“Don’t you dare. But we do need—”
“Condoms,” they said together. Gavin rolled off her, and she took advantage and scrambled for her nightstand.
“Here,” they both said as they came back to each other.
“Where’d those come from?” they said at the same time as each looked at the condom box in the other’s hands.
“Gage brought these when you were getting ready,” Gavin told her.
“Maggie brought these when you were in the shower,” Ellery said and began to laugh. Her laughter stopped when she saw Gavin’s eyes heating with lust as he watched her breasts sway with her laughter. Soon she matched the intensity in his green eyes as he raced to slip a condom on.
Gavin lowered her onto the bed, and she felt his weight on her. It was warm, hard, loving, and safe. Her heart was in his hands. And then she lost herself in Gavin, knowing she’d remember this forever.
* * *
Gavin wrapped his arm around Ellery as he pulled her to his side. Her head was resting in the crook of his shoulder, and her hand was splayed on his chest. He should have told her he was falling in love with her, but his brain was not working properly from the mind-blowing sex they’d just had.
Ellery’s breathing slowed and fell into a steady rhythm as he stroked her hair. “I’ll keep you safe. Always,” Gavin swore before drifting off to sleep with the woman of his dreams, in quite possibly the ugliest nightdress he’d ever seen, wrapped in his arms.
17
Charleston, Last Friday Night…
* * *
Ellery ducked into the back of the Mimi Hollis Art Gallery, located on the very popular and historic Meeting Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina and did a little celebratory dance.
In fact, the historic three-story brick house turned art gallery had once belonged to Mimi’s grandmother who had left it to her when she died in 1904. That was when Mimi, or Mary Hollis as her name really was, turned it into an art gallery. In turn, Mimi died and left it to her grandson, who left it to his son, Hollis Thomas Coldwell, who was Ellery’s boss—a boss Ellery had just impressed.
In Charleston, your past always meant something. “Who are your people?” is more important than “Where did you go to college?” Something Ellery learned when she’d been applying for the art director job. The Coldwell and Hollis families had been in Charleston for ten generations. The St. Johns had been there for six. In fact, Ellery got the job at the Mimi Hollis Art Gallery because her great-grandmother and Hollis’s grandmother had both been on the Garden Gates Historical Society Gala Committee some eighty years ago.
Ellery danced in a little circle as she fist pumped the air. Tonight she’d just sold four Mark Vosslinger paintings. Mark himself wasn’t her favorite person, bless his heart, but his artwork was outstanding. Hollis had discovered Mark selling his paintings in the open-air Charleston City Market three years ago. But after tonight, Mark was way bigger than any market and even Charleston, for that matter. And Mark and the Mimi Hollis Art Gallery were going to be famous. Hello job security.
Ellery straightened her black sheath dress and fixed the loose champagne blonde hairs that the summer humidity had let escape from the sloppy ballerina bun sitting on the top of her head.
“You look beautiful.”
Ellery gasped and spun to the back door. “Atherton! What are you doing here?” she asked her ex-boyfriend. Atherton Hawthorne was the epitome of old money. His ancestor was the first governor of the area. Hawthornes had been in the city since before Charles Town became Charleston. Their money built downtown, their plantation began the whole city’s trade with the north, and their opinion had led South Carolina to vote in favor of independence.
“I’ve missed you, Ellery.”
“And I told you it’s over,” Ellery hissed. Atherton was gorgeous in his custom tuxedo. His light brown hair was liberally highlighted with blonde streaks from his time outside. He was always running, surfing, or hunting with the “it” crowd of Charleston’s playboys. And he knew he was handsome. He paid a lot of money for his sexy smile, his tailored clothes, and his very sexy sports car. He had a condo downtown overlooking the city that was bigger than most houses. His parents had a mansion on East Battery—the old and very elite row of houses overlooking Charleston Harbor. And the family plantation outside of town had been handed down for twelve plus generations. But none of that mattered when Ellery had caught him in bed with a socialite named Bitsy.
Bitsy’s platinum blonde hair had still been up in a fancy style from the charity event Ellery couldn’t go to because she’d been hosting an evening with a local artist. She had decided to surprise Atherton and found Bitsy in nothing but a pair of expensive cowboy boots and her pearls, bouncing away on top of Atherton.
Bitsy had been thrilled, Atherton had been astounded that Ellery would actually break up with him, and Ellery had been spitting mad. So she’d reverted to generations of southern manners as a cold smile had broken out on her face. “Bitsy, darling,” she’d said as the twenty-one year old bimbo turned in faux shock. “What would your mother say, knowing you were bouncing around in bed with your cowboy boots on? Where are your manners?”
Bitsy had gasped. Atherton had tossed Bitsy from him, giving Ellery a view of his shrinking erection. And Ellery had grabbed her clothes from the closet as Atherton told her all the reasons she couldn’t leave him.
That had been two months ago. Ellery wouldn’t say she’d moved on, but she was definitely over Atherton. Her heart had been mended with a couple shots of whiskey, and she’d never looked back. Only, Atherton had been popping up all over town. He couldn’t get over the fact she’d left him. And then two weeks ago, he’d walked into the local bar she frequented and punched the man she’d been talking with. A man who was a tourist simply asking for directions to a nearby restaurant. And now he was at her big gallery exhibit… uninvited.
“It’s not over. You’re just being dramatic. I was with Bitsy to show her some moves since she was a virgin. It was educational. I told you that. It didn’t mean anything. It was only a favor for an old friend.” Atherton’s frown turned back into a smile as Ellery blinked at his stupidity. “This is your big night. You should have the handsomest man in Charleston on your arm.”
Ellery blinked at him then shook her head. “Get out, Atherton. You’re not my date.”
His smile slipped again as he took a menacing step forward. “Who is? You better not be here with that artist. He’s so far beneath us.”
“I’m here alone, Atherton. I know you don’t understand this, but I’m working. And we’re over. Now get out.” Ellery slammed her hands against his muscled chest and pushed all six feet of him out from behind the curtain separating the show floor from the back room.
Taking a deep breath to compose herself, Ellery stepped from the back into the perfectly lit gallery. The old brick walls were exposed and the hardwood floor was polished, allowing the generations of scrapes and dents to show.
With a wide smile, Ellery stopped next to where Hollis stood tall, talking to some of the Charleston elite while Mark stood near the bar in the back, angrily tossing back whiskey. Mark had perfected his persona of the brooding artist.
“Excuse me, Mr. Coldwell,” Ellery said with a professional smile to the men and women who were dropping seventy-five thousand dollars or more on each painting. “But I need to put this up.”
Hollis saw the sticky SOLD tag Ellery put on the brick next to the painting and nodded. “Great job, Ellery,” he said in his slow as molasses southern voice. “Mrs. Tandy was just saying she would be back to look at the Charleston gate piece.”
Ellery wanted to do a little dance again as she made the appropriate response to one of Charleston’s grand dames dressed in a bright blue tunic with a bright pink, yellow, orange, and purple design and white silk pants. Color was in for Charleston and not only on the houses.
Ellery had been working there for a little over a year, and under her direction several lo
cal artists had been launched to success. Tonight had been all hers. The marketing, the organization of the exhibit, the exclusive guest list, and the idea to include several invites to galleries in New York, London, and Paris.
After placing the sold card next to the landscape, Ellery ignored Atherton as he walked around the gallery. She moved in the opposite direction of him as he made his rounds, and she said her goodbyes to the guests beginning to leave for the night. There was talk of a tropical storm hitting late that night, which in Charleston only meant you made sure to stock up on cocktails. However, it prevented people from staying later than normal. Anything less than a major hurricane was an excuse to drink.
* * *
Soon the gallery emptied, even Atherton, who was throwing a drinking party for the storm that night, had left with the others. Ellery handed a check to both the bartender and the caterer. Tables were removed, money was secured, and she was ready to head home. Hollis locked the front door and turned to her with a huge smile. He was in his late forties, had perfectly cut light brown hair lightly peppered with some gray, and was stylish in his tan linen suit with a pale pink dress shirt and a purple bow tie with brightly colored pineapples on it.
“You should be very proud of yourself. Tonight was a smashing success.”
“Thank you, Mr. Coldwell,” Ellery said, picking up her purse from the backroom.
“Let me walk you out.” Hollis opened the back door for her then locked it as they entered the small parking area in the back of the gallery. At one time it had probably been a grand secret garden. “Now, I don’t want to see you back here until Monday. You deserve these two days off.”
Ellery unlocked her sedan with her key fob, and Hollis opened the door for her. “Thank you. I’m going to sleep through all of it.” She laughed as she climbed in.
“Stay safe and enjoy yourself. I’ll probably drop by Monday afternoon to see if Mrs. Tandy came in.”
“Okay. Have a nice rest of the weekend, Mr. Coldwell.”
Hollis closed her car door and strode over to his luxury sports car as Ellery put her bag away and waited for Hollis to leave before carefully backing out and driving down Meeting Street, turning onto Queen Street. Even though it was close to midnight people were still enjoying the nightlife downtown. Ellery dodged horse drawn carriages and ghost tours as she made her way to her small one-bedroom condo on Rutledge Avenue overlooking Colonial Lake Park. Her condo building had been a huge historic house owned by the sweet Tibbie and Elijah Cummings before it was divided up. Her whole condo had probably been someone’s bedroom in the eighteen hundreds, but all 750 square feet were hers now.
Ellery parked in her parking space and opened the lobby doors. She looked at the small bank of post boxes until she found the one for Apartment 7 and inserted her key. The front door opened and old Miss Tibbie, really known as Mrs. Elijah F. Cummings, came in with her small Yorkshire terrier dog in her arms. Miss Tibbie and Mr. Elijah had the four-bedroom, twenty-five hundred square foot penthouse. Tibbie never went by her real name of Tabitha. Instead she insisted on being called Tibbie, but good southern manners never allowed you to call an elder solely by their first name, so Tibbie became Miss Tibbie. Even her dog had to be called Miss. Manners never went out of style in Charleston. Similarly neither did seersucker suits.
“Oh, the wind is really picking up,” Miss Tibbie said, setting Miss Muffy, her small lap dog, down on the marble floor. “How did the art show go tonight?”
“Really well, thank you, Miss Tibbie.” Ellery smiled kindly at the older woman who had become her very good friend over this past year.
“Well, I’m glad you’re in for the night. I heard the storm has been upgraded to a category one hurricane. We’ll get our skirt blown up, but no slap on the ass.” Ellery grinned at the eighty-year-old woman who headed for the elevator. “Are you coming up?”
“I’m just checking my mail. I’ll be up in a minute. Good night, Miss Tibbie. Please tell Mr. Elijah hello as well.”
“I will. He’ll be delighted your show went well. Stop by in the morning to tell us about it.” The old, heavy metal doors to the elevator closed as Ellery turned to pull out her mail. She looked out the front door and saw the neighbors down the street putting up their storm windows. “Damn,” she muttered as she shoved her mail into her purse and headed back outside. She should have rolled them down at the gallery before she left, but she hadn’t checked the weather forecast because she was too eager to get home. It had been plausible deniability. But now there was no denying a storm was coming, and she needed to protect the gallery.
The wind was picking up, but if she hurried she could roll the metal storm shutters over the gallery windows and be tucked into bed reading when the storm hit. There might be some flooding, but Charleston knew the drill. Ellery started her car, turned onto the street, and headed for the gallery.
18
“Ellery!” she heard her name being yelled far off in the distance. Through the fog of her dream, her name reached her and yanked her from the darkness. Ellery’s eyes popped open, but instead of a person swinging something at her in the rain, she saw Gavin’s worried face above her with her hands being held gently, yet securely, in his own. “What’s going on?”
“You’re safe. We’re at the Bell Landing Plantation. You were having a bad dream. You began crying out for help. Can you remember what you dreamed?”
Gavin was calm and his voice steady. That grounded her as she drew a separation between her dream and the real world. She was in a well-appointed suite instead of outside in the rain. Sunlight peeked through the white plantation shutters instead of the darkness from the night in her dreams. “I remembered some of what happened,” she told him, scooting up the bed so she could lean against the headboard. She hugged the blanket to her as if it would protect her as she recounted her dream with a mixture of excitement and dread.
“So, you were heading back to the gallery. Was anyone there?”
“I don’t know. The last thing I remember is driving out of my condo parking lot. And then my dream jumped to me running. But, the parking lot behind the gallery has those cobblestones from my dream. Could I have made it back to the gallery and been attacked there?”
Gavin nodded. “It’s a possibility. There wasn’t much time between when you left the gallery and when you returned. Was anyone still at the gallery when you left?”
Ellery shook her head. “No. If my dream is correct, Hollis walked me to my car and left. It took me a minute to get everything put away in my car and I saw him leave. We were the last two at the gallery.”
Gavin sat against the headboard and patted his bare chest. Ellery didn’t speak as she wriggled over to him and rested her head against the warmth of his chest. His arm came around and anchored her as her mind raced. She listened to the steady beat of his heart and let her mind go back to the dream. Safely in his arms, she relived the dream in a wakened trance.
“Gavin, I think that’s what really happened. It feels so real. Can I see the pictures from the gallery you showed me at the police station?”
Gavin leaned over, grabbed his phone, and pulled up the art gallery’s social media posts from the night of Mark’s exhibit. Ellery leaned against him as he pulled up the first photo. Excitement filled her. “I remember this! She bought the small painting of King Street for twenty thousand dollars. She said it was perfect for her bathroom.”
Ellery took in the photo and was transported back to the gallery. The warmth of the night, the feeling in the air that rain was on the way. The way the lights made the artwork glow. The sounds of talking, laughing, and glasses being filled with champagne. She was there. And so was Hollis, Mark, Atherton, and the sales assistant, Blair. Hollis mingled with the who’s who of Charleston’s elite. Blair assisted her and flirted with every man who took a second look at her tight little black dress. Atherton bugged Ellery. And Mark sulked. She remembered her annoyance with him. She’d put in all this work to sell his paintings, and he acted like a li
ttle boy who didn’t get the toy he wanted. Except this little boy tossed back drinks instead of tears.
Gavin turned to the next photo, and she saw Atherton in the background of the photo. The photo was of Hollis and his mother, the very formidable Sylvia Coldwell. Sylvie, as her friends called her, smiled in her colorful silk suit next to her son. She was tall and willowy, and her straight, thick steel-gray hair dared not touch the top of her shoulder and was always adorned by a crystal encrusted barrette or headband of some kind. The night of the party she wore a bright turquoise suit with a white silk headband encrusted with pale pink crystals. She looked young, even with her gray hair. Hollis had let it slip that his mother visited New York City once a month to shop and get specialized facials that involved some very gross treatments, but Ellery couldn’t argue with the results.
However, what was interesting about the picture wasn’t Hollis and his mother. Right behind them Atherton had his hand resting on Blair’s ass. Following the direction Atherton was looking, Ellery saw herself talking to a customer with her back to Atherton and his handsy action with Blair. “That asshole,” Ellery grumbled.
“Hollis?” Gavin asked with interest.
“No. Atherton. I remember it all. He’s definitely my ex after he cheated on me. Look, he’s right behind Hollis with his hand on Blair’s ass. The sad thing is no more than ten minutes before this he was begging me to come back.”
She felt Gavin’s body tense beneath her, and not in a pleasurable way. She looked up to find his jaw tight and his eyes hard. “I will never make that mistake again. Atherton never believed me when I told him it was over.”
“He’ll learn soon enough,” Gavin said a little harshly before letting out a breath and relaxing. “Tell me more about the pictures.”
Saving Shadows: Shadows Landing #1 Page 13
