by Julia Kent
And then she looked back at Gerald.
Who had never stopped looking at her.
The ache intensified.
“You two know each other?” Hot Nude Greek God Guy asked. He stood up from the stool on which he was perched and looked at her, then Gerald, his eyes filled with questions. Casual and comfortable, he had zero self-consciousness about being naked in a room full of more than thirty people.
She tried very, very hard not to look between his legs.
She failed.
“You’re ruining the work, Declan! Sit down!” snapped an old lady in the front row. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to train my hands to manage an asymmetrical ball sac?”
“That’s what she said,” groaned someone from the back row.
“I like this view better,” said another one, wearing a blond wig. “Stay right there. Everything dangles where it should be. By the time my husband was eighty, his balls were close to his knees.”
The nude model took a step toward her, his body fluid and tight, all his skin drawn over compact muscle that looked like it belonged right where it was, exacting and calibrated. He had thick eyebrows, an expressive face, but one that stayed neutral now. She frowned, forcing herself to study his face after realizing she was a bit more consumed by observing the rest of him.
Declan.
Declan?
“Declan McCormick?” she gasped, the pieces fitting. “The Montgomery Trust? Anterdec?” Elena Montgomery had been married to James McCormick, and upon her death, her three sons had come into a substantial family trust, one that Suzanne helped to manage. Once a year, she met with the three McCormick sons.
She’d never seen Declan quite like this before.
Unable to stop herself, her eyes combed over the fine details of his cut body, the shoulders broad, arms toned as if sculpted by hands like Gerald’s, the eight-pack of abs a work of art in flesh form. His waist narrowed to inverted Vs of muscle at the hips, a smattering of dark hair on olive-toned skin a delightful vision. The man was tanned, with thick thighs featuring an array of rippling muscle, hardened by years of exertion, graced by good bones and genes but maintained by sheer will and steady discipline.
She felt her mouth go dry and water at the same time.
Gerald moved with that bold swiftness she knew well, inserting himself between the nude model and her, reaching for her arm and pulling her toward the open classroom door. His touch electrified her, the sudden rush of her pulse sending blood through her like a sonic boom. Gerald smelled like clay and paint, with a faint undertone of sweat and coffee. If you added sand and sunshine, she’d think it was a decade past.
He smelled like home. Like love. Like promise and comfort, like passion and disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” he snapped, his face alternating between joy and anger. “Why are you here?”
Coming to her senses, she extracted the thick envelope from her brief bag, looking him square in the eye. “Legal matter. I’ve been instructed to deliver this to you.” She used remarkable restraint in not peering around Gerald to get more of an eyeful of Declan McCormick’s stately form.
Then again, Gerald was an impenetrable wall of muscle himself, not easily subverted. She’d need taller heels to peer around him. He did not move his palm from her arm, and his touch infused her, a deeply satisfying sense of connection slowly creeping along her skin, her breath quickening, his touch ringing bells inside her that had been dormant for a decade.
“What is it?”
“Read it. You’ll understand.” She turned on her heel and started to leave, shaking inside so hard she might trigger the New Madrid fault.
He glared at her. “What? That’s it? Ten years and that’s it?” He pulled back, breaking contact.
All her anxiety faded, like an antidote injected straight into the heart, his words kicking in, providing such clarity.
“Ten years you chose, Gerald,” she hissed, mouth curling, throat seizing. “You do not get to put this on me.” Grief flared in her, a burst like a fireball, and then it turned to the ash of anger, a light coat settling over every spare surface of her heart.
His eyebrows shot up, eyes gliding away, his nose twitching and mouth tightening as if holding back.
Squaring her shoulders, Suzanne decided to make this easy for him. God only knew why. “My law firm is handling the estate of deceased billionaire Harold Hopewell. You’ve been named in his will.” She tapped the thick envelope in his hand. “These papers explain everything.”
“Explain what?”
“You’re his heir. One of them, at least.”
At that moment, a leaky pipe released a drop that went ker-plunk into a ragged bucket on the floor.
“How can I be an heir to a guy I don’t even know?” His words were about the dead billionaire, but she knew he was just trying to engage her. Make her stay.
She looked around. She had to get out of there. “Read the papers. If you have any questions, my office number is on the letterhead.” Turning to go, she felt his gaze on her, like a touch.
“Suzanne.” His voice was low and filled with ten years of yearning. “Please.”
Please.
Of all the words she’d imagined Gerald saying to her when they finally saw each other again, that was the last one she’d ever expected to hear.
If she pivoted and caught his eye, she’d cry. Or scream. Or worse—stand there pleading with him to take her back, to undo ten years of heartache, to atone for the unspeakable pain of being unceremoniously dumped and left brokenhearted, shattered into a thousand pieces before she was stateside, left to unpack her meager civilian belongings in her parents’ house in Minnesota and try not to talk about anything but her future.
Frozen, she stood a few feet from the doorway, the weight of her brief bag pulling on her shoulder, anchoring her in place. If he touched her again, she’d melt.
If he touched her again, she’d explode.
If she just stood there, letting her pulse pound through her like a helicopter blade whipping through too much thick wind, she would never move.
Slowly, with painstaking intent, she did swivel, her heels nearly choreographed for a dance she couldn’t avoid. Meeting his eyes, she let herself feel all the emotions at once, uncensored, but only for a few seconds.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just met her look head-on, the power of seconds ticking by without reprieve from each other’s look growing.
“Please what?”
“Please stay after class and talk with me.”
“I can’t,” she announced in a firm voice. “I have a date.”
Anger could do the most extraordinary things to eyes. She watched it fill his irises, clouds of ozone and shock stuffed into two orbs that looked at her through a furrowed brow.
“You know where to find me,” she said, nudging her nose toward the thick packet in his hand. She made a huffing laugh. “Then again, you always have.”
And with that, she took one very obvious gander at nude Declan McCormick, gave him a smile and a thumbs-up, and marched out of Gerald’s class, down the hallway, and into the warm late-summer night.
It was all she could do not to scream.
Chapter 3
Gerald willed his hands not to shake when he took the shot, sending a yellow-striped nine ball into the corner pocket, making him stripes, Declan solids.
“I have to hear this story,” Declan said, watching as Gerald set up for his next shot.
“Ten in the left corner pocket,” Gerald replied. Eyeing the shot, he lined up the cue, discerning the perfect angle, the exact spot on the table edge where he could get the ball’s trajectory in alignment to go where his mind’s eye saw it.
“How do you know Suzanne Dayton?” Declan asked, just as Gerald was taking the shot. He damn near ripped the table cover with a jagged push of surprise.
“How the hell do you know Suzanne?” Gerald growled, a burst of fire pulsing through him, heating his skin as he stopped breathing. I
f Declan ever dated her...
“Business.”
Gerald inhaled.
“Her firm handles my mother’s family trust. Once a year, we have a lovely two-hour meeting. She’s been at the table for the past seven years. Junior associate at first, now full partner.”
“Huh. Didn’t know.” How long had she been living in Boston? Gerald wondered. He’d forced himself, years ago, not to look her up. Other than knowing she’d gone to law school at University of Michigan, he’d let her go. It had been about eight years since he’d cracked open the door to that Pandora’s box.
“You drove me nearly every time.”
“Shit.”
“I take it you two have a past.”
Something like that.
Stalling, Gerald pointed his cue at Declan, who made a short shot quickly, the ball slamming into the center pocket. Bam bam bam—three balls in rapid-fire succession before Declan missed.
“Loser tells all,” Declan declared.
Gerald grunted, then smiled. “Fine. I lose, I tell you about Suzanne. You lose, you tell me about your honeymoon.”
Declan paled, his five o’clock shadow more pronounced, giving his face the look of a Vogue model. “I promised Shannon I’d never tell.”
“Must have been one hell of a honeymoon.”
Declan scratched the top of his thigh, then shook his head slightly, as if clearing a memory. “Yeah. Different bet, though. Can’t talk about it. Won’t talk about it.”
The two squared off in a staring match, until Gerald relented. “Fine. Same rule applies to Suzanne.” He took his shot.
Missed.
Damn it.
“You pinkie-promised never to discuss whatever happened?”
Gerald looked at Declan’s manicured hands. “Pinkie promise?”
The guy rolled his eyes. “You know Shannon.”
“Suzanne’s not exactly the pinkie promise type.”
“I got that impression. Tough as nails.”
“Tougher. How about loser buys the next round?”
“You’re on. She’s your ex?”
Gerald sighed. Might as well get this out there. Being invited to go out for beer and pool by his former boss had been the cherry on top of a decidedly bizarre day. Revealing personal details about his life wasn’t exactly his style.
And yet.
“We were engaged. Ten years ago.”
Declan was about to take a shot when he paused, pulling the cue off the table, sending it upright with the rubber stopper on the floor. His eyebrows went up. “Engaged?” He blinked. “I take it you ended it.”
“How’d you guess?”
He shrugged. “Pretty clear she’s still in love with you.”
Gerald damn near snapped his cue in half.
“What?”
When Declan McCormick smiled—the genuine grin of someone caught up in their own amusement—one side of his mouth moved up, making a deep dimple appear. Gerald noticed only because he heard Shannon McCormick comment on it often.
“It’s obvious. I’ve met her before. She’s stone-faced.”
“Takes one to know one,” Gerald muttered as Declan resumed his shot, flicking the green six ball into a side pocket like he was dispensing with a piece of lint on his cuff.
“And that,” Declan said, clearly not offended by Gerald’s comment, “is why I am qualified to know that she’s still not over you.” He gave Gerald an appraising look. “You must have something special for a woman like that to carry a torch.”
“Nothing special.” Gerald set up his shot. Three ricochets at perfect angles and he could blast a cluster of balls, sending one into a corner pocket. As he drew back the cue, the white end slipped between the index and middle fingers of his left hand, Declan spoke.
“My brother tried to date her once.”
A long, thick line of blue chalk from the cue’s tip left a ragged line on the brown table-covering, the shape not unlike a tube of lipstick dragged down a chalkboard.
The idea that Declan’s brother Andrew, the current CEO of Anterdec, would even touch Suzanne’s pinky finger filled Gerald with an unbridled rage that he could not quell.
“But she turned him down,” Declan said casually, filling his mouth with the green end of a beer bottle, leaving Gerald a smoking piece of charcoal.
“Why?”
Declan shrugged. “Because she has taste?”
In damn near any other conversation about Andrew McCormick, Gerald would defend him.
Not this one.
“You didn’t hit the ball, so technically it’s your shot again,” Declan pointed out, signaling the cocktail waitress by holding up two fingers, being gracious with the extra shot. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerald saw the waitress nod.
Gerald grunted.
“Try not to turn the table blue,” Declan said with a snort. He leaned back against a table edge, crossed his jeans-covered legs at the ankles, and watched Gerald with a relaxed countenance he’d never seen in the man. Though he’d arrived for the nude sculpting class in a suit, he’d come out of the dressing area in clothes that were pretty damn close to what Gerald wore, except the t-shirt was free of clay.
The waitress brought two beers. Declan told her to start a tab.
“I’ll get the next round,” Gerald announced, pride kicking into full gear.
“You will when you lose,” Declan said in a mocking tone, eyes all steel and challenge.
Gerald laughed, drawing on the same powers of concentration that had served him well as a sniper, and bam!
Cluster shattered.
Ball in the left side pocket.
Ball in the left corner pocket.
Too bad they were Declan’s balls.
“Mmm,” Declan muttered, throat working as he finished his cold beer. “Next one’s going to taste so much better. Beer always does when someone else is buying.”
A hush filled the bar suddenly, heads turning to watch the television. A bombing in Turkey. Another one in Kabul. Both claimed by the same terrorist organization.
Declan looked at the television politely, then returned to the game. “Weren’t you in Kabul?” he asked, having no idea how loaded those words really were.
“Yes.”
“With Suzanne?”
Gerald’s back straightened slowly, like a snake rising up to look at its surroundings before striking.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t. Put two and two together. She mentioned serving in Afghanistan. Is that where you met?”
“For a guy who hates being asked about his personal life, you sure do ask a lot of questions, Declan.”
He pulled up, dropping the cue to the floor, leaning on it. Assessment filled his eyes, which were shadowed by the strange bar lights.
“I thought this was how it worked.”
“What worked?”
“How you make friends.”
“That’s what we’re doing?”
He shrugged.
“Most of my friends don’t ask me about my past love life.”
“Most of your friends aren’t naked in front of a room full of women when your ex crashes in.”
“True.”
“Look, man. I’m not prying. Just curious. It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Of all the people in the world to serve you inheritance papers, it happens to be the woman you were engaged to?”
Coincidence.
The television flashed with a new story, this one about some billionaire who died and how his will was being executed. One of those names Gerald had heard a hundred times since his youth. Declan followed Gerald’s gaze and laughed softly, the sound closer to a snicker.
“Dad hated that guy.”
“Who?”
Declan nudged his chin toward the television. “Harold Hopewell. Billionaire. Routinely beat Dad on those stupid money magazine lists for top billionaires.”
“Huh.” The papers Suzanne had given him suddenly burned a hole in his back pocket as a
preternatural creeping sensation took over all the bare skin on his body.
Coincidence.
Five shots later, Declan paid for all the beer, grudgingly shaking Gerald’s hand after being soundly trounced. He did not reveal any details about his honeymoon. The two kicked back in uncomfortable, slightly sticky wooden chairs, and watched an anemic darts game being played by two drunk old geezers wearing Marines baseball hats.
“So this is how people hang out.” Declan watched as Gerald peeled the corner of the label on his beer. “You just waste time and shoot the shit.” He frowned, then sniffed. “This place smells like Louie’s Last Stand.”
“What’s that?”
“A dive casino that Anterdec owns in Las Vegas.”
“I think all old bars have a scent they patent. It’s the smell of desperation, defeat, and lovesick tears.”
“And anger,” Declan added. He sniffed again. “And old Fritos.”
“And puke.”
Declan shot him a disgusted look.
“You’re the hospitality industry expert.”
“Not anymore. Now I’m just a coffee chain owner.”
“You’ll never be just anything, sir—er, Declan.”
The two stood at the same time, as if thinking the same thought.
“Gotta go—”
“Time to head out—”
“I’ll get you next time,” Declan vowed, face tight at the memory of losing. “You snookered me.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who spilled his guts.” Gerald laughed as the blast of outside air caught him short, his inhale a shock. This part of Boston was gentrifying, filled with a mix of old shabby bars and fried-food joints and trendy haute-cuisine bistros. Lofts were being carved out of the old warehouses above the street-level shops. It was the It Neighborhood, and the Westside Center for the Arts was both benefitting and hurting from the change.
