His eyes sparkled. “Hold on, stay like that.”
“Like with wine in the air?”
He put down the grocery basket and came toward me while I stood frozen. I was like a statue of the world’s most enthusiastic wino.
He pressed himself against me, leaving barely any room between us, and with those searing baby blues trailing from my eyes down to my lips, he cupped my face with one hand. I closed my eyes, gripping the necks of the bottles extra hard, and felt his lips press against mine. They were soft, warm, and sweet. It felt like I didn’t have a hard bone in my body, just this lightness and sunshine.
Then I felt the wet brush of his tongue along the inner rim of my lip and I almost dropped the bottles.
He pulled back before I could readjust my grip and attack him more voraciously. That was probably a good thing considering we were standing in the middle of Safeway in Conservative Old Person Central.
“What was that for?” I asked breathlessly, finally lowering the bottles. My arms had been shaking but from the strain or the kiss, I didn’t know.
He picked up the basket and gave me a nonchalant look. “You looked cute. What can I say?”
“I thought maybe I looked easy, with the wine and all,” I joked, hoping my cheeks would stop flaming.
“Oh. Well, that too.”
A half an hour later, while my lips still tingled from our first kiss (well, second kiss, if you wanted to get really technical), we were back at Sins & Needles and taking the groceries up to where he lived on the top floor. The front of the house with the porch was the entrance for the shop, while the entrance to the upstairs was from the side of his house, also where he had a small garage. I noted that it was used as a woodworking shop instead of for keeping the Jeep.
“I didn’t know you were such a handyman,” I told him as he unlocked his front door. It was just a simple deadbolt, nothing too fancy. I hadn’t heard or seen any motion detectors or cameras either, though I knew from experience that it didn’t mean there weren’t any. There was a large hedge of desert rose between the side of the house and the main street, which blocked this door from prying eyes. That was a plus.
He glanced behind me as he opened the door and let me in. “Ah, I’m not so handy, believe me. I dabbled in the sign making business for a bit and sometimes do it for fun.”
The shop had a beautiful sign out front. “Did you do the Sins & Needles sign?”
“Took me a hell of a long time. Luckily when you screw up doing woodwork, the wood doesn’t cry out in pain and sue you.” He shut the door behind us. “Well, this is the part of my life most people don’t get to see.”
To the left of us was a door that I assumed led into the shop. To the right was another door that looked like it went into the garage. Then of course there were the stairs we were climbing. That left three ways to get out of the house if I had to. Not too shabby.
“How do we get to the backyard?” I asked him as we went up.
“Through the garage,” he said as he paused at the top.
The upstairs was absolutely stunning. Hardwood floors and Mexican rugs, white-washed walls above peeling-paint baseboards that looked like they were salvaged from a barn. Huge pieces of original artwork hung from the walls, along with a display of guitar necks that went in a diagonal slash from floor to ceiling. The ceiling itself was made of copper panels.
He took me into the kitchen, which was small but homey. To my delight, it was a bit of a mess, with empty beer cans stacked in the corner and toaster crumbs on the counter. Just like Camden’s ears had brought him down to earth, the fact that he wasn’t 100 percent neat and tidy made his shabby chic home easier to take.
My eyes were immediately drawn to a painting of a woman above the driftwood table. It looked like Picasso’s Woman in Blue, except that it was done from a photograph. The woman’s face was blurry and covered with a wash of dark hair, but her figure was exquisite.
“I love that,” I told him. “Did you do that?”
I looked over my shoulder at him. He gave me a small smile. “I did.”
Tattoos, sign-making, painting; Camden was the epitome of an artist—complete with the occasional mood swing as well.
I was about to ask who the painting was of, but I decided against it. From the tight look in his eyes, I knew it was his ex-wife. I wondered why on earth he kept the artwork in the kitchen. Did he really want reminders of her all over the place?
Of course, that train of thought was coming to you courtesy of a woman who drove her ex-boyfriend’s car and had a memory of him permanently inked on her arm.
I whirled around and clapped my hands together. “This is amazing, Camden. Come on, show me the rest!”
He took me out into the living room, which had couches of mahogany leather and white fluffy throws and a wonderful working fireplace. It got shockingly cold in the winters here and many homes didn’t have central heating, so the fireplace must have been a major selling point.
Also, a major sexing point. Any date that ended with two people drinking wine near a fire also ended with a woman’s thong being thrown across the room.
Before I could fixate on that thought too much, next was the spare bedroom, which had a single bed shoved in the corner. The rest of the room was crammed with paint supplies.
“Not your office then?” I asked.
“My office is downstairs between the hall and the shop. This is just for Ben, if he ever comes to visit.”
“Has he?”
He shook his head and flipped off the light. There was a nice bathroom with a clawfoot tub and a basin-like sink. Then it was his room.
Like the kitchen, it was a bit messy. He looked sheepish before he scampered across the room and started shoving all his clothes into a laundry hamper.
“Sorry, I’m not used to much company.”
“You’re also a man.” With flaws, thank god.
I walked across the room, trailing my hand over the cozy flannel bedspread and stopped at the window. We were right above the front of the store and could see down into the rock garden and the main street. The sun was starting to get low in the sky, casting long shadows in the golden light.
“So does that mean you’re neat and tidy, since you’re a woman?”
I scrunched up my face. “Are you kidding? I used to buy paper plates just so I wouldn’t have to do the dishes. My idea of vacuuming is borrowing someone’s dog for the day and having them eat all the crap off the floor.”
He laughed, a total belly-aching shake. What a fucking beautiful sound.
“All right, come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me away from the window. “Let’s keep the Day of Fun moving by going in the backyard and cracking open a bottle of wine.”
“I guess the tour’s over.”
“No more house to see, unless you want to see my office and the garage.”
“Sure, whatever.” I shrugged like I didn’t care.
But moments later, after we had put away the groceries and took two glasses for our wine, he showed me the office. A place I very much wanted to see.
It was small and simple. The door downstairs led into the office and another door led from the office to the shop. The only locks were on that door. There was also a small window that I could easily fit out of. That would most likely be my escape route. I tried to get a sense of where the window opened up to the outside without seeming overly suspicious, but it looked like it was still on the hidden side of the hedge.
He had a nice, retro-looking desk, mint in color, and a couple of metal filing cabinets beside it. A swanky iPod dock and speakers sat in the corner on top of a thick stack of magazines while a Mac computer ran a slideshow of beach photos. A pair of glasses rested on the keyboard. Beside it was a framed photo of a boy on a beach, throwing a rock. You couldn’t see his face because of his hat, but I assumed it was Ben.
I didn’t see a safe anywhere, not even under the desk. Shit. Maybe I’d be robbing the register, and as crammed as it loo
ked, it almost seemed insulting to steal it from him.
“Where do you keep all your tattoo equipment?” I asked.
He opened a closet that sat between the two doors. This was better organized than the rest of the house, with built-in shelves that housed plastic boxes affixed with post-it notes and labels. And at the very bottom of the shelving unit was the safe. It was bolted to the ground—not too easy to pick up and run away with—but with only a three-number combination lock. Although three number locks were easier to decode than six number ones , they were also easier to remember and usually nixed the need to be written down somewhere near the safe. Eight times out of ten, if someone had a six-number combination lock, they had that code written down somewhere in the room.
I just had to guess Camden’s three numbers. I didn’t have the time and patience to listen for the contact points and wheels and graph the results, and I certainly wasn’t about to do any drilling. I would need to get in, crack the code on only a few tries, and then get out. No fingerprints, no sound. The only thing I’d leave was some sort of sign that made him think a pro didn’t do it. Evidence of sloppiness.
Naturally, I was counting on the safe being actually full of cash or something valuable, when for all I knew, Camden used it for mementos and prized comic books. I hoped the bank transaction fees for a small business were high enough that he made a deposit just once or twice a week. I’d just have to chance it. I didn’t want to think about Plan B yet.
I made sure to let my eyes gloss over the safe only once and then looked at Camden. “Is this where you come to think? Your office?”
He shut the closet with a click. “Actually I go outside. Care to join me?”
He held out his arm and I gleefully took it, carrying the glasses with my other hand. I fought back the pinpricks of guilt that had started building inside my throat, and by the time we made our way through the garage that smelled like ponderosa pine, we were in his backyard.
The rock garden from the front continued in the back, surrounding a large stone patio that was hedged by sagebrush. But beyond the rocks was a small patch of lawn and two lawn chairs. It looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a while, but the grass was so stiff and wide out here that it didn’t look unruly. Beyond the lawn was the neighbor’s fence, though you couldn’t see it thanks to the layers of flowering bushes and the occasional small palm tree.
“This is beautiful,” I whispered, taking in the fragrant air. All the night-blooming flowers were opening as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, leaving us in a blue haze.
“Just you wait,” he said. He put the wine down on the wrought-iron table and flicked on a light switch on the wall. Suddenly the yard was swamped with small white lights, making it look like we were surrounded by a million fireflies.
“You do realize you have, like, the bachelor pad of all bachelor pads, right? Talk about a babe magnet.”
He held his hand out for the glasses. “Babe magnet? I don’t know if you’ll be saying that once I’ve got my outfit on.”
I grinned and handed them to him. His arms flexed deliciously as he wrestled with the wine bottle’s cork. “Well, for the record, cross-dressing Tom Sellecks turn me on.”
And at that, the cork came out with a pop. You know, for extra emphasis.
He shot me an irresistible smile. “That’s lucky, considering Ellie Watt turns me on. And she doesn’t have to be wearing anything at all.”
Shit. I was blushing again. “Where is this Ellie Watt, I’ll kill her,” I joked, looking around and making a fist.
“You tell me,” he said softly. “Is she here?”
His tone brought me down to earth. Yes, unfortunately Ellie Watt was here for once. I didn’t know how my other identities would handle this.
“I can show you my ID,” I said, taking the wine glass from him and swirling the liquid around. I kept my eyes focused on him and he did the same.
He opened his mouth to say something but then quickly closed it. He raised his glass instead.
“To our Day of Fun,” he said, voice warm and rich.
“And to the night,” I answered.
***
Some of the best laid plans are foiled by wine. Though, perhaps in our case, they were made better.
The first bottle of wine went down like a treat and straight to my head. I only had a hotdog and fries at the driving range, and the copious amount of grease ingestion did nothing to slow the wine. Then someone had the idea to break out the second bottle. It was probably me. Anyway, that went down too, all while Camden and I lay sprawled in his lawn chairs, staring up at the satellites as they went across the black sky.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have massive déjà vu about the whole thing, back to the time when Camden and I used to lie on top of his trampoline and listen to music. He must have been reminded of that too, because when he ran back inside the house to get a third bottle of wine from his rack, he picked up his iPod dock as well.
A few songs into Calexico’s Feast of Wire (my choice), when the bottle was half-drunk, we suddenly remembered we wanted to eat food. So Camden ran back inside to get the asparagus and steak—and a bag full of our thrift store clothes.
He threw the bag onto the lawn chair beside me and started firing up the grill.
“You know the rules, Ellie,” he said. “We can’t eat until we’re wearing that stuff.”
“You just want to get my clothes off, don’t you?” I teased, rifling through it. There was my skanky halter top (really nothing more than a bikini top) and Peggy Bundy pants.
“I can get your clothes off in other ways,” he shot back. He buried his devious smile behind the action of squirting lighter fluid onto the charcoals.
I have no doubt about that, I thought. I was fortunate, too, that I hadn’t said it out loud. Drunk Ellie needed to keep herself in check. And with that, I made a point of savoring the rest of the wine in my glass. Even though I was having the most fun I’d had in a very, very long time, I couldn’t forget who I was and the real reason I was there.
Even though every part of me was just screaming to let go.
A few minutes later and the backyard filled with the tantalizing sizzle of grilled steaks. I breathed in deeply, my stomach growling.
“You wanted yours medium, right?” he asked. “Not much longer now.”
Which meant it was changing time. While he started poking at the foil-wrapped asparagus, I turned the lawn chair around so that the high back was blocking his view of me. Then, after a quick look around at his neighbors and seeing only darkness from their windows, I shimmied out of my jeans. Unfortunately, I was drunk and had forgotten to take off my boots first. I fell over sideways onto the grass.
“What are you doing over there?” I heard Camden yell and the sound of metal tongs being placed on a rung.
“Stay back! I’m fine!” I yelled, hoping my voice wasn’t loud enough to alert the neighbors.
I thanked my lucky stars that my combat boots had a zipper and quickly unzipped them. Lying on my back with my leg bent up to my head, I pulled off the jeans and tossed them to the side. Then I got on my knees and started to look for my ugly Peg pants. Where the hell did they go?
“Looking for these?” Camden asked from behind me.
Swallowing my pride, I turned around on my knees and looked up. Camden was holding the pants in one hand. He dropped them beside him and then walked over to me. He held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said gently, a shadowed intensity in his eyes.
I shook my head quickly. “No. I’m just in my underwear.”
“I can see that,” he said. “Let me help you up.”
My heart thumped loudly in my ears and I looked away from his face and straight ahead at his knees. “I don’t want you to see.”
Suddenly he was down on his knees, and though there were a few inches between us, he was closer than he’d ever been. “I don’t care, Ellie,” he said determinedly.
I kept shaking my head, una
ble to form words, unable to tell him how I was feeling. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me get dressed in peace. I wanted to run. I wanted the darkness to swallow me whole.
“You know how I feel about your scars. They only make you more beautiful,” he whispered, now stroking the side of my face. His eyes were searching mine, begging me to open up but the fear was so big and so damn real.
“You’ve never seen my scars.” My voice was barely audible, even in my own head.
“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen what they’ve made you.”
His nose nudged the side of mine and maybe because I’d been thinking about it ever since Safeway, or maybe because I was buying some time, I leaned in and kissed him. This wasn’t the tender kiss from earlier. I had no wine bottles held above my head. This kiss was soft for a moment, then hurried. His lips sucked gently on mine, his tongue ravishing my mouth like he couldn’t stop himself. I was suddenly insatiable, each kiss reaching down into my core, making me want all of him, every part. A million thoughts flew through my head and then there was nothing at all. There wasn’t even Camden and Ellie. There was just this hot, primal, crucial need for each other.
Before I could stop him, or at least pretend to stop him, he was pushing me back until I was falling onto the grass. I reluctantly slid my knees out to the side, my legs coming into full view. My scars visible in the dark. He didn’t notice, didn’t care. He kept kissing me passionately, so hot, so sweet, as one of his hands disappeared into the back of my hair, cupping my head. He laid me on the ground, the hard grass tickling the sides of my ears, and that was the last time he was gentle.
He straddled me and pulled my tank top over my head and tossed it aside. Then he leaned back and ripped off his own shirt. As if I wasn’t breathing hard enough already, squirming beneath his form, he looked better than I could have imagined. Here was the new Camden McQueen, shirtless, a tower of defined muscle and gorgeous, darkly dangerous tattoos.
There was a phoenix rising from the ashes along the swoop of muscle of his hipbones, a tiger/dragon hybrid flying up the side of his stomach, scripture peeking out of the top of his boxers. I’d seen only glimpses of them before, and now they glowed before me, lit by the hundreds of warm lights in his garden. He was like a living, breathing painting on an all-male canvas.
Sins & Needles (The Artists Trilogy #1) Page 9
