Art-Crossed Love

by Libby Rice

  Yet, for all the brass, Kent couldn’t shake the feeling Cole was the bigger concern.

  “Cole has a woman…” Kent knew this, though the details had refused to gel when he’d asked his brain nicely.

  “Yup.” Trevor grinned in a way that said he didn’t want his uncle to guess at his concern over the memory loss. “Lissa the abstract painter appears to be giving him hell, and he’s secretly being a pain in the ass, in my humble opinion, to make her dig a deeper pit. The guy likes it.”

  The man’s smile grew so wide Kent wondered if it might split Trevor’s lip.

  “I sent him home to sleep with her,” Trevor admitted conspiratorially.

  Kent choked on his sip of water, wheezing through Trevor’s “gentle” hammers on the back. “What?”

  “I sent our boy home to get her out of his system. That, or realize this particular woman is in the system to stay. I figure he’ll know by morning.”

  When Trevor said the name—Liiiiissa with a strong “L” and a lazy “i”—Kent could almost picture her, but not quite. Even so, he had a warm feeling for the trying. He decided to trust the functioning gray matter up top and go with the idea that Lissa was on the right team. A re-meet of Cole’s painter might be paramount.

  Squinting up at Trevor’s protective bulk, the gray matter whispered something else, something not quite so bright or shiny. Recovering and restless, his swirling brain cells didn’t speak to him of facts he knew. Instead they dredged up urges, familiar curiosities regarding things he wanted to know.

  About what?

  Kent set the empty cup on the tray and eased back against the stiff mattress. Waking up after a near-death experience led to trust issues. With himself. Was he to believe his oxygen-deprived brain when it hinted at a hunt for information he’d yet to find?

  Fast, rather like his baffling assumption that Cole had gotten involved, an urgent question pushed to the top of Kent’s mental mush. He didn’t know how the answer mattered to the missing pieces his mind still held hostage, but he figured a man ought to take his own instructions, however inexplicable.

  “Trevor,” Kent started in, figuring the powers that had spared his life might intervene if he started to say something really stupid. “Where’s your wife?”

  Chapter 18

  In a daze, Lissa felt herself lifted and turned. A pillow fell in place beneath her head as she was laid gently under warm sheets. A dry kiss landed on her brow. The hands manipulating her position did so with great care, but the touch felt impersonal, completely devoid of sensual promise. She might have been subject to the ministrations of a competent nurse or a concerned parent.

  She opened her eyes.

  Above her, Cole was quiet with no outward expression of regret. He didn’t spring from the bed or sprint for the door. The truth surfaced in the elevens notched between his brows. Unlike a moment ago, when Cole had scrambled her insides with his brand of slow and loose and then rough and wild, they weren’t alone in the bed any longer. Despite the care he took in tucking her in, she noted he didn’t join her under the covers. A peek over the pile of high thread count would likely reveal one of his feet covertly planted on the floor, poised for flight.

  Intimacy with a man like Cole held inherent risk.

  She had known.

  That he might not be ready. That he might never be ready.

  “You were…” He cradled her cheek even though a ravine had cracked between them and continued to spread. “That was—”

  “Shh.” She laid a finger lightly over his mouth. “We don’t have to speak.” If he’d hurled accusations or scrambled away like she had the plague, she could have responded with anger. Too bad, really. Fighting was so much easier than forgiveness.

  He’d stolen her easy escape the moment he’d internalized the blame, silently recognizing that she’d asked—albeit in the roar of the moment—if he could handle such a step. Every reverent touch belied the self-hatred swirling his eyes, leaching away the final remnants of ohfucksogoodsogoodsogood till only the OHFUCK remained.

  Hard to blame him, too. First off, the sex had gone beyond physical. For her, the situation had approached chest level last week, when he’d trapped her between his thighs at the dining room table. Hiding those feelings under the guise of rampant dislike over artistic differences had veered toward impossible when he’d pilfered Triste tonight and called it great.

  Those firm lips had barely rolled through, “I want you,” before she’d opened with a lot more than physical welcome.

  Shrinking into the bedding on her side, Lissa shrugged off Cole’s caress and curled inward. She landed in a defensive position she wouldn’t need, at least not bodily. Pitching her tone light and wry, as was appropriate for all double entendres, she said, “I’ll never doubt your skills again.”

  Cole stalled mid-shift in his trek to the guest side of the bed, and she gave him credit for the sacrifice. Pretending he belonged at her side, at least for the moment, was a decent thing to do. When he looked her way, she saw she’d surprised him with her casual comment. Then the shock flickered out, replaced with relief. She met both with a kittenish smile, a silent lie.

  I’m fun. No pressure. Take your time.

  The ultimate cooooool girl.

  Except she wasn’t and never had been that person. Lissa wanted to spoon, ass to chest till the sun rose in the east. Saving Cole from the want and need and concern crawling through her psyche was her gift to him, one she hoped he might one day appreciate. For now, she settled for his relief and bit back the rest of the words threatening to jump off her tongue.

  “Wore me out,” she mumbled, letting her lids grow heavy and eventually close. Then Lissa Blanc—self-styled dragoness, a woman who didn’t scoff at drawing blood in a fight—faked sleep so the man she’d given too much could sneak away in peace.

  Chapter 19

  He’d loved her and left her.

  Cole had barely dragged his ass far enough from his own bed to sniff the side of a milk carton pilfered from the fridge. Yesterday. Overlooked in the mess the morning before, the carton had sat on the counter for twenty-four hours. From the looks of it, Lissa had avoided the kitchen entirely during Cole’s foray to the hospital. Soggy bags of peas littered the tile where Sasha napped in the sun pouring through the back windows. Every few seconds the dog blinked a brown eye, scanning the room for signs of edible castoffs.

  The sweet smell of rot wouldn’t seep through the waxed cardboard, but Cole had zero interest in twisting the lid and starting the day with a full-frontal of sour milk. He already had to deal with himself. Tossing the whole thing in the trash, he went for the fridge. The eggs appeared safe, at least in their natural state.

  Who knew what would happen when he tried to cook them.

  Since cereal was out, and the growling from his midsection gave a decent reminder that killer sex made a guy hungry, he’d have to try.

  Because the hollowed-out emptiness was so not the result of stomach-gnawing guilt. Over leaving Lissa alone. Over having the fucking sex in the first place.

  Touching Lissa had been a self-inflicted wound from a knife tipped with heroine. Inside her he’d been euphoric. The aftereffects had left him wounded and raw, yet fighting a corrosive hunger for more.

  Because Lissa had been so back-clawing, ass-clenching, vision-winking good.

  And he knew she would be again.

  Sex with Kate had been sweet and… rare. He’d lived to make love to his wife and then hold her afterward. Kate had always said coming wasn’t her goal, closeness was. Now he knew neither of them should have settled for one or the other.

  Upstairs, in that moment when Lissa’s orgasm had squeezed his cock like a slamming door, he’d felt closer to her than any other woman, any other person, in his life. Apparently grief took smoke breaks when its owner was getting ultra-laid.

  So he’d skipped the holding afterward and expected the sacrifice to make his betrayal all better.

  Doing half only made him a dic
k to both women.

  Cole cranked the gas burner to high and coated the pan with the non-stick spray that was supposed to save breakfast. After a couple minutes, he began cracking eggs. Surely Lissa would show in the middle of this farce—her absence this late in the morning didn’t help the constriction in his chest—so he cracked a couple for her, too. The eggs fell like gelatinous blobs, one on top of the other, into the pan.

  All the yellow and white immediately ran together, so Cole hammered at the yolks with a spatula, figuring he could forcibly subdivide the uni-egg when it came time to flip. These wouldn’t be the pretty, sunny-side-up kind of eggs featured in Denny’s commercials.

  They’d be the kind to show Lissa firsthand why his family had been delivering prepared meals.

  At least Lissa had no cause for complaint about last night, or the first part of it anyway. All the wariness and hostility of the last few weeks had melted into soft entreaties against bare skin. His dry spell had left him wary on all kinds of levels, but not that one. The woman had enjoyed herself immensely.

  He hadn’t even made her beg.

  Smoke suddenly poured off the food. Instinctively, Cole used the tip of the spatula to slice the egg sheet into individual squares. Then he flipped each piece, only to find the opposite sides partially congealed with strange, almost transparent crusts weaving around the edges.

  Uneven heat, maybe? Turning the dial on another burner, gas flared in a wider circle that would cover the entire bottom of the pan. As he moved the smoking food to its new home, he figured the additional heat would at least fire the pieces until he couldn’t contract salmonella. He wasn’t taking chances on vegetables—dicing was a cringe-worthy affair that typically ended in blood and Band-Aids—but he could probably handle cheese.

  He fished a grater from the drawer in the island and a pound of Kraft’s finest from the fridge. The grater stood on its own, a six-inch protrusion with a handle sprouting out the top. Each side of the rectangle featured a different pattern. He went with the least intricate. Their cheese didn’t need to be delicate or pretty.

  With one eye trained on the eggs sizzling next to him, he raked the yellow bar back and forth over coarse metal slats, sure to press the handle so the whole project didn’t fly across the room.

  The monotony of the motion guided his mind back to Lissa’s bed, as though he could only distract himself with bad cooking for so long. He’d known the sex would be good. She was too passionate and honest and, frankly, real for it to be anything else. The reality had been a gassed rag to a blowtorch.

  And damn him for being the bastard who bailed after the heat died down. After his breathing had returned to normal by sheer dint of will, he’d gotten Lissa situated against the sheets. And bam. He’d only been able to see the woman who’d picked out the bed. Not her face—he had the hardest time picturing Kate’s face these days—but her essence. A phantom to heckle him for wanting and doing the wicked thing his wife had not.

  Cheating. Giving himself over to another. A crime he could hardly wait to re-commit.

  Certainly people who needed to lose twenty pounds didn’t want to eat that next cheeseburger, yet in a weak moment, they might enjoy the hell out of one. A gambling addict didn’t want to bet on an unknown horse in the dead of night, but he might not be able hold the urge in check.

  Resisting Lissa’s siren call required willpower. Control. And he was fresh out, swimming alone in a sea of buyer’s remorse with a smear of unadulterated hunger floating across the top—

  Searing pain sliced into his knuckles. “Holy… ooowwww,” he moaned. Blood oozed down his hand, soiling the pile of tasty he’d been building on the counter. He dumped the grater into the sink and thrust his hand under running water. Scratch the cheese, too.

  Breathing deep against the sting, he made a plan to toss half the eggs to Sasha, eat the other half, and never tell Lissa he’d tried to cook her a really crappy breakfast in addition to the other poor choices he’d made within the last twelve hours.

  MEEP! MEEP! MEEP!

  The blare of the fire alarm mocked the eggs that were still on the burner undergoing a veritable nuclear meltdown. The appliances had finally decided, much like the rest of his family, that the only thing Cole was allowed to do in the kitchen was eat.

  ******

  Shrill ringing at her bedside woke Lissa from a recurring dream, the one where all her paintings were piled in a gothic-looking town square, burning. No one else was around to help, so her life’s work went up in smoke while she watched without a fire extinguisher. The dream neither ended nor progressed. The paintings simply smoldered, curling into themselves and barring rescue with the acrid scent of burning hope, until she jerked awake, each and every time.

  Lissa scrambled into a sitting position, happy to be released from the subconscious struggle. Before she went for the phone, she chanced a glance.

  The opposite side of her bed was empty, as expected. In fact, the covers lay completely undisturbed. Cole had escaped fast.

  Distracted by the unwritten memo forged across those smooth sheets, she swept her hand out, blindly feeling for the phone… and toppled half a bottle of vodka. Jerking to attention with a low curse, she righted the bottle at the same time she thrust her legs from beneath the covers and used her two big toes to reach for her discarded robe, dropping the otherwise useless garment on the puddle to soak up the eighty-proof mess.

  A picture of her father puffing a fat cigar flashed across the mobile sitting right next to the disrupted mini bar. Two more beats of “Stand by Me” would end the call, and she dove. “Hi, Dad.” He’d caught her oversleeping on a Thursday, so she injected some cheerleader into her drowsy. No use confirming she was a parasite failing on too many levels to count. Her dad could at least be spared the question as to why she lazed in bed until ten on a weekday morning.

  Oh, you know, Cole and I had a groundbreaking discovery, followed by a medical emergency, which preceded a couple more breakthroughs, a few life-altering orgasms, and finally, I gave up and decided to wallow in an itsy-bitsy abandonment issue.

  Robert Blanc cleared his throat and said cheerfully, “Hi, hon, it’s me.”

  Air siphoned out of her in slow increments as Lissa shifted against the pillows, searching for a more comfortable position. “I know.” She forced a teasing tone. “You and your Cubans”—her dad didn’t have anything against a little contraband in his smoke—“show up every time you call. Reminds me you’re a rebel.”

  He chuckled in his deep dad voice. “Capitalism ought not be stifled by any government, not even ours and not even for a good cause.” Robert Blanc believed in voluntary do-gooding, but he didn’t sit for any form of government regulation of commerce. To him, free trade was fair.

  Somehow he reconciled all that pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps fiscal conservatism with a seriously socialistic streak when it came to family affairs.

  “How are things in the Wild West?” he asked.

  Lissa hugged her knees to her chest with her free hand. Admitting her stumbles with Cole would only prompt a well-intentioned bail-out talk. And, hell, maybe bailing didn’t need to be in the cards. Last night had been a fuck-all move, but at least she’d had the fortitude to bring up the project before she’d passed into sensual lockdown.

  Cole had said they’d compartmentalize. Apparently—she glanced at the comforter, still straight and pristine next to her thigh—he knew what he was talking about.

  “Lissa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you all right?”

  They said if one looked good while talking on the phone, one would sound good on the other end. Too many artist friends had been forced to join the rat race when commissions ran dry. Lissa had always recommended wearing a suit for telephone interviews. Remembering her own advice, she called forth a broad smile, even though her farther couldn’t see it. “Sure. We’ve just been really busy, and yesterday was nuts. Cole’s uncle had a heart attack. He’s okay,” she clarified quickly,
“but it was touch and go for a while.”

  “Wow,” her dad said after a moment, like he was thinking of possible implications. “Is this going delay the project? Do you need anything?”

  The worry in his tone squeezed in her chest. Robert Blanc’s “anything” held distinct and unavoidable meaning. He might as well have said, “Do I need to write a check? Make a call? Donate a wing to the hospital? All three?”

  Can you stop a man from leaving my bed before the sheets go cold?

  “Thank you, really, but no. I’m good. Great. We’ll take a few days to—”

  Her dad’s tone grew stern. “I know when my daughter’s great, and now’s not it.” Then he pulled back, cajoling. “You don’t have to do this if it makes you miserable, honey.”

  Yes, I do. “Of course not. I know that, without a doubt. Okay, maybe I’m not perfect or even great, but I am fine. The project is moving forward, and Cole’s starting to appreciate my work.” Before she could control the reaction, panic hardened the refusal that rose in her throat. “Dad, no help. None.”

  She held her breath when he didn’t answer. As the silence stretched from Colorado to New York, she berated herself for chastising her most ardent ally. She’d sworn to never ostracize her family for offering everything they had—unconditional love and support in the form of advice and influence and, most of all, affluence. Her dad, especially.

  “I’m sorry,” she rushed. “I only meant—”

  She cut herself off, not sure how to make him understand her appreciation for what he offered without accepting it. The choice had always come down to this, and she’d taken the help. Years of acquiescing nods and docile thanks had won her nothing but shallow, reluctant praise delivered from behind fluttering hands.

  Half-hearted bias based on her last name forged the wrong kind of legacy.

  This gig with Cole might be curdled, but she didn’t know that yet, not for sure.

  Tinges of foul-smelling smoke curled under her nose. Sliding from the bed, she cracked her door and peeked out. Visually, the upstairs appeared its perfectly-ordered self—sun lit the landing, and vacuum lines marred the hallway runner. Whatever was burning, it wasn’t the house… smelled too much like food. Closing the door again, she refocused on her father, who’d been talking in the margin of her thoughts.