenty-four hours before they bailed me out. My cellmate puked on me.”
Sydney pressed her lips together to keep in the laughter that pushed through her sadness. “He just . . . walked up to you and blaaaah?”
“Yeah. A big, threatening guy who didn’t like scrawny kids with smart mouths. I tried to disappear into the bench.”
“Did you think he was going to hit you?”
“Absolutely. His fists were the size of hams. But then he puked on me instead.”
She laughed and rolled her head to look at him. “I bet you smelled like a rose the next day.”
“Jeez.” He shuddered. “My dad wouldn’t let me in the car. He made me walk home from the jail. Three miles.”
Now she really laughed, one arm flung over her head and the other falling across her stomach to keep from coming apart. She didn’t remember the last time she’d genuinely laughed.
She stopped when he said, “Truth or dare, Syd? Any girl with guts would choose a dare now.”
But she didn’t trust him enough. She didn’t know how. “Whatever. Truth.”
“What’s your biggest regret?”
Her mind went blank. She didn’t want to think about any of it. She had to swallow before she could reply. “That I ran away from home at seventeen and never went back.” She didn’t give him a chance to ask about it. “Your turn.”
His fingers curled around the metal bars on either side of his legs, and he changed feet, hooking his other heel on the edge of the merry-go-round. “Truth.”
“Your biggest regret in life. What’s good for the goose . . .”
He didn’t speak for so long, she poked his arm. “Come on. Spill it.”
“My wife died in an accident.”
Sydney turned her head to look at him, but all she could see was his profile silhouetted against the golden lights they passed.
“I was driving,” he said.
“Colm.” When she sat up, he reached for her hand.
“We’re still playing the game.” His voice came low, unemotional, even as he slid his fingers between hers and squeezed her hand. “Truth or dare?”
“I’m so sorry. Colm. I’m sorry.” She met his eyes when the merry-go-round rotated out of shadow again, and withdrew her ha
nd from his warmth. “I can’t do this. It’s not right, not after what you just told me.”
“Truth or dare?” he repeated, the words coming harder now, insistent.
She blinked once, then again, her stomach aching and hollow. “Truth.”
“Tell me why you’re so afraid. Of men. Of me.”
Her own regret and misery paled before his confession. But she couldn’t block the memories, or stop the fresh tears, a river of them now, as she released a breath, and with it, the darkest truth she could muster. “It’s ironic, really, my fear, considering what I’ve done . . . but . . .”
“But?” he prompted gently.
“But I had an affair with my mother’s boyfriend when I was sixteen.”
The merry-go-round stopped abruptly under his direction.
She drew a shuddering breath, tangled in feelings of horror and sympathy for the secret he’d just shared with her, and the deepest shame for her own. “I was an angsty, multi-pierced teenager who looked like trouble. The guys my mom brought home—they liked to come after me, but she never believed me when I tried to tell her. And then she started dating Greg, and he was different. He actually listened to me and talked to me when she ignored me. He acted like he cared.”
The tightness in her throat threatened to choke off the words. Why in God’s name was she admitting any of this to Colm? And why did it matter that he would likely find her as disgusting as she still found herself fourteen years later?
Fresh tears squeezed through her lashes as the teenager in her rose up and finished the story she couldn’t bring herself to speak. “This whole thing went on for a few weeks behind my mom’s back, but eventually she put two and two together. It wasn’t until she kicked him out that I started thinking maybe . . . maybe it wasn’t okay that a forty-year-old man had wanted to be with someone as young as me.”
She drew a shuddering breath and hung her head. “Then I hated him, but my mother hated me more. So I ran away. Came to D.C. After a few years of waiting tables and living with college students, I met Max at a party where I was a waitress. He had such a mental force, and at the same time he gave me the sense that he would be my family—that I would finally have a family if I trusted him. He believed in me. So I—”
She couldn’t finish; she was too sick inside. Slowly Colm sat up beside her, but he didn’t touch her. He gave the merry-go-round another push with his foot. The cold breeze gently lifted free the strands of hair that had stuck to her damp cheeks.
She wiped her eyes on her shoulder and finally found her voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said quietly. “It’s just a game.”
She swallowed. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted him. His realness. His rawness. His honesty. “Truth or dare?” she managed to ask, and prayed he’d tell her something else that would lift them both from the darkness.
Grasping the bar overhead, he ducked his head to look at her as they passed into shadow again. “Dare,” he said. And before she could draw another breath, he leaned in and kissed her.
* * *
To his astonishment, she didn’t kiss back. Damn it, her mouth didn’t move one bit, not even when he angled his head and slid the tip of his tongue across the soft seam of her lips. He could taste the sweet saltiness of tears and went hard just that easily. He tried again, licked her top lip, then her bottom, but while her mouth quivered, she didn’t invite him in. Finally, he eased back and met her eyes, which shone liquid with tears.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered.
“You dared me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No.”
“Didn’t you?” He lifted a hand to brush the unkempt hair back from her temple. He loved her like this, so broken and imperfect. He breathed in her scent, flowers and fruit. “Just like last night in the studio, we’re alone here. You have tears in your eyes. I want to kiss them away. I want to kiss you, again and again.”
“You can’t.” She put up a hand and climbed off the merry- go-round before he could act on his words. “Not last night, not now, not ever.”
He leaped up and followed her.
“Why?” he asked, catching her elbow.
“You know why.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you.”
Self-loathing ate into his conscience. He thought of Amelia and kept talking. “There’s this thing between us, Sydney. From the start. It’s keeping me up at night.” A truth, but not enough to banish the mortal sin of the lie he offered her every day. And now that he knew the pain she carried from her past . . .
Wretch.
He lowered his voice, heard the same husky tone emerge from his throat that he used on his clients at Avalon. “You know what I think about when I lie awake?”
“Don’t say it.”
Don’t say it. Let her out of this trap, let her run free.
Amelia would go to a nursing home when the money stopped coming in.
“I think about touching you . . .” He traced the curve of Sydney’s eyebrow with a single finger and she shivered, her face upturned to him, asking for his kiss, yet ready to turn it aside again.
“I think about tasting you”—he leaned to murmur in her ear—“and making you cry out with pleasure . . . ”
“I said don’t.” She drew back and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her wool coat. “Even if this were the passion of a lifetime, Colm, it’s not going to work. Do you honestly think I’d go bounding into an affair with the man Max hired to model for my next show? He’s trying to help me.”
“Hell of a way to do that,” Colm said shortly.
“But I do think he is, in his own messed-up way. So I won’t betray him. He and I . . . it’s ending, but not until I can do it right. We’ve gone too many miles together.”
He didn’t answer. The half-decent being still alive inside him wanted to lay down the truth about her beloved Max.
“I’m sorry,” he told her as he rose from the merry-go-round. “I won’t touch you again until you ask me.”
She gave a dry laugh. “You really think I will? Come on, Colm.”
“Let me see you home safely and I’ll leave you alone.” More lies. Even though it was dark, he imagined he could see the doubt die in her eyes and knew she trusted him to do just that. The hustler in him knew this wasn’t over. She was gullible. He would have her under his hands and mouth, twist her and mold her into exactly what he wanted.
Exactly like Max Beaudoin had for four years—only Colm would do it in nine days.
Chapter Eleven
Sydney couldn’t sleep.
Four hours after she and Colm shared a tension-choked walk home, she kicked free of the binding covers and climbed out of bed. The wood floor creaked under her feet loud enough to wake the dead, but not even a phantom would be interested in her sleeplessness.
Downstairs, she flipped on the kitchen light and blinked in its high fluorescent glare. The room was cavernous. Who needed such a big kitchen? Three people lived in this house. She, Max, and Hans. Three. The kitchen would never know the sounds of children, either. Once upon a time Sydney had believed she could change Max’s mind—change him. But the subject of children, the impasse they’d reached, had ceased to even matter with his accident, like a child in its own right the way it took her attention, her time, her devotion, every cell of her soul.
Now, again and at last, the relationship was over. When he came home from Chicago, she would tell him good-bye. As friends, if he would allow it, but no more so-called lover, and no more puppet master. It was all she knew for certain in her existence on this damned planet.
Sleep tonight was a fickle friend. She headed back upstairs to dress.
When she stepped outside and drew the massive front door closed behind her, the world outside was hers. Wind rifled through the dried autumnal canopy overhead as she swung her flashlight along the path to the studio. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.
Beyond the trees, Colm’s cabin windows glowed golden and muted, rem
inding her of one of those clichéd, mass-produced prints that somehow still appealed to her haggard artist’s heart. His cabin looked warm and welcoming.
Sydney changed direction at the last minute, away from the studio and toward Colm. The fallen leaves crunched beneath her tennis shoes as she approached the small guest cabin and slowed to see if she could spot him through the open curtains. The TV was on. His bare feet were braced on the coffee table in front of it, his ankles hemmed by pale blue pajama bottoms. Although she couldn’t see all of him, she knew he was slumped down on the sofa so that the back cushions caught the nape of his neck, one hand resting on his flat stomach. Even from the porch steps, she could hear the low murmur of his voice, the conversation indecipherable but the tone low, intimate. He was obviously on the phone, talking to a friend. At this inappropriate hour, a very special friend. Someone uncomplicated who deserved such intimate attention, not a woman entangled in a mess with Max Beaudoin.
Feeling like a fool, she backed away and headed for the studio. Inside, she jacked up the heat, set the canvas of the ménage against the wall, and uncovered Colm’s portrait, then put it on the easel to look at it. It could still be salvaged from the other night. She played with her brushes, trying to decide if she wanted to work on it now, while night waned and dawn threatened, and a few yards away, Colm was the only other person awake in the world.
Then she remembered the way the champagne had made her feel the night of her last show—that she could do anything, even stand under a beautiful man’s piercing regard and discuss genitalia. Hers.
A new bottle of Shiraz in the cabinet, via Hans, would have to do.
Soon she was settled down with a plastic cup of wine and a fresh palette of paint. She put on some Joan Baez, poured herself more wine, organized her supply area . . . poured herself more wine, changed her mind about working on Colm’s portrait, tried to stretch a canvas and felt too silly and loose-muscled all of a sudden to deal with hammer and nails.
By the time the bottle was three-quarters empty, she sat perched on the barstool again, staring at the portrait. She did need to fix the smudges from where she’d thrown it on the floor. The part that wasn’t ruined looked just like him, especially the eyes and the collarbones. Collarbones? The thought made her smile. She stopped abruptly when the room tilted a little. His lips looked good, too, but there was no way to capture their resilience in two dimensions. They were so soft, and God, did the man know how to kiss, with sinuous tongue, with soft invasion, which meant he probably did everything else with the same thoroughness and care.