True Colors

by Judith Arnold

  Chapter Twelve

   

  He’d come here hoping for everything and expecting nothing.

  Well, in truth, he hadn’t hoped to make love on the stairs leading to the loft—and he hadn’t expected that, either. But he’d known Emma would be magnificent. He’d known she would be all sweet curves and fiery hair and devouring kisses. He’d had a taste of her yesterday evening, and once he’d had that taste, he’d wanted the full banquet.

  She felt surprisingly light in his lap, her head resting against his shoulder, her hair spilling over his skin and tickling the underside of his jaw. She fit perfectly in his arms. The step he sat on was even more uncomfortable than the stool, but he didn’t want to move. He wanted to sit exactly where he was. With her. Like this. Forever.

  That was a crazy thought. This whole situation was crazy. He knew hardly anything about her, other than that she was an artist and she was broke. If he were looking for a woman—which he wasn’t—two items that wouldn’t be on his list were “artist” and “broke.”

  “Mind-blowing sex” would be on his list, however. Pretty high up on the list. And what he’d just experienced with Emma…

  Mind-blowing was an understatement. Defense-shattering came closer. Universe-destroying. He felt stripped naked—not just his body but his heart, his soul, totally vulnerable, unprotected.

  Unprotected. Shit.

  “Emma.” His voice was muffled by her hair.

  She heard him, though. “Hmm,” she said drowsily, her breath whispering across the skin of his neck.

  “Emma, I didn’t use anything.”

  “It’s okay.” She leaned back slightly so she could speak. “I’m protected. And I’m healthy.”

  “I’m healthy, too,” he said. She gave him a drowsy smile and settled back against him.

  He closed his arms around her again and sighed. He was healthy, but he didn’t feel protected. He felt altered in ways he wasn’t sure he liked. Life was safer when he thought about protection—not only condoms but emotional protection. He’d had bad experiences. He’d been used. He’d been hurt. He’d been taken advantage of. He had to be careful.

  With Emma, he hadn’t been even remotely careful, either now or yesterday, when he’d kissed her. Or pretty much every minute since he’d sat across a table from her in that bar and heard “True Colors” pour from the jukebox.

  He was a smart guy. He’d developed a unique computer encryption system and started a company. He’d earned a fortune. He’d created a foundation and he was its executive director. If someone held a gun to his head, he could probably still play the Theme From Schindler’s List on his violin. Badly, perhaps, but he could play it.

  Yet with Emma Glendon, he was someone else. Someone he hardly recognized. Someone wild, someone utterly reckless.

  “What do we do now?” he asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. He really had no idea where to go from here.

  “Well…” She traced her index finger down his sternum, swirling it through the hair growing there. “We could make love again, if we were sure it wouldn’t kill us. Or we could put or clothes on and resume the interview.”

  Not the interview. He’d felt profoundly awkward discussing his dreams with her. As far as making love again, that would be wonderful, but it wouldn’t solve his problem. It wouldn’t transform him back into the man he’d been before he’d met Emma. And she was right—another round of sex would probably kill him. At the very least, he’d need to consume a few energy bars first, and maybe a fistful of megavitamins.

  “I still don’t know about your dreams,” she said.

  “One of them just came true.” His statement obviously touched her. She leaned back and gave him such a sweet smile, he felt his blood shimmer in his veins.

  His claim surprised him as much as they flattered her. Who the hell was this sentimental creature, this romantic lover who knew just the right thing to say to a woman? Not Max Tarloff.

  “Another option…” she traced her finger down his chest again, sparking stirrings of renewed lust in his groin “…would be to get something to eat. I didn’t have any breakfast this morning. I’m starving.”

  Energy bars, he thought—enough fuel to power him through some more epic lovemaking. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  Slowly, cautiously, she extricated herself from his embrace without tumbling down the stairs. Like her aimless finger trailing across his skin, her radiant smile caused his dick to twitch back to life. But when he stood, he knew he’d need more than her smile to get him going once more. His thighs ached and his back was sore. He prided himself on staying in shape. Apparently he wasn’t in the sort of shape conducive to screwing on stairways.

  Uninhibited in her nakedness, Emma strolled across the loft to where their clothing lay in a disheveled heap. She slipped her shirt over her head and tugged on her jeans. Then she carried his clothing to where he stood, gob-smacked not just by her glorious beauty but by the realization that she hadn’t bothered to put on her underwear. More twitching in his groin. He ignored it as he donned his own clothes. “Why didn’t you eat breakfast?” he asked, recalling the concoction—a parfait glass dish filled with layers of yogurt, fresh berries, and granola—with which he’d started his morning at the Ocean Bluff Inn.

  She smiled again, another blindingly lovely smile. “I was a nervous wreck about your coming here. I was afraid something like this would happen.” She tossed back her head and laughed. “And it turns out I was right. Maybe I can earn some spare cash telling fortunes and predicting the future. I could scrounge up a crystal ball and a deck of Tarot cards and set up shop on Atlantic Avenue.”

  He remained silent, unsure of whether he should give voice to what he was thinking: that she hadn’t needed any skill at prognostication to know this would happen. There had been an inevitability to it. As forceful as the song that brought them together, their attraction simply had to travel to its final measure—which had turned out to be hot sex on the stairs.

  She pranced down to the first floor, light on her bare feet, and he plodded down behind her, wishing he felt as breezy as she looked. She also looked rumpled, her lips rosy from his greedy, devouring kisses and her hair a lush tangle of curls. On her, “rumpled” was gorgeous.

  Like her, he was exhilarated. He was exhausted in the best possible way. But a vague foreboding gnawed at him. She was his tenant. She needed spare cash. This was all wrong.

  And yet he wanted her. Possibly even more than before.

  He’d spent even less time in the kitchen of his house than in the loft. Of course, he’d spent little time inside the house at all—touring it with Andrea Simonetti and Vanessa before he’d purchased it, wandering through it and listening to Vanessa gush about the space, the views, the airiness of the rooms. She’d talked as much to Andrea as to him, describing what she’d want to do with this room, how she’d decorate that one, the updates she was planning for the master bath: “A jetted tub, of course. And one of those towel warmers.”

  “Whatever you want,” he’d said, not really caring about the temperature of his towels as long as she was happy.

  She’d been excited about the kitchen, and as he followed Emma into the room he could see why. It had been updated just prior to when he’d purchased the house, and it presented a sleek, clean arrangement of granite counters, stainless-steel appliances, white cabinetry and bright lighting, including a row of three cone-shaped metal lamps hanging from a bar above the center island. Vanessa had eaten sparingly and worried incessantly about gaining weight, but she’d liked things new and shiny, and this kitchen certainly fit that profile, even after Monica and Emma had been using it for a year.

  Emma glided around the room as if she actually knew what she was doing. She pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator, set a pan on the stove, and got to work breaking eggs into a bowl. “Are omelets okay with you?” she asked as she pulled a whisk from a drawer.

  “If it’s not too much t
rouble.”

  “I love cooking,” she said. “When I was growing up, we cooked everything from scratch. We had chickens. There’s nothing like fresh eggs from your own chickens—who haven’t been fed antibiotics and commercial feed. The yolks are such an intense yellow. Like the heart of a daisy.”

  He settled on one of the stools at the center island; it had a molded seat and a backrest and was much more comfortable than the stool in the loft. Emma’s movements as she whisked the eggs mesmerized him—yolk and white liquefying and blending into yellow. Not the heart of a daisy, unfortunately. A paler yellow, almost lemony.

  “Did you grow up on a farm?” he asked.

  “Not a commercial farm.” She turned from him to swing open the refrigerator again, this time to remove cheese, mushrooms and chives. The refrigerator’s shelves weren’t as barren as his usually were—he was a huge fan of take-out, and he stocked only the essentials in his fridge: milk, beer, a couple of apples, a bag of bagels that lacked the chewiness and sour undertone of the bagels he’d grown up eating in Brooklyn. And leftover take-out containers. Always a varied collection of those.

  She pulled a knife from its slot in a wooden block and began to chop the chives. “My parents are back-to-the-earth hippies. They were middle-class suburban kids who met in college and decided to buy a few acres in Vermont and make a go of it. We had a big vegetable garden and the chickens. We had a cow for a while when I was really little, but raising dairy cows is a lot more complicated than just carrying a pail out to the barn and milking the animal. So my parents wound up selling the cow to a neighbor who ran a commercial dairy farm, and we’d get our milk there. It was all very rustic.”

  She turned from him once again, this time to retrieve a loaf of bread and a tub of butter. She clicked a dial on the stove, igniting one of the burners, slapped the pan onto it, scooped a blob of butter into the pan, and got busy grating the cheese.

  “Brooklyn must have been quite an adjustment for you,” he said. He knew full well that there was nothing rustic about that congested New York City borough.

  She grinned. “I went to Boston University. After four years in Boston, I was used to traffic and noise and crowds. And eggs that weren’t quite so yellow.”

  “Growing up on your parents’—well, whatever it was. Not a farm.”

  “Just a piece of land in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

  He nodded. “So when you grew up there, was your dream to live in a city?”

  Her gaze met his across the center island. If she could ask him about his dreams, he could ask her about hers, couldn’t he? Even if he wasn’t going to paint her, even if he was going to sell this house and return to San Francisco, he could still ask her about her dreams.

  She didn’t seem as uncomfortable as he’d felt when she’d questioned him. “I can be happy anywhere,” she said. “City life, rural life, it’s all good.” She poured the beaten eggs into the pan, creating an appetizing sizzle. “My dream is to have a roof over my head and some studio space with good lighting.”

  And by selling the house, Max was going to deny her that simple dream.

  But he’d promised to help her find new studio space. Maybe he could find her housing, too.

  Maybe he could bring her back to California with him.

  He stifled a sardonic laugh. That wasn’t going to happen. She might have given herself to him this morning, but last night outside the tavern, she’d warned him she wouldn’t make love with him because he was a businessman. And a landlord. She’d said that as if landlords were evil.

  Perhaps, when they were evicting tenants, they were.

  But she had made love with him. So maybe he had a chance of… Of what? No, he couldn’t bring her back to California with him. Get real, Max.

  She deftly flipped the omelet in the pan, then layered in the cheese and mushrooms and folded the egg around it. “Can you check the toast?” she asked.

  A few minutes later, they were seated side by side at the center island, each with a plate full of steaming omelet and golden toast, and a mug filled with coffee she’d reheated from earlier that day—she apologized about that, but it tasted fine to him. “This is delicious,” he said after taking a bite of his omelet. “Obviously, your talents extend beyond painting.”

  “They extend beyond cooking, too,” she reminded him, twirling her fork to break a stretchy thread of melted cheese.

  Her wicked smile made him grin. “Indeed they do,” he said, thinking he’d sure as hell like to see how those talents of hers manifested themselves on a surface more comfortable than the stairs. Taking a bite of toast, he pondered various strategies to get her into bed, or at least onto the sleek modern couch in the great room. Then he reproached himself. He owed her something more than a satisfying orgasm. He could make her dream come true, couldn’t he? “So,” he said, “we’ll make sure you have a well-lighted studio and a roof over your head.”

  She seemed momentarily taken aback by his having changed the subject. Then she shrugged. “I have that now,” she reminded him. “Right here.”

  “No,” he said swiftly, then shook his head and belatedly tried to soften his words with a smile. “I can’t let you stay here. I have to sell this house. I’m sorry, Emma.”

  “Is it a financial problem? You need the money?”

  The last thing he needed was money. “No. It’s…a personal matter.”

  “This house means something to you,” she guessed. “Something bad?”

  He really didn’t want to discuss it with her. But he couldn’t lie to her, not when she was so sweet and open with him. “I bought this house for my fiancée,” he told her.

  “Oh.” Something went cold in her face, her eyes no longer radiant, her lips tightening. “You should have told me you were engaged.”

  “I’m not. Not anymore.”

  She thawed slightly. “You got rid of the fiancée, and now you want to get rid of the house.”

  “Something like that,” he agreed. “Except that I didn’t get rid of the fiancée. She got rid of me.”

  The light in Emma’s eyes changed again, warm with sparks of emerald and gold. “Did she break your heart? The bitch!”

  He was amused and touched by her rush to his defense. “My heart healed,” he assured her.

  “Not completely.” Before he could argue, Emma explained, “If it had, you wouldn’t be attaching emotions to this house. It’s just a building, right? A beautiful building with fantastic natural light—but you wouldn’t be so anxious to sell it. If you were completely over the bitch fiancée, you’d double the rent and make some money on this place. I shouldn’t have said that,” she added with a self-deprecating smile. “If you doubled the rent, I’d have to move out anyway. I couldn’t afford it. Monica might be able to, though. Now she’s stuck trying to decide whether to relocate to a teeny-tiny apartment at the inn or to move in with her boyfriend, who—just for the record—is an asshole.”

  Max wanted to refute her claim. Of course he was over Vanessa. The only reason he wanted to sell the house was that he saw no reason not to sell it. His life wasn’t in Massachusetts. He had no use for the house. It was just more thing to own, one more responsibility, one more liability. Emma was correct in pointing out that he could increase the rent and turn the house into a source of income, but he didn’t need any more income.

  He couldn’t say any of those things, though, because he was too intent on trying to suppress his laughter. He loved the matter-of-fact way she referred to Vanessa as “the bitch fiancée,” and her succinct assessment of Monica’s boyfriend. And then the urge to laugh faded as he acknowledged the truth in her words. The house was just a building. An asset. If he were truly over Vanessa, he wouldn’t care about the house’s fate, one way or another.

  Yet it wasn’t just a building. It was Emma’s home. She was the one acutely aware of the building’s beauty, its natural light. Selling it meant subjecting her to upheaval, both personal and professional.

  “Let�
�s not talk about the house,” he said. He didn’t want his mind crammed with Emma’s words, her wit, her sharp observations. He didn’t want to reflect on that upheaval his actions were likely to cause her. He ate another forkful of omelet—damn, it was tasty—and turned the conversation back to her. “Let’s talk about your ex-boyfriends.”

  “Ex-boyfriends? Plural?” She grinned.

  “I have no doubt you’ve broken dozens of hearts.”

  “Dozens! Yeah, sure. I started dating when I was three.”

  “Up there in the wilds of Vermont?”

  “Hmm, you’re right. The only other kid I saw when I was three was my brother. Who I didn’t date.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “My high school was pretty small, too.”

  “You went to Boston University. That wasn’t small.”

  She conceded with a shrug. “You’re right. There were at least a dozen guys there. I tried my best to break their hearts, but I’m not sure I succeeded.” She noticed his plate was empty and slid off her stool to clear the dishes.

  He stood, gathered their mugs and carried them to the sink. “Surely you broke at least one heart,” he teased.

  “Maybe. If I did, it wasn’t deliberate.”

  They worked together smoothly, rinsing the dishes, stacking them on the dishwasher racks. “I find it odd that you’re unattached,” he justified his curiosity. “You’re beautiful, you’re talented… You’re very sexy.”

  Her cheeks grew rosy. She was even more beautiful when she blushed. He recalled the blush of her naked breasts, the intensity of her well-kissed lips when their bodies had been joined. Beautiful seemed a woefully inadequate word to describe her.

  “I was with a guy in Brooklyn,” she told him. “Claudio. He was a painter, too. Abstract expressionist. He liked dark colors painted with big, strong swipes of the brush. All his paintings looked like anger to me. But then he developed an unexpected yearning to paint portraits—of one particular woman.”

  “I take it that woman wasn’t you?”

  “No. She was an artist’s model. I guess she knew some good poses.” Emma shrugged, not seeming terribly upset. “In retrospect, I think the worst part was that when Claudio and I broke up, I had to move out of the apartment, because it was his. I really hate being homeless.” She sighed, shook the excess water off her hands and dried them on a towel. When she turned to him, she was smiling. “It’s not your problem,” she said. “You want to sell this house. That’s your right. I’ll find somewhere else to live. But now—”she put down the towel and checked her watch “—I’ve got to find somewhere else to paint. I told Nick Fiore I’d drop by the community center today to see if he could scare up a studio for me.”

  Max didn’t know who Nick Fiore was. He did know he ought to phone Janet. He had a foundation to run—even if she could manage the office well enough in his absence. He ought to phone Stan Weisner, too, to see if they could arrange a dinner down in Cambridge. He ought to check in with Andrea to get the house listed for sale. He ought to carry Emma off to bed and make love to her properly, on soft sheets, on a plush mattress. Languorously. Indulgently. Wickedly.

  But she wanted to go to the community center. “Can I come with you?” he asked.