Page 19 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“Yeah,” Russell said. “Those ones are a little different. Those are the ones she hasn’t sold. Waiting to take ’em over to Seattle. Not everybody gets ’em, don’t want ’em in their living room, you know?”
Once again, Blake had stopped listening. He picked up a heavy piece, moved it against the storage dividers holding colored sheets of glass, propped it up, and stood back.
“Whoa,” he said again. “That’s… I’ve never seen anything quite like that. What is it?”
“Iris,” Russell said. “The flower.”
Blake guessed it could be that. Like the poppies, it was in a sort of extreme close-up. Butthisone…
He was standing here with the artist’s stepfather. His heart was beating faster, but that wasn’t the reaction that was concerning him. He was getting turned on by aflower.
But holy hell, that was some flower. He guessed irises did look like that if you got up real close, but he’d just say that the Methodist church wasn’t going to be hanging this thing in their community hall.
Delicate, curving, ruffled-edged petals unfolded and unfurled above the flower’s center, picked out in shades of pink from delicate pearl to more of an inside-of-a-shell deal. Below the center, the petals were in shadow, nearly lavender, gentle and open.
But that center. That secret heart, that deep-purple oval with its waving indentations around the edges. Your eye went right there, like the petals were all arranged for you, laid out there for you, inviting you to…
Yeah. Well. He wanted this one, too.
He got a better grip on himself looking at the others, not that they were much less imagination-worthy. More flowers, from morning glories to calla lilies to roses, all of them in that same close-up. Silken petals laid open, and a deep, secret heart.
They were erotic as hell, was what they were. No heterosexual man was going to look at them and not see it, surely. He glanced up from where he was crouching before the pieces and saw Russell watching him not quite impassively, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
When Bella let out a short, sharp bark and took off, her toenails skittering on the floor, Russell said, “That’ll be her. The salmon’ll be a good treat for her, too. I bet she was in here working all day.”
Blake heard the sound of a door closing and moved to slide the latest piece back into its spot. When he met Russell’s stepdaughter, it might be better if he weren’t literally sporting a hard-on from her art. Might be a little difficult to explain, although he had a feeling he wouldn’t be the only guy ever to have that reaction.
“They’re all that and then some, aren’t they?” Russell asked, waving a hand at the flowers. “Some of the folks in Seattle go for those big-time. Hang them in their bedrooms, I guess. Kinda making a name for herself with those, but it’s not a name she wants to make around here.”
“Ah, no,” Blake said. “I’m guessing not. Small town.”
“You got that right.”
Blake was turning, moving to stand when she came around the corner like an avenging fury. An avenging fury in an ugly navy-blue swimsuit. His girlfriend from the rocks. Dakota.
She skidded to a stop outside the gate and said, her voice vibrating with outrage, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Her dark eyes were flashing, she was practically panting, and her hair wasn’t in a braid this time. It was down and messy and dark and wet. One of her straps was falling down her shoulder, revealing a stripe of tan line and, where the suit fell away, the swell of a pale breast.
She saw the direction of his gaze and yanked the strap up. It was only then that he registered the other guy. The big guy, the linebacker from last night. He was with Dakota again. And this time, he was holding a baby.
The big guy muttered something and took the baby away, but everybody else just stood there. After a few seconds, Blake heard water running, but he wasn’t paying much attention.
When he’d seen Dakota last night, he’d been willing to overlook her flirting with him earlier, even though she’d been out with somebody else. He’d been out with somebody else himself, after all. She hadn’t been wearing a ring, and the way she’d walked past him, like she’d known what she was doing to him and had wanted to do it, had made him think that it might have been a first date for her, too. It had felt like they were both out with the wrong people, no matter how hostile she’d seemed earlier. That heat hadn’t just come from him. A fire couldn’t burn without oxygen. She hadn’t just been giving it oxygen, though. She’d been pouring the gasoline on, and he’d known it.
But now? This put it in a whole different category. She had a baby with this guy, and she’d still looked at Blake like that, talked to him the way she had, flirted that hard? And she’d made those… those glass pieces? He wondered if Russell knew what she really was. And he still let her—them—live with him?
She didn’t look one bit ashamed. She looked mad. No mistaking that lifted chin, those cheekbones showing sharp as knives. “What’shedoing here?” she demanded of Russell.
“Watch your mouth,” Russell said. “He’s here because we went fishing.”
“That’swhose boat you went out on? Why would you do that? I can’tbelieveit. How could you?”
“It’s not your business who I go fishing with,” he said.
“I’ll head on out,” Blake said. He didn’t want to stay anyway. He liked Russell, but he wasn’t feeling like using up all his manners on this situation. Dakota’s stepfather had been hurt on one of his jobs. That must be why she was mad. But how did she have any room to talk?
And, yes, part of him might have pointed out that she was mad about her stepfather’s serious injury on his watch, whereashewas mad because… because she’d confused him, and that those two things weren’t exactly comparable. But he didn’t care. He was still mad.
