Heartbreakers and Heroes

by Box Set

If she were an artist, she’d use mostly charcoal to draw his face. Stern, quick lines. Harsh ones, with lots of the white paper showing through in contrast. Al, by comparison, would be all soft paint strokes in vibrant colors.

  Then again, she wasn’t an artist. She just sold art.

  Realizing she hadn’t spoken for too long a period of time, she returned her gaze to the painting and scrambled for something to say. “She’s pretty famous,” she said lamely.

  “Are you extra staff hired on for tomorrow?” the man asked casually.

  “Uh,” she said. Her mind blanked.

  “Because if you are, you have a few hours free before they truly need your assistance. I’d be happy to give you the full tour…” His cold gaze considered her from head to toe. Something about the way he looked at her caused a cold chill to race up her spine. “The bedroom has another piece by Cramer which you might find equally fascinating.”

  Ew, she thought. Trying to think of an appropriate response, she opened and closed her mouth without releasing a sound.

  “Hey, Dad, I see you’ve met Jude.” Al leaned on the doorway, but it took her a second to recognize him.

  The beard was gone, replaced by features that could’ve modeled for a bust in any museum. His clothes were the same sort of thing he’d worn since she met him—superhero tee shirt and a pair of jeans—but his feet were bare, a detail her brain found unnaturally erotic.

  The older and creepier version of Al turned to face his son. “Ah, you brought home a woman?” His raised brows suggested this wasn’t par for the course.

  “Yes, let me introduce you to my girlfriend.” Al swept into the room and came very close to her side, almost nudging his father aside with the movement. He pulled her into a hug, which she returned awkwardly as he mumbled, “Play along, ‘kay?”

  She added a squeeze as he started to back away, a few seconds too late for the hug to look organic and comfortable. Her face had to be red, but she gave him a smile and a nod.

  “Have you known Jude long?” his father asked. His expression appraised Jude, as if he considered a piece of art and whether or not it fit in a space rather than the look of someone about to possess something, which was a great comfort to Jude.

  Al’s laugh sounded canned, reminding Jude of the studio audience in some live television show. “Ah-ha-ha, Dad, you’ll have to save the inquisition for later. We just got in and Jude was nice enough to let me use the shower first. It’s her turn now, so if you’ll excuse us?”

  Although he’d phrased it as a question, he led her out of the room as he spoke.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t share the water,” replied the world’s creepiest father.

  Again the canned laughter, but they’d made it to the stairs and he ushered her up quickly.

  “Good save,” she whispered.

  He snorted. “Thank me for it later. Sorry about that, actually. He’s married, believe it or not, but my mother is either in too much of a Vicodin haze to notice his extra-curricular activities or happy someone else will deal with him for a while. They’ve been like that my whole life, not that it makes it okay, but saying we’re dating should keep him away from you. How’d he corner you alone in a room anyway?”

  She considered how to answer as he closed his bedroom door, sealing them away from prying eyes and creepy fathers. In the end, she decided to simply be honest. “The painting was done by my mother.”

  Considering her bag with a frown, she realized she could choose between various rumpled items. Just figured, she’d landed in the land of wealth and snobbery and she couldn’t even dress to mask her discomfort.

  “Your mom is Agatha Cramer?” The slight awe in his tone didn’t stop his movement. He pointed into the bathroom. “I took the liberty of sending Pile out while I showered. Texted him to get you some fresh clothes. Made up this romantic road trip we went on impulsively… Whatever, he bought it and got you some clothes. Hopefully they fit. I figured what you had wouldn’t be terrifically fresh after being on the run and all that.”

  She offered him a grateful smile. “That was really nice of you.”

  He shrugged. “If you have money, you can buy almost anything. You’d know, though. Your mom has got to be pretty loaded. They spent a fortune on that piece. For a modern artist, she’s a very big deal.”

  Jude resisted rolling her eyes, but only barely. “Yeah, you know how you said this was your parents’? That’s her stuff. I’m not part of that world and I never fit into it.”

  “But you work in an art gallery…?” She heard the question in his statement and shook her head.

  “In this case, I got hired for what I knew. I can’t draw a circle, like I said. I’m not a passionate artistic type. I’m just me, plain old Jude.”

  He opened and closed his mouth as if he were about to say something, but finally closed it on whatever thought he'd almost shared.

  The idea of a shower offered too much temptation, so with a last glance his way, she simply said, “I like you without the beard.”

  Closing the bathroom door on his stunned expression made her giggle like a teenager.

  Her humor didn’t last, though. As she stripped and stepped into the shower—hedonistic, as promised—she wasn’t sure what bothered her more…

  For one, she’d likely be in as much trouble for running during an investigation as she would’ve been if Braunberger never woke up. For two, she was somewhere in Dallas in a mansion and didn’t know how to act at all. For three, her hero was hot and she was shockingly attracted to him.

  Just the smell of him in the still fogged up shower hardened her nipples.

  Shoving it all away, she focused on getting cleaned up. If only the rest of her problems would melt off and vanish down the drain as easily as the grime from travel…

  Chapter 6

  Al found himself staring at the door, not sure whether or not it was appropriate for him to be in the bedroom while his paranoid princess showered. Since he didn’t really want to be cornered by either of his parents, either, he found himself stuck in the hallway, facing door to his room like some video game avatar while the gamer was away from keyboard. Just standing there, not sure what to do with himself until she came back.

  Neither the thought nor the comparison sat well with him.

  Carpenter chose that moment to find him, rushing down the hall like a fireball of hyperactivity. “Where the hell have you been, man? I’ve been spazzing. I came here, hoping you’d turn up eventually, but…”

  While his partner sputtered for more words, Al squinted at him. “Since when do you go to my parent’s house to look for me? You know better than anyone how much I avoid this place usually.”

  “Call it a hunch,” Carpenter said with a shrug.

  Al called it fishy.

  “Look, I’m actually really glad I found you. I know you said no events this month, but an opportunity right around the corner popped up. They’re paying good, too. I’m not talking some kid’s birthday party; they’re offering us a decent check. It would be like a half an hour of your time.” Carpenter’s winning smile worried Al further.

  “It isn’t like we’re short of money. This has been a good year. Besides, I have a guest.” Al pointed a thumb at the door. “And I’m still not back on the job, technically.”

  “You said a week,” Carpenter pointed out.

  “I need more than a week,” Al answered, still wondering if he should go in and act nonchalant about the fact she was naked behind one closed door.

  “Dammit, Jimme, this is a great opportunity and I’m not kidding—it is literally a few miles from here. We can be in and out in a half hour. You smile, sign some autographs and we get back out. No big at all.” Carpenter’s face seemed flushed. Al wondered if he was coming down with something, maybe a fever.

  He sure looked borderline feverish. But maybe he was just excited. Which, in and of itself was kind of sweet. His friend stuck around through the early days when they didn’t plan to do anything more than
make a few silly videos. He’d been there in the garage days, so to speak, and stuck around even after success snuck up on them and bit them in the ass.

  Him being so excited—still—about their enterprise was a good thing.

  Even as he thought it, Al wasn’t so sure. And Carpenter called him Jimme again…

  “Look, man, you put up with my ass leaving on the lurch. If this thing is such a big deal to you, you’ve got it. We’ll do it.” Likely, the event would take place after Jude went on her way again…

  The thought of her leaving caused a twitchy sensation in his stomach, similar to the flipping but not quite the same.

  “Great. It is tomorrow morning.” Carpenter began backing away even as he spoke.

  “Tomorrow? I can’t tomorrow. I told you—”

  But Carpenter already bounced down the stairs. “I’ll text you the deets. Thanks for this, man. You won’t regret it.”

  “I already regret it,” he muttered.

  “Regret what?”

  She’d opened the door he’d been staring at while he’d been talking to Carpenter and he hadn’t even noticed. The sweet scent of her, all warm and feminine, had his stomach flipping again. A glance down at her didn’t help. Her hair hung in wet strands around her pretty little face and her lips looked plumped, adorably pink and nearly irresistible.

  He grunted, not sure what they’d been talking about.

  “Was that your friend, the one Pile mentioned?” she asked when he didn’t come up with more of a response.

  “Yeah, Carpenter, the asshole.” Thinking of his partner helped, grounding him when his mind seemed determined to think all the wrong things about Jude.

  “So you have to work tomorrow?” She chewed on her tempting bottom lip after she spoke, not helping his hormones in the slightest.

  “Apparently. You can come, if you want.” He wasn’t sure why he offered. He’d never even invited a real girlfriend to come along when he worked, yet he’d invited Jude? He needed to get his head on straight. Unfortunately, his brain seemed determined to keep adding the little things about her together, and all of it appealed to him.

  “I’m not sure if I should be seen in public…” And princess paranoid returned to the fore.

  “You’re in Dallas. No one is looking for you here.” Besides, based on most of his appearances, people would be focused on him.

  “If you think it will be okay, it might be a fun distraction to see you work.” Her smile broke free and charmed him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

  Too bad there was nothing to distract him from her…

  ***

  He took her on a tour of the property mostly to get them both out of the house and away from his family. What he hadn’t anticipated was her enthusiastic joy at the horses. As long as he could remember, they’d kept the animals on the land—an investment rather than for anyone’s personal pleasure. He knew how to ride, mostly because his parents hired someone to teach him, but he never found any real fun in the experience.

  The stable hands gave her a tame mare, all the while looking shocked to see him outside. He hadn’t ridden in years, but figured it was probably like riding a bike.

  Not that he did that much, either, but the premise seemed sound.

  His gelding had a vast and overwhelming interest in eating grass, ducking his head every few feet to try to nibble at the ground. Al’s shoulder ached from yanking on the reins to keep his horse from stopping to eat, but when he glanced over at Jude, he found her head tossed back and her eyes closed. Wind toyed with her hair, turning the mess of it into wild fairy locks and making her face appear even more impish than before.

  She was gorgeous.

  When she glanced his way to toss him a smile, his stomach flipped again, but he snapped a picture of her with his cell phone.

  “Don’t post that,” she warned.

  The image had blurred, partly because of the horses and partly because of her hair moving in the breeze, but he saved it anyway. “No worries. Wasn’t planning on bringing you this far and then getting you busted. You gotta answer me this, though… Why does a city girl who has an artist for a mother know how to ride horses?”

  Her grin bordered on devious when she peeked his direction. “Al, I never said I was a city girl.”

  He shouldn’t ask more. There was no sense getting to know her. Once things cleared up in her real life, she’d be back at her gallery hocking art to the highest bidder and he’d be back to making dick jokes for the internet. Still… “So, where did you grow up?”

  The horses set a gentle pace, meandering along under the hot Texan sun. She stayed quiet for so long, he wasn’t sure if she planned to answer him. Finally, she spoke to the horse’s forelock rather than to him. “We traveled a lot. I remember living in a camper, in an apartment, and in a house almost as big as yours. None of them were our house, of course. That was the thing, though. I never knew where we’d be next, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to get attached to anyone. By the time I was a teenager, Mom’s art hit pretty big, so we had the money for her to buy a little house of her own on a hill outside the city. I think I thought all our problems up to that point were because of money, so now that we had some…”

  Her voice trailed off and she dismounted. Since she wrapped her reins around a fencepost, he got off his horse and did the same. “Money doesn’t solve problems.”

  “Exactly,” she agreed, grinning up at him. “I think I wanted a normal life, you know? A mom that remembered when I was going to be in a school thing and sat in the crowd to applaud, even if it was something dumb. I wanted the mom who packed my lunches and wrote notes on the napkins. Everyone always said they were so jealous of me—getting to live with that kind of talent and genius and fame must be pretty great, after all. Me? I just wanted someone to put a smiley face of mustard on my bologna sandwich.”

  He snapped another picture of her when she laughed. As if she’d flipped a switch, the worries vanished from her face, and he couldn’t resist taking another picture.

  “Why do you keep taking my picture?” she asked.

  “I take pictures of everything, even my lunch,” he responded automatically. Guilt instantly swamped him. She’d been open and honest and he blew her off with a casual remark. He added, “But I like looking at you.”

  Her grin spread. “I like looking at you, too.”

  He would swear he didn’t think about kissing her before he did it. One second, he reveled in the way the light glinted off her eyes, the next he took her lips with his own.

  He might have been able to pull back, too, if she hadn’t released this delicious little moan from the back of her throat. The sound drove him to slant his lips over hers fully, sampling and teasing at her mouth with all the repressed attraction he’d bottled up since he’d met her.

  Her fingers dug into his scalp, altering the angle in a way which deepened their kiss. He gripped the fence on either side of her to resist pulling her closer, but he didn’t have to since she melded herself against his body.

  His desire gave him lots of ideas. He’d release the fence, grab her ass in one hand and grind into her warmth. He could trace his lips down her neck to her collarbone. Lower, he could suck on her nipples—see what color they were and how well her breasts fit into his palm.

  But logic returned and he stepped back quickly. “Sorry,” he said.

  Her lips were parted, her eyes a bit glassy as she gazed up at him. He told himself not to notice her flushed cheeks or the way her breath rushed out of her in small pants.

  In a single stride, he’d freed his reins from the fence. Mounting up, he watched the last of the sunlight vanishing on the horizon. “If we hurry back, we should be able eat while the food is still warm. C’mon.”

  He didn’t look back at her to see her mount. He couldn’t look at her at all.

  If he did, he might get back off the damn horse and do his very best to convince her the only thing he was sorry for was ending the kiss.

&
nbsp; Chapter 7

  They hadn’t exchanged more than a few cursory words since they’d returned from the horseback ride. His bed seemed huge as she stared blindly toward the ceiling a few hours later. She could hear him breathing from the other side of the room. The whole place smelled like him, or perhaps she couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss and it made her nose as demented as the rest of her.

  He was a hell of a kisser.

  Which she shouldn’t be thinking about, especially not when she was alone with him in his bedroom, of all places. He was a stranger. She was in deep trouble. He’d been kind enough to help her out in her hour of need, even though he didn’t know her. She had neither the time nor the inclination for a romantic entanglement.

  Listing the reasons why she shouldn’t be attracted to him didn’t lessen the attraction any, though. Punching the pillow, she gave up pretending to be asleep and whispered, “Are you still awake?”

  “How can I not be? You’re tossing and turning over there,” he said.

  His voice sounded decidedly grouchy.

  “I’m keeping you awake?” she whispered back.

  “No. I’d like to blame it on you, though.”

  Her lips twitched as she tried to decide whether to be amused or annoyed at the response. “I tried to be an artist once, did I tell you that? I’m not creative. You said you make videos, so you must be creative. What was your first or how did you know that was the thing you wanted to become?”

  His short bark of laughter broke the silence following her questions. “Well, I didn’t know that was going to be what I’d be when I grew up at all. Like I mentioned before, I never really fit into my parents’ lives. So I had this huge house, endless resources and no one who cared what time I showed up at night. By the time I turned fourteen, I was stealing radar detectors out of cars in mall parking lots and otherwise raising as much hell as I could to try to get a drop of attention. At least that’s what the shrinks said—I was seeking negative attention to fulfill my need for any attention at all. As a last ditch effort, and at the prodding of our housekeeper at the time, I ended up shipped off to a ranch for delinquent kids in Montana.”