by Sara Daniel
Hearing her explain how she was an art lover and worked to inspire love, well, he was inspired with something that was often mistaken for love. Hard, needy lust. He couldn’t even take a deep breath without longing to be inside her.
He didn’t want to eat pizza. He wanted to take her out the back door and make love to her in the first halfway secluded spot he could find, just like they were teenagers again. Thankfully, a teen boy walked up the table before Zane could do anything stupid.
“Ms. Truman, I’m sorry to interrupt.” He cast a nervous glance at Zane before focusing back on Julianne. “I was thinking about my painting, and I know we agreed it was done, but I decided the red is a little too bright, and I should darken it before tomorrow.”
Julianne stood up and put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Marco, we talked about needing to let go at some point. It’s too late to paint and have it completely dry by tomorrow, and I can’t let you inside the school tonight. A couple of the people coming to the auction have a great eye for color. You’ll have a fantastic opportunity to ask them what they think.”
“But then it’ll be too late. I won’t be able to change it before it’s sold.”
The kids were auctioning their work too? Zane hadn’t realized that. “If you’re not ready, it doesn’t matter if you fix the color tonight,” he said, speaking from experience. “You’ll just find something else you want to change tomorrow.”
“Zane’s right,” Julianne said. Somehow, she was able to straddle the fine line between authority figure and friend. The kid looked like he worshipped every word she said. Zane was half-afraid he wore the same look, except his was combined with red hot lust. “You need to decide if you’re ready to let it go or not. I’m never going to force you to give up a work of art that you’ll regret later.”
“Zane DeMonde?” the boy asked. He turned to Zane with wide eyes, oblivious to the fact that Julianne was biting her lip, seeming to harbor some serious art regrets of her own.
“The one and only.” He shook the boy’s hand. “Are you auctioning your art tomorrow too?”
“In the silent auction. Only your pieces are in the live auction. The art club’s been working on this for months. Wow, no one is going to believe it when you actually show up.”
Hell, now he was expected to show up tomorrow.
“The auction needs your art, Marco,” Julianne said gently. “But it’s always your choice. Think about it tonight.”
The boy promised he would and walked back to his friends. Julianne collapsed back in her seat.
“So you’re not going to cancel the auction, no matter how much I pay you,” Zane said.
“I can’t. It was the kids’ idea. I added your work to bring in some real money, and because I knew it would attract people from the art world. I have a rare year where I have two or three kids with serious talent. Marco is one of them. I want the collectors to see their talent. You’re more than welcome to bid on your own stuff and buy it if you don’t want anyone else to own it.”
He did want someone else to own it. Her. He felt strangely hollow knowing whether he bought the artwork back or not, after tomorrow there’d be nothing left of him in her life.
He’d made her choose between him and her family before and lost. Now he was making her choose between him and her students who were clearly an extended family to her. Even if he won this time, he’d end up losing Julianne. He needed a third option, one that gave him a second chance to build a life with Julianne and protected his art reputation.
The pizza was probably as delicious as always, but tonight Julianne couldn’t taste a thing. The restaurant was swirling with speculation about Zane’s return, now that they knew who he was. She didn’t understand how no one else had recognized him on the spot.
Her students wanted to meet him. Community members wanted to ask how the auction was going. She couldn’t admit it was a disaster with Zane wanting to pull his works and her students getting cold feet. But the icy reality settled against her stomach as she walked out into the warm spring air with him at her side.
The only chance she had of some semblance of success was to bring Zane to the auction, so her students could get artistic feedback from a source they’d hold in highest regard. She stopped in front of her car and turned to him. “If you’re planning to come to the auction tomorrow, do you need a place to stay tonight?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any plans yet.”
“Well, I have a guest room if you need.” She tried to keep her voice calm, as if it was no big deal to offer this man a bed in her house. Sure, she hadn’t offered her bed. But she wasn’t confident she had enough self-control to stay away from him. She’d end up hurt. There was no question there. She was ready to pick up right where they left off fifteen years ago. And once again he would leave her without looking back.
Zane stepped toward her and reached out his hand, stroking his thumb against her neck and sending her pulse jack-hammering. “You make me need things that I’ve convinced myself I’d never need.”
She gulped. “Like what?”
He didn’t answer, just threaded his fingers up against the back of her scalp. His lips zeroed in on hers hard and fast. There was no teasing and cajoling this time. It was all stark need. And she needed it too. She wrapped her arms around his neck bringing Zane as close to her as she could get. And it still wasn’t close enough.
“This is the police,” a deadly man’s voice threatened. “Step the hell away from my sister.”
Chapter Three
ZANE IMMEDIATELY BROKE AWAY and stepped back. A kiss on a public sidewalk shouldn’t have left him so disoriented, but he needed a moment to get his bearings and figure out what the hell he’d done to get the police involved.
Julianne recovered first. She walked to the cop and shoved her hands against his chest. “Wyatt, cut that crap out.”
“Your brother’s a cop?” Zane asked. Instead of making love to her in the first secluded place they could find, he was going to be handcuffed in the back of a squad car and spend the evening in a cell.
“Police chief,” Wyatt answered. “As much I would love to smear your face in the pavement, I’ll settle for locking you up until the end of time.”
Some things clearly hadn’t changed. He’d longed for years to have a punching rematch with this bastard, but he wasn’t stupid enough to punch anyone in law enforcement.
“Stop being an idiot,” Julianne told her brother. If she could read Zane’s mind, she’d no doubt think he was one too. He could definitely see how she kept control over a high school classroom. “Zane is here because of the auction. I’ve offered him the guest room at my house tonight.”
“No f—” Wyatt began.
“Which I’ve decided to accept,” Zane said, just to piss him off more. Wyatt was wearing his uniform. He wouldn’t dare take a swing at Zane and jeopardize his career.
“If you so much as lay a finger on her,” Wyatt threatened.
“It’ll be because I want him to,” Julianne finished smoothly.
Zane swallowed, suddenly inundated with fantasies, all involving his fingers and her naked body.
Her brother made another attempt to move toward him, but she continued to push back against him. “Wyatt, at seventeen, your intentions were honorable, but your actions were deplorable. This time your behavior is out of line all the way around, so butt out.”
Yep, he could totally see her saying that to one of her students. Zane grinned.
Wyatt’s eyes shot poisoned daggers at him over her head. “If you change your mind, Julianne, tell me, and I’ll get rid of him.”
“You’re my only brother, and I love you to death, but I won’t change my mind,” she said firmly.
Wyatt stormed to his cop car.
Only then did Julianne’s shoulders slump, and she looked utterly defeated. “Why do I have to choose between you two? Why do you guys rip my heart out like this?”
Zane couldn’t gloat about winning. He didn’t
even feel like he won. Most definitely, he refused to consider that she cared enough about him that he could be responsible for breaking her heart. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”
He took the keys from her hand and led her to the passenger seat of her car. Other than giving him directions to her house, she was passive and quiet. He pulled into the driveway and cut the motor.
Then he reached over and squeezed her hand. As much as he hated to let her brother win, this wasn’t about their one-upmanship battle. What she wanted was the only thing that mattered. “I understand why you’ve changed your mind about letting me stay. I’ll walk you to the door.”
She looked at him then, the golden flecks in her olive eyes flaring to life. “I haven’t changed my mind. My home is open to you.”
He wanted to lean across the seat and kiss her, but he squelched the urge. The next time he kissed her, he wasn’t going to give her any reason to feel uncomfortable or self-conscious. “Do you have an extra toothbrush?”
She smiled then and returned the hand squeeze, relieving the pressure against his chest. After they exited the car, he recaptured her hand and clasped it as they walked along the sidewalk to her unassuming ranch house. Inside, she turned on the lights.
Artwork covered every wall. He felt like he’d stepped into a museum. “All this, and you chose to sell my stuff?”
She laughed, not allowing him to take offense. “I have a great eye for picking pieces I really like that are worth next to nothing.”
He walked to the first print, an amateur impressionist painting channeling Monet but with frogs sunning themselves on the lily pads.
“I adore art I find at flea markets, especially whimsical pieces,” she admitted. “I love talking to the artists about their technique. If I take up their entire Sunday afternoon talking, I owe it to them to buy at least one piece. Every time I look at their works hanging here, the whole conversation comes back to me.”
He looked around the room, at a loss of where to start but knowing he had to study what had drawn her to each piece enough to want to hang it in her living room. “Can I look around?”
“Of course.” She stayed by his side, understanding his need to analyze brushstrokes close-up and then walk several steps back to observe the painting from further away.
After the third canvas, a blob of paint she once would have argued with him was a paint spill, not art, he realized Julianne had grown and changed as much or more than he had. Classics, modernism, minimalist, ridiculous, sublime—she had everything.
The combination was eclectic, but somehow it all worked together. She indeed did have a story for every piece she’d acquired and was more than happy to share with him. She was a true student and appreciator of the arts. No wonder her students adored her. She was receptive to every artist’s talents.
Zane was only dimly aware of the hours that passed as they made their way from canvas to canvas. He was much more aware of her shoulder brushing against his, her hand touching his arm as she engaged him in a story, and the softness of her body as he put his hand on her waist to guide her toward the next piece.
They wandered through the living area and kitchen and finally into the den that she’d converted into an art room. Pieces of clay lay on tables and shelves in various stages of creation. “This is where I work with different compounds in my spare time, experimenting with techniques to show my students,” she explained.
“That’s the end of my collection.” She walked him to the small hallway that branched into two bedrooms and a bathroom.
“Nothing by you?” His paintings and sketches hadn’t been part of her collection. She hadn’t had any open places on the walls where something used to hang either.
“My drawings are in the guest room. You can amuse yourself. I don’t need you to laugh at me to my face.” She opened the door and flipped on the light, but didn’t enter with him.
Now he was definitely curious. He stepped into the room but then turned back to her. “What about your room?”
“Nothing to see. Good night, Zane.” She walked to the bathroom and closed the door.
He looked between the closed doors of the bathroom and her bedroom, then back into the guest bedroom. The room was full of amateur pencil sketch caricatures. She was right that her talent didn’t stand out enough to get her nationally recognized or to financially support her. But he couldn’t laugh, not when he was looking into creations that sprang from her heart.
He recognized her parents in the picture above the bed. They appeared to be arguing over a TV remote but also looked affectionately at each other. On the other side of the room, her brother was posed in his high school baseball uniform with a determined stare as he stood in a batting stance. A third picture had her and her brother, pushing against each other and laughing as they simultaneously reached for the last piece of cake.
Her family was so important to her. No wonder she’d been upset after this evening’s encounter with her brother. As teenagers, he and Wyatt had made her choose between them. She had been a good girl who adored her family. He shouldn’t have been surprised or hurt that she’d chosen them.
Zane looked at the pictures again. He might understand her better, but there was absolutely no way he could sleep in this bed with her brother looking down on him all night.
He heard a door open. Since he had plenty of his own sensitivities about unauthorized people touching his work, he stepped into the hall to get her permission to move the pictures. Julianne came through the bathroom door at the same time, wearing a silky blue low cut pajama top and matching shorts. His mouth went as dry as the first time she’d approached him in art class, and he forgot how to speak.
“Is everything okay?” Julianne asked.
Zane was watching her with same intensity that he’d studied each line of the paintings in her living room. Her skin tingled, wanting that intensity to manifest itself physically with each finger he’d slide over her body.
“I set out towels and an extra toothbrush in the bathroom,” she babbled, trying to cover any fantasies she’d been telegraphing to him. “There are extra blankets and pillows in the closet in your room.”
Zane stepped toward her. He deliberately slid the spaghetti strap of her top down her shoulder. His cobalt eyes fastened on her, trailing his finger down her bare skin. Oh yes, he knew exactly what she wanted and was prepared to give it to her.
He was also giving her the chance to step away, to tell him no and close the bedroom door on him. But she’d never been able to walk away from Zane DeMonde. Fifteen years hadn’t changed that. She lifted her hand to touch the lock of black hair curling around his ear.
His face was still a fascinating sculpture of planes and angles, the same yet different, filled in some places, the tiniest of lines across his forehead. She brushed his hair back and settled her hands on his shoulders, broader than she remembered, defined with muscle, but no bulk.
His hand moved across her bare shoulder and down the slope of her breast. She leaned against the wall, needing the support, as her limbs turned to warm wet clay. He pushed aside her flimsy top and cupped her naked breast in his hand. Julianne trembled, too focused on him to breathe. Every cell of her body hoped he would choose to touch it next.
He lifted her hand away from his face, pressing his lips to her palm before he released her and slid the strap from that arm off her other shoulder. Her top pooled around her hips, leaving her chest exposed.
Vaguely, she recognized she should have felt vulnerable and tried to cover herself. But she was transfixed by Zane’s artistic appreciation and blatant longing. Despite clearly wanting her, he didn’t touch her. He simply looked while her body became hotter and shakier.
“Take me,” she whispered.
Chapter Four
ZANE’S DESIRE-FILLED GAZE SHOT TO HERS.
“Now. Please.”
The banked wildness in his eyes broke free. He bent his head and molded his lips to hers, slipping his tongue into her mouth and claiming
his place. She clasped his head in her hands, holding him to her, welcoming him home, giving him more, inviting him to take more. She never felt like this with anyone else. It had always been Zane.
They were both breathing hard and moaning by the time he broke free of her mouth and kissed his way under her jaw, along her neck. She arched her back, needing desperately for him to hold the weight of her breasts, to take her nipple in his mouth and make her cry out his name.
She reached for the buttons on his shirt, clumsy with need but wanting to return some of the pleasure he was giving her.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Later. I won’t last if you touch me. I need you so badly. I’ve needed you for too long.”
“I need you more,” she whispered.
“That’s not possible.” He bent his hand and covered her breast with his mouth, suckling until she fisted her hands in his hair and cried out his name.
“It is possible. Touch me and see,” she challenged. Even if he didn’t touch her, she was going to come. Embarrassing as it was, her body was starved for him. His nearness was enough to set her off.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, as he slid his hand inside the elastic of her shorts. His palm slid hot against her core. She leaned back against the wall to give him better access and for her own support. She was no longer clay. Her bones were the consistency of watered down paint.
His finger slid slick and smooth inside her and she shuddered violently. She gripped his shoulders, unable to stand without support, caught in the vortex of emotion and sensation that was Zane.
“Sweet Julianne,” he whispered, rocking his palm against her.
Suddenly, his hand was not enough. “I want you inside me now.”
She reached for his trousers, undoing the button and yanking down the zipper. He ripped away her flimsy pajamas and lifted her against his body. His arm muscles bulged and trembled as he gripped her hips and slid himself inside her.
