by Shelby Reed
“There’s humor here,” he added, glancing back at the field of penises he’d noted earlier. “Maybe anger, too.” He shrugged. “I want to know more.” He wanted to know what she didn’t like about him. He wanted to know why she was the only female to look past him in forever, this reluctant child to whom he was being presented like a toy with a big red bow. And most of all he wanted to know if her skin was as soft as it appeared, shining like dusky gold in the display lights. Gritting his teeth, he waited in the excruciating silence that had fallen over the small group, his attention unwavering on her face. She would look at him, damn it. She would look at him, or he’d be out of a job. Azure let escorts go for much less than lack of enthusiasm on a client’s part.
At last Sydney met his eyes and blinked as if awakened for the first time, her lips parted. “I’ll have to think about your question . . .” She hesitated as if searching for his name.
“Colm Hennessy,” he repeated.
“Most people don’t bother to see beyond the surface of my work. To be honest, Mr. Hennessy, I’m not sure there is anything beyond the paint on the canvas. But I assume you have your theories.”
“I do.” A smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he read the vague flush seeping into her cheeks. Just like that, the tension drained from his muscles. She was self-conscious for a reason, and in that instant he understood why she treated him so remotely.
It had nothing to do with dislike.
Beaudoin’s chair rolled forward another few inches, a vague and nonsensical threat to block Sydney from the gigolo he’d paid to seduce her. “Sydney, why don’t you give Colm the grand tour?”
“Yes,” Azure added. “Max, darling, you and I have some catching up to do after ten long years.”
His thin lips curved. “Has it really been that long? It seems like yesterday.”
He’d paid yesterday. In cash. Colm had stood at the top of Avalon’s grand staircase and watched the transaction take place in the lobby below. Not only had Max bought a sexual partner for a woman who could hardly look a male in the eye, but that woman had no clue what was in the gift box.
This was going to be a real walk in the park.
Chapter Two
Sydney preferred a little imperfection in a man, the character inherent in a subtle lack of balance. The artist in her appreciated a well-proportioned body, but only from a distance, appraising him as a potential object for the canvas.
The male standing beside her, studying the flowing composition of female genitalia she’d entitled The Garden, challenged that belief. He embodied everything she disliked—and yet he stunned her like the first Michelangelo she’d ever seen. Tall, broad-shouldered, with chestnut brown hair and light green eyes, he was classical.
It wasn’t his good looks that tilted her decorum, or the way every passing woman seemed to have the same visceral reaction as Sydney.
The instant her gaze had met his a few minutes ago, she’d felt . . . exposed. She didn’t know how he did it, but the brief, excruciating inventory he’d taken of her face—without ever once skimming down her body in the clichéd visual assault some men offered—told her she couldn’t fool him. He’d somehow grabbed hold of her cool disguise and yanked hard enough to send it pooling around her ankles, and yet they’d hardly uttered a word to each other.
Then, before she could recover, Max had thrown her to the wolves. He’d sent her off to play with this incredibly attractive stranger while he stayed behind to visit with his “old friend,” the one with the long raven hair that poured down her back like Chinese silk. The one currently standing too close to his wheelchair with a hand caressing his shoulder as they laughed over some joke Sydney would never share.
She swallowed and turned back to the canvas without seeing it. The low hum of gallery-hushed voices around her, the faint scent of expensive perfume and spilled champagne filled her senses. So did her returning awareness of the man beside her.
The piercing focus he’d aimed at her earlier was now fixed on the painting, a perfect opportunity to steal a glance at his profile. He looked about thirty. His brown, clean-cut hair was shot through with golden highlights only the sun could bestow. His nose was straight and unextraordinary, his mouth sensuous with that wonderful bow at the top of his upper lip, a detail she prized in faces. The faint beginnings of a beard shadowed his strong jaw in a way no razor could quite banish. He was confident without being cocky, and just beautiful enough to make that confusing. Usually his kind wore their appeal like a Technicolor dream coat. This one, though . . . she couldn’t quite figure out.
She let her gaze drop down the smooth expanse of his charcoal sports jacket and wondered about the physique beneath it. Hard lines, she guessed. Hard flesh, no give. His gabardine pants looked expensive and broke perfectly atop Italian leather loafers.
When he moved suddenly, she startled. If he knew she’d been staring, he didn’t show it. He smiled at her and reached out to grab two champagne flutes off the tray of a waiter standing nearby. “Thirsty?” he finally spoke, holding out a glass.
“Thank you.” She took the champagne and sipped it, nearly choking when the bubbles tickled her dry throat.
They lapsed into silence again. The female genitals painted on the canvas stared back at them. Sydney hadn’t experienced shyness over her choice of subject before, but suddenly she couldn’t get away from this painting fast enough.
“Let me know if you have any questions,” she said dutifully as they sauntered toward the next painting. Oh please don’t have any questions.
He didn’t. They stopped beneath a display light that glared directly on a four-foot-high clitoris painted in varying shades of fuchsia and lavender. She’d forgotten about this one; it was a study in the most unforgiving secrets of female flesh. He looked at it, those green eyes tracking back and forth, top to bottom, like a dot matrix printer. What was he thinking?
She peered past him at the next canvas. A field of penises. “I like this next one better,” she said, trying to move him along.
He didn’t respond, didn’t even glance in the direction she indicated. He stood rooted, his gaze fixed on the clitoris painting, while Sydney rubbed an aching spot between her eyebrows and tried not to look at him.
Damn it, but he was gorgeous. Beneath the fine lines, though, she saw only an unpredictable animal through the eyes of a woman who didn’t feel comfortable with men in general. Her mother, who’d never married Sydney’s father and rolled through a wild slew of boyfriends, had spoken of the male sex as though they were creatures in some exotic zoo. Wolves, she’d called them. Thieves. Liars. Love and hate.
Even Max, the only one Sydney had loved in her twenty-nine years, had proven himself equally deserving of both.
Once again, her gaze was drawn over her shoulder to her lover and his female friend. Max had always done the enamoring when it came to the fairer sex, but now he seemed lost in the force field of charisma Azure Elan radiated. And despite the hard-won healing that had taken place between him and Sydney since his accident—despite all the indications that he was a better, more honest man—Sydney recognized what was obviously a flirtation.
A sick feeling curled in her stomach, reawakened vestiges of the old days.
Wolves. Thieves. Liars.
Suddenly the silence between her and the undesired guest beside her seemed to roar in her ears. She turned back to him. “Have you two been dating long?” Her question rang out, disjointed and lacking key information.
He stirred from his meditation on the painting. “Who . . . you mean Azure and me?”
Azure. It sounded like a stage name, but it suited the woman’s exotic beauty. That hair of hers—its darkness reflected the light, blacker than black, as though it had been dipped in Egyptian ink and combed through. She wore it like a priceless accessory.
“We’ve known each other a couple of years.” Colm sounded distracted as he swirled his glass by its slender stem, the champagne sliding dangerously close to the lip. “She’s
a friend.”
Sydney looked at him, threw back the remainder of her drink like a shot of whiskey, and coughed. “Really?”
“Really.”
“She’s stunning.”
He shot a look over at Azure, shrugged, and then returned his attention to the painting. “I’m not sure how I feel about this.”
For a moment she didn’t follow. She was too busy entertaining a searing image of him and the stunning Azure wrapped in a tangle of linens, limbs, and lust. When she realized he meant the painting in front of them, she straightened her spine. “You don’t like it?”
His mouth quirked. “You really want to know?”
“I always want to know what people think about my work.”
“I like your work very much.”
“Thank you.” Something about the compliment told her a “but” was en route.
“But this one—it’s not quite accurate. A woman’s flesh is softer. The edges here are too bold. Too harsh.”
She took a harder look at the composition, trying to see it through his eyes. For heaven’s sake, she knew what a vulva looked like. What could possibly be inaccurate about her depiction? This particular canvas was the least abstract in the exhibit.
As if on cue, he added, “Is it supposed to be abstract?”
She winced. “Actually, Mr. Hennessy, no.”
He finally abandoned the canvas and turned to her. Face-to-face they stood, Sydney hugging herself against the threat of a too-honest, too-beautiful man, and he with his hands tucked in his pants pockets, the edges of his gray sport coat caught behind his forearms. He didn’t smile. He gazed straight into her and down into the empty place she thought was capped off for good.
“The grocery bagger called me ‘Mr. Hennessy’ today,” he said. “And the doorman.”
“I was always taught to address strangers politely.”
“Am I still a stranger?”
“Of course,” she shot back too quickly.
“I’d like to change that. We can handle this first-name issue you have when I see you again.”
He was flirting. She wasn’t. “You think you’ll see me again, do you?”
“I don’t think,” he said. “I know.”
If he’d smirked, shown the slightest hint of conceit, she would have walked away. But the sincerity in those striking green eyes brought out her six-shooters. “It’s likely you won’t. I may soon fall out of favor with Georgetown art aficionados.”
“Why do you say that?”
Her chin lifted. “I’m supposed to be an erotic artist, but apparently I have my parts all wrong.” Her earlobes went hot behind the pearl studs she wore. She knew better than to say what was coming, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Tell me, are you a gynecologist?”
This time he did smile. Then he laughed. Only a little, but enough to elicit an embarrassed giggle from her own chest—and with it, a wave of ease.
“This is the silliest conversation I’ve ever had at one of these things,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re a piece of work.”
“I’ve been called worse. And I’m not a gynecologist.” They stood in silence that instantly turned awkward before he spoke again. “Did you use a model for this painting?”
She bit her lip and averted her eyes. “Well, yes. Me.”
His dark brows shot up.
The experience had been brutally personal, but she would keep that to herself.
He cast another glance at the painting before his gaze returned to search hers. “At the risk of insulting you a second time, I stand by my original statement. A woman’s flesh is softer than what you’ve painted here. And I’m willing to bet, Sydney, that despite what you see when you look in that mirror, you are softer, too.”
Sydney blinked. She couldn’t possibly be standing here talking about her own genitals with a total stranger. And what disarmed her most was the feeling that he referred to more than just her female anatomy.
This wasn’t funny anymore.
He made it worse. “You’re beautiful when you laugh. I don’t think it comes easily to you, and that’s a shame.”
How could he know that laughter had become as alien to her as a foreign language? He’d committed a mortal error being so discerning, and an even worse one to throw a compliment into the mix.
“It’s time to say goodnight,” she murmured, staring into those pale green eyes and seeing twin reflections of a ghost. “Thank you for the stimulating conversation, Mr. Hennessy.”
He inclined his head. “Thank you for the tour, Sydney.”
And she left him standing before her naked self-portrait with its too-harsh, too-bold lines, each one a possibility that after all these years she still couldn’t see the truth in the mirror.
Chapter Three
Sydney rested her forehead in her hand and tried not to look at the buttered toast that Hans, the valet, had set in front of her. A storm thundered behind her eyes. When was the last time she’d suffered a hangover?
Champagne always made her sick, but last night it had been blessedly close at hand. She’d returned to Max’s side, smiling politely, guzzling bubbly and shivering inside, while Azure and Max wound up their cozy conversation. When Azure finally bid good-bye and glided over to rejoin Colm, Sydney watched with narrow interest as the man laid a solicitous hand at the small of his date’s back to escort her out. Just friends, he’d claimed, but Azure’s serpentine confidence said Colm was all hers. It didn’t matter. Somehow Sydney knew he would look back at her—something sick and petty in her wanted him to—and in the end he hadn’t disappointed her. He’d cast a humorless glance over his shoulder at Sydney as he ushered Azure toward the exit, and then they were gone. Magical, inhuman creatures, vanished from her sight, and she could breathe again.
Sydney touched a fingertip to the crust on the toast. It came away glistening with melted butter. Nausea crept around her stomach and her mouth watered. The early sun had shifted enough in the last five minutes to dump its insidious spotlight through the French doors and over her head.
Across a table big enough to seat ten, Max finally lowered the wall of newspaper and snapped it closed into a neat square. He set it beside his plate, pressed it into a rectangle, and lined it up with his untouched grapefruit spoon.
“Are you sick?” he asked lightly, his pale hand smoothing the paper over and over in the odd ritual he performed every day.
She forced herself to take a sip of coffee, the slight tremor of her fingers causing dark liquid to slosh into the saucer. “A little hungover, maybe.”
He raised his brows. “Do you want Hans to bring you aspirin?”
“I think I’ve swallowed half the bottle already.” She grimaced. “It’ll pass. I didn’t realize how much champagne I put away last night.”
He seemed hypnotized by the movement of his own hand as it continued to stroke the folded newspaper. “What would possess you to drink something that always makes you ill?”
Sydney thought of the handsome man from the reception and a fresh spear of pain pierced her skull. “Nerves, I guess. The show was pretty explicit, even for me.” Such a lie. They both knew she aimed to be as brutal as possible in her depictions of eroticism.
A hint of surprise crossed Max’s aquiline features, and then his expression eased into concern. “Maybe you need to throw yourself full force into the canvases for the next show. Begin immediately. You seem to need the escape.”
On the heels of what had happened last night after they got home, anger grabbed her by the throat. “What do you mean?”
His gray gaze shifted to the sunlit windows. “I don’t know. This drinking champagne thing, for example. And last night after we came home . . .”
“Yes, Max, that fiasco might just go down in infamy.” She gave a choked laugh and fought a fresh wave of nausea. God, she’d made a fool of herself. On the drive out to the suburbs, sequestered in the back of Max’s limousine, she’d felt strangely awakened, alive, hungry. How long had it
been since she’d had sex of any sort? Six months? Seven?
Max hardly seemed interested anymore, and guilt edged her frustration. She understood he was fragile despite his smooth demeanor, but last night she didn’t want to feel compassion or pity for him. She wanted a lover. Their relationship was tattered and threadbare, but they were still together. She wanted—needed—to be touched, and Max could do that. Despite the distance between them lately, she could make him want her again.
Once home, she’d accepted his perfunctory goodnight kiss, then headed to her bedroom and thrown on one of the sheer nighties he’d bought her in the old days. Then she tiptoed down the corridor to his room, pulse pounding as though she were disobeying some kind of unspoken law. When she tapped on his door and peeked in, he’d already hoisted himself into bed by the metal bar mounted above the four-poster, the coverlet and sheets neatly folded on his lap.
Like the newspaper, she thought now. Every part of every day the same. Every morning, the same poached egg and toast on his plate, the same grapefruit he never ate but insisted Hans serve him. Why did he waste the fruit? Because he could. Why did he waste her? Because he could.
“Max,” she said from behind her hand. “When did I become the grapefruit?”
The clang of his juice glass bumping the side of his plate made her jerk. “What?”
“The grapefruit.” She let her fingers slide away from her face. “You never touch it. It sits in its bowl in front of you. You look at it. Maybe you think about tasting it, but you never do.”
Last night he’d actually flushed at the sight of her standing so brave and transparent in his doorway. All he’d done was stare at her in her pathetic see-through nightie without uttering a word. Could a dearth of desire be as consuming as lust? It had felt that way in the passage of those excruciating seconds. After a moment, she’d backed out of the bedroom and closed the door soundlessly behind her, too mortified to cry.
“Why didn’t you say anything to me last night?” she asked from her sun-drenched spot at the other end of the table, a thousand miles away.
