by Nora Roberts
“Any sensitivity,” she continued, “you wouldn’t announce that you were in love with someone in the same tone you’d use to frighten small children.”
“I’m not in love with someone!” he shouted at her, infuriated because she was right and he couldn’t do a thing about it. “I’m in love with you, and damn it, I don’t like it.”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear.” She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
“Don’t pull that regal routine on me,” Grant began. Her eyes sharpened to dagger points. Her skin flushed majestically. Abruptly he began to laugh. When she tossed her head back in fury, he simply collapsed against her. “Oh, God, Gennie, I can’t take it when you look at me as though you were about to have me tossed in the dungeon.”
“Get off of me, you ass!” Incensed, insulted, she shoved against him, but he only held her tighter. Only quick reflexes saved him from a well-aimed knee at a strategic point.
“Hold on.” Still chuckling, he pressed his mouth to hers. Then as abruptly as his laughter had begun, it stilled. With the gentleness he so rarely showed, his hands came up to frame her face, and she was lost. “Gennie.” With his lips still on hers he murmured her name so that the sound of it shivered through her. “I love you.” He combed his fingers through her hair, drawing her head back so that their eyes met. “I don’t like it, I may never get used to it, but I love you.” With a sigh, he brought her close again. “You make my head swim.”
With her cheek against his chest, Gennie closed her eyes. “You can take time to get used to it,” she murmured. “Just promise you won’t ever be sorry it happened.”
“Not sorry,” he agreed on a long breath. “A little crazed, but not sorry.” As he ran a hand down her hair, Grant felt a fresh need for her, softer, calmer than before but no less vibrant. He nuzzled into her neck because he seemed to belong there. “Are you really in love with me, or did you say that because I made you mad?”
“Both. I decided this morning I’d have to bend to your ego and let you tell me first.”
“Is that so?” With his brows drawn together, he tilted her head back again. “My ego.”
“It tends to get in the way because it’s rather oversized.” She smiled, sweetly. In retaliation, he crushed his mouth to hers.
“You know,” he managed after a moment. “I’ve lost my appetite for breakfast.”
Smiling again, she tilted her face back to his. “Have you really?”
“Mmm. And I don’t like to mention it …” He took his fingertips to the lapel of the robe, toying with it before he slid them down to the belt. “But I didn’t say you could use my robe.”
“Oh, that was rude of me.” The smile became saucy. “Would you like it back now?”
“No hurry.” He slipped his hand into hers and started toward the steps. “You can wait until we get upstairs.”
* * *
From his bedroom window, Grant watched her drive away. It was early afternoon now, and the sun was brilliant. He needed some distance from her—perhaps she needed some from him as well. That’s what he told himself even while he wondered how long he could stay away.
There was work waiting for him in the studio above his head, a routine he knew was directly connected to the quality and quantity of his output. He needed that one strict discipline in his life, the hours out of the day and night that were guided by his creativity and his drive. Yet how could he work when his mind was so full of her, when his body was still warm from hers?
Love. He’d managed to avoid it for so many years, then he had thoughtlessly opened the door. It had barged in on him, Grant reflected, uninvited, unwelcomed. Now he was vulnerable, dependent—all the things he’d once promised himself he’d never be again. If he could change it, he was sure he would. He had lived by his own rules, his own judgment, his own needs for so long he wasn’t certain he was willing or able to make the compromises love entailed.
He would end up hurting her, Grant thought grimly, and the pain would ricochet back on him. That was the inevitable fate of all lovers. What did they want from each other? Shaking his head, Grant turned from the window. For now, time and affection were enough, but that would change. What would happen when the demands crept in, the strings? Would he bolt? He had no business falling in love with someone like Gennie, whose lifestyle was light-years away from the one he had chosen, whose very innocence made her that much more susceptible to hurt.
She’d never be content to live with him there on his isolated finger of land, and he’d never ask her to. He couldn’t give up his peace for the parties, the cameras, the social whirl. If he’d been more like Shelby …
Grant thought of his sister and her love for crowds, people, noise. Each of them had compensated in their own way for the trauma of losing their father in such a hideous, public fashion. But after fifteen years, the scars were still there. Perhaps Shelby had healed more cleanly, or perhaps her love for Alan MacGregor was strong enough to overcome that nagging fear. The fear of exposure, of losing, of depending.
He remembered Shelby’s visit to him before she made her decision to marry Alan. She’d been miserable, afraid. He’d been rough on her because he’d wanted to hold her, to let her weep out the memories that haunted them both. He’d spoken the truth because the truth was what she’d needed to hear, but Grant wasn’t certain he could live by it.
“Are you going to shut yourself off from life because of something that happened fifteen years ago?”
He’d asked her that, scathingly, when she’d sat in his kitchen with her eyes brimming over. And he remembered her angry, intuitive, “Haven’t you?”
In his own way he had, though his work and the love of it kept him permanently connected with the world. He drew for people, for their pleasure and entertainment, because in a fashion perhaps only he himself understood, he liked them—their flaws and strengths, their foolishness and sanity. He simply wouldn’t be crowded by them. And he’d refused, successfully until Gennie, to be too deeply involved with anyone on a one-to-one level. It was so simple to deal with humanity on a general scope. The pitfalls occurred when you narrowed it down.
Pitfalls, he thought with a snort. He’d fallen into a big one. He was already impatient to have her back with him, to hear her voice, to see her smile at him.
She’d be setting up now for the watercolor she’d told him she was going to begin. Maybe she’d still be wearing the shirt Grant had lent her. Her own had been torn beyond repair. Without effort, he could picture her setting up her easel near the inlet. Her hair would be brushed away from her face to fall behind her. His shirt would be hanging past her hips….
And while she was getting her work done, he was standing around mooning like a teenager. On a sound of frustration, Grant strode into the hall just as the phone began to ring. He started to ignore it, something he did easily, then changed his mind and loped down the stairs. He kept only one phone, in the kitchen, because he refused to be disturbed by anything while he was in his studio or in his bed. Grant snatched the receiver from the wall and leaned against the doorway.
“Yeah?”
“Grant Campbell?”
Though he’d only met the man once, Grant had no trouble identifying the voice. It was distinctive, even without the slight slur it cast on the Campbell. “Hello, Daniel.”
“You’re a hard man to reach. Been out of town?”
“No.” Grant grinned. “I don’t always answer the phone.”
The snort Daniel gave caused Grant’s grin to widen. He could imagine the big MacGregor sitting in his private tower room, smoking one of his forbidden cigars behind his massive desk. Grant had caricatured him just that way, then had slipped the sketch to Shelby during her wedding reception. Absently he reached for a bag of corn chips on the counter and ripped them open.
“How are you?”
“Fine. More than fine.” Daniel’s booming voice took on hints of pride and arrogance. “I’m a grandfather—two weeks ago.”
> “Congratulations.”
“A boy,” Daniel informed him, taking a satisfied puff on his thick, Cuban cigar. “Seven pounds, four ounces, strong as a bull. Robert MacGregor Blade. They’ll be calling him Mac. Good stock.” He took a deep breath that strained the buttons on his shirt. “The boy has my ears.”
Grant listened to the rundown on the newest MacGregor with a mixture of amusement and affection. His sister had married into a family that he personally found irresistible. He knew pieces of them would be popping up in his strip for years to come. “How’s Rena?”
“Came through like a champ.” Daniel bit down on his cigar. “Of course, I knew she would. Her mother was worried. Females.”
He didn’t mention it was he who had insisted on chartering a plane the minute he’d learned Serena had gone into labor. Or that he had paced the waiting room like a madman while his wife, Anna, had calmly finished the embroidery on a baby blanket. “Justin stayed with her the whole time.” There was just a touch of resentment in the words—enough to tell Grant the hospital staff had barred the MacGregor’s way into the delivery room. And probably hadn’t had an easy time of it.
“Has Shelby seen her nephew yet?”
“Off on their honeymoon during the birthing,” Daniel told him with a wheezy sigh. It was difficult for him to understand why his son and daughter-in-law hadn’t canceled their plans to be on hand for such a momentous occasion. “But then, she and Alan are making up for it this weekend. That’s why I called. We want you to come down, boy. The whole family’s coming, the new babe, too. Anna’s fretting to have all the children around again. You know how women are.”
He knew how Daniel was, and grinned again. “Mothers need to fuss, I imagine.”
“Aye, that’s it. And with a new generation started, she’ll be worse than ever.” Daniel cast a wary eye at his closed door. You never knew when someone might be listening. “Now, then, you’ll come, Friday night.”
Grant thought of his schedule and did some quick mental figuring. He had an urge to see his sister again, and the MacGregors. More, he felt the need to take Gennie to the people whom, without knowing why, he considered family. “I could come down for a couple of days, Daniel, but I’d like to bring someone.”
“Someone?” Daniel’s senses sharpened. He leaned forward with the cigar smoldering in his hand. “Who might this someone be?”
Recognizing the tone, Grant crunched on a corn chip. “An artist I know who’s doing some painting in New England, in Windy Point at the moment. I think she’d be interested in your house.”
She, Daniel thought with an irrepressible grin. Just because he’d managed to comfortably establish his children didn’t mean he had to give up the satisfying hobby of matchmaking. Young people needed to be guided in such matters—or shoved along. And Grant—though he was a Campbell—was by way of being family….
“An artist … aye, that’s interesting. Always room for one more, son. Bring her along. An artist,” he repeated, tapping out his cigar. “Young and pretty, too, I’m sure.”
“She’s nearly seventy,” Grant countered easily, crossing his ankles as he leaned against the wall. “A little dumpy, has a face like a frog. Her paintings are timeless, tremendous emotional content and physicality. I’m crazy about her.” He paused, imagining Daniel’s wide face turning a deep puce. “Genuine emotion transcends age and physical beauty, don’t you agree?”
Daniel choked, then found his voice. The boy needed help, a great deal of help. “You come early Friday, son. We’ll need some time to talk.” He stared hard at the bookshelf across the room. “Seventy, you say?”
“Close. But then true sensuality is ageless. Why just last night she and I—”
“No, don’t tell me,” Daniel interrupted hastily. “We’ll have a long talk when you get here. A long talk,” he added after a deep breath. “Has Shelby met— No, never mind,” he decided. “Friday,” Daniel said in a firmer tone. “We’ll see about all this on Friday.”
“We’ll be there.” Grant hung up, then leaning against the doorjamb, laughed until he hurt. That should keep the old boy on his toes until Friday, Grant thought. Still grinning, he headed for the stairs. He’d work until dark—until Gennie.
Chapter 9
Gennie had never known herself to be talked into anything so quickly. Before she knew what was happening, she was agreeing to pack her painting gear and a suitcase and fly off to spend a weekend with people she didn’t know.
Part of the reason, she realized when she had a moment to sort it out, was that Grant was enthusiastic about the MacGregors. She learned enough about him in little more than a week to know that he rarely felt genuine affection for anyone—enough affection at any rate to give up his precious privacy and his time. She had agreed primarily because she simply wanted to be where he was, next because she was caught up in his pleasure. And finally because she wanted to see him under a different set of circumstances, interacting with people, away from his isolated spot on the globe.
She would meet his sister. The fact that he had one had come as a surprise. Though she admitted it was foolish, Gennie had had a picture of Grant simply popping into the world as an adult, by himself, already prepared to fight for the right to his place and his privacy.
Now she began to wonder about his childhood—what had formed him? What had made him into the Grant Campbell she knew? Had he been rich or poor, outgoing or introverted? Had he been happy, loved, ignored? He rarely talked about his family, his past … for that matter, of his present.
Oddly, because the answers were so important, she couldn’t ask the questions. Gennie found she needed that step to come from him, as proof of the love he said he felt. No, perhaps proof was the wrong word, she mused. She believed he loved her, in his way, but she wanted the seal. To her, there was no separating trust from love, because one without the other was just an empty word. She didn’t believe in secrets.
From childhood until her sister’s death, Gennie had had that one special person to share everything with—all her doubts, insecurities, wishes, dreams. Losing Angela had been like losing part of herself, a part she was only beginning to feel again. It was the most natural thing in the world for her to give that trust and affection to Grant. Where she loved, she loved without boundaries.
Beneath the joy she felt was a quiet ache that came from knowing he had yet to open to her. Until he did, Gennie felt their future extended no further than the moment. She forced herself to accept that, because the thought of the moment without him was unbearable.
Grant glanced over as he turned onto the narrow cliff road that led to the MacGregor estate. He glimpsed Gennie’s profile, the quiet expression, the eyes dreamy and not quite happy. “What’re you thinking?”
She turned her head, and with her smile the wisp of sadness vanished. “That I love you.”
It was so simple. It made his knees weak. Needing to touch her, Grant pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. She was still smiling when he cupped her face in his hands, and her lashes lowered in anticipation of the kiss.
Softly, with a reverence he never expected to feel, he brushed his lips over her cheeks, first one, then the other. Her breath caught in her throat to lodge with her heart. His rare spurts of gentleness never failed to undo her. Anything, everything he might have asked of her at that moment, she would have given without hesitation. The whisper of his lashes against her skin bound her to him more firmly than any chain.
Her name was only a sigh as he trailed kisses over her closed lids. With her tremble, his thoughts began to swirl. What was this magic she cast over him? It glittered one instant, then pulsed the next. Was it only his imagination, or had she always been there, waiting to spring into his life and make him a slave? Was it her softness or her strength that made him want to kill or to die for her? Did it matter?
He knew it should. When a man got pulled in too deeply—by a woman, an ideal, a goal—he became vulnerable. Then the instinct for survival would take seco
nd place. Grant had always understood this was what had happened to his father.
But now all he could grasp was that she was so soft, so giving. His.
Lightly, Grant touched his lips to hers. Gennie tilted back her head and opened to him. His fingers tightened on her, his breath quickened, rushing into her mouth just before his tongue. The transition from gentle to desperate was too swift to be measured. Her fingers tangled in his hair to drag him closer while he ravished a mouth more demanding than willing. Caught in the haze, Gennie thought her passion rose higher and faster each time he touched her until one day she would simply explode from a mere look.
“I want you.” She felt the words wrench from her. As they slipped from her mouth into his, he crushed her against him in a grip that left all gentleness behind. His lips savaged, warred, absorbed, until they were both speechless. With an inarticulate murmur, Grant buried his face in her hair and fought to find reason.
“Good God, in another minute I’ll forget it’s still daylight and this is a public road.”
Gennie ran her fingers down the nape of his neck. “I already have.”
Grant forced the breath in and out of his lungs three times, then lifted his head. “Be careful,” he warned quietly. “I have a more difficult time remembering to be civilized than doing what comes naturally. At this moment I’d feel very natural dragging you into the backseat, tearing off your clothes and loving you until you were senseless.”
A thrill rushed up and down her spine, daring her, urging her. She leaned closer until her lips were nearly against his. “One should never go against one’s nature.”
“Gennie …” His control was so thinly balanced, he could already feel the way her body would heat and soften beneath his. Her scent contradicted the lowering sun and whispered of midnight. When she slid her hands up his chest, he could hear his own heartbeat vibrate against her palm. Her eyes were clouded, yet somehow they held more power. Grant couldn’t look away from them. He saw himself a prisoner, exulting in the weight of the chains.
Just as the scales tipped away from reason, the sound of an approaching engine had him swearing and turning his head. Gennie looked over her shoulder as a Mercedes pulled to a halt beside them. The driver was in shadows, so that she had only the impression of dark, masculine looks while the passenger rolled down her window.
A cap of wild red hair surrounding an angular face poked out the opening. The woman leaned her arms on the base of the window and grinned appealingly. “You people lost?”
Grant sent her a narrow-eyed glare, then astonished Gennie by reaching out and twisting her nose between his first two fingers. “Scram.”
“Some people just aren’t worth helping,” the woman stated before she gave a haughty toss of her head and disappeared back inside. The Mercedes purred discreetly, then disappeared around the first curve.
“Grant!” Torn between amusement and disbelief, Gennie stared at him. “Even for you that was unbelievably rude.”
“Can’t stand busybodies,” he said easily as he started the car again.
She let out a gusty sigh as she flopped back against the cushions. “You certainly made that clear enough. I’m beginning to think it was a miracle you didn’t just slam the door in my face that first night.”
“It was a weak moment.”
She slanted a look at him, then gave up. “How close are we? You might want to run off the cast of characters for me so I’ll have an idea who …” She trailed off. “Oh, God.”
It was incredible, impossible. Wonderful. Stark gray in the last lights of the sun, it was the fairy castle every little girl imagined herself trapped in. It would take a valiant knight to free her from the high stone walls of the tower. That it was here, in this century of rockets and rushing was a miracle in itself.
The structure jutted and spread, and quite simply dominated the cliff on which it stood. No ivy clung to its walls. What ivy would dare encroach? But there were flowers—wild roses, blooms in brambles, haunting colors that stubbornly shouted of summer while the nearby trees were edged with the first breath of fall.
Gennie didn’t simply want to paint it. She had to paint it in essentially the same way she had to breathe.
“I thought so,” Grant commented.
Dazed, Gennie continued to stare. “What?”
“You might as well have a brush in your hand already.”
“I only wish I did.”
“If you paint this with half the insight and the power you used in your study of the cliffs and lighthouse, you’ll have a magnificent piece of work.”
Gennie turned to him then, confused. “But I—you didn’t seem to think too much of the painting.”
He snorted as he negotiated the last curve. “Don’t be an idiot.”
It never occurred to him that she would need reassurance. Grant knew his own skills, and accepted with a shrug the fact that he was considered one of the top in his field. What others thought mattered little, because he knew his own capabilities. He assumed Gennie would feel precisely the same about herself.
If he had known the agony she went through before each of her showings, he would have been flabbergasted. If he had known just how much he had hurt her by his casual comment the day she had finished the painting, he would have been speechless.
Gennie frowned at him, concentrating. “You did like it, then?”
“Like what?”
“The painting,” she snapped impatiently. “The painting I did in your front yard.”
With their minds working at cross purposes, Grant didn’t hear the insecurity in the demand. “Just because I don’t paint,” he began curtly, “doesn’t mean I have to be slugged over the head with genius to recognize it.”
They lapsed into silence, neither one certain of the other’s mood, or their own.
If he liked the painting, Gennie fumed, why didn’t he just say so instead of making her drag it out of him?
Grant wondered if she thought serious art was the only worthwhile medium. What the hell would she have to say if he told her he made his living by depicting people as he saw them through cartoons? Funny papers. Would she laugh or throw a fit if she caught a glimpse of his Veronica in the New York Daily in a couple of weeks?