We collide only briefly, my palm splaying against an unbuttoned, bespoke black suit jacket and the crisp white shirt beneath it. Heat sears me on contact, as if my senses recognize the danger even before my brain can engage. I glance up into sharp cerulean blue eyes that still hold the power to strip me to the bone.
“Nick.”
My voice is too quiet, rough with the shock of seeing him for the first time since Paris.
New York is immense, but to think we’ve gone a year in and out of the same city without running into each other must be some kind of miracle. A blessing, as far as I’m concerned. Of course, I’ve done my best to avoid him, staying away from the places I know he frequents, making sure the chances of our paths crossing are next to nil.
Now this.
Even though I understood there would come a time when our paths would likely cross again, the sight of him is as powerful as a physical blow. That crown of thick, raven-dark hair that gleams under the soft gallery lights overhead. That strong, straight nose and impossibly square jaw, as sharp as a blade and shadowed with the rough beginnings of his beard.
And, most devastating of all, those sinfully lush lips that have been on every inch of my body, and have whispered such dirty, wonderful things to me before I realized everything he said was based on a lie.
He stares down at me, his gaze intense but unreadable from beneath inky black brows. “Hello, Avery.”
As surprised as I am to find him standing in front of me, I know my narrowed glare is ripe with suspicion, if not blatant accusation. All justified, considering how disastrously things ended between us. “What are you doing here, Nick?”
“I received an invitation, like everyone else.”
That sinfully deep voice vibrates along my nerve endings, generating unwanted heat and an awareness I don’t care to acknowledge. I edge backward, craving space. If I had any less pride, I’d be tempted to bolt for the nearest exit.
But I have every right to be here. It’s Nick who’s the interloper.
“I suppose you didn’t know I’d be here too.”
“Actually, I didn’t. Lily made the arrangements. For some reason, she neglected to mention the guest list of attending artists. I’ll be taking the matter up with her in the morning.”
He doesn’t sound pleased with his assistant, and I have to wonder if the impeccably efficient Lily Fontana could have lost some of her edge the past year. I doubt it, but I can’t imagine why she’d think putting Nick and me within a city block of each other was anything but a bad idea.
“I apologize, Avery. If I had known you’d be here, I promise you, I wouldn’t have come.”
God, he really means that. It’s hard to deny his earnestness. For all his past deceptions, I recognize his honesty now. I’m not sure why I don’t feel more relief, some sense of satisfaction that he can at least acknowledge the wreckage that lies between us.
Instead, all I feel as we stand together for the first time in so long is the racing beat of my heart. The streaks of uninvited, unwanted awareness. The dull ache of regret over everything that might have been.
Nick’s gaze takes a while to leave mine. When it does, his eyes flick past my shoulder to the painting hanging on the wall behind me. He moves toward it, studying the canvas. My breath lodges in the center of my chest as I watch him take in the large abstract depiction of silvery feathers, turbulent blue water, and flame-filled orange sky.
He swivels his head toward me, a flicker of surprise in his expression. “Icarus.”
The painting is more than the myth, and we both know it. I acknowledge with a nod.
He hasn’t seen it before, even though I first began working on this piece soon after we took our first getaway together. Our Florida Keys sail aboard Nick’s beautiful boat, Icarus, seems like a hundred years ago now. So much has happened since then. So many lies between us, so much pain.
“I’ve been carrying it around with me for the past year. I figured it was finally time to let go.”
Time to let us go. I don’t have to say the words out loud. Nick’s gaze holds mine, penetrating and intense, still powerful enough to cleave me wide open if I’m not careful. But I am careful. I have to be, especially with him.
It’s been a year since I spoke to him—since I’ve been close enough to feel the warmth of his body and breathe in the spicy, intoxicating scent of him, which even now seems to trip all of my senses. A year since I’ve known Nick’s touch, yet I feel the memory of it as if I had been in his arms only yesterday.
I don’t want the memories anymore. He can’t possibly know how hard I’ve worked to move past them, to get on with my life after he shattered my heart with his betrayal.
But he does know.
I can see that knowledge in every nuance of his handsome face. I see a hundred questions in his eyes, a hundred things we both should have said in Paris. Things we need to say to each other now, but probably never will.
“You look good, Avery.” He studies me as he speaks, and I’m not sure if it’s surprise or disappointment I hear in his subdued tone. “I’m happy for all your success. The gallery showings, the accolades from the press and critics. The six-figure acquisition of your last painting. Congratulations, by the way. You’re headed for even bigger things, I have no doubt. I’m impressed.”
And I’m astonished. I can’t deny that his praise affects me, but I’m more taken aback to hear that he’s aware of everything that’s happened with my career this past year. Evidently, he’s been paying attention.
I’d be lying to myself to pretend I haven’t been curious about him too. Not that he’s made it easy to ferret out even the smallest information since we’ve been apart. Nick’s reputation for privacy in his personal life is almost as notable as his staggering net worth. The “shadow mogul” has been practically invisible the past year. Not a single photo in the media, not a hint of gossip in the society pages or the Internet.
In the absence of facts, I indulged in countless spiteful fantasies about him. Imagining Nick haggard and despondent, with an overgrown, unkempt beard and midsection paunch. Reveling in the idea that he might be suffering as profoundly as I had after I returned home from Paris alone, an inconsolable, shredded mess.
But Nick has never looked better. Still flawlessly fit, devastatingly gorgeous. And he’s staring at me as if he can see every imperfection in me, every fissure in my carefully constructed facade. As if I’m still the heartbroken, foolish woman he treated like his plaything.
The woman he once claimed he loved.
“Are you happy, Avery?”
“Happy?” The question catches me off guard, another of his specialties. I force a smile and a nonchalant shrug. “As you pointed out yourself, things have never been better.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
A scoff erupts out of me before I can hold it back. “The way I recall it, you’re the one owing the answers, not me.”
“You’re right.” He grunts, sounding almost contrite. “You didn’t seem ready for anything I had to say then. Are you now?”
“You’re a little late, Nick. None of it matters anymore.”
“Would it have then?”
“No.”
It’s the truth, even though I’ve told myself he should have at least tried. He should have come after me that day in Paris or any of the hundreds that followed. Some pathetic part of me had been certain he’d come after me. Dominic Baine isn’t one to let something that belongs to him slip through his fingers.
He should have forced me to listen. Regardless of my capacity to forgive him, he should have explained why he chose me to manipulate the way he did.
But he did none of those things.
He let me go.
He watched me walk out the door of his flat and out of his life, and in all this time he never even attempted to bring me back.
That alone was answer enough for me.
It still is.
I step back from him, a retreat his keen ga
ze doesn’t miss. “It’s been nice seeing you, Nick.” The lie sounds as tight as my smile feels when I look at him. “Enjoy the rest of the reception.”
I hold out my hand the way I would to any other acquaintance or colleague. He takes it, but there is nothing casual about the way his fingers close around mine.
His grasp is firm and hot and certain. He holds my hand like a lover. Like a man who remembers as well as I do how often I’ve placed my trust in him and allowed him to lead me into every sensual place he wanted us to explore. After all the months we’ve been apart, he touches me like a man who’s very much aware that he knows me better than anyone before him, or since.
His thumb brushes over the back of my hand. “Ready to run away from me already again?”
“I’m not running anywhere.” I pull out of his loosened hold. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been gone for a long time, Nick. I’ve moved on.”
“Have you?”
The question has an edge of challenge to it that makes me bristle. “What do you want from me? Don’t you have anything better to do than trying to make me squirm?”
A world of meaning churns in his gaze, all of it dark and sensual. Arrogantly so. As intimate as a caress. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Avery.”
“Good. Because I’m not going to do this with you. Not now. Not here.”
“Then let’s go somewhere else.”
The suggestion makes me gape. “Leave with you? You can’t be serious.”
But he is. Dominic Baine offers nothing without careful deliberation. And when he sees something he wants, he pursues it with singular determination. I should know. That’s how I ended up in his bed in the first place.
“I want you to go now, Nick.”
I glance away from him because I have to. Because if I don’t, I might be tempted to forget that this reception is important to me. And because if I stare any longer into those searing blue eyes, I might be tempted to forget about the fact that I came here with another man.
A good, decent man who’s been nothing but kind to me in the two weeks we’ve been dating. I spot Brandon in the crowd finally. He’s slowly making his way toward me, glasses of champagne in hand as he pauses here and there to converse and laugh with his colleagues from the university.
“Please, Nick. Just . . . go.”
He follows my gaze into the throng, where Brandon now heads our way. Something dark flickers across Nick’s face when he glances back at me. “Does he know about us?”
“No.”
The denial feels like a betrayal of its own, despite the fact that Brandon and I have only been dating a short while. I haven’t confided in him about anything, least of all the months I spent in Nick’s bed. As for the rest of our history together, I have no intention of sharing that with Brandon or anyone else. There’s only one man who knows every secret and jagged facet of me and he’s staring at me now with a look that’s intimate and raw, seeing through me in the way he has from the very beginning.
As unsettling as Nick’s scrutiny of me is, by the time Brandon arrives, his expression is shuttered into one of schooled indifference.
“Here you are!” Brandon grins as he hands me one of the flutes. “I’ve been looking for you for the past ten minutes. Sorry to keep you waiting on the bubbly. I ran into the dean at the bar and he started showing me pictures of his grandkids.”
“It’s all right,” I murmur, taking the sweaty glass and watching as Brandon’s attention flits to Nick. “Brandon, have you met Dominic Baine?”
“No, I haven’t had the pleasure.” He thrusts out his hand, pumping Nick’s enthusiastically. “Brandon Snyder, sir. Art History department. It’s wonderful to meet you, Mr. Baine. My colleagues and I are very grateful for your generous contributions to our fine institution over the years.”
Nick’s contributions. No wonder he was invited to the reception. I smile and sip my champagne as Brandon continues to effuse over Nick and the donations he’s made to various departments of the university.
Before I realize it, I’ve drained my glass. Brandon notices it too. Chuckling, he draws me under his arm. “Better take it easy on the bubbly, sweetheart. You need to be on stage for your speech in a few minutes.”
“I’ll be fine.” I can’t keep from looking at Nick as Brandon presses a kiss to my temple. It’s a tender, yet possessive, move that shouldn’t bother me, yet all I can feel is the measuring heat of Nick’s gaze as he watches us together.
“We should head that way,” Brandon reminds me. “Dean Witherspoon told me he’d like to say hello to you before everyone else starts gathering for his closing remarks.”
“All right.”
“If you’ll excuse us,” Brandon says, extending his hand to Nick once more. “Really great to meet you, sir. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have to steal my girl for a few minutes.”
Nick merely grunts in response.
He doesn’t look at me, but I burn under the intensity of his silence as Brandon places his hand at the small of my spine and leads me away.
Chapter 3
“Avery Ross, you’re a heartless bitch.”
Jarred out of my concentration at the easel the next day, I glance up from my work in progress. “Excuse me?”
My studio mate Matt Hollis gives me a look that’s anything but serious as he walks over to my work station. “You heard me, blondie. Heartless.”
Since last summer, I’ve been sharing space with him and another friend, Lita Frasier, the tattooed, pierced, mixed-media sculptor who owns the small second-floor loft studio in East Harlem.
Matt holds a small collection of cleaned paintbrushes in his hand, which he uses to point at the gift-wrapped box that’s been sitting on the edge of my work table since it arrived via courier that morning. “I realize it’s your prezzie from the new man in your life, but when a friend gets a decadent box of hand-dipped French chocolates, it’s customary for said friend to share the love with those less fortunate.”
“What are you talking about? Of course, you can have some.”
He tilts his chin low, rolling his eyes. “You haven’t even opened the damn box yet.”
He’s right. I glance at the embossed gold paper with its red satin ribbon and bow, all still intact. There are few things in this world that I love more than chocolate, yet this particular box has been sitting untouched for more than an hour. As much as I appreciate Brandon’s lavish gift, I can’t think about France or knotted lengths of silken, scarlet fabric without thinking of him.
Not the man who sent this gift to me.
The one whose unexpected reappearance in my life last night has left me more rattled and confused than I care to admit, even to myself.
With Matt waiting eagerly for his chance to pounce on my chocolates, I unfasten the long red ribbon and tear the paper from the pretty box, holding it out to him. “Help yourself.”
He reaches in and pops a truffle into his mouth. His eyes close as he chews.
“Oh, my God.” His moan sounds practically orgasmic. “It’s insane how good this is.”
From across the studio, Lita swivels on her stool to face us. “I don’t know how anyone’s supposed to work around here with you two yapping and carrying on.”
I laugh, because it’s ironic she would complain about noise considering she prefers to work with a boom box blasting everything from Mozart to Metallica on any given day.
Lita gets up from the sculpture she’s working on. The complicated tangle of metal wire and hammered steel has been her obsession for several weeks, a prototype for the piece that’s recently been commissioned for the lobby of a high-profile corporate office in Brooklyn.
She saunters over in her usual black-on-black ensemble and combat boots. As of this morning, her pixie haircut is dyed platinum blonde with a dusting of cardinal red at the tips—the most traditional color combination I’ve seen on her in all these months. “Got any caramels in there?”
I shrug. “I think the
se two might be.” I point and she takes one of them, biting into it.
“Ugh! Not even close.” Her face scrunches, the little diamond stud in the side of her nose winking as she recoils. “What kind of animal puts frigging lavender in perfectly good chocolate?”
Matt chuckles and holds out his hand. “You’re hopeless. Give it to me, heathen.”
“Want to try a different one?” I ask.
“No thanks.” She’s still grimacing as she shakes her head and deposits her uneaten half into Matt’s open palm. “Give me an old-fashioned candy bar any day. This fancy shit is not for me.”
“Suit yourself,” Matt says. He tosses back her lavender-infused reject, savoring it slowly before making grabby hands at me for another sample. He sets down his brushes and leans against my work table, indicating he plans to stay a while. “So, when are you going to spill some deets about the big reception last night? Did you have fun hobnobbing with the academic elite and all your adoring critics?”
I haven’t told my friends at the studio that I ran into Nick. If they knew I spoke to him, I’d catch nothing but hell from both of them. They hate him because he hurt me, and they don’t even know the half of it. Only my best friend, Tasha, knows the truth—and only because it was her doorstep I landed on after I fled back to New York from Paris.
I shrug as I meet Matt’s questioning gaze. “It was okay.”
“Just okay? Evidently the night ended more than okay if your date is following up with a two-hundred-dollar box of chocolates today.”
I glance down, reflecting on how my encounter with Nick had shaded the rest of the evening. By the time I met the dean and made my little speech, he was gone. I know, because I couldn’t keep my gaze from straying into the crowd the whole time, searching for his face. I could still hear his deep voice ringing in my head, my hand still heated from his touch.
I hadn’t improved by the time Brandon took me home to my place. Instead of inviting him inside with me, I turned him away at the door with a lame excuse about a migraine and a chaste peck on the mouth. Not the first time, either. Yet rather than getting upset, Brandon sent me expensive chocolates with a sweet note and an invitation to dinner later in the week.