“Love is about changing and growing with another person.”
“Well, I don’t see him offering to make any grand changes to his life.”
She laughed softly. “Have you even asked?”
I paused and then frowned at her. “That’s just it. I’m not even prepared to start demanding things from him, and it’s really unfair that he’s that far ahead in this whole situation. What makes him know what he wants? How can he even be sure I’m worth his time?”
“He’d be an idiot not to know that. You are a smart, intelligent, successful woman, with a great sense of style and excellent choices in friends.”
I flushed a little. “I’d still like some big tits.”
“Maybe you can get some next year with your bonus.”
“I would have already if the whole process didn’t make me want to run for my life. They honestly should refrain from showing those kinds of surgeries on cable. It costs them a lot of money.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen a few of those. It’s pretty damn horrific. The childbirth one is practically medieval. I don’t know how they get away with treating women that way.” She shuddered. “Just don’t ever make the mistake of watching one of those things on a big-screen TV. You’ll be ruined for life.”
I laughed at her expression. “I’ll make a note of that.” I went to the refrigerator and got another beer. “Want another one?”
“No, I’m still nursing this one.”
“So, what should I do?”
“Well, you aren’t going to like this.”
“Just tell me what you think.” I tossed the cap of my beer into the trash and leaned against the counter.
“Mathias strikes me as a man who is ready to find a partner and settle down. If you can’t ever imagine yourself being that woman, you would be doing him a favor to avoid further interaction with him on a personal level.”
“Did I tell you that he was a sex god?”
“Yeah, you mentioned it.”
She was right, and the knowledge of it hurt more than I anticipated. “I never asked for this.”
“Life has a way of kicking you in the teeth.”
“He’s a grown man, and I’ve been real with him about how I feel and what I’ve got to offer.”
“Then he can come to you if he wants to play with fire.”
He seemed the type that wouldn’t deny himself. Wouldn’t it be best if I turned him away? Since there was little chance of that happening, I sighed. “And if he wins the bid for the gallery?”
“James notified Mathias a couple of hours ago that his company won the two-year contract for security. He’ll begin work immediately.”
I rolled over on my back and stared at the clock on my nightstand. It was barely 7:00 A.M. Since I should already have been at work I managed to get the sleep out of my voice before I picked up my ringing cell phone.
“Jane Tilwell.”
“I’m at the deli down the street from the gallery getting coffee. Will you join me for breakfast?”
I loved the sound of his voice. “Mathias.”
“Just say yes.”
“Yes.” I sat up and rubbed my head. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
I closed my phone and tossed it on the bed. It was a stupid thing to do and it didn’t jive with the plan I’d made after Mercy had left. Of course, since he was going to be in the gallery long term, none of my plans had really been viable. Ignoring him was simply out. Forgetting what had happened between us would be damned impossible.
I was most sincerely screwed.
7
He stood up as I approached the table and reached out to help me with my coat. “Thanks for coming.”
I smiled and slid into the booth. “I shouldn’t have.”
“It’s good to break your own rules every once in a while.”
The man looked and smelled amazing. I stared at him for a few seconds, as if I hadn’t seen him in weeks, and then plucked up the menu on the table in front of me. “I should be at work.”
“Late night?”
I frowned. “Pardon me?”
“I was at Shame’s when Mercy called to be picked up.” He sat back in the booth. “He told me that the two of you were together.”
“We had a bit of a girl party.”
“Yes, that’s what she called it. She knows, right?”
“She already suspected.” I smiled for the waitress and ordered quickly. All I really wanted was coffee, but I figured that I needed to get some real food down. “We’re good friends. Mercy is probably the closest friend I have in Boston.”
“Is it going to make things difficult at work?”
“No, but she might look at you funny. I told her all about the sex and everything. So if she looks at your crotch a couple of times while she talks to you, she’s just getting used to knowing things about you that she shouldn’t.”
“Christ, women suck.” He sat back in the booth and glared at me. “If we talk about a woman like that, you act like we betrayed your entire gender.”
“It’s a horrible double standard.” The waitress came back with coffee, and I snagged a flavored creamer as she left. “But to be real, no—there shouldn’t be any problems. Mercy is a very discreet person, and she understands already that I’m uncomfortable with the whole thing.”
“I won’t give anyone in that gallery something they can use against you, Jane. No matter who they may be.”
“Mercy wouldn’t.”
“This isn’t about you and her, this is about us.” He reached out and took one of my hands. I loved the strong, calloused feel of his fingers. “You’re important to me. Important enough that I’m going to back off and leave you alone like you want.”
It wasn’t what I wanted, but on the other side of it, I couldn’t give what he wanted. “Leave me alone?”
“I’ve pushed and pressured you since we met because my attraction to you knocked me off center.” He sighed and released my hand as our food arrived.
“Okay.”
“I’m telling you this because I want you to be comfortable with me.”
The man was trying to manage me. I unrolled my silverware as I considered what I wanted to say. “I won’t do anything to interfere with your contract at Holman, Mathias. I didn’t help you get it, and I won’t stand in the way of it.”
“I didn’t think that you would.”
“Then why are you so interested in making me comfortable?” I inclined my head. “Wouldn’t I be easier to manage if I was off balance and worried about what your next move will be?”
He laughed softly. “Perhaps, but I enjoy a challenge. I’ll play fair with you, Jane. It’s the only way I want you in my life.”
“Even if I’m not willing to play by your rules?”
“We’ll take it one step at a time. You were right about one thing; I had no business making demands on you. It’s too soon, and I’ll make every effort to keep my arrogance in check. So, I’m going to try things your way.”
Somewhere between coffee and his promising to try things my way, battle lines had been drawn. He was saying all the right things. Being reasonable and charming and sexy came easily to him. The man was so up to something.
I watched Mercy walk across the bull pen toward my office, several folders clutched to her chest. She looked excited—as excited as she’d let anyone see. I envied her reserve and her ability to hide what she was thinking. My heart and temper are displayed all over my face, despite years of work to change.
“You look like you just won a million dollars.”
She closed my office door and leaned on it. “Samuel Castlemen is coming to do a site visit. He’s agreed to bring six pieces for display in the special focus gallery on the first floor, provided that he likes the setup.”
Samuel Castlemen, genius of canvas and world-renowned womanizer, was coming to Boston. “That’s awesome.”
Mercy came to my desk and offered me a folder. “I want you to handle it.”
“Me
?” My stomach dropped to my feet as I accepted the folder. “I’ve never done a show, Mercy.”
“This is a special focus show. It will be invitation only on the opening night, and Castlemen doesn’t want anything grand. Something simple and classy to showcase the six paintings he is bringing.”
I opened up the folder and swallowed hard. “Oh.” He was bringing Phases of a Woman. It was one of the most sought-after collections in the country and the only work he’d ever produced that he refused to sell. It was, in fact, one of the few modern collections that could be called priceless. “Did he insist on the charity deal?”
“Yes, and I agreed to give fifty percent of the ticket price for the special focus display to the breast cancer foundation in his mother’s name. That wasn’t hard to agree to. I donate to them myself on a yearly basis. I’d like you to compile a list of the most influential and powerful women in Boston. They go on the list first.”
“Total head count?”
“One hundred invitations—so two hundred.”
Two hundred people. I cleared my throat. “Are you sure you want me to choose?”
“Yes.” Mercy stood and smiled. “Just remember to include our big buyers. While they are here for Castlemen’s show, we can provide private tours of the rest of the gallery. You’ll need to spend some time with the sales staff and the rest of the support staff regarding the tours.”
I watched her for a few seconds and pressed my lips together. When I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to beg her to take the show back, I cleared my throat. “This is huge, Mercy.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
She sat down again and glanced briefly toward the bull pen. “Castlemen will be in here in two weeks and he would agree to no other time.”
I hadn’t even looked at the date. Two weeks wasn’t even reasonable, but that wasn’t why she’d passed it off to me. Mercy would be in New York in two weeks, testifying in the trial of the man who raped her. “How is that coming?”
“The DA thinks I’ll spend two or three days on the witness stand, mostly under cross-examination. His assistant sent me a list of questions that the defense might ask—some of them are just so horrible that they make my heart hurt. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.” She’d kept her gaze on the floor in front of her until she’d finished speaking, and then she looked up at me. “But knowing that you are here handling the show and the gallery is one less stress for me.”
“You know I can still call my brothers and have them go to New York and kick his ass.”
“I have enough trouble keeping Shame from killing Jeff; I don’t want to add your relatives to the mix.”
I laughed softly at her frustrated tone. “Must be horrible to be loved like that.”
“Yeah, sometimes it is.” She sat forward a little, her gaze focused on mine. “The other night you compared being in love with a lack of freedom. I’ve been thinking about it, and in some ways you are right. There are times when I would like nothing more than to hide in my apartment until the trial is over. Then I remember how strong Shame has been for me. How he’s put aside his own anger to comfort me time and time again, and I know that I can’t hide from my past.”
“So love forces you to do things that you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been naked with Shame?”
Mercy stared at me for a few seconds, frowning. “Jane, you’ve seen the sculpture of me at Shame’s…of course I’ve been naked with him.”
“Not that kind of naked.” I waved my hand dismissively and then used it to rub at my mouth. She was my friend—I should just be able to ask the question outright, but I found I couldn’t. “You know when I was in school, we received yearly lectures about safe sex and AIDS prevention. I watch the news now, about how people are trying to prevent schools from teaching sexual education and instead are trying to promote abstinence, and I wonder how those people could be so stupid.”
“OH.” She was silent for a moment, then her lips curved into a little smile as if she was remembering something particularly hot and amazing. “Yes. Though it wasn’t something we planned. Shame is very careful about birth control. We’ve talked about alternate methods, but he insists that he wants to take care of it. Pills and shots have side effects.”
“Yes, but condoms aren’t 100% effective.”
“True.” She nodded in agreement. “But on the other hand, neither of us would be unhappy if I got pregnant. It might move our plans up a little…but the prospect isn’t a scary one.”
Pregnancy wasn’t a concern for me, and it wasn’t about disease. It was about a level of intimacy and trust I’d given Mathias.
“You forgot a condom with Mathias.”
Forgot twice, requested he not use one a third time. Even now, I didn’t regret it. I was just left wondering why it had been so important to me last night. “Actually, I asked him not to use one.”
“Oh.”
I looked up at her and sighed at the shock on her face. “Primitive, huh?”
“Is that what it was about?”
“I don’t know. I just needed him to be as vulnerable as I was. Naked.”
She nodded her head in silence and bounced her foot a little as she digested my words.
I sat there tense while she thought, wondering why I’d told her and why her opinion on the matter had me all twisted up. Her perspective had always been important to me, and maybe I wanted her to tell me that what I was feeling was natural.
“That kind of intimacy can be overwhelming. I mean, it’s one thing to have sex with a man…it’s another to open yourself up to him completely.”
Had I done that? I started to shake my head, but she laughed.
“No, really, Jane. Getting barenaked with a man like that is intimate. It’s a base and entirely primal reaction to sexual attraction.”
I crossed my arms over my breasts and sighed. “You spend too much time with your therapist.”
She stood with a grin. “My therapist would tell you that deep down you are starving for an emotional connection and you are using sex to fill that need.”
“I don’t buy psychobabble.”
“Fine.” Mercy stopped at the corner of my desk and met my gaze. “Just be careful.”
“I am.”
“I don’t mean birth control, Jane. I mean with your heart. I’ve never known you to be so intimately involved with a man. You’ve already told me how you feel about serious relationships.”
Insulted, I sat up straight in my chair. “I’ve had relationships.”
“Yes, but this is no ordinary relationship for you. You let him spend the night in your bed.” She tapped the desk with one fingernail. “Just be careful.”
Just be careful. I watched her leave and let my gaze drop to the desk in front of me. How can I be careful with my heart when my body is set on doing whatever it wants? Not that my body was totally to blame; Mathias was just as stimulating intellectually as he was sexually. That was part of the problem I suppose—I couldn’t forget about him when I left the bed.
I spread the contents of the folder out and stared at the picture of Samuel Castlemen from his press kit. He looked like exactly what he was…a big mountain-man artist from Alaska. Black hair fell on his shoulders, he wore a neatly trimmed beard, and sharp green eyes looked right at the camera. The photographer who had done his head shots for his press kit knew exactly what made Sam so attractive, both as an artist and as a man.
And he was all mine. All one hundred eighty pounds of him. What the hell was I gonna do with him? A special focus show usually took months of planning…it wasn’t like a large coming-out party for an artist. It was intensely personal, and it wasn’t about buying. The small shows had been Mercy Rothell’s first contribution to the gallery, and the people in Boston had taken to them like a moth to a flame.
Being invited became a bragging point, and a special focus show featuring Samuel Cas
tlemen would be a coveted event. The first thing I had to do, of course, was to contact the breast cancer foundation. Well, it wasn’t the first thing I had to do.
I stood up and closed the folder. There was a slight buzz of activity in the bull pen as I left my office and hurried to the service hall that led to the show floor. It was the only truly private place except for the bathroom, and I couldn’t do what I needed to do in there.
Deanna Lee Page 12
