Because You Are Mine (Because You Are Mine #1)(85)

“I know. I went and looked at your progress when I returned home this afternoon. It’s spectacular.”

“Thanks,” she said, still avoiding his eyes.

“Jacob informs me that you passed both of your driving tests. He was very proud of you.”

She couldn’t help but smile a little at that. It’d been a proud moment for her, too—profound in many ways. She owed Ian for that.

“I did. Thank you for encouraging me to do it.” She studied her shoes. “Did you have a good trip to London?”

When he didn’t immediately respond, she looked up at him.

“I hadn’t realized I’d told you where I was going,” he said.

“You didn’t. I guessed. Why do you always go by yourself to London?” she asked impulsively. “Jacob told me you never take him.”

She noticed his expression darken. “Don’t blame Jacob. He didn’t know where you were, either. I was asking him questions about it and he happened to mention he never drives you in London. I figured you must be there, since Jacob was here in Chicago.”

“Why were you so curious?”

She blinked at that. Why indeed, if she was professing not being interested in him anymore?

“What did you want to show me at the penthouse?”

His bland look told her he was very aware she was avoiding answering his question. He put out his hand, prompting her to walk next to him. “It’s something that has to be shown, not described.”

She hesitated for a few seconds. Was she really considering forgiving him for walking out so abruptly Friday without explanation of his errand?

She sighed and fell into step beside him.

She wasn’t conceding defeat, but just like that first night, it was a grueling effort to resist him. Maybe it was because of the lonely days of his absence, or his sudden appearance had caught her off guard, or perhaps it was because of the dizzying rush of warmth and happiness she experienced upon seeing him again.

Whatever the reason, this afternoon her resources for resistance were running very thin when it came to Ian Noble.

Chapter Fourteen

She stepped off the elevator, the entryway to Ian’s foyer striking her as strange, even though she’d grown quite familiar with it in the past weeks. So much had changed since she’d first peered into his world. Yet that feeling of anxious excitement as she entered the hushed penthouse with Ian just behind her was all too familiar.

“This way,” he said, his hoarse, quiet voice like gentle knuckles caressing the back of her neck. Her anticipation and curiosity grew as she followed him to the room she now knew was the library-office where The Cat That Walks By Himself hung.

When he opened the door and she first entered the room, the first thing that struck her was the other man turned in profile to her as he attended to his task.

“Davie?” she exclaimed, full-out shocked to see her friend in this unexpected environment.

Davie looked over his shoulder and grinned. He set down the painting he’d been arranging and turned toward her. Her gaze volleyed back and forth between the surprising vision of her friend and the painting he’d been perching on a long table against the wall.

“Oh my God! Where did you get it?” she gasped in disbelief, staring at a cityscape painting she’d done of the Wrigley Building, the Union and Carbide Building, and the Gothic-rocket masterpiece, 75 East Wacker. She’d done the painting when she was twenty years old and sold it for two hundred dollars to a suburban gallery. She’d hated parting with it, but she’d had no choice.

Before Davie could respond, she started to spin on her feet, her mouth hanging open in shock. She couldn’t breathe.

Her paintings encircled the entire library. Davie had placed them all about the room, sixteen or seventeen of them—lost lovers—all of them fanning out from the mantel and The Cat That Walks By Himself, which hung above them all. She’d never seen so many of her own pieces together. She’d had to part with them one by one, a piece of her soul splintering away every time she did. Part of her always hated herself for not being able to keep the cherished pieces of her creativity close . . . sacred.

And now here they all were in one room.

She quaked with emotion.

“’Cesca,” Davie said, his voice sounding strained. He stepped toward her, his happy smile a thing of the past.

“You did this?” she asked shrilly.

“I did it under request,” Davie said. She followed his significant glance.

Ian stood just inside the entrance to the library, watching her with a hooded gaze that morphed to concern—and something else, something darker . . . sadder—as he studied her face.

Oh, no. She could protect herself against his arrogance. His controlling manner. His imperiousness.

But not against that anxious, vaguely lost expression on his bold, handsome face. It was too much. The weight of her emotions surged like a storm rushing a beach.

She hurried out of the room.

* * *

“Let me,” Davie said when Ian turned to follow Francesca, his gut wrenching at the shadow of anguish on her lovely face. Ian abhorred feeling helpless. He’d fashioned his entire life to avoid the unpleasant sensation. And yet he had to accept that hateful emotion as he stilled his feet with great effort and watched Davie pass him in pursuit of Francesca.

* * *