Should she push? She knew his past was painful, and she hated bringing it back. But how was she supposed to do anything for him when she didn’t know exactly what had happened?
“Who taught you that you had to be perfect?” she asked gently, as though the more softly she spoke, the easier it would be for him to answer.
“No one taught me anything. I just like drawing for myself.” His knuckles cracked as his fist bunched. Watching him broke her heart into ragged halves. And she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. He hadn’t been ready the last time she’d asked, and he wasn’t ready now.
She was afraid he never would be.
She pretended she’d never brought up the subject, adopting a teasing tone. “All right, then I won’t look at you while you’re sketching. I’ll pretend you’re not even here.” She licked her lips and fluttered her eyelashes. “But you can look at me all you want.”
She was surprised by his sudden kiss—rough, raw, and so passionate that her head was spinning by the time he drew back.
“That was way better than just looking,” she murmured, her voice breathless. She put her hand over his chest, felt his heart pounding hard and fast beneath her palm. And she understood that his kiss was a way of deflecting the question he didn’t want to answer. “Is that a yes to sketching me?”
He breathed in, held it, then finally exhaled on a sigh. “We’re different. You go into yourself as if you’re not even aware of me while you’re working. But for me—it’s a hell of a lot harder to know you’re watching me make one mistake after another.” His explanation was actually a concession, giving her a piece of what she so desperately wanted to know.
She wanted to make him see it didn’t have to be like that. “Can’t it just be for fun? You don’t have to figure me out. It doesn’t have to be good.” Pressing her lips to the side of his neck, she licked his deliciously warm skin. “Come on, for me?”
“I don’t have a sketchbook.”
He was finally bending. She could feel it, and she nearly shouted with glee, but managed to contain the victory. This was a start. All the rest would come eventually—at least, she prayed it would. “I’ve got a clipboard with some paper.” Instead of getting them, she pushed against him, his scent and his heat wrapping around her. “I’ll give you a reward later.”
Looking down at her, his eyes were suddenly deep. “What kind of reward?”
“Whatever you want,” she whispered.
“Anything?”
“Anything.” Heck, she was almost ready to give him the reward right now, before he’d so much as made a mark on the paper.
He lifted her wrists, circling them with his hands. “Have I mentioned that I have some brand new leather wrist ties at the house that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?” She was nearly panting as he added, “Looks like they’ll be just the right size.”
“So it’s a deal?”
He sealed his mouth to hers, stealing all her thought, her breath, before he whispered, “It’s a deal.”
She danced away to get him the clipboard and pencil, suddenly energized from the gourmet breakfast. From Sebastian all predatory and sexual. From knowing he’d sketch her while she worked. And then there’d be lusciously hot nookie afterward.
Turning to her stallions, the vision suddenly burst to the surface, the shot of energy Sebastian had given her starting her creative juices flowing again. All at once, she could see why the horses looked skeletal. Because they were—just bare metal rods stuffed into pipe fittings. The rods needed filling out so that they emulated the curve of muscle and the suppleness of sinew. Somehow over the past weeks, she’d forgotten the brass pipes she’d found at the construction sale. They’d be a perfect fit.
She dove in to create the effect she wanted. But she didn’t forget Sebastian, not for one single second. Seated in one of the deck chairs he’d brought in weeks ago, he balanced the clipboard on his legs, his hands gliding over the page. After a while, he started asking questions, and she was happy to answer them, especially if it meant he would keep drawing.
“You’re doubling up on the rods?”
“I’m going to augment what’s there with the pipes. The brass will look like sinew and that will flesh out the muscles.”
He drew as he spoke, his fingers flying. He looked up, down, tipped his head one way, then the other. He talked, she answered and explained as she manipulated the metal and tack-soldered the pieces into place.
When she got to the welding itself, however, there was just her, the metal, and her torch for long enough that at some point Sebastian got up to leave. Immersed in her work, she hadn’t wanted to shut down and pull off her mask to ask where he was going. Not until he waved a ham sandwich under her nose, the aroma so tantalizing that her stomach growled raucously.
“You’re a life saver.”
Throwing off her gear, she slid down into the deck chair next to his as a new wave of exhaustion hit her. Hard. The work had sustained the flow of energy through her body until the moment she’d stopped. Now she honestly wasn’t sure she could get out of the chair.
Seating himself next to her, Sebastian jutted his chin at the stallions. “You were right, they needed filling out. Now you can see they’re racing like the wind.”
“Before, they were stick figures.” She took a bite of the simple sandwich, then closed her eyes and sighed. Sitting down was as delicious as the honey-roasted ham. “This gives them depth.”
“You never cease to amaze me. The way you envision your art and how you work. You try this thing, then that thing, changing it until finally the work perfectly matches your vision.”
“Isn’t that what every artist does?” She spoke without thinking as she drank thirstily from the frosty mug he’d brought.
“No.”
The simple word said it all. By this point she was too tired—literally a million miles past exhausted, all the way down to her bones—to keep pussyfooting around the issue. She was going to help him, damn it, whether he wanted her to or not!
“Can I see the drawings you did of me?”
* * *
Charlie’s tone was different. Not harder exactly. Not frustrated, either. But no longer the gentle persuasion she’d used before.
Her love for him still laced every word, but Sebastian instinctively knew that didn’t mean she’d back down any time soon. Just as he’d wanted to facilitate her career by finding her all the new commissions, she wanted to return the favor. The difference, however, was huge. She was a brilliant artist who deserved every accolade. He was little more than a hobbyist. Still, he wouldn’t hide the sketches from her. He’d made that mistake once, and he wouldn’t make it again.
He handed her the clipboard.
“Oh my God, Sebastian.” He’d caught her down on her haunches scrutinizing the weld on a horseshoe as if she were a vet examining a hoof for an abscess. “They’re fabulous.”
Of course she’d say that. She probably even half believed it. “They’re okay,” he said as mildly as possible. And by okay he meant crap.
Holding up the clipboard, she tapped the picture. “Tell me what could possibly be wrong with it? You’ve caught my concentration, even the squint while I’m studying that weld. Your drawings make me actually feel how hot it is in the room. And I swear the horses are going to fly off the pages. You really can’t see how brilliant your drawings are?”
“You have a vision, Charlie. You pound your work into submission, work and rework metal and parts until it perfectly meets your vision.” His gut felt completely wrenched as he admitted, “I don’t know what my vision is. I never have.”
“You keep talking about this vision thing as if it’s a big deal. Keep saying it’s perfect. But half the time I hardly know what I’m going to do with something until I stick it on somewhere and finally see its true purpose. And we both know my work isn’t perfect—how can it be, when I’m slapping together disparate pieces of junk all day? It can’t be perfect, but it can make people feel.”