One Little Indiscretion

by Joss Wood

  Reaching the door to the conference room, Sadie lightly knocked and stepped inside. Because she was currently enjoying the luck of a blind mouse in a cattery, the room was empty except for Carrick, who stood by the large window, looking down onto Boston Common. He turned, that lethal smile flashing, hinting at that shallow dimple in his left cheek, and Sadie’s heart kicked up a beat. Yep, there went her blood to that special place low in her womb, and heat meandered through her body.

  Chemistry was a hell of a thing.

  “Sadie.”

  Her name, rumbling out of Carrick’s mouth, had never sounded sexier. Sadie sighed and just managed to stop herself from putting her hand on her heart.

  Pulling her eyes off him, she placed her bag and her folders on the conference table and managed a quiet “good morning.”

  “Isabel’s heirs are running late. They should be here in fifteen minutes or so.”

  Damn. What would they talk about while they waited? The weather? The painting? How amazing, strong, powerful and masculine he felt when he slid inside her...

  Slade! So not helpful!

  Thinking that she had to aim for sophistication or, at least, to act her age, Sadie walked over to the window, keeping a healthy distance between her and Carrick. Because, you know, chemistry...

  Sadie saw him cast a glance over her outfit as she walked across the room and wondered if her boldly patterned red and orange dress was too arty and too bohemian for the conservative, upmarket offices of Murphy International.

  She didn’t care. She wasn’t a black-suit-and-white-shirt-wearing type. She was an art lover and connoisseur, someone who needed color like other people needed to breathe. Carrick would get used to her clothes and if he didn’t...

  Tough.

  She’d changed for one man, toned down her clothes, swallowed her thoughts and opinions and designed her life around a man who’d repaid her by having numerous affairs with everyone from her cousin to her masseuse. She would never dim her shine again, not for anyone.

  Sadie looked past Carrick’s very broad right shoulder to his stupendous view. The afternoon sun was starting to sink and the light held a touch of the same rose-pink Degas used for the dancers’ tutus in his work Dancers in Pink. Or was it closer to the color of that rose Renoir painted in Gabrielle à la Rose?

  Ooh, now she saw a hint of orange...

  Carrick’s knuckles rapping on the window brought her back to the present. She expected him to look annoyed, so his amusement was a surprise.

  “Something happening on the common I should know about?”

  Sadie took a moment to make sense of his words. She shook her head and waved at the window. “I have this habit of seeing colors in terms of art.”

  Confusion flashed in those grape-green eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  Normally, she didn’t try to explain, but for some inexplicable reason, she wanted Carrick to understand her obsession with color. Maybe if he did, they’d have something in common, a connection.

  Something other than sex...

  Seeing his interest, she looked down onto the busy street, trying to find an object to make her point. A woman cut across the common, wearing a yellow coat.

  Sadie gripped Carrick’s sleeve, her fingertips digging into the corded muscle of his forearm. She wanted to let go, but she could feel his heat, smell his clean, fresh skin.

  “That woman, the one wearing yellow, do you see her?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her fingers remained on his arm, as if stuck there with superglue. “Name the first painting that comes to mind where the artist used that color.”

  Carrick didn’t hesitate. “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.”

  “Too easy. Try again.”

  “Andy Warhol’s banana on the sleeve of The Velvet Underground’s record?”

  “Nope, try again,” Sadie suggested.

  “Jeez, you’re tough.” Carrick’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer?”

  Okay, that was a really good answer. “Better,” she reluctantly admitted.

  Carrick’s laughter was low and rumbly. “Think you can do better?”

  Please. “It reminds me of that untitled Mark Rothko work sold in New York a few years back.” She cocked her head to the side. “Or maybe it’s the color of The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt.”

  She felt Carrick’s eyes on her profile, and she couldn’t look at him, not sure if she wanted to see whether he was impressed or not.

  “You know your art,” Carrick said.

  “I have a PhD in art history, so I should,” Sadie replied, her tone crisp. Then she realized that she was stroking Carrick’s arm like he was a cat with a particularly luxurious coat. She looked down at her hand, blushed and yanked it away.

  “Sorry, along with color, I’m also a textile freak. And your suit is so soft, so...touchable.”

  Yeah, sure, the fabric was wonderfully soft, but that wasn’t the real reason she was touching his arm.

  Stop thinking about that night, Slade, and take your hand off his arm.

  Sadie moved away from Carrick, folded her arms and hauled in a deep breath, telling herself to act like a professional.

  Carrick stared down at the Common and they silently watched the Boston residents taking advantage of the cold, clear afternoon. After a minute of silence, Carrick pointed to a woman dressed in a fuchsia-colored coat and walking two elegant, very well behaved Great Danes.

  “The pink coat of the woman walking the Great Danes is the same color as the floor in Matisse’s The Pink Studio,” he said.

  “Or the pink in O’Keeffe’s It Was Yellow and Pink.”

  They could talk about art, thank goodness. It was a neutral subject, something they were both passionate about. And far safer than their other mutual interest: their fascination with each other’s bodies.

  “I also think it’s the same color as your nipples after I lave them with my tongue.”

  It took Sadie a few seconds for his words to sink in and she flushed, immediately catapulted back to that night and the shooting, aching ribbons of pleasure running through her, heating her from the inside out. Sadie couldn’t look at him; she knew that if she did, if she saw the passion in his eyes, she’d fly into his arms and curl herself around him.

  Not exactly appropriate behavior for a conference meeting. His clients might feel slightly in the way.

  Sadie placed her hands on the glass and stared down at the small cars and tiny people. The dog walker was gone but the pedestrians below often tipped their faces to the weak sun, enjoying the little heat on offer.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that night.”

  Sadie groaned and placed her forehead on the glass between her hands. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, either, but she didn’t want to admit that, didn’t want to continue this conversation because Carrick’s observations both bemused and befuddled her.

  The only thing she was sure of was that she couldn’t talk art and paintings and forensics while memories of that night swirled around her overheated brain.

  “Carrick, please stop talking about it.”

  Carrick moved closer, and Sadie could feel his heat. “Why? Because you regret it or because talking about it makes you hot?”

  This wasn’t the behavior of a man intent on avoiding her. After he left and didn’t call or text, she’d assumed he considered her as just another casual hookup and had moved on. His comments suggested he wouldn’t mind a repeat.

  Neither, dammit, would she.

  But that would be foolish and Sadie wasn’t generally a foolish woman. Except she had totally lost her head when she allowed Carrick Murphy to push her up against the wall in her apartment and kiss her senseless.

  She could lie to herself and say she wished she hadn’t slept with him, but s
he couldn’t force herself, even mentally, to issue such a whopper. She didn’t regret what they’d done, the hot evening they’d shared, but she had to move on. Now, immediately.

  But man, when she looked into those light green eyes and saw his blatant desire, she felt foolish and reckless. The urge to strip was strong.

  Nope, not happening. “It’s best if we just forget about that night,” Sadie said, pulling her hands off the glass. She gripped her hands behind her back and stepped away to put a solid amount of space between her and Carrick.

  “I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon,” Carrick muttered, his deep voice rich with frustration. “I want you, Sadie. God, I know we shouldn’t, that it’s a crap idea, that we said it was a onetime thing, but then you walk into the room and all I can think about is being inside you as soon as possible. And judging by all that blue fire in your eyes, by the way they keep going to my mouth, racing over my body, I think you want that, too.”

  He was spot-on, dammit.

  But you can’t go there, you have to be sensible, Slade. “I also want to find out who modeled for Da Vinci in La Belle Ferronnière. I want to own one of Manet’s bride paintings, find the Russian amber room. But I’m a realist and I know that none of the above will happen, just like I know that a repeat of that night is a solidly bad idea.”

  Also, because the last time I was this attracted, I ended up marrying the guy and he made my life hell.

  Carrick, so she was told, was cut from the same cloth. Initially charming and attentive and then turning into a monster at the first hint of something deeper.

  “Screw good ideas. They aren’t any fun,” Carrick muttered, jamming his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, pulling back his jacket to reveal his broad chest covered by a mint-green shirt.

  His suit was designer—maybe Armani?—his tie Hermès and perfectly knotted. To anyone else, he looked like a ridiculously successful Boston businessman, but Sadie was beginning to see past the implacable facade he presented the world. Beneath his layer of perpetual cool, red-hot lava churned.

  And damn, those contrasts, seeing the passion beneath the surface, made her hot. And horny.

  What could happen if she spent one more night with him? Except that one night probably wouldn’t be enough and, in another week, maybe two, they’d be back in the same position again, yearning and burning.

  Nope, it was better to be resolute now, to nip this in the bud.

  Sadie opened her mouth to say no, fully intending to tell him there wasn’t the slightest chance that they’d hook up again.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Sadie almost turned around, convinced that some other woman had uttered the words she’d never meant to say. Or maybe she’d imagined saying them, but then she looked at Carrick’s face and saw the flash of excitement in his eyes, the twitch of pleased lips. Oh, crap.

  What in the world was wrong with her and since when did her mouth act independently of her brain?

  Carrick cupped her cheek with his hand and placed his lips on her temple. Sadie forced herself to keep her hands at her sides, bunching her fists so she didn’t grip his hips, run her hands up that wide chest.

  “Think hard. And think quick,” Carrick murmured.

  Two

  Carrick stepped away, buttoned his suit jacket and moved to the door of the conference room. He pulled it wide and stood aside to allow two women to enter the room. Sadie watched as the small blonde returned Carrick’s hug, conscious of the streaks of jealousy coursing through her body. Annoyed with herself—there was nothing to be jealous about; she and Carrick had shared their bodies, not their souls—she turned her attention onto the second woman casually dressed in black.

  The woman was of Indian descent; Sadie could see that in her lovely, light brown skin and the shape of her luminous gray eyes. They were, Sadie decided, eyes that would change with her mood or with the color of her clothes, the gray-blue of Sisley’s fog or the green-gray of a Whistler sea. Her nose was perfectly straight and her cheekbones could cut glass.

  Man, she was gorgeous.

  Carrick ushered the women into the room and gestured to Sadie. “Keely, Joa, meet Dr. Sadie Slade. She’s the art detective we’ve employed to work on your painting. Sadie, Keely Mounton and Joa Jones.”

  “Hi, Sadie, nice to meet you,” Keely—the blonde—said, shaking Sadie’s hand. She looked at Carrick, her smile small but infectious. “And it’s Ju-ah, not Jo-ah.” Keely dropped her bag on the conference table as Sadie and Joa shook hands. “She never corrects anyone, but I know it drives her mad when people mispronounce her name.”

  “I am standing right here, Keels,” Joa replied with a wry smile. “Sorry, Keely has been bossing me around for half my life and I don’t see her stopping anytime soon.”

  Joa’s smile took her from stunning to exquisite. Sadie darted a glance at Carrick, expecting his tongue to be on the floor, but his expression was inscrutable and he looked completely unaffected.

  Well...huh.

  After exchanging small talk—mutual acquaintances and the horrible winter weather—Carrick gestured for them to take a seat. When they did, Sadie took the seat opposite his clients.

  Sliding his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, Carrick looked every inch the corporate CEO of an international company. “Sadie, Isabel Mounton-Matthews was a valued and important client of Murphy’s. I think she bought her first painting from us over forty years ago. She and my stepmom, Raeni, were great friends and she passed away about—” he raised his eyebrows at Keely “—a year ago?”

  Keely nodded. “Fourteen months to be precise.”

  “Keely and Joa jointly inherited her estate,” Carrick continued.

  Lucky, lucky girls. Gorgeous and wealthy and now owners of one of the best art collections in the country.

  “Keely and Joa have decided to sell the bulk of the collection through Murphy International and donate the proceeds to Isabel’s foundation, which supports various charities on the east coast. Her collection will be the sale of the decade. If you want a comparison, think of the Rockefeller collection that was sold a few years back. Isabel’s collection more than competes. She collected masterpieces, porcelain, jewelry, Native American art, Asian art, silver, furniture, textiles.”

  “My aunt was a magpie with a lot of money,” Keely cheerfully agreed.

  “My brother Finn is cataloging the collection, which is extensive, but he doesn’t have time to delve into the mystery of your paintings, ladies. And that’s why I hired Sadie,” Carrick said. “And Sadie has already determined that two of the three paintings are Homer copies.”

  Keely pulled a face and Joa sighed. “I’m not that surprised. I’m sure I recall Iz mentioning that she wasn’t fully convinced they were all by Homer. She had a gut instinct for art and a fabulous eye. And pedigree wasn’t important to her, she liked what she liked,” Keely said, resting her forearms on the table. She turned to Sadie. “So what makes you think the two paintings are copies?”

  Carrick looked at Sadie, and she explained. “While the paintings are by an artist with talent, the execution simply isn’t good enough to be a Homer. They lack his energy and verve. The signature is wrong and the colors are off. They simply aren’t accomplished enough to be a Winslow Homer. But the third painting is exceptional.”

  “Are we talking about the one that’s unsigned?” Joa quietly asked. When Sadie nodded, Joa continued. “If it is by Homer, shouldn’t it be signed? Isn’t that what artists do?”

  “Not necessarily. There are lots of reasons an artist didn’t sign their works. Sometimes they thought the work wasn’t good enough. Sometimes they never completed it. Sometimes they simply forgot.” Sadie divided her glance between Keely and Joa. “How emotionally invested are you in this being a Homer?”

  A small frown pulled Keely’s dark eyebrows together and those deep brown eyes
reflected her confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean?”

  “Was the painting one of your aunt’s favorites? Is it a favorite of yours? How disappointed will you be if it’s not a Homer?”

  Keely exchanged a quick look with Joa, who simply shrugged. Keely answered her question.

  “The unsigned painting always hung in the small sitting room at Mounton House, adjacent to what was Isabel’s bedroom. All her favorite paintings hung there so I know she liked it. She obviously had her doubts about the other two because I found them in her cupboard in her bedroom when I was up there doing inventory with Mr. Snooty Pants—” Keely glared at Joa “—and you owe me for doing that, by the way.”

  “Mr. Snooty Pants?” Joa asked, puzzled.

  “Wilfred Seymour.” Keely uttered the name as if poor Wilfred was an all-powerful wizard who shouldn’t be named.

  “Are you talking about Dare?” Carrick asked. When Keely nodded, he released a low chuckle.

  “He’s the least snooty guy I know,” Carrick stated.

  Sadie didn’t know Keely, but she instantly recognized the woman’s stubborn expression. Possibly because she’d seen it on her own face a time or two.

  “I have, obviously, seen a totally different version of the man than you have.”

  “He’s a pretty cool guy, Keely,” Carrick protested. Points to Carrick for defending his friend, Sadie thought.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that subject,” Keely retorted. Sadie met Joa’s eyes and caught her small smile. Yep, she knew what Joa was thinking because Sadie was thinking it, too...something along the lines of the lady and protesting too much.

  “Moving on from annoying lawyers...” Keely waved away the subject of Dare Seymour.

  Sadie sympathized. It was exceedingly annoying to be attracted to a man you didn’t want to be, or couldn’t afford to be, attracted to.

  Joa pulled them back to the subject at hand. “Just to be clear, we are talking about the painting of the African American woman with her two children in the fields, right?”

  Sadie nodded. “Let me explain...”