Chesapeake Blue
Page 27

And to ensure he did, she'd brought a kitchen timer with her.
The woman had no tolerance for artistic temperament. That was all right with Seth. In his opinion, he didn't have an artistic temperament.
He was using pastels, just a basic study for now. It was an extension of the charcoal sketch. A way for him to learn her face, her moods, her body language before he roped her into the more intense portraits he'd already planned in his mind.
When he looked at her, he felt all the models he'd used throughout his career had been simply precursors to Drusilla.
She knocked. He'd told her it wasn't necessary, but she kept that formal distance between them. That, he thought as he walked to the door, would have to be breached.
There could be no formality, and no distance, between them if he was to paint her as he needed to paint her. "Right on time. Big surprise. Want coffee?" He'd had his hair cut. It was still long enough to lay over the collar of the torn T-shirt that seemed to be his uniform, but the ponytail was gone. It surprised her that she missed it. She'd always felt that sort of thing was an affectation on a man. He'd shaved, too, and could almost be deemed tidy if you ignored the holes in the knees of his jeans and the paint splatters on his shoes.
"No, thanks. I've had a cup already this morning."
"One?" He closed the door behind her. "I can barely form a simple declarative sentence on one hit of coffee. How do you do it?" "Willpower."
"Got a lot of that, do you?"
"As a matter of fact."
To his amusement, she set the timer on his workbench, set at sixty. Then went directly to the stool he'd set out for her, slid onto it.
She noticed the change immediately.
He'd bought a bed.
The frame was old—a simple black iron head—and the footboard showed some dings. The mattress was bare and still had the tags.
"Moving in after all?"
He glanced over. "No. But it's better than the floor if I end up working late and bunking here. Plus it's a good prop."
Her brow lifted. "Oh, really?"
"Are you usually so preoccupied with sex, or is it just around me?" It made him laugh when her mouth dropped open. "A prop," he continued as he moved to his easel, "like that chair over there, those old bottles." He gestured toward the bottles stacked in a corner. "The urn and this cracked blue bowl I've got in the kitchen. I pick up things as they catch my eye."
He studied his pastels, and his mouth curved. "Including women." She relaxed her shoulders. He'd notice if they were stiff, and it would make her feel even more foolish.
"That's quite a speech for one 'oh, really.'"
"Sugar, you pack a lot of punch into an 'oh, really.' Do you remember the pose?"
"Yes." Obediently she propped her foot on the rung of the stool, laced her hands around her knee, then looked over her left shoulder as if someone had just spoken to her.
"That's perfect. You're really good at this."
"I sat like this for an hour just a few days ago."
"An hour," he repeated as he began to work. "Before the wild debauchery of the weekend."
"I'm so used to wild debauchery it doesn't have a particular impact on my life." It was his turn. "Oh, really?"
He mimicked her tone so perfectly, she broke the pose to look toward him, laughing. He always managed to make her laugh. "I minored in WD in college."
"Oh, if only." His fingers hurried to capture the bright, beautiful laughter. "I know your type, baby. You walk around being beautiful, smart, sexy and unapproachable so we guys just suffer and dream." It was, obviously, the wrong thing to say as the humor on her face died instantly—like flipping a switch.
"You don't know anything about me, or my type."
"I didn't say that to hurt your feelings. I'm sorry." She shrugged. "I don't know you well enough for you to hurt my feelings. I know you just well enough to have you annoy me."
"Then I'm sorry for that. I was joking. I like hearing you laugh. I like seeing it."
"Unapproachable." She heard herself mutter it before she could bite down on the urge. Just as her head jerked around before she could pull back the temper. "Did you think I was so damned unapproachable when you grabbed me and kissed me?"
"I'd say the act speaks for itself. Look. A lot of times when a guy sees a woman—a beautiful one he's attracted to—he gets clumsy. It's easier to figure she's out of reach than to analyze his own clumsiness. Women…"
If furious was what he was going to get out of her, then he'd
"That's nice. That's lovely," she said softly. "I got my mother a Baccarat vase and a dozen red roses. She was very pleased."
He set down his pastels, dusted his hands on his jeans as he crossed to her. And took her face in his hands. "Then why do you look so sad?"
"I'm not sad."
In response, he simply pressed his lips to her forehead, keeping them there as he felt her tense, then relax.
She couldn't remember ever having a conversation like this with anyone before. And she couldn't fathom why it seemed perfectly natural to have it with him. "It would be difficult for you to understand a conflicted family when yours is so united."
"We have plenty of conflicts," he corrected. "No. Not at the core, you don't. I need to get downstairs."
"I still have some time left," he said, holding her in place when she started to slide off the stool. "You've stopped working."
"I still have some time left," he repeated, and gestured to her timer. "If there's one thing I know about, it's family conflict, and what it does to you inside. I spent the first third of my life in a constant state of conflict."
"You're speaking of before you came to live with your grandfather? I've read stories about you, but you don't discuss that aspect," she said when his head came up.
"Yeah." He waited for the constriction in his chest to ease. "Before. When I lived with my biological mother."
"I see."
"No, sugar, you don't. She was a whore and a drunk and a junkie, and she made the first few years of my life a nightmare."