Drawing Me In: A New Zealand Secret Baby Second Chance Romance (Due South Series Book 7)

by Tracey Alvarez

  “Bree?” Harley’s deep voice eroded the last grip she had on her control. “I’ll come over to the studio soon. Unless you can’t pose for me today, which is okay.”

  To not meet his eyes would be a sign of weakness. Pride forced her chin to arch in acknowledgment. “I’m perfectly fine. I’ll be ready in an hour.”

  With the exhibition only three weeks away, reclining on a yoga mat and retreating to her happy-place was a small price to pay for the possibility of saving her gallery.

  If only her happy-place wasn’t in Harley’s arms.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, a decent enough amount of time so that Kezia and the other women wouldn’t think he was bailing on them, Harley left the café. In deference to Bree, the conversation switched to safer topics. School, Holly’s salon, Harley’s favorite Manhattan restaurant.

  His footsteps thudded dully on the wharf as the white wash of waves surging up Halfmoon Bay beach directed him to the main road. And Bree’s gallery.

  He’d only told her part of why he’d shown up at Erin’s café. Yeah, he’d needed caffeine and food he hadn’t cooked himself. But the baby’s wailing cries every three hours wasn’t the only reason for his sleep deprivation. That was due to an endless internal battle. His brain ordered him to stay away from Bree, while his body told him to shut the hell up and pay her another visit.

  And yeah, he had wanted to be there because trusting people with her vulnerability—even her friends—wasn’t easy for Bree, and he hadn’t wanted her to do it alone. But truthfully, he’d gate-crashed her breakfast for a not-so-altruistic reason. He’d suspected she’d announce her pregnancy today, and he wanted to see the women’s reactions for himself. To be reassured Bree wouldn’t go it alone this time. That she’d have the love and support of people who cared for her close by.

  His gut still looped into strangling knots each time Michaela cried, and he thought of his own child slowly developing inside Bree. He’d asked the other night, as she’d laid draped over him, the press of her stomach on his hipbone, if she’d felt the baby move. Bree had stroked her palm down his chest, exploring the contours of his abdomen.

  “No, not for a little while yet,” she’d said and then sighed dreamily. “At first, it feels like a tiny fish zigzagging deep inside, and then it’s gone so fast that you think you’ve imagined it.”

  He’d kept his mouth shut, stroking her silky hair and swallowing the next question, “When can I feel it kick?” because he remembered he likely wouldn’t be around to experience it.

  The back door of the studio was propped open, which he interpreted as a come-on-in signal, so he did. An empty room awaited, sunlight filtering through the windows and highlighting the canvas mounted on the easel, his tray of brushes next to it, ready for action. He strode farther into the studio, studying the unfolding image of Hineahuone.

  Now that he was happy with the final sketch, he’d blocked most of the background in raw umber as well as finessing the darker tones differentiating light and shadow within the portrait. Today, he’d tackle Hineahuone herself, layering tones of more raw umber through to a dark, earthy brown he’d found by experimenting on his palette—the closest he could come to the mud Bree had posed in.

  He could, at a push, work from the photos captured on his phone. He could. The sensible, sanity-saving course of action would be to work from photos. But he didn’t want to. Not when studying the moods and expressions changing on her face was so fascinating. Not when talking to her, listening to her, just being with her, was as addictive as the rush of creating art.

  Footsteps echoed on the staircase, and a moment later, Bree appeared, her eyes flicking warily toward him. She was back in the mono-boob-inducing Lycra top and shorts. The slight jiggle of her breasts beneath the clingy top as she walked toward him fanned alive an ember already starting to stir in his groin. Fruity shampoo, mouthwash, and desirable woman reached his nose before she did.

  Mouthwash?

  “Have you been sick?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  Obviously, he wasn’t half the man Kip was, since he’d never held a woman’s hair out of her face while she’d worshiped at the porcelain throne. He hadn’t stayed with the same one long enough for that level of familiarity. But the thought of Bree here, dealing with her nausea alone while he knocked back his second espresso? Yeah, shit. For Bree, he’d hold her damn hair out of the way—hell, he’d clean up after her if she missed the target.

  Just went to show how far gone he was over the woman.

  “I should’ve come with you.”

  She raised a brow with a silent “Why?” implied.

  “I could’ve made you that toast, or something,” he added lamely.

  The pinched mouth softened, her lips smooth and kissable again. “I can make my own toast.” But the small curve in the corner of her mouth suggested amusement rather than brittle indignation.

  “You know mine is better.”

  The curve disappeared, and the chill returned to her blue eyes. “You must be thinking of another of your hook-ups, as you’ve never made me toast.”

  “My hook-ups don’t get offered breakfast.”

  With a little sniff, she crossed to her desk and booted up her computer. “I’ll reply to a few e-mails while you mix today’s paints.”

  A topic change he wasn’t willing to follow her on. He tried, but dammit, he couldn’t resist fishing for an answer.

  “Are you jealous?”

  And what did he want to hear? That he wasn’t the only one who still felt the paper-cut painful slice of jealousy? That sometimes, in his darker moments, alone in his East Village apartment, he’d open the art history textbook he’d kept from Christchurch and examine the weird-angled black and white photograph tucked inside that Bree had taken of the two of them before selfies were a thing. That time after time, during calls home to his brother, he’d resisted grilling Ford for details on Bree’s life. Because if she was sleeping with someone—like Kip the barman, who Ford once described as ‘the kind of guy even straight men look twice at’—Harley didn’t want to know.

  “Jealousy requires a level of relationship you and I don’t have,” Bree said.

  She huffed out a sigh as she caught his gaze dipping to her breasts and slipped on the shirt draped over the back of her office chair. The small, jerky motions she made as she rolled up the cuffs told a different story. His gaze switched to the red-checked fabric. It was the same man-sized shirt she’d worn on their bike ride.

  Harley stalked to the workbench. Lightning-fast tapping came from Bree’s desk, but he set his jaw and got to work. For about five minutes, until the question burning on his tongue couldn’t be held in any longer.

  “Whose shirt are you wearing?” He’d aimed for a mildly-curious-just-making-conversation tone, but the words came out in an asshole-ish growl that made him want to punch himself.

  The key-tapping ceased and Bree twisted on her chair, eyebrows raised. “Hallensteins, I think,” she said, faux-innocently naming a popular men’s clothing line. “I can check the label to make sure.”

  “Did some guy leave it on your bedroom floor?” After he’d had his hands on her, tasted the sweetness of her skin, shoved his dick—Harley fisted the palette knife so tightly he felt the plastic handle flex dangerously in his grip.

  She sent him a brain-cell blistering smile that amped up his core temperature up another few degrees.

  “Jealous?” she asked.

  Oh, the fucking irony.

  “Yeah,” he said between gritted teeth. “With absolutely no right to be, I know.”

  She studied him for a beat, probably taking in the clenched fists and bunched caveman-like biceps ready to beat the shit out of some guy who’d dared take what Harley had walked away from.

  “It’s Scott’s,” she said.

  “The douchebag ex.”

  “I prefer dickhead ex, but yes. I bought it for him, and he wore it once as a token gesture before relegating it
to the back of our wardrobe. I knew he’d hate it. Scott was more a three-hundred-dollar, made-in-Italy than a Farmer Joe shirt, as he called it. But I was curious as to how much of an effort he’d make to please me…or at least be honest and admit he didn’t like it.” She rolled a slender shoulder. “An immature little test, but then I guess I was pretty immature—and insecure.”

  Harley laid the palette knife on the workbench and flexed his cramped fingers. The initial fireball of jealousy exploding in his gut had dampened down to a manageable, but still not completely contained blaze. Even though the man sounded like a colossal ass, Bree had spent years of her life with him. “Did you love him?”

  Guileless blue eyes met his. “I wouldn’t have moved in with him if I hadn’t.” She tipped her head to the side, slid a quick, scanning glance over him. “He was eight years older than me—successful, smooth-talking and with not an artistic bone in his body. I thought he’d be the perfect antidote to you.”

  His heart punched up into his throat. “You met Scott how many years after I left for New York?”

  “About three. He was the first serious relationship I’d had since you left.”

  “We didn’t have a serious relationship. You told me as much at my first exhibition.” The night when everything had done a one-eighty, and Chelsea gallery owner Clarissa Hobbs had arrived early to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  Her chin arched. “Following your lead, Harley. You introduced me to Clarissa Hobbs as your friend from Oban. Not your girlfriend, your friend.”

  Had he? Harley combed through the kaleidoscopic memories from that night. He’d been buzzing on free-flowing champagne and the rush of meeting so many potential art dealers and the who’s-who of the New Zealand art scene—not to mention the opportunity to paint and exhibit in New York. Then Bree arrived fashionably late in a little black dress, looking so fucking edible that it’d addled his brain even more than the alcohol…he couldn’t remember the exact words he’d almost shouted to Clarissa over the deafening hum of the crowded gallery. He’d been coasting the wave, his mind revving with all the possibilities. A year, possibly two in New York, spent gaining priceless experience and exposure, and then he’d be back in time for Bree’s graduation and maybe they’d—

  “You cut me off because I didn’t introduce you as my girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t cut you off that night, and you know it.” She swung her chair back around to her desk and shut down her laptop. When she spoke, she spoke to the whirring machine. “I had enough pride not to ask you to stay, because I could see you’d already gone.”

  Harley dipped his head. “So you made it easy for me to leave by making light of what we had.”

  “Ninety-five percent of what we had was in my head. Curse of the creative mind. We’d only been sleeping together a couple of months—longer than your previous girlfriends had lasted—so I started building fairy-tale castles in my mind, casting you as my Prince Charming, imagining us having a life together.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to hear it.”

  At age twenty? And so soon after the foul taste left in his mouth from the confrontation with his father? No. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear it. Even though he hadn’t been on the same page as Bree, thinking engagement rings or clearing out drawer space in his cramped student flat, he’d still had a few nail-in-the-heart moments. Moments when he’d woken next to her in the middle of the night, her hand curled beside her cheek, a small smile on her lips, her hair a tangled blonde mess half over her face…and he’d played catch with the big L-word.

  Until he’d hit a home-run all the way to New York City.

  Bree stood and slipped off the shirt, draping it onto the back of her chair again. “Remember the part when you made it clear you weren’t steady boyfriend material? I was paying attention”—she shook her head with a rueful smile—“obviously, not enough attention, or perhaps I got over-confident. My bad. I sure as hell wasn’t over-confident enough to think you’d choose me over New York, and neither did I want you to. You had no idea how talented you were. I did. It was your big break, and I couldn’t stand you thinking of me as ‘Bree, the pathetic chick who begged me to love her.’”

  Harley glanced down at the ooze of oil and pigment on his palette. The sable brushes lined in a neat row, the tips still damp from where he’d rinsed them in preparation. Tools of his success—and his gateway out of the nightmare of his early childhood. Transferring the fear, hatred, bitterness and brokenness inside him onto the canvas via his tools had acted like a windshield wiper, clearing the worst of the muck off his soul. Then Bree had come along, not just as his friend from Oban, but as a woman who’d started to wash off the smears that his art couldn’t remove. But the soul-clearing had come with too steep a price tag to the young and ambitious man he’d been. A clear soul could reflect who he really was, and he’d been certain that if allowed, Bree would stare into his soul and see something monstrous.

  He closed the distance between them, part of him expecting her to run. She didn’t. She held her ground as he skimmed his hands down her bare arms and laced his fingers through hers.

  “I never once thought of you as anything but an incredible woman. Strong, passionate, loyal, selflessly kind. You don’t need to beg any man to love you, Queenie. You deserve a man who’d love you so intensely that you’d have to beg him to stop.”

  For an instant, she continued to stare at him then dropped her gaze to their linked hands. She offered up a quarter smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “We should make a start.”

  He nodded, reluctantly giving her fingers one last squeeze. “We should. But will you tell me why you keep Scott’s shirt?”

  Bree pulled her hands from his, glancing over her shoulder. “Oh. It’s a reminder.”

  “A ‘Scott is a dickhead’ reminder? Or an ‘all men are assholes’ reminder?”

  “Something along those lines.” She walked across to the yoga mat, offering a perfect view of her Lycra-clad ass, which made his lungs cease to function, and lowered herself into a cross-legged position.

  “Come to think of it,” he said. “Didn’t you keep a couple of my old tee shirts that you used to sleep in? I don’t see you parading around in those.”

  She glanced up, her face once more affixed in a smooth, emotionless mask. “I gave them to the local charity shop. I didn’t want a reminder.”

  “Ouch,” he said, carrying his palette to the easel.

  Nothing mild about the blood pounding through his veins.

  Maybe eighteen-year-old Bree had dreamed of castles and Prince Charming, but after he’d left she’d started a new chapter of her life. He should be glad that when he left this time, she’d once again bounce back, beautiful and undamaged.

  Chapter 17

  They’d formed an uneasy truce in the week leading up to Carter’s cricket game. Like two territorial creatures forced to cohabit, but neither willing to roll belly up in submission.

  Hineahuone’s painting was nearly complete, and after the last afternoon session a week previous, Bree hadn’t needed to pose again. So they’d kept their distance. Harley in the studio when he wasn’t applying the finishing touches to the mural. Bree obsessing over last-minute details of the upcoming exhibition or working in the gallery.

  She’d craved his touch, even as she’d constructed an impenetrable wall of keep away around herself. Not that Harley had shown any inclination to take a sledgehammer to that wall.

  Bree shut the door of the rental car Harley drove them in from Christchurch airport to the suburb of Cashmere where Carter’s game was due to start in thirty minutes. She slid on her sunglasses, angled her floppy straw hat over her eyes to keep the bright November sunshine off her face, and crossed the parking lot to the sports field, where multiple cricket games took place.

  Harley strolled with her but with a wide gap of grass-clipping-scented air sifting between them. Bree sneaked another glance at his profile and h
is grey-and-black-collared shirt. His grey-and-black checked shirt. She suspected it was a deliberate garment choice, but damn if she could figure out his point. A wasted fashion statement because the man looked good enough to lick, whether he wore a dinner suit or his birthday suit. Especially his birthday suit.

  Scratching that train of thought before it mowed her down in a wave of desire, Bree hurried through the gate onto the grassy field.

  Parents and grandparents buzzed around and past them. Kids in their sports uniforms rushed to different areas of the field, younger siblings whined about the ice-cream truck in the parking lot, while older ones looked peeved at having to spend Saturday morning there instead of with their electronics. The stuff suburbia and family life were made of—and there was Paul, waving from amid a crowd of mostly male spectators. Amy would meet up with them after the game, since the wattle trees surrounding the Cashmere sports field flared up her allergies.

  Bree waved back at Paul, switching her gaze to Harley with a teasing comment along the lines of, “Welcome to the cricket dads’ league”, on her tongue. Wiry tension knotted his jaw, and his mouth thinned to a lemon-sucking grimace.

  Bree’s stomach plummeted elevator-fast to her feet. Well, crap. He wasn’t going to ruin Carter’s day by acting like a jerk.

  “Hey.” She grabbed his hand to halt their progress down the marked gaps between cricket pitches.

  His eyebrows rose in smooth enquiry over his wraparound shades. “Problem?”

  “Lose the scowl, grouch. If Carter sees it, he’ll think you don’t want to be here.”

  A beat passed, during which she imagined him confessing that he didn’t want to be there, would rather have his nuts in a rusty vice than spend Saturday morning in the normal dad-ish occupation of watching your kid whack around a ball. Instead, his lips parted into a panty-melting smile.

  “I’d be less grouchy if you’d come with me behind the changing sheds and let me try to hit second base.”

  A hot shiver skated down her spine and settled in a slow throb between her legs.