“I’m so glad you had this chance to meet Sweeney,” Candra said. The mention of her name brought Sweeney’s attention back with a rush, and she found Candra smiling warmly at her. “I have an example of her work here if you’d like to see it, but unfortunately not any of her portrait work, as that’s done only on commission.”
Sweeney kept her mouth shut, and the portfolio firmly under her arm. She had no intention of showing any of her work now.
“It isn’t important,” Margo said, bored. “I’m sure she’ll do, if you recommend her. What I’m really interested in is the new VanDern you mentioned. I’m sure the colors will go marvelously in the living room.”
Sweeney refrained from rolling her eyes, but it was difficult. She couldn’t fault the woman for wanting her wall decor to complement the room, because color was vital to Sweeney’s own sense of well-being, but ... a VanDern? He was a hot commodity right now, but he was a sly, talentless clod who daubed huge clumps of color on a canvas and called it art.
“I’m sure they will,” Candra agreed, indicating with a graceful wave of her hand the direction of the VanDern.
Sweeney had no intention of trailing along behind them. “I have to go,” she said, gripping her portfolio. She needed the job, she really, really needed the job, and she steeled herself to say something polite and make arrangements to begin after the couple returned from Rome. She opened her mouth and heard, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do your portraits, Mrs. McMillan. I’m booked.”
The words surprised even herself. So much for good intentions, but at least she had given a polite lie instead of saying she had despised the couple on sight and the only way she would paint them would be if she could add horns, goatees, and pitchforks. She was a little proud of herself; a Tibetan goatherd couldn’t have come up with such a good lie.
“What?” Margo looked startled. Candra’s lovely face looked first amazed, then alarmed, as if she had begun imagining all the responses Sweeney could make to Margo’s incredulous question. Sweeney didn’t give herself time to think of any. She had to get out of there before her thin layer of tolerance for fools and jerks was worn through and she said something that would really embarrass Candra. She swung around and headed for the door, going as fast as she could without actually running.
She switched the portfolio to her left hand and reached out with her right to grab the door handle, but a tall body was suddenly right next to her and a dark-clad arm shot out in front of her, blocking her way. Over her head a deep voice said, ‘Allow me. I was just leaving, too. Good-bye, Senator, Mrs. McMillan. Kai.”
Startled by the novelty of having a door opened for her, Sweeney didn’t think to call her own goodbyes. To be honest, it wasn’t just Richard’s courtesy that had startled her, but his closeness. Her stomach jittered again. It was unsettling to have him right next to her when only moments before she had been mentally stripping him.
Richard let the door close behind them and for a moment they were enclosed in the silence of the small vestibule, the smoked glass of the outer door dimming the sunshine outside. Then he stepped past her and opened that door, too, his movement bringing him so close that his suit jacket brushed her arm and the quiet scent of expensive cologne drifted to her nose. Another jolt hit her, accompanied by a sudden wave of physical awareness.
This wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all. Bemused, she stepped out onto the sidewalk. First the Diet Coke commercial this morning and now Richard, of all people. Maybe there was a full moon or something, though lunar cycles had never before affected her hormones. Not much of anything had. Maybe she should make a doctor’s appointment, make sure her ovaries hadn’t suddenly gone into overdrive, flooding her with an overdose of unruly hormones. If they were going to do that, they should have done it when she was a teenager and didn’t know any better. She was thirty-one now and didn’t have either the time or the inclination to indulge in any hormonal frivolity.
“Sweeney?” Richard waved his hand in front of her face, and she snapped back to the present, flushing as she realized she had been staring at him while she pondered the state of her ovaries.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “What did you say?”
The corners of his mouth curled a little, as if he was suppressing a smile. “I asked if you wanted a lift home. It’s starting to rain.”
So it was. It hadn’t been just the smoked glass of the doors making the day look dreary; the bright sunshine was gone and the sky had turned cloudy while she was in the gallery. She looked up as raindrops began to spatter on the sidewalk.
Instantly she hugged the portfolio closer to her, as if she could protect it with her body. There was no decision to it, not when the choice was between keeping her drawings dry or letting the rain ruin them. “Thanks, I would. Where’s your car?” she asked, looking around.
“Right here.” He raised his hand, and a dark gray Mercedes rolled forward to stop at the curb in front of him. That struck her as a lot handier than standing on the curb waving frantically at passing cabs, as she knew hundreds of people had started doing as soon as the first raindrop fell.
He put his hand on her back as he leaned forward to open the car door. The contact was so unexpected, and so unexpectedly pleasurable, that she almost stumbled. Recovering, she juggled the portfolio out of the way as she bent down to slide into the car, continuing across the buttery leather seats to give him room to get in. Her insides were doing the rumba: heart pounding, lungs heaving, stomach clenching. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever felt. Too bad it undoubtedly meant she was losing her mind.
Richard folded his tall body into the seat beside her. “We’re giving Sweeney a lift home, Edward,” he said to his driver.
“Very good, sir.” The accent was faintly British, the word choice even more so. “What is Miss Sweeney’s address?”
Richard gave it, and Sweeney stared at him in surprise for a moment before remembering that he owned the building where she lived. She was surprised he had remembered, but probably stock-market geniuses had to be able to remember the tiniest detail. Forcing herself to relax, she settled back into the ultracomfortable embrace of dead cows’ hides. She stroked the seat, delighted in the smooth, soft texture of the leather, and the delicious smell. Nothing rivaled good-quality leather in its richness, its utter luxury.
Then temptation got the better of her, and she glanced at Richard, to find him watching her and smiling slightly. Funny, she had never associated him with smiles; he was too controlled, even remote, but this smile looked as natural as if he’d had a lot of practice. She felt a moment of kinship, and her lips curved upward, too. “I guess your tolerance for bullshit is as low as mine,” she said, her smile widening into a grin, and he laughed. It was an honest-to-God, throw-your-head-back laugh, and damn it, even that made her insides start jumping around again.
“I thought you were going to run right through the glass, you were in such a hurry to get out of there.”
“I don’t know who is worse, the senator or his wife. They both gave me the creeps.”
“That was pretty obvious, to everyone but them. Kai was trying to make himself invisible, but at the same time he didn’t want to leave in case he missed some fireworks.” Richard’s tone turned neutral when he mentioned Kai, and Sweeney wondered if he knew about Candra’s affair with her assistant. That could certainly be the reason for the divorce; Richard didn’t look like a man who would tolerate infidelity or try to “work through it” with marriage counseling sessions.
The first warning sprinkles of rain abruptly turned into a downpour, sending pedestrians scurrying for doorways or taxis; umbrellas bloomed like mushrooms. Sweeney loved the sound of rain anyway, but today it was particularly evocative, making her heart pound the way it did whenever she heard cello music or taps. A delicious chill suddenly prickled her skin, and she hugged herself.
“Edward, turn on the heat, please. Sweeney is cold.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I’m not really col
d,” Sweeney denied, without knowing why. Her constant coldness was somehow embarrassing, a weakness she didn’t want to acknowledge. “Listening to the rain gave me goose bumps.”
“You were shivering. Do you want to put my coat around you?”
There it was again, shaking her insides as if the San Andreas Fault ran right through her. He had been watching her closely enough to notice a small shiver. She didn’t know which was more disturbing, that realization or the flood of warmth she felt at the thought of being draped in his coat, his body heat being transferred to her, his scent surrounding her. The warmth was welcome, but the reason behind it wasn’t. At least her fascination with the commercial had ended when the ad was over. This strange awareness would end, surely, as soon as she got out of the car and away from Richard, but until then she had to guard against doing something stupid, like throwing herself into his arms. Wouldn’t that raise Edward’s eyebrows! It would probably raise her own, because if anything was out of character for her, throwing herself at a man ranked at the top of the list.
“Sweeney?” Richard prompted, waving his hand in front of her again. He was smiling again, too. She wished he would stop doing both. One was annoying, and the other was downright disturbing.
“What?”
“Do you want my coat?” He was already shrugging out of it.
“Oh—no, thank you. I’m sorry, my thoughts wandered.”
“I noticed.” He smiled again, his dark eyes slightly heavy-lidded. Despite her refusal, he draped the coat over her.
She almost moaned in delight. It was just as she had imagined, so toasty warm she thought she might melt. She snuggled into the coat, pulling the fabric high around her face and unconsciously inhaling, drawing his scent into her lungs like a smoker taking the morning’s first drag.
“I had to do something to cover up that sweater,” he said by way of explanation, his tone amused.
“It’s cursed. I’m going to burn it when I get home.”
“Don’t bother. It’s what’s underneath that’s doing the damage.”
Oh, God. He felt it, too.
The realization was like a punch in the stomach. She froze, unable to look at him, afraid of what she would see in his eyes. This wasn’t just an aberration inspired by the red sweater. This wasn’t a strange moon cycle. She couldn’t say how she knew; it certainly couldn’t be experience telling her, because she had made it a point through the years to avoid letting messy relationships clutter her life. Richard was the third man in an hour to look at her with appreciation—well, the fourth, if she counted the senator, but his look had been more insulting than appreciative—but in Richard’s case, it was something more. Not even Kai’s knee-jerk attempt at casual seduction had been like this, but then Kai was a lightweight, and Richard . . . Richard was not.
Still, she would have been tempted, if he hadn’t been embroiled in a divorce; a divorce, moreover, from a woman very much involved in Sweeney’s career. No, be honest. She was tempted, beyond a doubt, and against every grain of common sense in her body. But being tempted didn’t mean she had to act on that temptation; a woman who could see ghosts and make traffic lights change when she approached sure didn’t need a man in her life to complicate things. She could handle the ghosts; she couldn’t handle a man, especially not Richard. Just why she thought he was more trouble than any other man was an issue she didn’t want to explore.
Still, the urge to look at him, watch him, study him, was almost overpowering. To keep her gaze away from those intense, knowing dark eyes, she looked down, and found herself staring at his hands. They were rather elegant hands, she thought in surprise, in a rough way. She had always thought of him as an expensively dressed dockworker, but she had never before noticed his hands, and now she wondered why. Their shape was beautiful, with the beauty of strength, like Michelangelo’s David, long-fingered and sinewy. She saw the roughness of calluses, a few scars, manicured nails. Senator McMillan had been a fool to pit his strength against this man’s.
She chuckled at the memory. “I’ll bet the senator won’t try to squeeze your hand again,” she said with relish.
Bold dark eyebrows slanted upward. “You saw that juvenile stunt?”
“Um. It was fun. His knuckles turned white, then yours did, and he broke out in a sweat. I almost cheered.”
He laughed. “You wear your civilization very lightly, don’t you? I never noticed before.”
“I wasn’t the one in the pissing contest,” she pointed out, a little irritated that he obviously thought she was a savage. She considered herself a very civilized person. She’d never squeezed anyone’s hand, because she was afraid of hurting her own hands. Maybe that wasn’t the same as not wanting to hurt someone else, but the outcome was the same, so surely she got points for that.
“No, you weren’t.” He was smiling again, very faintly Glancing up, he saw that they were almost at her apartment building. “The trip didn’t take very long,” he noted, and didn’t sound pleased.
She didn’t tell him why all the traffic lights had turned green or traffic mysteriously detoured out of their way
“Will you have dinner with me tonight?” He turned back to her, and somehow he was closer than he had been before, his shoulder touching hers, his left leg against her right one. She felt his body heat like a lodestone all down her right side, triggering an insane impulse to get closer and see just how warm he could get her. Plenty warm, she bet. On fire. Melting.
“Good God, no!”
He laughed. “Please, don’t spare my feelings.”
Sweeney blushed like a teenager. One day, maybe when she was ninety years old, she might learn the art of the polite lie. She had done well enough with the McMillans, but obviously that was her quota for about a year.
“I didn’t mean . . . It’s just that you’d be a big complication, demanding time and sex and things like that, and I have all I can handle right now.” Great. He was laughing again, and when she realized what she had just said, she wanted to bury her face in her hands. Instead she doggedly plowed on. “And then there’s Candra. She’s been good to me, promoting me when a lot of other gallery owners wouldn’t. Even though you’ve been separated for almost a year . . . Anyway, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just watched her with a completely unreadable expression on his face. “I’ll ask again,” he finally said.
She wasn’t sure how those three words could sound almost like a threat, but they did. Richard Worth wasn’t a man who was used to being turned down “You do that,” she said, as the Mercedes slid to a stop in front of her apartment building. “And I’ll turn you down again.” She removed his coat and gave it back to him, and reached for the door handle.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, staying her hand. “There’s no point in getting wet. I have an umbrella, and I’ll walk you to the door.”
“I can manage, thanks.”
“What about your portfolio?”
There was that, damn it. The rain was really coming down. She scowled at him. “You don’t have to look so satisfied,” she growled, knowing he had her.
His mouth quirked as he reached for the umbrella. “Honey, you don’t have any idea how I look when I’m satisfied.”
No, but she could imagine, and her mental image knotted her stomach. He bent his head and kissed her sulky mouth, the contact light and warm and devastating. “Think about it,” he whispered, then opened the door and extended the umbrella out, opening it so it provided a circle of protection. He climbed out and held it for her as she slid from the car.
“Think about it,” she mimicked savagely, making him laugh. “Damn you.” She was so annoyed she didn’t care that sliding across the seat made her skirt ride high on her thighs. Let him look; that was all he was going to do.
Together they dashed across the sidewalk to the sheltered doorway. He took care that her portfolio didn’t get splashed, and she appreciated his concern, even though she w
anted to give him a good swift kick. He left her there and strode quickly back to the waiting car. She didn’t wait until he left, but went inside immediately. He didn’t need any ego stroking, and she definitely needed to get back to her safe, isolated world, away from temptation.
She needed order, not disorder; peace, not excitement. Most of all, she needed to paint. With a brush in her hand, she could shut out the world.
CHAPTER
THREE
Think about it. Well, she had. Despite her best efforts, and to the point where she was about to have a screaming fit, she had. With hours stretching before her in which she could paint, instead she continually found herself standing in front of the canvas with an idle brush in her hand while she stared off into space like some giddy adolescent. The problem, of course, wasn’t so much Richard’s attraction to her as her attraction to him. What disturbed her most was her inability to stop thinking about him. Other men had been distinguished by their total lack of distinction; she could put them out of her mind, if indeed they had ever entered it, and go on with her life as usual. None of them had ever tempted her. She couldn’t say that about Richard.
She felt silly, obsessing about a man. Nothing was ever going to come of her attraction, she would see to that, so it was stupid to waste time mooning over him. Not that any other man would have had a better chance, but the fact that this was Richard kept stunning her over and over again, hitting her right between the eyes. Of all the men in the world she might have expected to appeal to her hitherto nonexistent libido, Richard wasn’t even on the list. Richard was married, he was married to a business associate of hers, and now the two were involved in an acrimonious divorce, which was an even better reason to stay the hell away from him.
Okay. Her mind got the message. Now, if the word would just seep farther down, she might be able to get some work done.
The rain had stopped but the day remained cloudy, and though she had installed bright lights in her studio, it wasn’t the same as sunlight. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered her, but today it did. She wanted bright sunlight. She had been working from a photo she’d taken of the St. Lawrence, which remained one of her favorite subjects, but without sunlight she couldn’t get the colors right. Disgusted, she thrust the brush into the can of turpentine and swished it around. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t get the colors right anyway. She hadn’t been able to get the colors right for a year.