Текст книги "Reckless In Love"

Автор книги: Bella Andre

Соавторы: Jennifer Skully
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

CHAPTER FOUR

Magnificent. It was more than just a word to Sebastian, encompassing not only Charlie’s beauty but also the wonder with which she took in everything around her.

“Did you plan the light show this way?” Her voice was quiet, as if they were in a sanctuary.

“It lasts only a short time as the sun moves through at noon. Then the effect is gone.”

“You’ll have people coming here just for this sight.” She held her hands up to the ceiling, the sky, her skin glowing like that of a goddess in the sunlight streaming over her. “And it’s not even hot.”

“Low-E glass reduces the heat.”

“You thought of everything.”

“That’s what I do.” In Sebastian’s experience, if you didn’t account for every detail, if you didn’t understand absolutely everything about the people you dealt with, life could go completely down the tubes.

But he’d never imagined this moment, standing close to the most beautiful, talented woman he’d ever seen. So close he could barely keep from shoving his hands into the thick, gorgeous red masses of her hair and tasting her.

Devouring her.

“Can you already see what the space needs?” He grinned as he added, “A T-Rex, maybe?”

Her smile was a radiant curve. She’d put her palms against her neck, her elbows together in front of her, as if the posture increased her concentration. Tipping her head one way, then the other, she looked up, turned a circle, then stopped in the same spot she’d started from. “I love my T-Rex, but he’s not right for this space.”

Watching her work, getting to be a part of her creative process, had a physical effect on him. A need to touch, to taste, to explore. To try to satisfy all his cravings for her right here, right now. Yet at the same time, it went beyond sex. Because he wanted to be a part of that inner life, to touch the inner woman, to explore her genius. During his early morning meeting, he’d even found himself imagining how he wanted to sketch her. Instead of paying attention to the details of the negotiation, he couldn’t stop thinking of her.

Sebastian had never felt this way about a woman. Not until Charlie.

Then, when her eyes suddenly met his, he was hit with another one of those electric jolts as she said, “I know what you need.”

You.

“Tell me.”

“A chariot race. Like in Ben-Hur.” Her arms came out, encompassing the whole, then her fingers curled as if she were creating her vision out of water that wasn’t even flowing yet. “Four horses running so fast they’re almost flying. The chariot bouncing so hard, it throws its driver, then slams on its side, snaps its wheel, and the magnificent stallions gallop headlong, dragging the broken carcass of the chariot behind them.” She tilted her head as if she was already looking at the sculpture in the middle of his building. “Can you see it?”

“Yes, I see it. The horses breaking free of all attempts to control their power—of everything holding them back—so they can run as fast as they were born to go. It’s what all of us truly long for.”

The images were so alive in her head that it would have been impossible for him not to see them too. But even clearer was Charlie, red hair on fire in the sun, her features shining, the light coming from inside her as well as outside. Her eyelashes lay lush against her cheeks as she closed her eyes for one long moment of vision. Her excitement was like fuel, making his heart beat faster, his blood pump harder.

“The fountain has to blow the water up, right under their feet, like it’s earth and dust roiling beneath their beating hooves. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” For her, he could do anything. He would do anything. Everything she wanted. Everything she needed. He would be her patron. He would show her work to society, introduce her to his world. And he wouldn’t rest until she’d conquered it all.

She pivoted on her heel and grabbed his forearms, her touch branding him. “It was meant to be here. I can see it so clearly.”

Her eyes were the deep verdant green of a forest when the sun hits the leaves after a hard rain. Her skin was flushed pink, her fingers warm, her grip on him unrelenting. Their eyes locked for an endless moment.

Then her gaze fell to his mouth. Her breath came harder, and she licked her bottom lip. She held more tightly to him, her body leaning closer...closer...  He wanted his mouth on hers. He wanted her lips on his. He wanted to taste and touch and never let go.

“Sebastian,” she said softly, with the same awe he’d heard when she’d seen the light come shining through just minutes before. “Do you want it?” She could have meant the statue. She could have meant the heat that sizzled between them.

“God, yes,” he said, his voice so full of need it almost hurt as it rose up from his throat. “I want it all.”

He was barely a heartbeat from tangling his fingers in her hair and crashing his mouth down on hers when his brain replayed her question from the previous afternoon: You’re not expecting anything from me other than a sculpture, are you?

He’d promised her there weren’t any strings attached to the commission. Which meant that even though he wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to take his next breath, he’d never forgive himself if she thought the price of her art was sex.

“Do you believe I want your chariot as much as I want you?”

She paused, just long enough that he knew her answer even before she said, “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he said slowly as he let himself take one more greedy glance at her gorgeous mouth, “isn’t in my vocabulary.”

“It isn’t usually in mine either,” she told him in her delightfully straightforward way. “Then again—” She smiled and her eyes sparkled in the rain of sunlight. “—I can’t think of the last time I was so tempted by a billionaire. You are going to adore my chariot and horses.”

“I’m sure I will.” He couldn’t imagine anything about her that he wouldn’t adore. That he wouldn’t crave. “Your new workshop is all ready for you.”

“I’ve got some things to wrap up first. Let’s make the move to your workshop the day after tomorrow. Plus, I’ve got to load all my welding equipment into my truck.” She ticked things off on her fingers. “The MIG and the TIG. My torch. My plasma cutter. And any parts I can use from the yard. It will be better if I just drive my truck over.”

Charlie spoke easily about trucks and trailers and torches. But he could see that she was beautiful and accomplished enough to fit into any world in which she chose to live. He would open a new universe to her, one full of glittering possibility, and he knew instinctively that his world would embrace her completely.

He wanted to take her upstairs to the helipad right this second and fly her off to his estate in the Hayward Hills so she wouldn’t have a chance to change her mind. But he’d already learned that Charlie was as fiercely independent as her work. Was it because she’d moved around so much as a kid? Or was there another reason? Had someone in her past disappointed her and made it difficult for her to trust others? Sebastian understood that all too well, knew just how hard it could be to trust that the people who were supposed to be there for you would actually be there when you needed them.

Whatever her reasons, he knew for sure that dragging her to the workshop on his property as if he were a caveman would be a mistake. A big one. So instead of insisting she start today, he said, “I’ll send a trailer with some guys to help with the loading. It’ll be easier than trying to get everything in your truck.”

Just as she had when he’d offered her the commission yesterday, she didn’t jump at his offer. Instead, she took the time to turn it over in her mind, before she finally nodded. “That will work great, thank you.” She tilted her chin at the fountain and when she touched him again, her hand on his arm, everything inside him stilled, absorbing her heat, her closeness, her heady scent. “The sun show...it’s almost over.”

He put his hand over hers on his arm, bound her to him as the wide swath of sunlight made its final arc across the floor, just as the chariot and its stallions would. “The horses will look like they’re racing through an arena.” Shining, alive. Like her.

And then, in the next moment, it was gone, leaving the fountain in the shade of the building’s façade. But he could still see the brilliant vision as if it were a mirage lingering on his horizon.

“It will be spectacular,” he told her. “You will be.”

He felt the slightest tremble of her hand beneath his, before she took a deep breath, then smiled into his eyes and said, “That’s the plan.”

* * *

Francine Ballard’s gnarled fingers gripped the walker’s handles. Charlie’s natural tendency was to let her mother hang on to her, so that Charlie could keep her steady and safe. But her mother had to do things on her own, and since Charlie was a chip off the old block, she understood that was better for her mother’s wellbeing.

“Just two more passes along the hallway,” her mom said. She walked the halls four times a day for exercise. Use it or lose it, she always claimed. And it was true that without the workout, she would have been in a wheelchair years ago.

As soon as Sebastian had brought her home from their excursion to the city, Charlie had jumped in her dusty old truck and rattled across the Dumbarton Bridge to Fremont. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother all about her new project, but for the next few minutes she didn’t want to break her concentration.

“Hello, Gladys,” her mom called through an open door as they passed.

“You go, girl,” the gray-haired lady called back. “Hi, Charlie.” Gladys was ninety and bedridden, and she loved soap operas in the afternoon. She could recite everything that had happened over the last ten years on each of her favorite shows as if the characters were her relatives.

Charlie’s mom had lived at Shady Lane for the last two years. But there was no shade, no lane, and no garden. There were only concrete walls, linoleum floors, beige paint, the underlying scent of cleaning fluids and medicines, and the competing sounds of too many televisions tuned to different channels.

Charlie had come to her parents late in life, and she’d still been a toddler when her mom was diagnosed with severe degenerative osteoarthritis. Though she’d been in her early forties, Francine’s joints had begun to collapse. After years of pain and increasing loss of use, she’d had her first operation in her fifties to fuse three of the vertebrae in her spine. She’d soon had to give up sewing and needlework, which had been her joy. Since then she’d had all the joints in her fingers replaced, except the pinkies, which were etched into a permanent curl. Her ankles had disintegrated and were now held together by steel and bolts and staples.

But at seventy, her mother still walked a mile of hallway every day. Because Francine Ballard never gave up.

Charlie smiled at her mother as she moved at a snail’s pace beside her, her mom’s head barely coming to her chin now that years of arthritis had compressed her spine. “Okay, I need a short rest before I finish my walk.” Her mother plunked her bottom down on the walker. In a compartment beneath the seat, she kept a book and a purse with her reading glasses, tissues, a brush, and her lipstick. Today’s outfit was a skirt and sweater set in a dusty rose color. She had her hair done once a week in the nursing home’s salon, and Charlie did her nails when she visited. It didn’t matter that her fingers were bent in odd directions, her mom loved the pretty pink polish.

After resting a minute, she said, “Okay, I’m ready to keep going now.”

Charlie put her hand beneath her mother’s elbow and helped her up so that they could steer back into the central hall. This wasn’t a bad place, but the staff was overworked and didn’t have time for anything extra. The residents never went on outings. The food, though nutritious, was often unidentifiable. The worst, though, was the lack of anywhere to sit outside, to smell the flowers and get a little sun to heat old bones. Charlie often took her mom out for lunch or to a nearby park, but those excursions weren’t the same as having a lovely garden she could go to whenever she wanted. She knew her mother would adore the gardens at the Los Gatos facility. Instead of walking institutional hallways, she could stroll through lush greenery and fragrant flowers and read her book in the shade of a leafy tree, in the gazebo, or by the koi pond.

At the end of the hall, her mother let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Another lap done. Let’s sit in the lounge.” Francine shared a room with Rosemary, who was nearly deaf and had the TV on so loud, Charlie couldn’t think, though thankfully it didn’t seem to bother her mother at all.

They parked her walker outside the lounge, and her mom made her way to the sofa, moving hand by hand across each chair back she passed, while Charlie brewed tea. She’d brought china mugs with her because her mother claimed tea tasted better in bone china, especially if the cups had been warmed with hot water. For herself, Charlie pushed the whipped coffee button, creating foam on the top, then added milk and sugar to both her mother’s cup and her own.

At the opposite end of the lounge, a TV blared for the six residents seated in front of it. A sallow-skinned lady, who must have been new since Charlie didn’t recognize her, slept in an overstuffed chair kitty-corner to the sofa her mother had chosen.

Charlie carried the two flowered mugs, setting her mother’s on the coffee table. “I brought your favorite.” From the shopping bag she’d slung over her arm, she pulled a pink box from a fabulous bakery only a few blocks away, two china plates, and pretty paper napkins, then placed one half of an almond bear claw on the china. In the old days, her mother had made the most delicious pastries. But she’d had to give up baking when the pain of standing too long became excruciating, not to mention what all the measuring, mixing, and spooning had done to her fingers.

“This is so yummy.” Her mother savored the pastry in little bites, enjoying every morsel. “Now tell me what has you positively glowing.”

Charlie had known her mother would see what she was feeling. Glowing was the perfect word for it. “I’ve got a new commission. A really big one.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you, honey. You deserve it.”

Just like her father, Charlie’s mother had always believed in her art. They’d lost her dad to cancer seven years ago. She and her mother had taken care of him together at the end, with the help of Hospice, who’d come in twice a day. As close as she and her mother had been before, that difficult time had forged an even deeper bond between them.

“Tell me all about the commission.”

Tell me. Sebastian had whispered the words to her, and she’d wanted to tell him everything. Not just about her vision for the chariot, but all the secrets she kept buried down deep. Even from herself.

“My work is going to be shown off in a high-rise in San Francisco at the headquarters of a company called Montgomery Media International.”

“That sounds familiar,” her mother said, frowning a little as she tried to figure out where she’d heard it.

“Sebastian Montgomery is pretty famous.” Charlie had assumed he’d be some glib TV personality, all looks and fast talking, but there seemed to be so much more to him. “He’s on TV a lot and in the papers. That’s probably why it sounds so familiar.”

Charlie felt a thrill just saying his name. Or maybe the thrill came from the heated memory of the moment she’d put her hands on him and said, Do you want it? Even better had been his response. God, yes. I want it all.

Charlie’s stomach did a slow roll of desire just from remembering how the sparks had flown like crazy between them that morning. She wanted him with an intensity she’d only ever felt while working on her art—and every sign indicated he felt exactly the same way—but he hadn’t crushed his lips to hers. Hadn’t given them a first, desperate taste of each other. Instead, he’d asked her if she trusted his intentions. Asked her if she truly believed that he wanted her art as much as he wanted to take her to bed. And when she’d hesitated...

“What does he want you to create, dear?”

Magnificence.

He not only seemed to believe Charlie could do it, but he was also truly determined to make sure she didn’t think her six-figure paycheck came with any naked, sexy strings.

“The lobby has an enormous fountain, and I’m going to create a chariot with stallions, a horrendous race, foam flying, dust billowing.”

Her mother clapped her hands, her fingers so crooked, they barely made a sound. “Like Ben-Hur. Oh, I loved that movie and Charlton Heston.” She sighed dreamily. “He was so handsome.” Her mother would have been a teenager when the movie came out. “I take it Sebastian is pleased with your vision?”

Charlie grinned. “Very.”

Her mother’s eyebrows went up as if she’d just realized there was more to the story than a great commission. “Is he gorgeous?”

“He’s very good-looking. But this is business.” At least for right now.

She didn’t want to get her mother all worked up that Charlie was finally going to have some romance in her life, only to disappoint her if nothing happened. Or if something did happen, and then Sebastian turned out to be like all the other guys she’d dated, eventually becoming frustrated with the fact that she wasn’t a neat and tidy package of a woman. Odds, Charlie knew, were on that one. Finding someone who liked her just the way she was—junkyard and all—would be a tall order, indeed. Good thing she already liked her life. Apart from her worries about her mother’s care.

“He’s going to pay me a lot of money, Mom. Enough to get you into that place in Los Gatos. Remember we toured it last year? Magnolia Gardens.”

“Charlie, that’s so far out of our league.”

“He’s paying me a lot of money, and I don’t know what I’d do with all of it if I didn’t use it to put you somewhere that at least has a garden. And good food too.”

“The food’s fine here.”

Her mother hated that Charlie had to put money toward her care. But they were family, and she’d do anything for her mom. “I want you to live where you can feel the heat of the sun on your skin and smell the blooming flowers.”

“Charlie. Sweetheart. You should be saving for your own future.”

“They have more staff. More doctors.” Charlie lowered her voice. She didn’t want to insult anyone here, but she needed her mother to understand how important this chance was. “There’s physical therapy and hydro baths, all the things that can help ease your pain. I want that for you. It will make me—” She tapped her chest. “—feel better.”

Her mother stared deeply into her china mug, as if there were leaves at the bottom that would predict the future. “Your father wasn’t good at saving for retirement. And all his medical bills just ended up being so big.” They’d had insurance, but so many things were only partially covered. “I’m so sorry it’s all fallen on you, honey.”

“I’m not sorry, Mom.”

“But you could use the money to fix the house.”

Five years ago, Charlie had sunk all her money into the property because it was perfect for her studio, such as it was, and it was close to the college where she taught. The land was valuable, the house, not so much. But if she’d realized her mother would need full-time assisted living, she would have made a different choice. “Your care is more important to me right now. Let me do this. Please.”

“You always could wrap your father and me around your little finger.” But her mother was smiling. “I would love to smell the flowers and sit out in the sun more often.”

“I’ll start making arrangements.”

“Thank you, honey. You’re too good to me. You always have been.” Her mother patted her hand. “Now, tell me more about your Sebastian.”

“He’s not mine, Mom. He’s just an art patron.” But even as she said it, she knew Sebastian could never be just anything. Especially when he made her body heat and her heart race as though she were having palpitations.

And when she was already counting down the hours until she saw him again.