Page 22 of Silver-Tongued Devil
Evan took the drowsy baby from Russell, and she gave a contented little sigh and snuggled in close.Obviouslyshe was his. He’d been the one holding her all along, and she was blonde with blue eyes, while Dakota was anything but. How could Blake have thought anything else? And maybe his radar wasn’t that far off after all.
Except it was, because Dakota jerked her chin at him and said, “Come on. I’ll find you a shirt if you’re going to stick around.” Which didn’t sound very much like, “Take me out dancing, pull me up close, and whisper dirty things in my ear.”
But then, nobody won the game in the first quarter.
Why, why,whywas Blake Orbison in her house?
Or more like—why was he in Russell’s house? If he’d been inherhouse, she could have kicked him out. Or never have let him in.
But, even worse, what was the first thing she’d thought? Well, the second thing. The first thing had been, “He’s looking at my flowers,” followed by a rush of heat that had been embarrassment and anger and awareness and… and something. The second thing had been, “I’m a mess again.” Thethirdthing had been, “What does that matter? What do I care whether Blake Orbison finds me sexually attractive?” The fourth thing had been, “Liar.”
And then what had she done? Had she put on her comfy shorts and a loose T-shirt and stuck her hair on top of her head like she would have done on any other warm day? No, she’d waited for Evan to get out of the bathroom with Gracie, then had taken a fast shower, blow-dried her hair halfway, and put on an outfit that she’d never have worn otherwise. At least she’d drawn the line at makeup and her contacts. She’d told herself it was a simple matter of pride, and had known she was lying. She’d just look like she hung around the house in sexy outfits as a matter of course.
Except that Blake’s girlfriend had been a supermodel. He wasn’t going to think her outfit from Dress Barn was sexy.
Now, he was following her back into the house, and she thought,Shirt. Salad. Self-control.She couldn’t kick him out, but she wasn’t going to let him get to her, whatever he said. Instead, she led the way into Russell’s room, opened his shirt drawer, and said, “Pick a color. You’ve got gray, navy blue, black, or white.” Russell didn’t exactly live on the cutting edge of fashion.
She turned to look at him and wished she hadn’t, because he was pulling his gray T-shirt up his chest and yanking it over his head, and then he was standing there in a pair of red gym shorts with a devil insignia on one leg. They hung too low on his slim hips, displaying the eight-pack again, the start of a thin trail of dark hair leading down from his navel, and that other thing. That vee of abdominal muscle that was her downfall.
She didn’t like gym boys, and she didn’t like puffed-up muscle-bound freaks, but she sure had a hard time resisting a man with that abdominal vee. Not to mention the kind of arms where you could say, “Shoulder muscle, check. Biceps, check. Triceps… .” and move on down.
“White, please,” he said, and she blinked at him.
There was that crooked edge of smile trying to get out. “The T-shirt. If I get puked on again, at least I’ll match.”
“Oh.” She handed him the shirt and had to watch the whole over-the-head performance in reverse. It wasn’t that he preened, because he didn’t. It was just that some men could do a whole lot with putting on a T-shirt. He tugged it down over his broad chest and all those abs, ran a hand through his brown hair, smoothing it back and unfortunately displaying too much bicep for her entire comfort, and said, “Thanks.” And then, instead of flirting with her the way he’d done at the rocks, the way she’d expected, he said, “Russell told me you’d made him an owl that was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. I’d sure like to see that owl.”
“Uh… OK.” Well,thathad thrown her off balance. She went over to the window and carefully opened the drapes to reveal the octagonal piece. What else could she do? She always got flustered and embarrassed talking about her work, but she had to get over it. She might as well practice on Blake, because surely nobody else would be harder.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just sighed, and she forced herself not to wonder why. If it was, “Sorry I asked,” or “That’s nice.” Sheknewshe was good, but she had a hard time showing her work to gallery owners, let alone multimillionaire tycoons who must be used to the best. Even if they were football players who were more likely to see art in a sports car than a sculpture.
Finally, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, he said, “I’ve got to admit, Russell was right. Thatisabout the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Not fair,” she said after a minute, when she had her composure back.
“Excuse me?” he asked, and she didn’t have to look hard to see the mischief in his eyes.
“Forcing me to be gracious.”
She got a barely-there smile. “Somehow, I think you’ll recover. I’m preparing to be mortally wounded, but before you get there—how’d you get the idea for this? How’d you get that eagle? Do you go off pictures or what?”
“If I’m studying,” she said, “figuring out the feather pattern—yes. But the idea? No. That’s something I see.”
Blake looked at the snowy white and black of the owl’s wings, the head and breast glowing nearly pink as it soared across the twilight sky, its bands of blue shading to violet above the indistinct black outline of mountains. “You saw this?”
“Just for a moment. Just a flash.” She let herself look back and remember that evening hike by the lake, that breathtaking moment. “It was a good flash.”
“I’ll bet.”
“This was my first big bird piece,” she found herself going on, since he actually seemed interested. “I almost didn’t do it, not just because I knew it was a bad idea economically, but because it’d be such a hard test. I didn’t think I’d be up to it.”
“I’d say you were wrong,” he said quietly, and she felt a rush of… something. Of pride. Or pleasure that wasn’t sexual at all, but was too close to attraction. “Why was it a bad idea economically?”
She traced her index finger with the lightest touch over the tiny pieces of white and black that made up the owl’s wings, with their suggestion of speckles. “Too many pieces. Too much art glass—the expensive kind, because I needed these textures, these swirls—but mostly, it took too long to do.”
“Why? Why was it too long?”
“You can’t charge enough to make it worthwhile.”
