by Alison Kent
Isabel was the only one without prospects. Of course, her masked lover did know her name, so there was some possibility that he’d engage in a little chasing of his own.
Unlike Natalie, Isabel was hoping that wouldn’t happen.
What had Nat said? We want you to find true love…
Isabel sat at the desk, feeling twittery inside. It was strange, but when she thought of true love, the image that came to her wasn’t a man in a gilded lion’s mask, but an indistinct figure…
A man at a drafting table, with a computer nearby. Even though he was faceless, she knew him well enough to recognize that he was the one for her.
Tom Grace.
Gah! Isabel banged a fist on the desktop. Too much female bonding was making her soft. She could not be in love with Tom for the simple reason that he knew too much about her.
She pulled the laptop over and tapped keys until she found a copy of the e-mail she’d stupidly mailed to Tom after she’d gotten home from the Venetian ball. It was a mess, but the meaning was clear enough. Now Tom really knew too much about her. Even—she gulped—about her encounter with a stranger. Had she purposely sabotaged her relationship with Tom by giving him details that would change the way he thought of her?
Her face flaming, Isabel checked her incoming mail. She dreaded what Tom would write, although he’d never been anything but warm and understanding in the past.
Her gaze flew across the spam glutting her electronic mailbox and lit on a letter from Tom’s address. Subject: CONFESSION.
Suddenly there was a chunk of ice in the pit of her stomach. With numb fingers, she clicked Read.
And she read.
All of three words.
It was me.
THE SILENCE WAS OMINOUS.
Tom sat in his office at Grace Notes on the second day of the new year, wondering if it was possible for e-mail to be threateningly silent. If so, his was.
There’d been no response from Isabel.
He’d checked, and his “confession” had been delivered. A hundred times since then, he’d started to write a plea for forgiveness, explain that he’d been carried away by the moment, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her, that she should give him a shot at proving how right they were for each other.
Every time, he’d stopped himself. She had to know what he wanted, which meant the next step was hers. He was willing to let her make it, but he’d thought she’d strike swiftly.
Instead…only silence.
A cold shoulder was far worse than anger.
He knew by experience. His well-to-do family had been mystified by his decision to become, as they put it, a carpenter. At least try architecture, his father, a renowned surgeon had said. Graces are professionals, his mother, administrator of a billion-dollar research center, had needlessly pointed out. Tom’s older sister was also a doctor; his younger brother on the way to a Harvard MBA. But Tom had always liked wood, design, working with his hands. Though he’d gone to his father’s ivy league alma mater as demanded, it had been to acquire a master’s in Fine Arts.
After he’d cashed out his trust fund and started Grace Notes on a relative shoestring, he’d been given the disapproving cold shoulder at family affairs for at least a year. But he’d stuck to his guns, and eventually his parents had realized they were being prigs. Especially when their colleagues began asking how to acquire Grace Notes pieces and they realized he might not be such a failure after all, even though his baffled father continued to refer to his son as a longhaired hippie. Likewise, Tom thought the elder Graces were too rigid. Yet they had managed to accept each other for what they were.
How his family would react to a person like Isabel was anyone’s guess.
In multiple e-mails, she’d teased him about his stuffy New England upbringing, asking him how he’d ever become friendly with a gutter rat like her. He saw the hurt behind her words, and while he’d once explained his theory that the best and most interesting people were the “beasts” of the world, she continued to make cracks about her low-class roots, being a mutt, how she’d had to fight for every snippet of respect and scrap of success that came her way.
No matter how many times he wrote it, she didn’t seem to understand—with her heart—that he found her both admirable and inspirational.
And now he’d pushed too hard and scared her away.
Agitated, Tom got up from his desk and crossed to the drafting table positioned adjacent to the windows that overlooked the factory floor. Drawings were tacked to the work surface, but they held no interest for him.
What he’d returned to again and again, were the masks he’d kept after the party. His would have to be returned to the costume shop, but Isabel’s was unique—an original concoction layered in red pinfeathers and embellished with white-and-black plumes. Both masks looked the worse for wear, hers with broken feathers and missing beads and crystals, his slightly crushed from—
Tom smiled. Well, that had been worth it.
A sharp whistle pierced through the constant clatter of the factory below. A smattering of male catcalls rang out above the whine of table saws.
Tom parted the wooden blinds to see what was happening out there.
Isabel was happening. She stopped briefly to ask one of the workmen for directions. Then, proud and brazen as a Valkyrie, she charged across the cement floor of the factory space, ignoring the workers’ continued interest as she made a beeline for the stairs that led up the short tower that held the office and reception area. She wore a fringed suede jacket with tall boots and tight jeans that showed off every inch of her long legs as she strode purposefully toward Tom’s aerie. Her complexion was stark, with high color in her cheeks and blazing eyes. There was an odd bundle in her arms that he couldn’t identify.
The metal steps rattled as she leaped them two at a time. Something large and exultant built inside Tom with every clanging footstep.
Isabel was here. Isabel…Isabel…
Every worker on the factory floor had stopped and was watching slack-jawed. Tools and packing cartons had been abandoned. Safety goggles were shoved up for a better view.
Tom’s secretary stood at the top of the stairway. “Pardon me, miss—”
Isabel barreled by. “Where is he?”
“Just a minute, please,” Janet said. “Do you have an appointment?”
Tom opened his office door. “Never mind, Janet. I know her.”
Isabel’s head snapped around. “You’re Tom Grace?”
“The one and only,” he said, standing tall for her perusal.
The furniture makers who’d gathered at the bottom of the office tower to watch began to murmur among themselves. Probably placing bets on Isabel’s identity. Those closest to Tom knew that his dates were minimal. Certainly no woman had ever come looking for him.
Tom waved at them. “Show’s over. Get back to work.”
“Oh, no.” Isabel threw the items in her arms at him. “The show is just beginning!”
Thud, thud. He looked down as the shoes hit his chest and fell to the floor, atop his crumpled tuxedo jacket. “What the hell?”
“I can’t get them unknotted. Two days I’ve been trying and they’re driving me mad.” She came at him. “Same as you!”
He caught her arms. “Hold on, Isabel.”
She stopped, breathing hard, her eyes wide and brilliant as she stared. He remembered that she was seeing him for the first time and felt himself growing warm as her gaze traveled across his face. Her expression was filled with a small percentage of wonder beneath the fire-spitting anger. That gave him hope. At least it wasn’t disgust.
“You…” She seethed. She wrenched away and waved her arms. “You…rat bastard.”
Laughter from below. “You tell him, sweetheart.”
“Sneaky, slippery, slimy sleazebag,” she spat.
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
She cocked a hip. “Oh, yeah, you are.”
“You can call me all the names you want.” Isabel’s ho
t emotions were exciting to Tom, though he was aware of the onlookers even if she didn’t care what they overheard. “But let’s go into my office.” He nodded to the secretary. “Janet, hold my calls.”
The motherly woman smiled encouragement. She thought he was too lonely and had made several unsuccessful attempts to set him up on blind dates.
Tom ushered Isabel inside. With a shrug for the whistles from the eavesdropping workers, he went back to scoop up the jacket and the tangle of the beribboned shoes. He recognized them from the New Year’s Eve party.
“Ahem,” said Janet as he was about to close the door.
Tom looked where she pointed. Isabel’s lace thong trailed across the threshold of his office. Apparently it had fallen from the pocket of the tux.
Janet winked as he snatched up the revealing undergarment.
He slammed the door and hurriedly dropped the stuff on his desk before turning to Isabel. “I know you’re mad.”
She stood on the other side of the desk, her hands on her hips. “Mad doesn’t begin to define what I’m feeling.”
“Listen, I made a mistake. I should have told you who I was before we—” He gave his head a little shake. “My only excuse is that you were so persuasive. And irresistible.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not interested in your sweet talk. All of that, what happened at the party, that was a—a foul. It never happened. Your mistake was coming to the party in the first place!”
“No, that was the smartest risk I ever took.”
“But it wasn’t your risk to take. How many times have I told you that I didn’t want us to meet?” She stalked around the office, flailing and fulminating.
He went to the windows that rimmed the office and closed the blinds one by one.
Isabel continued. “Oh, what an ego on you! Completely ignoring my wishes! Want to tell me why you thought it was your decision to make, huh?”
“Simple.” He lifted his hands. “Because you were wrong.”
She stopped. He could practically see the anger draining out of her. But she stubbornly crossed her arms and pooched out her lower lip. “You say.”
“Isabel…” It was a joy to use her name. He almost smiled. “Isabel, for a smart woman, you can be so dense. All you have to think of is how it was between us in that alcove—”
She put up a hand. “Stop. That didn’t happen.”
“Is that how you dismiss all your one-night stands? Erase them from your mind?”
“Don’t throw my past up to me,” she warned. “I told you all that junk about myself in good faith. In confidence, I mean. You were supposed to stay—stay—” She gestured at his computer, then said with renewed heat, “Out of my life.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. “I don’t have to answer that.”
“Sure. That would mean examining your motives.” He approached her, and she hunched her shoulders up to her neck, drawing away from him although she didn’t actually step out of range. “I understand that you don’t feel safe with me being a real man who wants you in the real world, instead of some anonymous electronic blip on the computer screen.”
She tilted her head forward, not looking at him. Her black lashes lowered. “You weren’t anonymous.”
“Close enough.”
“Our friendship was real.”
“Yeah, and that’s not changing, no matter how many shoes you whip at me.”
She breathed heavily, in and out, almost letting herself laugh. “Sorry, I guess. I just—I got so frustrated after I read your confession. I’ve been caged in my loft for the past twenty-four hours, pacing and worrying and cursing you and trying to undo those shoes so I could send them back to Rafe—”
“Why would you do that?”
A glance skimmed his face. “I didn’t want the reminder.”
“I’ll take them, then. Even if they’re the only part of you I get to keep.” He touched her arm. “Tell me that’s not how it’s going to be, Isabel.”
She threw her head back, full of umbrage and bravado. “Why? You want another piece of me?”
He couldn’t let her reduce their relationship to only sex.
“Yeah,” he said, and his voice had gone all husky and rough. “Yeah, I want a piece. Another piece of mail to join the hundred others in my Isabel file. A piece of the pumpkin pie you dole out on Thanksgiving day, to me and all the rest of your friends. Peace of mind, the kind a person gets when they know there’s always going to be someone around to laugh with, gripe to and count on. Most of all…”
He put his arms around her. “I want a piece of your heart, Isabel. And I’m greedy.” He kissed her flushed cheek, hoping it was auspicious when she didn’t pull away. “I want the biggest piece you have to give.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “What if I don’t have any to give?”
“I’d say you underestimate yourself.” And that she’d had plenty of training in that from her cruel stepfather and a mother so weak she’d allow her daughter to be scarred by his vitriol and abuse.
Isabel blinked at him, then gave an awkward, mirthless laugh. “You think you know me so well.”
“Oh, and you believe I don’t?”
She tipped up her chin, narrowed her eyes. Leaned into his chest. “Then tell me what’s in my mind right now, why don’t you?”
A certain heat was building between them. Her body had gone from brittle to lissome in his arms. By her rapid breathing and the way she wet her lips with a flick of her tongue, he had no trouble reading her mind. But sex wasn’t the way he wanted to go. It was the wrong message when she already clung to the mistaken idea that her greatest value for men was in the pleasure she gave and received.
His body, though, had another reaction. And he could tell that she knew it. With an infinitesimal adjustment, her hip nudged his thighs, brushed his already-thickening arousal.
“You’re thinking you can distract me,” he said.
Her left arm was crushed against his chest. Lightly she touched her dangling hand to his fly, fingertips pattering maddeningly in a butterfly caress. His prick twitched, swelled. “Wrong. I’m thinking I already have.”
Groan. “That proves nothing, Isabel.”
“Except that it is sex you want from me,” she whispered, trying to slip her fingers past his belt.
“No.” He held her hand still. “I won’t let you dismiss me that way.”
“You had no complaints on New Year’s Eve.”
New Year’s Eve—enough fantasy material to keep him going for years. But he gave her a blank look and said, “Uh, I don’t remember that. What happened?”
“Oh, very funny.”
He stroked her spine. “New Year’s Eve wasn’t only about sex for me. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I was making love. To you, Isabel Parisi, not to some anonymous hot, willing body that I rented for the night. That was why I wanted to see your face while it happened.” He put his mouth near her ear. “Beauty.”
She shivered. “Stop.”
“Call me Beast.”
“Too late. You’re not the beast anymore.”
“Then call me Tom. You haven’t yet.”
A silence welled until finally she parted her lips and said, “Tom,” in the smallest voice possible, like a whisper of silk.
“Look at my face. What do you see?”
“No,” she said, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.
He stroked between her shoulder blades, feeling the breath shuddering through her, then the tension as she gripped handfuls of his shirt and wrenched it open, popping buttons from their holes. Her fingers fanned across his ribs. Fire licked his senses despite his determination to make her see him for who he was.
“Wait,” he said.
She opened her mouth and pressed her lips to his neck. “Kiss me.”
Her throaty plea went through him like a hot blade cuts butter. Distantly, he was aware of the busy sounds of a manufacturing concern—a phone ringing, n
ail guns popping—and at the front of his mind was the knowledge that he was making another mistake. Except that Isabel, by her own account, rarely went back for seconds. That she’d come here knowing what might happen between them, had looked him in the eye and still couldn’t stop her desire, was significant.
At least he hoped so. Because he was weak.
He kissed her.
IN MINUTES, they were all over each other, ripping off most of their clothing as if they were on fire. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Isabel kept thinking, even while she sucked at Tom’s tongue and tore off his shirt. With shaking fingers she reached inside his shorts and stroked every hesitation and damned thoughtful concern out of him. No man could actually think coherently when all blood had gone south, and the truth was that she was acting on little more than raw instinct herself.
She knew she wanted him, at this moment.
There was no afterward. No tomorrow. Hadn’t been for years.
Except that Tom’s touch lingered reverently. Even in their rush, he slowed and used his hands and his mouth, loving every inch of her, with his eyes searching hers out again and again, asking her questions she didn’t want to comprehend, let alone answer.
She bit his shoulder. He caught her, holding her against him as he staggered forward and slammed her bare bottom onto the drafting table. She hitched herself up on the slanted surface, knocking the Venetian masks aside, crinkling his drawings. The wooden blinds on the window behind the desk clattered like bones.
She yelped when he shoved her top up to her neck and took a long tingling pull on her nipple, his teeth pressing into her flesh. “Oooch. Can they hear us?”
He put his hand across her lips. “Shhh.”
She kissed his fingers, sucked on them when they curled into her mouth. Wasn’t she supposed to be mad at him? This didn’t seem like it. Or taste like it.
Tom was bound to get ideas, ideas like those Nat had spoken about—intimacy developing into a relationship.
Oh, yeah, this was stupid. Stupid and risky.
So then why had she started it?
Because she wanted to be stupid and risky, in the biggest, most stupid, riskiest way of all? She wanted her life to be changed?
