Artfully Yours

by Isabel North

  “Stop telling me about your sex life with my baby sister!”

  Derek’s laugh followed her into the house.

  Jenny was in the kitchen. Her face was bright red, her hair stuck out like she’d licked an electrical socket, and she was wrestling with the buttons on her shirt. Elle grinned at her.

  “What?” Jenny barked.

  Her buttons were done up wrong, but instead of pointing it out, Elle said, “Let’s order pizza tonight.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “The occasion is that I have a job I like, you’ve got three more weeks until the cast comes off, and by this time tomorrow, my niece will have a beautiful newly painted bedroom.”

  Jenny scowled. “She already has a beautiful newly painted bedroom.”

  “Jenny! I know you’re mobile but you’re still supposed to be resting up. How on earth did you even manage it? Don’t tell me you climbed the stepladder.”

  She scowled harder, pressing her lips together in a white line.

  Lightbulb. Elle smiled. “Derek did it, didn’t he?”

  “He just walked in, Elle. He didn’t even ask permission! He even got Katie to help.”

  “Stay here. I’m going to call him back, invite him to share the pizza.”

  “You do, and Katie can bunk with you tonight while the paint dries. I love my girl, but she snores like a drunken lumberjack with a sinus infection.”

  In the end they shared the pizza with Lila, whom Jenny had already blackmailed into coming over and, as Katie’s room was already done, they moved on to the living room. Yes, they were making progress.

  Elle had hoped that the long shift, the hard work painting, the pizza, and the good company would make it easier for her to fall asleep. But once again she lay on her back—on an actual mattress now—and stared at the ceiling, completely incapable of shutting off the very detailed thoughts of Alex Zacharov and his giant box of condoms that kept her awake night after night.

  Better than lying there worrying about her personal finances, or spiders, or whatever the hell it was that woke up and ran around in the attic above her head after dark, but still.

  If she didn’t get a good night’s sleep soon, she was going to have to do something about it. Like wait for Jenny and Katie to fall asleep and then sneak out to drive over there. Knock on the door. He’d answer. It would be late, so she’d have woken him up. Gotten him out of bed. All warm and sleepy, and definitely not wearing much.

  Or anything at all.

  Yes. He’d be naked. And he’d be happy to see her, drag her inside, and then he’d—

  The creature in the attic scurried right over her head.

  Elle let out a groan of frustration. She flung herself over to lie on her side, pulled the pillow up and over her ear to muffle the noises, and got back to thinking about Alex and his giant— No! Got back to trying to sleep.

  The next day Elle was eating lunch at the diner across from the clinic with Cassidy. T.J. had tagged along but wasn’t adding much to the conversation, glued to his cell phone. Initially Elle worried about what kept him so transfixed during these regular lunches, but it turned out it wasn’t the porn addiction she feared. He was active on dating sites, and was constantly, hopefully, tweaking his profile to lure in Ms. Right.

  When she’d quit the ER and city life, Elle hadn’t imagined she’d be working for T.J. Coleman, of all people, even liking him most of the time despite the fact that he was, no question, still a jackass. She’d sure as hell never seen Alex Zacharov coming. She’d expected a change. She’d hoped for something to shake her up. She hadn’t actually expected to be happy.

  “Don’t look now,” Cassidy said. “But that guy is here.”

  Elle crunched a chip. “What guy?”

  Cassidy’s eyes darted to T.J. and back to Elle. “That guy,” she said from the corner of her mouth. “Fire extinguisher guy.”

  T.J.’s head came up with interest. “Hey. Fat—” was all he got out before Elle rapped her glass of Diet Coke on the table.

  “No!” she said.

  T.J. flashed her a dimple, then innocently turned back to his cell.

  “Where is he?” Elle glanced around the diner, trying to make it subtle. She did a great job of it until she locked eyes with Alex, who stood blocking the doorway, oblivious to the irritated old man attempting to get past him. He appeared to be quietly seething, giving off a clear do not approach me vibe. Elle was starting to think this was his usual state of being in public. Then he took in the table, and he went up a gear from quietly seething to furious.

  “He’s coming over here,” Cassidy said. “Should we run? Doc, quick. Have you done anything else to him?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure? Think hard. He looks like he wants to kill you.”

  T.J. sat back, eyebrows going up. “Looks to me like he wants to kill Elle. Have you done anything to him, Elle?”

  “Uh—”

  “Shit, I was joking. You have done something to him?” He leaned forward. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” Kissed him until I was cross-eyed. “I haven’t done anything!” Ran away from him and his box of condoms.

  “Guess we’ll find out any minute which one of you he’s trying to fry with his eye lasers,” Cassidy said, “since he’s coming over—no, damn he’s fast, he’s right here.”

  Elle knew he was here. She could feel him. “Hello,” she said brightly, looking up into his dark eyes as he came to a stop in front of her, the table between them.

  “Hi.” He looked at T.J. and back to Elle. His jaw clenched. “Are you two dating?”

  Dating? Was that what had him trying to set T.J. on fire with his eye lasers? “No,” she said, horrified.

  T.J., on the other hand, seemed intrigued by the idea. “You want to go out sometime, Elle?”

  Alex hissed in a sharp breath.

  At the same time, Elle said, “No, T.J.! You’re my boss. I can’t date my boss.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that. Never mind.”

  Some of the tension seemed to drain from Alex. Nope. Not the tension. That was still there, evident in the rigid set of his wide shoulders, his tight jaw. The anger, though, had gone. “All right,” he said. “Good.” He didn’t say anything else. He loomed at her.

  “Okay, Alex Zacharov. You know T.J.,” she said, managing not to wince. “This is Cassidy Hayes. We work together at the clinic.”

  Alex dipped his chin. “Cassidy.”

  She smiled at him. “Hi.”

  Silence again. “Is…is there a reason you’re here?” Elle asked eventually. Wow. That came out wrong. “Did you want something?” Not sounding any better. “You’re welcome to join us, if you like, but we’re almost done. We’ll be leaving in a minute.” Good grief. “So, did you? Want something?”

  He didn’t seem to take it the wrong way. “Yes. Come to my place. Tonight.” He stepped closer to the table, his shadow falling over it.

  “For dinner?”

  Alex’s eyelids flickered. “Yes. For dinner. And before we eat, I want to show you my stuff.”

  T.J. snorted and opened his mouth. Cassidy reached over, slapping a hand over it. He peeled her hand away, shrugged, and went back to his cell.

  “Your stuff?” Elle asked.

  “My pieces.”

  Pieces? Did he mean guns? “You have guns?”

  “My art,” he said, offended. “My art. I’m an artist. Haven’t you Googled me?”

  “I’m Googling you right now,” T.J. said.

  Alex jerked his head at T.J. impatiently.

  “What kind of art?” she asked. “Painting? Graphic design?” She glanced at his hands. Long-fingered, artistic. A smattering of white scars over the tanned skin. As she knew from experience, strong. You didn’t get hands like that wielding a pencil.

  Alex looked so indignant that Elle got flustered. She was missing something. Okay, she spent all her free time thinking about him and his giant box of condoms rather than wonderin
g about his day job, so she was shallow.

  “Metal. Metal sculpture.”

  “Oh.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, fisted it. “You saw me. In the barn.”

  That was his art? She thought he was fixing something! Elle floundered. “Cool.” Was she twelve? Cool? His gaze, still locked on hers, softened and began to drift over her face, down, back up. Her mouth went dry and her pulse kicked up a gear.

  “Hey, Alex,” T.J. broke in. “Why are you pretending to be Russian?”

  “What?”

  He held up his phone. “Googled. Hot-shot metal sculptor, blah blah. Russian? You’re not Russian.”

  “What’s my name?” Alex growled.

  “Alex Zacharov.” Cassidy sighed.

  Alex smiled at her, and she giggled. “Russian,” he said to T.J.

  “No, no. I get it,” T.J. said. “Part of the whole be-a-butterfly thing, right?”

  Alex folded his arms over his chest. “I look like a fucking butterfly to you?”

  “I mean reinvent yourself after being a loser in high school.”

  Alex looked at Elle.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said. “I need the paycheck.”

  T.J. frowned. “Why would he hurt me? I think it’s great. Break away from the past, the expectations. Create a new reality. In your case, get buff, melt stuff, pretend to be Russian. Good for you.”

  “I’m not pretending. My father was Russian.”

  “Gotcha.” T.J. winked. “Going to try it on my profile. Not Russian, though. Spanish. No, Italian. This could work. This could be where I’ve been going wrong.”

  “I doubt it,” Elle said.

  Alex said something in Russian, glaring at T.J. It went on for a bit.

  T.J. grinned. “Grocery list, right?”

  He grunted in response, scoured T.J. with a head-to-toe look that made Elle shiver, and continued on in a clipped, rough voice. And on. And on. T.J. very, very slowly, started to blush.

  “I’m going to have an orgasm in a minute,” Cassidy said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  Elle bit her lip. Me, too.

  Alex’s dark eyes slanted to her as if she’d said it out loud. He considered her speculatively for a moment then his tone changed, pitch dropped, and he started talking to her instead.

  “Um,” Elle said.

  His lips curved in a slight smile, and he didn’t stop talking.

  “Yes!” Elle said. “Let’s do it. Dinner. Let’s do dinner. I’ll come to your house for dinner. See you there? Yes. It’s a date.”

  Placing his hands flat on the table between them he leaned in, still talking. The smile deepened, turned a little cruel. He knew what he was doing.

  “Alex—”

  Cassidy nudged her, hard. “Don’t you dare shut him up. I mean it, girl.”

  Elle pressed her knees together, clasped her hands on her lap. Her knuckles whitened. Whatever it was he’d said—probably was his grocery list, right, and not the incredibly erotic things she was now imagining—he rumbled to a finish.

  A charged, vibrating, quivering silence hung around the table. Alex’s smile faded, but he didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “All righty, then,” Elle said, sounding over-the-top chipper. Excellent. She was worried she’d just moan. “See you at seven? Seven good?”

  He nodded, reached out to gently flick her cheek, and sauntered off.

  Cassidy snagged Elle’s Diet Coke and took a huge gulp. “What?” she said when Elle shot her a startled look. “I’m dehydrated.” She drained the glass. “I’ll buy you another. And I’m guessing you and Mr. Hot Stuff have reconnected since high school.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you want to tell me about that in lots and lots of detail, that would be good. If you have pictures, that would be better.”

  Elle laughed and hoped no one else noticed how unsteady it was. “He’s kind of intense.”

  They watched him leave the diner, go one way, put a hand to the back of his neck, stare up at the sky, change direction, and jog across the street to the grocery store.

  “Hah,” T.J. said. “Now he’s got to go and get something to cook, because now he’s got to give you dinner as well as giving you the business.”

  Elle and Cassidy stared at him.

  “Sex,” he said. “Dinner as well as sex.”

  “I know what it means, T.J.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She knocked three times, but Alex didn’t answer the door. If this was any other guy, she might think he was standing her up. Since he’d made his interest in her scorchingly clear every time she ran into him, from that first rainy night they’d tussled over ice cream to the diner at lunch today, she wasn’t worried. About the standing-up part. The rest of it? She took a shaky breath. Worried, a little panicked, a lot overwhelmed.

  She heard a familiar squeak and turned to see Gargoyle sitting close behind her. “Hey, sweetie.” He dropped his bear. “This for me?” She bent down, grabbed it, and threw it across the yard. Gargoyle snorted with delight and hurled himself after it. She followed him, heading around the back of the house toward the barn.

  It was early evening and the barn, open, was filled with the light of the setting sun. The wood turned to dark sand and amber, the twisted metal structures inside shimmered like flowing rivers of silver and fire, and at the heart of it all Alex stood, half blazing with light and half cast in shadow. His hands were on his lean hips, head cocked at an angle as he contemplated the—what had he called it? the piece—in front of him. His absorption was almost eerie, and she wondered what he saw. Whatever it was, it held him rapt.

  She knocked lightly on the open door. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. He had that odd, disconnected air of a sleepwalker and he stared at her.

  Elle broke out in goosebumps. This was ridiculous. All the guy did was look at her, and her entire body threw itself into a fit.

  “Elle,” he said.

  “Hi, neighbor.”

  He closed the distance between them with an impatient, loose-limbed gait but, to Elle’s disappointment, stopped short of picking her up and pinning her to the wall. Instead, he held out a hand, and she slipped hers into it, no hesitation. His fingers closed over hers as he drew her to the sculpture at the center, glittering in the bright sun. He stopped and positioned her so that she stood in the same spot he’d been in. Without letting go of her hand, he moved behind her, arms casually circling her waist to ease her back against his hot body.

  “What do you think?” His breath stirred the hair at her temple.

  Take me to the ground and make me scream. “It’s…uh…it’s big.”

  “I was talking about the sculpture.”

  Elle’s mouth dropped open and she jerked away from him. She didn’t get far before he hauled her back. “So was I!”

  “Then yes, the sculpture is big. A lot of my work is designed for a landscaped setting, or for large interior spaces like the lobby of a hotel or office building, and has to dominate. Do you like it?”

  She narrowed her eyes and twisted to look up into his face. “We still talking about the sculpture?”

  “All right.”

  “In that case, yes. It’s very…well, it’s very striking.”

  She was the worst person in the world to ask about art. The worst. She was way too practical for this. She hadn’t had time between work and getting ready to come over here to Google him, but from what T.J. had kept bouncing in all afternoon to tell her, as excited as if he was the one going on a date, Alex Zacharov was a big deal in the art world. A huge deal. He was some kind of sculptor rock star, and honestly? She couldn’t tell if she stood in the presence of genius, or the physical representation of a breakdown.

  “I have you to thank for this, you know.” His hands slid down to her hips, tightened.

  This was her fault? How could this be her fault?

  “Since I ran into you that night in the store, I’ve been on fire.” He vibrated with intensity beh
ind her. “All of this, it’s because of you.”

  Elle’s wide eyes followed his gesture from the piece by his workstation to the sculptures stacked along the far wall of the barn. Yikes. “Okay, Alex,” she started, turning in his grip. Whatever she’d been about to say fell clean out of her head when she saw his face. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. Said it all about this guy, didn’t it? He didn’t hide anything. He stood there, and he looked at her like that. Like it was easy.

  She couldn’t help it; she reached up and brushed her fingertips over the scruff on his jaw. Trying to ground herself in him? Confirming he was actually real and there? He moved his head, caught her fingertip in his mouth, and bit down lightly before releasing it. It was a damn good thing his arms were still around her because she almost fell over.

  Elle took a sudden, sharp breath. “I don’t really get what’s going on here,” she said desperately. “I get bits of it, I get the big picture, but…what is this?”

  He lifted his chin at the sculptures. “What’s this, or—” he kissed the inside of her wrist, “—what’s this?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he grinned. “I mean, both.”

  “Well, this—” he flattened a hand at the small of her back, and she gasped, “—is me dating you. Yes. We’re dating. And this—” he let her go to make a proud, all-encompassing gesture over the barn, “—is you, immortalized.”

  See, she was on board and knew which way was up and exactly what direction they were headed, and then he came out with that. The weird stuff. He was a beautiful weirdo.

  “You’re my muse, Elle.”

  Muse? His muse? “That’s fast. We only met a few days ago.” He stiffened and his lips formed a hard line, so she amended, “Reconnected. We only reconnected a few days ago.”

  “I’ve only ever had one muse. It’s always been you.”

  She felt his words all the way down to her bones. It’s always been you. He sounded sincere, and wasn’t that the most seductive thing in the world, so tempting to believe? But come on. Elle Finley, artist’s muse? “Bet you say that to all the girls you lure into your barn.”