The people who dotted the beach were no more than part of the painting that encompassed water and sand, bobbing boats and an endless, cloudless sky.
The countryside, which she could see from one of the many terraces that graced the villa, spread out in neat square fields bordered by stone fences like the ones she saw from her own doorway in Clare. But here, the ground rose up in terraced slopes, from orchards on sunny embankments to the higher green of the forests and on to the foothills of the magnificent Alps.
Rogan's grounds were lush with blooms and flowering herbs, exotic with olive and box trees and the sparkle of fountains. The quiet was disturbed only by the call of gulls and the music of falling water.
Content, Maggie lounged in one of the padded chaises on a sun-washed terrace and sketched.
"I thought I'd find you here." Rogan stepped out and dropped a kiss, both casual and intimate, on the top of her head.
"It's impossible to stay inside on such a day." She squinted up at him until he took the shaded glasses she'd tossed on a table and slipped them on her nose. "Did you finish your business?"
"For now." He sat beside her, shifting so as not to block her view. "I'm sorry I've been so long. One call seemed to lead to another."
"No matter. I like being on my own."
"I've noticed." He peeked into the sketchbook. "A seascape?"
"It's irresistible. And I thought I'd draw some of the scenery, so Brie could see it. She had such a wonderful time in Paris."
"I'm sorry she could only stay one day."
"One lovely day. It's hard to believe I strolled along the Left Bank with my sister. The Concannon sisters in Paris." It still made her laugh to think of it."She'll not forget it, Rogan." Tucking her pencil behind her ear, Maggie took his hand. "Neither will I."
"You've thanked me, both of you. And the truth is I did nothing more than make a few calls. Speaking of calls, one that kept me away just now was from Paris." Reaching over, Rogan selected a sugared grape from the basket of fruit beside them. "You've an offer, Maggie, from the Comte de Lorraine."
"De Lorraine?" Lips pursed, she searched her memory. "Ah, the skinny old man with a cane who talked in whispers."
"Yes." Rogan was amused to hear her describe one of the wealthiest men in France as a skinny old man. "He'd like to commission you to make a gift for his granddaughter's wedding this December."
Her hackles rose instinctively. "I'll take no commissions, Rogan. I made that clear from the start."
"You did, yes." Rogan took another grape and popped it into Maggie's mouth to keep her quiet. "But it's my obligation to inform you of any requests. I'm not suggesting you agree, though it would be quite an impressive feather in your-and Worldwide's- cap. I'm simply fulfilling my duties as your manager."
Eyeing him, Maggie swallowed the grape. His tone, she noted, was as sugarcoated as the fruit. "I'll not do it."
'Your choice, naturally." He waved the entire matter away. "Shall I ring for something cold? Lem onade perhaps, or iced tea?"
"No." Maggie took the pencil from behind her ear, tapped it on her pad. "I'm not interested in made-to-order."
"And why should you be?" he responded, all reason. "Your Paris showing was every bit as successful as the one in Dublin. I have every confidence that this will continue in Rome and beyond. You're well on your way, Margaret Mary." He leaned down and kissed her. "Not that the comte's request has anything to do with made-to-order. He's quite willing to leave it completely in your hands."
Cautious, Maggie tipped down her glasses and studied him over the tip. "You're trying to sweet-talk me into it."
"Hardly." But, of course, he was. "I should add, however, that the comte-a very well-respected art connoisseur, by the way-is willing to pay hand somely."
"I'm not interested." She shoved her glasses in place again, then swore. "How much is handsome?"
"Up to the equivalent of fifty thousand pounds. But I know how adamant you are about the money angle, so you needn't give it a thought. I told him it was unlikely you'd be interested. Would you like to go down to the beach? Take a drive?"
Before he could rise, Maggie snagged his collar. "Oh, you're a sneaky one, aren't you, Sweeney?"
"When needs be."
"It would be whatever I choose to make? Whatever came to me?"
"It would." He traced a finger over her bare shoulder, which was beginning to turn the color of a peach in the sun. "Except . . ."
"Ah, here we are."
"Blue," Rogan said, and grinned. "He wants blue."
"Blue, is it?" The laugh began to shake her. "Any particular shade?"
"The same as his granddaughter's eyes. He claims they are as blue as the summer sky. It seems she's his favorite, and after he saw your work in Paris, nothing would do but that she have something made for her alone from your lovely hands."
"His words or yours?"
"A bit of both," Rogan answered, kissing one of those lovely hands.
"I'll think about it."
"I'd hoped you would." No longer concerned with blocking her view, he leaned over to nibble at her lips. "But think about it later, will you?"
"Excusez-moi, monsieur." A bland-faced servant stood on the edge of the terrace, his hands at his sides and his eyes discreetly aimed toward the sea.
"Oui, Henri?"
"Vous et mademoiselle, voudriez-vous dejeuner sur la terrasse maintenant?"
"Non, nous allons dejeuner plus tard. "
"Tres bien, monsieur." Henri faded away, silent as a shadow into the house.
"And what was that about?" Maggie asked.
"He wanted to know if we wanted lunch. I said we'd eat later." When Rogan started to lean down again, Maggie stopped him with a hand slapped to his chest. "Problem?" Rogan murmured. "I can call him back and tell him we're ready after all."
"No, I don't want you to call him." It made her uneasy to think of Henri, or any of the other servants, lurking in a corner, waiting to serve. She wriggled off the chaise. "Don't you ever want to be alone?"
"We are alone. That's exactly why I wanted to bring you here."
"Alone? You must have six people puttering around the house. Gardeners and cooks, maids and butlers. If I were to snap my fingers right now, one of them would come running."
"Which is exactly the purpose in having servants."
"Well, I don't want them. Do you know one of those little maids wanted to wash out my underwear?"
'That's because it's her job to tend to you, not because she wanted to riffle your drawers."
"I can tend to myself. Rogan, I want you to send them away. All of them."
He rose at that. "You want me to fire the help?"
"No, for pity sakes, I'm not a monster, tossing innocent people out on the street. I want you to send them off, that's all. On a holiday, or whatever you'd call it."
"I can certainly give the staff a day off, if you'd like."
"Not a day, the week." She blew out a breath, seeing his puzzlement. "It doesn't make any sense to you, and why should it? You're so used to them, you don't even see them."
"His name was Henri, the cook is Jacques, the maid who so cheekily offered to wash your lingerie is Marie." Or possibly, he thought, Monique.
"I wasn't after starting a quarrel." She came forward, her hands reaching for his. "I can't relax as you do with all these people hovering about. I'm just not used to it-I don't think I want to be. Do this for me, please, Rogan. Give them a few days off."
"Wait here a moment."
When he left, she stood on the terrace, feeling foolish. Here she was, she mused, lounging in a Mediterranean villa with anything she could ask for within her reach. And she still wasn't satisfied.
She'd changed, she realized. In the few short months since she met Rogan, she had changed. She not only wished for more now, she coveted more of what she didn't have. She wanted the ease and the pleasure money could bring, and not just for her family. She wanted it for herself.
She'd worn diamonds
and had danced in Paris.
And she wanted to do so again.
Yet, deep within her, there remained that small, hot need to be only herself, to need nothing and no one. If she lost that, Maggie thought with a whip of panic, she would have lost everything.
She snatched up her sketch pad, flipped pages.
But for a moment, a terrifying moment, her mind was as blank as the sheet in front of her. Then she began to draw frantically, with a violent intensity that burst from her like a gale.
It was herself she drew. The two parts, twisted together, pulled apart and so desperately trying to meet again. But how could they, when one was so completely opposed to the other?
Art for art's sake, solitude for sanity, independence for pride. And on the other side-ambition, hungers and needs.
She stared at the completed sketch, dumbfounded that it had poured out of her so swiftly. And now that it had, she was oddly calm. Perhaps it was those two opposing forces that made her what she was. And perhaps if she were ever really at peace, she'd be less than she could be.
They've gone."
Her mind still drifting, she looked blankly up at Rogan. "What? Who's gone?"
On a half laugh, he shook his head. "The staff. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"The staff? Oh." Her mind cleared, settled. "You've sent them off? All of them?"
"I did, though God alone knows how we'll eat over the next few days. Still-" He broke off when she leaped into his arms. As she'd shot at him like a bullet from a gun, he staggered back, overbalancing to keep them from crashing through the beveled-glass door behind him and nearly tumbling them over the railing.
"You're a wonderful man, Rogan. A prince of a man."
He shifted her in his arms and looked wearily at the drop over the rail. "I was nearly a dead man."
"We're alone? Completely?"
"We are, and I've earned the undying gratitude of everyone from the butler down. The parlor maid wept with joy." As he supposed she should, with the holiday bonus he'd given her and the rest of the servants. "So now they're off to the beach or to the country or to wherever their hearts lead them. And we've the house to ourselves."
She kissed him, hard. "And we're about to use every inch of it. We'll start with that sofa in the room just through there."
"Will we?" Amused, he made no protest as she began unbuttoning his shirt. "You're full of demands today, Margaret Mary."
"The business with the servants was a request. The sofa's a demand."
He cocked a brow. "The chaise is closer."
"So it is." She laughed as he lowered her to it. "So it is."
Over the next few days they sunned on the terrace, walked on the beach or swam lazy laps in the lagoonlike pool to the music of the fountains. There were ill-prepared meals to be eaten in the kitchen and afternoon drives through the countryside.
There were also, to Maggie's mind, entirely too many telephones.
It might have been a holiday, but Rogan was never farther than a phone or a fax away from business. There was something about a factory in Limerick, something else about an auction in New York, and unintelligible mutters about property he was looking for in order to add another branch to Worldwide Galleries.
It might have annoyed her if she hadn't begun to see that his work was as much a part of his identity as her work was to hers. All differences aside, she could hardly complain about him spending an hour or two closeted in his office when he took her absorption in her sketches in stride.
If she had believed in a man and woman finding the kind of harmony that was needed to last a lifetime, she might have believed she'd found it with Rogan.
"Let me see what you've done."
With a contented yawn, Maggie offered him her sketchbook. The sun was setting, drowning colors sweeping the western sky. Between them the bottle of wine he'd chosen from his cellar nestled in a silver bucket frosty with ice. Maggie lifted her glass, sipped and settled back to enjoy her last evening in France.
"You'll be busy when you get home," Rogan commented as he studied each sketch. "How will you choose which one to work on first?"
"It will choose me. And as much as I've enjoyed being lazy, I'm itching to get back and fire up my furnace."
"I can have the ones you've drawn up for Brianna matted and framed. For simple pencil sketches they're quite good. I particularly like . . ." He trailed off when he turned a page and came across something entirely different from a sketch of the sea or a landscape. "And what have we here?"
Almost too lazy to move, she glanced over. "Oh, yes, that. I don't do portraits often, but that one was irresistible."
It was himself, stretched over the bed, his arm flung out as if he'd been reaching for something. For her.
Taken by surprise and not entirely pleased, he frowned down at the sketch. "You drew this while I was asleep."
"Well, I didn't want to wake you and spoil the moment." She hid her grin in her glass. "You were sleeping so sweetly. Perhaps you'd like to hang that one in your Dublin gallery." "I'm naked."
"Nude is the word, I'll remind you. When it's art. And you look very artistic nude, Rogan. I've signed it, you see, so you may get a nice price for it." "I think not."
She tucked her tongue in her cheek. "As my manager it's your duty to market my work. You're always saying so yourself. And this, if I do say so, is one of my finest drawings. You'll note the light, and the way it plays on the muscles of your-"
"I see," he said in a strangled voice. "And so would everyone else."
"No need to be modest. You've a fine form. I think I captured it even better in this other one."
His blood, quite simply, ran cold. "Other one?" "Aye. Let's see now." She reached over to flip pages herself. "Here we are. Shows a bit more . . . contrast when you're standing, I think. And a bit of that arrogance comes through as well."
Words failed him. She'd drawn him standing on the terrace, one arm resting on the rail behind him, the other cupping a brandy snifter. And a smile-a particularly smug smile-on his face. It was all he was wearing.
"I never posed for this. And I've never stood naked on the terrace drinking brandy."
"Artistic license," she said airly, delighted that she'd flummoxed him so completely. "I know your body well enough to draw it from memory. It would have spoiled the theme to bother with clothes."
"The theme? Which is?"
"Master of the house. I thought that's what I'd title it Both of them actually. You might offer them as a set"
"I won't be selling them."
"And why not? I'd like to know? You've sold several of my other drawings that aren't nearly as well done. Those I didn't want you to sell, but I'd signed on the dotted line, so you did. I want you to market these." Her eyes danced. "In fact, I insist, as I believe is my right, contractually speaking."
"I'll buy them myself, then."
"What's your offer? My dealer tells me my price is rising."
"You're blackmailing me, Maggie."
"Oh, aye." She toasted him then sipped more wine. "You'll have to meet my price."
He glanced at the sketch again before firmly closing the book. "Which is?"
"Let's see now. ... I think if I was taken upstairs and made love to until moonrise, we might have a deal."
"You've a shrewd business sense."
"I've learned it from a master." She started to stand, but he shook his head and scooped her into his arms.
"I want no slipping through loopholes on this deal. I believe your terms were that you be taken upstairs."
"Right you are. I suppose that's why I need a manager." She wound a lock of his hair around her fingers as he carried her into the house. "You know, of course, if I'm not satisfied with the rest of the terms, the deal's off."
"You'll be satisfied."
At the top of the stairs he stopped to kiss her. Her response was, as always, fast and urgent, and as always, it quickened his blood. He stepped into the bedroom, where the softened light of sunset s
wam through the windows. Soon the light would go gray with dusk.
Their last night alone would not be spent in the dark.
Thinking this, he laid her on the bed, and when she reached for him, he slipped away to light candles. They were scattered through the room, some stubs, some slim tapers, all burned down to varying lengths. Maggie knelt on the bed while Rogan struck the flames and sent the light dancing gold.
"Romance." She smiled and felt oddly touched. "It seems a spot of blackmail's been well worth the effort."
He paused, a flaring match between his fingers. "Have I given you so little romance, Maggie?"
"I was only joking." She tossed back her breeze-ruffled hair. His voice had been much too serious. "I've no need for romance. Honest lust is quite good enough for me."
"Is that what we have?" Thoughtfully he set the match to the wick then shook it out. "Lust."
Laughing, she held out her arms. "If you'd stop wandering about the room and come over here, I'll show you exactly what we have."
She looked dazzling in the candle glow with the last colors of day bleeding through the windows beside the bed. Her hair afire, her skin kissed by her days in the sun and her eyes aware, mocking and unquestionably inviting.
On other days and other nights he would have dived into that invitation, accepted it, reveled in it and the firestorm they could make between them. But his mood had shifted. He crossed slowly to her, taking her hands before they could tug him eagerly into the bed with her, lifting them to his lips as his eyes watched her.
That wasn't the bargain, Margaret Mary. I was to make love to you. It's time I did." He kept her hands in his, drawing her arms down to her sides as he leaned forward to toy with her lips. "It's time you let me."
"What foolishness is that?" Her voice wasn't steady. He was kissing her as he had once before, slowly, gently, and with the utmost concentration. "I've done more than let you a great many times before."
"Not like this." He felt her hands flex against his, her body draw back. "Are you so afraid of tenderness, Maggie?"
Books by Nora Roberts Page 74
