Indiscreet

by Alison Kent

Earlier, Poe hadn’t wanted to talk about Patrick’s weirdness. She’d simply gotten dressed in the guest room, grabbed her bag and herded Chloe to the parking garage, using some excuse about needing to go over the setup for the New Year’s Eve showing at Devon’s gallery.

  Now that they’d arrived, and Poe had had the twenty-minute trip across town to cool her jets, Chloe vowed that she wasn’t going anywhere without first getting the scoop.

  Poe slammed the driver’s-side door of her low-slung black Jaguar. Her expression might’ve fooled others, but Chloe saw beneath the cold mask to the seething fire.

  “It’s exactly as I related earlier. I told him he has to go, and he’s pissed off,” Poe said, walking around the front of the car.

  “Patrick being pissed off makes sense.” Chloe fell into step beside her girlfriend as they headed for the staircase leading to the building’s second story. “But I still say that you blowing him off doesn’t.”

  Poe cast a glance over her shoulder as she began the climb. “Actually, it makes a lot of sense. He’s been a nice distraction, but it’s time for me to move on.”

  “Move on to what?” Chloe asked, following Poe. “A nunnery? Because I can’t imagine that Patrick Coffey doesn’t know his way around a bedroom.”

  “It’s about moving on with my life. My life. It has nothing to do with Patrick or the bedroom.” Poe reached the second-story covered landing and glanced back. “How many times have we talked about this recently? You know what I’m facing.”

  “Yeah. A midlife crisis at age thirty-three.” Though thirty-three wasn’t as bad as the crisis Chloe was having as she neared twenty-eight.

  “It’s hardly a crisis. I’m simply preparing for life after graduation.”

  “So you’re determined to leave gIRL-gEAR?”

  “You and I talked about this long before I was made partner. It can hardly be a surprise to anyone. But especially not to you.”

  Chloe shrugged. “You’re right. It shouldn’t be. But it is.”

  Poe crossed her arms over her chest and faced her friend directly. “This degree has taken me twice as long as it should have. I’ve worked full-time. I’ve modeled on the side, all to pay for this education. Why would you think I’d change my mind after the effort I’ve put in?”

  “No reason. Just wishful thinking. We’ll miss you,” Chloe admitted, hating the thought of losing a friend. It was hard enough to face the idea of losing Eric. Oh, God. “I’ll miss you,” she said, her voice a strangled mess.

  “Good Lord, Chloe. I’m not leaving the country. I’m not even leaving the city. At least not yet. I’ll certainly still be around.”

  “You won’t be at the office.” She pursed her lips, deciding to put an end to this depressing conversation before she sank any further into a morass of self-pity. “But nothing you’ve said explains why you’re dumping Patrick.”

  Poe rolled her eyes before giving Chloe a look that throttled her as effectively as a pair of hands. “Our being together is not…healthy. You’ve seen how Patrick is.”

  “Yeah. Sexy as hell. Moody and intense. Wickedly intriguing.”

  “Not to mention quite unstable and more than a little bit wild. He’s unpredictable, to say the least, and I’m running short on patience dealing with his disposition.” Poe put an end to the conversation by turning away and opening the gallery’s front door.

  But Chloe wasn’t that easily fooled. She’d seen the harsh pain in her girlfriend’s eyes and knew there was a lot more going on here than Poe, being Poe, would ever admit. With the subject of Patrick Coffey summarily closed, Chloe walked into the gallery.

  The first thing that struck her was the coolness, then the silence and then the sense of calm. Closing the door behind her, she shut her eyes and breathed in the scents of hardwood floors and fresh flowers and oils on canvas.

  Or she imagined the latter, because she couldn’t quite identify the source of a more earthy and elemental smell. No, even that was a lame description and not accurate at all. The scent was rich and sharp and…arrgh!

  She gave up trying to isolate what it was relaxing her so, and simply…relaxed.

  “Chloe? Are you coming? Devon’s probably in his office.”

  Chloe shook her head; her eyes drifted open slowly. “I’ll catch up. I want to look around. I haven’t been here before, remember?”

  Poe smiled. “Sure. I’ll find Devon and be back.”

  Chloe couldn’t even find the energy to wave the other woman away. She knew she was being overdramatic, or flaky a` la Kinsey Storey—the most recently married gIRL-gEAR partner—but it was as if Chloe could literally feel the tension of the last few weeks seeping away. Ridiculous, really.

  She was much too practical to believe the ambience of a room could soothe her stress. Then again, soothed was exactly how she felt as she held her clutch purse at her waist and made her way slowly into the gallery proper.

  It had to be the simplicity, the contrast to the recent chaos of her life, lending an air of tranquility to her surroundings in ways the supposed aromatherapy candles she burned failed to do.

  Candles. Ha! Yes, she’d been that desperate, that hopeless, that lost of late that she’d turned to candles and bath oils and massages, looking to ease the nerves burning an ulcer into her stomach.

  The massages had helped; sex would’ve been better.

  But Eric never came to bed anymore until long after she was asleep.

  “That watercolor is called Missedtakes,” said a voice at Chloe’s shoulder.

  She glanced from the painting she hadn’t even noticed to the man who had spoken, the man without a trace of an accent, but whose beautiful almond-shaped eyes told her he was Devon Lee.

  “I’ve thought of moving it farther into the gallery because visitors find it hard to walk away.” As he spoke, he studied the depiction of a woman staring into a pond, gazing at what wasn’t her reflection but a man’s retreating back. Devon didn’t look at Chloe at all.

  She turned to the framed canvas again and listened to Poe’s brother; his voice lulled her further into a strangely hypnotic state.

  “I suppose there’s a sadness about it, but I prefer to see the hope that comes with moving on.”

  Moving on. The very words Poe had used earlier. Chloe felt conspired against, though such a feeling was absurd. Neither Devon nor his sister knew all the details of the uncertainty plaguing her relationship with Eric, how she feared he’d fallen in love with who he thought she was and not the truth of who he’d since discovered her to be….

  “It doesn’t appear to me as if she’s doing anything but wondering what went wrong.” Ugh. She’d barely managed to raise her voice above a whisper and still it had cracked.

  Devon stepped closer, hovered behind her yet made no contact. “Or maybe she sees it exactly, and he’s the one who is blind.”

  Emotion gripped Chloe’s throat and made it hard for her to swallow or to speak. She wondered what Eric would see in this painting, or if he would be as blind to any possible interpretation as he was to her.

  No. That wasn’t fair. He knew she was restless, searching, unsatisfied. That was why he never came to bed. A funny way to go after all those babies he’d once claimed to want so badly. A claim she was coming to believe had been a lie.

  Chloe turned and stared into Devon’s dark eyes, seeing a sensitivity that complemented rather than compromised his incredible masculinity. “You painted it, didn’t you?”

  His lips quirked in a wry smile. “And here I worked so hard on disguising my signature.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see your signature. It’s in your eyes.”

  Slowly, he moved his gaze from the canvas to her face. His black brows drew into a slashed V above a very straight, very aquiline nose. His lips were lush and eminently tempting, and his teeth fairly gleamed.

  “I wasn’t aware I was that transparent,” he said softly, his voice low and seductive, even if he hadn’t meant it to be.

  Or perhap
s she was simply longing to be seduced. She tried to shrug it off. “You caught me in a receptive mood.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it is?”

  She tilted her head ever so slightly. “Why do you ask?”

  He drew closer without seeming to move at all. “I hear it in your voice.”

  Oh, boy. This was not good, this feeling of anticipation sweeping the length of her body. The unexpected excitement, the sudden giddy rush of blood to her head.

  She reached deep inside to find the punchy sarcasm, the acerbic sense of humor that always served her well…and came up with nothing. “Then I suppose I ought to keep my mouth shut.”

  What she really needed to do was turn and walk out the door, to wait for Poe at the car, to refuse to have anything to do with the New Year’s Eve showing that would mean time spent in this man’s company. She was hurt and raw and too susceptible to his flirtation, to the feeling of having what a man might want when she’d so obviously disappointed Eric.

  “Devon Lee,” he said, and held out his hand.

  She took it and replied, “Chloe Zuniga.”

  “Ah. Annabel’s friend,” he murmured, taking far too long to release her.

  Chloe nodded. “She thought she’d find you in your office. I told her I wanted to look through the gallery.”

  He held out his arm, gesturing for her to precede him into the low-ceilinged maze. “Then it would be my pleasure to give you a tour.”

  Doing her best to ignore the warmth of his attention, Chloe turned, only to come face-to-face with Poe. “Poe, hey. I found your brother.”

  “So I see,” she said, with a remarkable lack of pleasure in her tone at finding the two of them so chummy.

  Devon cleared his throat. “I was just about to walk Chloe through the gallery.”

  Poe looked from Devon to Chloe and back again before facing them with crossed arms, a posture that nearly caused Chloe to cower.

  “The only stop on this tour is your office,” Poe said to Devon, turning to Chloe and tapping into her guilt with what might as well have been an accusation. “We have work to do.”

  UPON RETURNING to the loft, Annabel shoved the elevator grate closed just as Patrick came out of the kitchen. He was wiping his hands on a towel, and smells of onions and garlic followed him. The guarded look he wore told her she wasn’t in for a fun-filled evening at home.

  It really was too much for a Saturday. No breakfast, refereeing Devon and Chloe and now back to face her pirate and his mercurial moods. Wondering what had happened to her nice, relaxing two-week vacation, Annabel tucked her car keys and sunglasses into her bag and tossed it to the sofa.

  She arched one brow. “Are you finished sulking?”

  Patrick waited for a moment, staring at her, unmoving, the glint off the silver hoop in his ear as bright as that in his eyes. With his hair cropped close and his face exposed completely, she had no trouble seeing the tic in his jaw as he bit down on his answer. Finally, he turned and walked back to the kitchen, leaving her unsatisfied and frustrated and on the verge of turning right around and walking back out.

  Of abandoning him to his own devices. And abandonment was one thing of which she was incapable.

  Circling the near end of the sofa, she picked up the wooden memento box she kept on her coffee table. Twelve inches long, four inches deep and covered with a Chinese almanac print, the box had belonged to her mother, a gift from man number seven and a keepsake that meant no more to Annabel now than it had to her mother then.

  She’d kept it…she didn’t know why. It was as false in its representation of her Asian heritage as were her mother’s never-ending promises to stay.

  Inside, however, was a rectangular jade pendant inscribed in gold with the Chinese character for love. The pendant had belonged to Annabel’s grandmother, who had willed it to her and it meant more to her than any single memory of her mother that remained.

  Her grandmother had done all that she could for both of her grandchildren, finally moving them to Houston to be near more of her own family when it was clear their mother had left, never to return. Annabel couldn’t have asked for a better example of serenity in patience and purpose.

  Inheriting more of that attitude would have served her well, but at least she knew that when she parted ways with Patrick, she would do so having given his redemption her very best shot. If she failed in her efforts, it would be because he wasn’t ready to be redeemed. She stroked her thumb over the smooth jade before returning it to the box and going to salvage what she could of her Saturday night.

  “Listen, Patrick,” she began, rounding the wall of lava lamp sculptures and entering the kitchen. Once again, the empty kitchen. She sighed heavily and turned off the fire beneath the skillet of braising garlic.

  On the countertop next to the stovetop, she found the New Year’s Eve menu notes she’d left on the coffee table earlier in the day. This time her sigh was even heavier, as was the weight of her heart. She recognized his effort to apologize for being an ass this morning.

  He’d taken the initiative and jumped right to what had to be a trial run of the recipes, taking care of what she wanted him to do. Holding up his end of the bargain they’d made. The only reason she’d agreed to keep him around.

  That thought shouldn’t have caused her such grief, such a sense of foul play. She certainly shouldn’t be thinking of taking it all back—and she wasn’t, really. She was simply surprised to find Patrick so deeply under her skin.

  Steeling herself for what she’d find in the bedroom, she walked out the kitchen’s back entrance and down the short hallway. He stood at the bedroom window. Even though it wasn’t yet dusk, the interior remained dim due to the cloudy evening skies.

  With the miniblinds open but left down, stripes of what light there was outside fell across the hardwood floor and across Patrick’s body. From the rear, he appeared more as a silhouette than a three-dimensional man.

  His head hung down, his focus on the floor rather than the street below. Having his hands in his pockets seemed to add more width to his already impressive shoulders. He stood with his feet apart as if he were on point, ready to pounce.

  The bronze of his skin, the black of his T-shirt and jeans, his crop of dark brown hair combined in a sort of camouflage. She could so easily see him in the tropics, in the jungle, fighting to stay alive. He had the look of a freedom fighter, a guerilla, and he stirred her emotions as well as her blood.

  She drew in a full breath to steady her shaky nerves, and approached slowly. She wanted him to hear her steps; she’d learned from their first night together not to surprise him. It was best for both their sakes.

  He stiffened. She saw the slight shift in the set of his shoulders, saw him tighten further the closer she drew. It wasn’t until she slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the center of his back that he relaxed at all. The breath he exhaled seemed to deflate his entire body until she thought he might fall should she let go.

  Breathing deeply, she inhaled his scent, looking to calm herself with his familiarity, but remembering too many other times when she’d held him this close without the burden of clothing between them. Separating the sensual from the sexual had become an impossible task.

  She embraced the aesthetic feel of his body, the muscles that bulged, that rippled, that stretched into elongated contours beneath his skin. Yet another part of her knew this body simply as the one that brought her such pleasure.

  Her own now reacted, her breasts tightening, her thighs clenching hard in response to the rush of inner heat and dampness waiting to spill. Patrick finally moved his hands from his pockets to cover hers, which were resting over his midsection. The simple gesture brought enormous relief.

  “Guess the haircut didn’t do much for my civility.”

  A little bird told her that this was not the time for that conversation. Instead, she tightened her hold. “No, but it’s done plenty for your sex appeal.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, and she f
elt his cocky grin.

  She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t have to. His entire body relaxed, as if accepting her forgiveness of his transgression.

  “So,” he began in that rich voice that rumbled through her, holding him as she was. “If I’m so sexy, why aren’t you busy jumping my bones?”

  This time she was the one who grinned. “You really do have a one-track mind.”

  “Yeah, but at least that’s one thing about me you don’t hate.”

  If only things were that simple. “There are more than a few things about you that I don’t…hate.” Didn’t he know? The breath he obviously held said he needed to hear the words. “I do not hate your kitchen skills.”

  He huffed.

  “Or your passion. I certainly do not hate your wit, your intelligence or your ability to take yourself lightly, though you need to work on doing that more often. And I do appreciate that you don’t hold a grudge against those who aren’t sure what to make of you.”

  He huffed again and growled. “I’m more interested in what you make of me.”

  She sighed, doing no more than enjoying this moment of holding him close. An enjoyment that took on a heightened sense of pleasure when he grasped her hands and moved them from his midsection to the fly of his jeans. Very impressive.

  “Okay,” she admitted. “You’re very hard to resist.”

  “Too hard to resist, I hope.”

  “Hmm. I don’t know.” She pressed her palm to the length of his growing erection and squeezed. “Ah, now it’s getting harder.”

  “You like flirting with danger, don’t you? I can feel your smile on my back.”

  “You could feel it much better if you’d pull off your shirt.”

  He wasn’t two seconds in taking her up on the suggestion. He unbuttoned his jeans while he was at it, then braced both hands on the window frame and leaned his weight into his arms, silently inviting her to have her way.

  Ah, the responsibility of his surrender. She thrilled to the fact that he trusted her as far as he did, and wished that he trusted her fully. Or perhaps it was himself he still wasn’t ready to trust.