And yet…nothing churned in his gut and spilled out from his heart onto the canvas. He was empty.
And maybe he was done.
Harley ripped the rectangular canvas off the easel and dumped it against the wall. Spotting his sketch pad on his nightstand, he picked it up and slumped into the armchair positioned by the glass doors. Outside, a pair of kereru perched on a tree branch and stared at him in disdain. One took offense at the movement of his pencil skimming across the page and flew away, the bird’s heavy wings making a distinctive whooping sound as it disappeared into the native bush-covered hill behind West and Piper’s house.
Allowing his mind to wander, Harley sketched the remaining pigeon. The rounded curve of its skull, the slope of its back. Something about the bird’s sleek, feathered wings held close to its body reminded him of Bree’s prissily pulled-up hair that morning.
He dropped his pencil down the page, tracing the line of her jaw, angled defensively as she’d denied being tired. Then the sweep of her eyebrows…the slant of her blue-grey eyes, hooded with passion…her long blonde hair as it tumbled free, draping over the pillow as he looked down on her from above then, lowering his head to nip softly at her lush lower lip—
Three sharp knocks echoed down the hallway from the front door. Harley jumped, so deeply under the pencil’s spell that the tip slipped and scribbled over the page.
“Can you get that?” Piper hollered from somewhere upstairs. “I’m peeing. Again.”
With a shake of his head, Harley stood and strolled out into the hallway. “TMI, pregnant lady.”
“Bite me, asshat,” came the shouted reply.
He chuckled. Man, he’d really missed his old gang. Especially his two surrogate little sisters, Piper and her younger sibling, Shaye. He’d been best mates with West and the two girls’ older brother, Ben, since he and Ford had arrived on Stewart Island as five-year-olds.
Harley opened the door to speak-of-the-devil-herself-in-chef’s-whites, Shaye.
She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “Took you long enough. Bree and I nearly dozed off.”
His gaze zipped past Shaye’s shoulder to where Bree stood a step behind. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of him, and she retreated farther. Make that two steps behind. He kept his lips set in a neutral line as he noticed the embroidered logo on her tee shirt, now returned to its correct position. Seeing her become flustered as he’d pointed out her wardrobe malfunction this morning? Priceless. He’d empty his wallet for the opportunity to ruffle Bree’s sleek-kitty fur up the wrong way again.
As if reading his mind, Bree’s rosy-pink lips parted into a tight smile. “Sorry if we disturbed you. Shaye and I have some last-minute baby shower details to go through with Piper.”
Harley stepped aside, waving them in. “No worries. I was just mucking around.”
“Oooh. Can I see?” Shaye plucked the sketch pad from his hand before Harley was even aware he still held the damn thing.
“Wait—” A little late to tag on the disclaimer that his doodles were as private as entries in a secret journal.
“Awww, a kereru.” Shaye studied the two sketches.
Moving alongside Shaye, Bree directed a cool stare onto the page. Her shoulders stiffened, eyes narrowing into dangerously thin slits.
“Who’s the woman?” Shaye glanced up with a frown. “She looks familiar, but…”
Bree’s gaze clearly displayed a homicidal urge to freeze his nuts off. Yeah, yeah. He got it. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t want their friends discovering that the excruciating politeness they’d shown each other while socializing was a cover up of the ooops-a-fucking-daisy incident of sleeping together last month.
Harley’s blood pressure rocketed, heartbeat booming in his eardrums. He slid the pad from Shaye’s hands and tucked it under his arm. “It’s Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother from Maori legend. I’m thinking about doing a mural on the outside wall of Dad and Ford’s workshop.” A bloody brilliant on-the-spot lie that had arrived in a flash of inspiration.
“What a most excellent idea,” Shaye said. “That wall could sure use a facelift.”
Bree adopted her usual did someone fart in here? nose crinkle, which she wore whenever he was around. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on a new collection?” she asked. “Or are you still blocked up?”
Should it surprise him that even though he and Bree had exchanged less than a dozen sentences in the last week, she knew his muse had abandoned him for a warmer climate? Nope. First rule of living on New Zealand’s third-largest island—news, especially tasty, gossipy news, travelled wicked fast. Almost as fast as it did in certain circles in the New York art scene.
“You make it sound as if I’m constipated. Or are you implying that something is blocking my ass—my head, for instance?”
For the first time since he’d been back, Bree shot him a smile that reached her baby blues. “You said it, not me.”
Shaye nudged Bree with an elbow. “Play nice, kiddies.” Then she turned her sous chef’s gaze on Harley—and trust him, as sweet as Shaye Harland was, in her kitchen she was a force to be reckoned with. “We don’t want to upset the crazy pregnant lady.”
“I heard that,” Piper yelled from somewhere upstairs. “And you better have brought cookies—lots of cookies for the crazy pregnant lady.”
“See?” Shaye lowered her voice to a whisper. “Hormones.” Then, with the familiarity of someone who’d once offered him a taste of mud-pie when she’d been eight, Shaye patted his cheek. “If you’re stuck, Harl, why don’t you find yourself a new muse and try something completely different. Take a walk on the wild side.”
“Says the woman whose motto is ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’,” said Bree.
Shaye gave an exaggerated sniff. “Like you aren’t ten times worse than me on a bad day, sister. The only thing wild in you is the animal-print bra and panties you picked up at Flirt last time we went shopping.”
“Really?” Harley just…couldn’t…help himself. “That does sound kinda outrageous.” And very, very hot. He positively would not think about whether the animal print was leopard spots, zebra stripes or bloody snake scales, or how the fabric clung to her curves.
“Wild is overrated,” Bree said. “I’m happy being boring.”
A tinge of pink blossomed on her high cheekbones, and a faint crease appeared between her eyebrows.
“Boring is the one thing you’re not,” he said.
Her gaze flicked to his and then darted aside. Shaye, intuitive to people’s feelings as always, slid an arm around Bree’s waist.
“He’s right. You’re not boring, hon, just a little…”
“Repressed?” Harley supplied helpfully.
“I was going to say, in need of a good orgasm,” Shaye said. “And then I thought, that’s a little crass.”
“Yet you went there.” Bree extracted herself from Shaye’s side. “I should be grateful Mr. Big-Shot-Artist didn’t.”
No need. Because they both knew he’d given her more than one earth-shattering orgasm not so long ago. The details were a little hazy as he’d been half plastered at the time, but he remembered she’d cried out his name—at volume—on at least three different occasions.
So he showed his palms and switched on his A-grade smile. “I have the right to remain silent, since anything I’m dumb enough to say now will be held against me. Have fun planning your party, ladies.”
Bree gave him one final blistering glare and strode down the hallway.
“Think about what I said.” Shaye tapped his chest with her index finger. “Find a new muse. One without double-D cups and the instincts of a Great White like the women you normally bed. Someone like the Papatuanuku in your sketch.”
Then, before he could open his mouth to reply, she winked and walked away.
Chapter 2
Bad things come in threes.
And bad thing number one, he of the very-fine-ass, stood outside her studio t
he next morning holding three coffee mugs.
“My boots are clean,” Harley said after she’d opened the door.
He angled his chin down, and like a trained monkey, she followed it with her gaze. Down the tight, grey marl tee, which clung to his wide chest and bagged a little over nicely sculptured abs. Down to the battered leather tool belt slung around his hips, which served as a weird kind of arrow, directing her gaze farther south to worn-soft denim cupping a sizeable bulge and strong, lean thighs.
She never made it to the dirt-check of his work boots.
“But the rest of me feels dirty from the eye-fucking you’re giving me.”
Her gaze shot to the smirk on his mouth.
“In your dreams, hotshot.” She whirled away from the doorway.
In your dreams? The verbal equivalent of poking out her tongue. Very mature. She continued to walk across the studio, past the stainless steel sink where she kept a row of glass jars soaking brushes, as well as a tray of tea-and-coffee-making supplies. “Kettle is there. Help yourself.”
Sitting at the desk in the studio’s corner, she forced her eyes to focus on the tiny digits of her spreadsheet. Harley remained silent, the click and hiss of the kettle heating up the only signs she wasn’t alone. The soft squeak of his footsteps on wood caused her fingers to clench on the mouse. She clicked away from the spreadsheet to another tab where she was adding some more details to the plan for Piper’s baby shower on Saturday.
Tiny hairs prickled on her nape as her nostrils filled with the scent of sawdust and warm man. He stood directly behind her office chair; she could see him in her mind’s eye, as if he were one of the shadowy negatives developed in her darkroom. He was a negative—her negative. Dark-haired to her blonde, risk-taker to her conservative nature, male to her female. Especially the male to her female.
Testosterone pumped off the man.
Bree tensed, waiting for a smart-ass comment about the photo used in the event invite—a black and white shot she’d taken of Piper in an armchair, laughing at Diablo, Holly’s adopted cat, who was perched on her pregnant belly, washing his paw.
“You see her, don’t you?” he asked. “Who she is under her tough ex-cop shell.”
“She’s my friend. And she’s not so tough.”
Harley chuckled, moving to sit on the desk edge. Bree camouflaged a flinch by crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt over her kneecaps. This morning, she’d triple checked her outfit in the bedroom mirror before coming downstairs to open up the gallery.
“No. Not as tough a nut to crack as you are, Brianna.”
“Bree,” she said. “Did you want something else?”
A rasping sound met her ears as Harley scratched some part of his sexily stubbled face. She couldn’t tell what part, exactly, since she refused to glance away from her screen.
“Shaye implied yesterday afternoon you’d make a good muse.”
“Shaye was yanking your chain.” Tappity-tappity-tap. She added an updated list of suggested baby gifts to a post, then a link to some baby-shower-themed snacks for guests to contribute to the pot-luck dinner.
“Probably. Think she could be onto something though. I’d be bloody inspired if you’d do some life modelling for me.”
Heat mushroomed into her face like an atomic explosion, and her fingers stilled on the keyboard. He was dredging that up from her first year at The Fine Arts & Design College? Partly because she was cash-strapped but more as proof she wasn’t repressed or a stick-in-the-mud, Bree had life modelled—for non-artists, that meant modelled stark naked—at a community-based art class on the other side of Christchurch.
Somehow Harley had found out about it and said he would’ve paid twice the going rate to see her twisted into pretzel-like poses while in the buff. She’d taken his teasing as a sign that perhaps Harley saw her as more than the girl from his hometown. Maybe even liked her as much as her eighteen-year-old self had liked him.
Delusions of the grandest order.
Bree swivelled her chair toward him, the skin pulling taut and hot across her face with the effort of maintaining her necessary-to-survive chilled composure. “Let you draw me like I’m one of your French girls? I’ll pass. And you don’t believe in an artistic muse, anyway. Not unless it’s a demon from hell disguised as your father.”
The words dropped from her tongue like poison-coated bombs, punching through the kettle’s boiling hiss and the tinkle of bells as the gallery door opened out front. Bree’s gaze rose from Harley’s hands clamped on the edge of her desk to the harsh bob of his Adam’s apple. Oh God. The cruellest possible thing she could say—
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That was totally uncalled for.”
“Bee-bee? Are you out back?”
And…it looked as if bad thing number two had shown up.
Praise-Jesus-I’m-saved thankful, Bree turned toward her mother’s voice. Which went to show how much Harley had rattled her composure. She shoved her rolling chair backward, keeping her gaze well away from his face. “Yes, in here, Christine.”
Her mother strode across the floor in a flurry of beaded turquoise skirts, the gold bracelets encircling her wrists tinkling as she yanked on a wheeled overnight bag. “I just got off the ferry—which, by the way, is still a barbaric way to travel—and came straight here. Oh.” She halted in the archway, her face a brittle mask of exaggerated surprise. “You have company.”
Company said in the tone she’d also use to inform Bree of a cockroach infestation.
“Harley’s making coffee. The, um, water’s been switched off next door.” Bree rose from the office chair, feeling like a teenage girl caught with the town’s bad boy her parents had expressly forbidden her from dating.
“Nice to see you again, Christine.” Harley also stood, moving with panther-like grace around Bree to the kettle boiling away on the counter.
Her mother smoothed her sleek blonde bob. “And you,” she said. “Your brother and the Harland boy are outside. Are you helping them?”
“Yep,” he said.
“Instead of painting?”
“I’m painting. Walls, mainly. Three and a bit inside and one big one outside.”
Harley popped off the instant coffee jar lid and dumped a spoonful in each mug, forgoing the little coffee plunger and fresh ground beans Bree kept to feed her mid-morning addiction. Couldn’t blame him for wanting a fast exit when she wanted to run upstairs and lock herself in her bedroom.
Christine huffed through her nose. “You always did have a flippant attitude toward your gift, Harley.”
Bree’s insides contracted into a sickening ball. “Why are you here, Mum?”
Her mother gave a tinkling laugh, but her eyes were cool-blue chips of ice. “Christine, Bee-Bee. You haven’t called me Mum since you were a child.” She wrangled her suitcase forward, parking it inside the studio. “And I thought it was time to check on my gallery since I haven’t visited in a while.”
Nine years to be precise. The week after Bree had left for art college, Christine had packed her bags, shut the gallery doors, and caught a one-way flight to the Gold Coast of Australia. “And to make sure my youngest daughter hasn’t run it into the ground.” Another tinkling and oh-so-fake laugh.
Bree folded her arms, sensing the heat of Harley’s gaze in her peripheral vision. Don’t do it, she ordered him silently. Don’t you dare remind her how I raised the gallery from the dead after she abandoned it. How I’ve kept this place running for four years. How I’ve clawed and fought and lived on baked beans some weeks to remain in business. How I’ve smiled at customers who’d rather buy a dozen kitschy souvenirs and framed landscape prints than one photograph I’ve taken. Don’t you dare play the hero and come to my defence—because you don’t know me anymore.
But Harley kept his own counsel, stirring the coffees and then dumping the teaspoon into the sink.
“I’m off. Thanks, Bree.” He angled his chin at her mother. “Christine.” Hooking his fingers through the mugs�
� handles, he disappeared out the back door, kicking it shut behind him.
“I see New York hasn’t erased his attitude. But then someone with God-given talent like his can get away with being an ass.”
“He’s not an ass.” Totally was, at times, but Bree would rather poke out an eye with a sharpened HB pencil than agree with her mother’s character assessment.
“After everything he put you through, you’re still defending him?” Christine clucked her tongue and dug into her purse, removing her smartphone.
Bree refused to crack open that particular squirmy can of worms, so she kept her mouth sealed while she examined the dimensions of her mother’s suitcase. How long did Christine plan to stay?
Christine held up the phone and took a couple of shots of the studio. She swivelled on the balls of her leather sandals and held her phone landscape to capture a wide-angled view of the gallery through the archway.
Icy pebbles tumbled into Bree’s stomach in a rockslide of really bad juju. “Christine?”
Her mother walked farther into the gallery, taking more photos.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking photos, dear.”
Clearly, Christine believed Bree had the brain capacity of a field mouse when it came to deductive powers.
“I can see that—”
“Don’t worry. I know they won’t look professional, but it’s just to give an initial impression of the place. I’ll get you to redo the shots with all your fancy-pants gear later.”
And yes, Bree had heard her mother’s opinion on Bree’s choice of art many, many times. Christine had taken it as a personal attack when Bree had switched her portfolio from the medium of paint to photography in her last year of college. Christine was a small-to-moderately successful artist, and their shared love of the watercolor medium was the last common strand connecting mother and daughter. Photography was in the same league as finger-painting in her mother’s worldview—and God help anyone who mentioned the latest craze of adult coloring books in her presence.
“Why do you need photos of the gallery?”
Christine’s mouth pinched into a hard line. Most people were fooled by her hippie-dippie clothes, flirty smile and gypsy-ish air. Bree and her older sister, Amy, weren’t most people. Beneath their mother’s flamboyant, artiste persona was a woman whose day-dreamy air was due to her self-absorbance, not creative temperament.
Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7) Page 2
