Dance Away with Me(64)

She cleaned up the mess he’d made of the salad and transferred the remainder into bowls, the skirt of her dress swishing around her bare legs. He took the lasagna from the oven. “I lit the stove. Let’s eat in front of the fire.”

She shrugged and carried the salads into the living area. He tossed a wool throw on the floor in front of the potbelly stove and brought out the rest of the food. The table might be more comfortable, but he wouldn’t have had such a captivating view. First, she sat cross-legged, the skirt of her dress tucked between her thighs, her calves and bare feet exposed. Later, she shifted her legs off to one side so the swirl of her skirt crept to midthigh. She was a ballet of decadent crimson and earthy cream.

And worry. Easy to see how upset she was. He’d also been thinking about Wren more today than he wanted to. He refilled Tess’s wineglass, but left his alone, neither of them saying much. Finally, he gave up attempting to eat and did what he’d been contemplating all day. He picked up his sketch pad.

She stiffened, remembering her promise to let him draw her nude. He took his time picking out a 3B graphite pencil as the internal war between his compulsion to draw her and his contempt for what he would produce raged all over again. This wasn’t art. These hackneyed drawings were a distraction keeping him from doing what he should be doing, except he didn’t know what that was. How could he with all this mess?

The fire glowed through the stove’s window. She’d been staring at it, but now she looked at him. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you want to draw me.”

And he had no intention of explaining it. “Inspiration strikes in strange ways.” He looked up from his sketch pad. “Today it’s you. Tomorrow it’ll be some big ass toadstool I spot in the woods.”

She laughed, the first one he’d heard from her in a while. “A flattering comparison. It’s a good thing I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me.”

“Not the best attitude toward someone you’re trying to convince to marry you.”

He could have kicked himself for bringing that up, because all the laughter faded from her eyes. She glanced down at her skirt. “Is this the part where I have to strip?”

That pissed him off, which it shouldn’t have, because he was the one who’d baited her. “You don’t have to do a damn thing you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to.” She set her wineglass on the coffee table next to her. “But I will.” She reached behind her back to lower the zipper of her dress.

“Stop right there.” As much as he wanted to see more, he wouldn’t see it like this. Not with that stricken look on her face, which made him feel as if he’d turned her into a ten-dollar hooker.

“I need you on my side tomorrow,” she said.

His grip tightened on his pencil. “I’m aware of that. Stay the way you are.”

And so, instead of sketching her lying naked on the purple couch in his studio, she posed for him as she was. Legs drawn to her side, skirt ruffled around her thighs, head tilted. He was furious with himself.

*

Tess told herself she should be relieved by how detached he was. The idea of lying naked and passive in front of him, of letting him study her as if she were an insect mounted with pins, was beyond disturbing. But instead of relief, she felt like some sort of sexual pity case. She wanted more than that, so why didn’t he?

Always the seductress. Never the seduced.

She sat up. “Have you seen enough for tonight?”

“Are you getting tired?”

“Yes.” A lie. Her nap had refreshed her.

His pencil abruptly stopped moving. “I can’t believe you tried to buy me with sex.”

He hadn’t been angry at the time, so why was he upset now? She brought her knees under her. “I didn’t have anything else to barter with.”

He came to his feet in one abrupt movement. “You had your . . . your character. Your intelligence. Your . . .” He struggled for words. “You can cook!”

His reaction mystified her. “Why didn’t I think of that? Go along with my nefarious marital scheme, and I’ll make you meat loaf.”

He came closer, looming over her. “When we go to bed together, it’s going to be because we both want to be there. Not because you’re sacrificing yourself like some kind of vestal virgin.”

“Did you say when we go to bed . . .”

“I did.”

“But—”

“Don’t pretend not to understand. A woman like you who oozes sex . . .”

She blinked. “You think I ooze sex?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Those eyes. That hair. Your body.”

She swallowed. “I can go along with the eyes, and I guess my hair is personal preference, but the body?”

“That’s enough. More than enough.”

He whipped his T-shirt over his head.





Chapter Fourteen




He loomed above her, the flames from the potbelly stove licking his bare chest. He held out his hand, and she gave him hers. That simplicity of his big hand folding around her smaller one felt more intimate than anything they’d ever shared.

He drew her to her feet. She gazed into those dark, silver-sluiced eyes. How had she ever thought they were cold? He pressed his thumb into her palm and drew a delicious circle there. “I need to make sure we both understand. . . . This has nothing to do with tomorrow.”