Reckless In Love (The Maverick Billionaires #2)(10)

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 fa?ade. 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.”