There was a Greek god sitting on her beach

And as Catherine stood there, glued to the window of her grandfather’s beach house in the Hamptons, the visual was as arresting as anything ever painted by a master.

From her side angle, she could see him only in profile. A hard jaw that looked chiselled instead of real. He had forgone sunglasses, staring sightlessly into the churning grey waters of the Atlantic, with the sun burnishing him in gold highlights. His hair was short and dark, with a few pieces curling waywardly at the neck. Thick black lashes were clearly visible, even from a distance.

And that was only above the shoulders. His torso was like exquisite marble—powerful and broad, a sheltering bulkhead in any storm, its long axis divided by rippling abdominal muscles. A sprinkling of chest hair formed a narrow line down the sternum, leading to…to…Catherine smiled to herself.

There was art, and then there was man art.

Dear Reader,

This is a story that’s been in my head for a long time. We were living in Texas on September 11, and I shared the same sad reactions as everyone else about the day, but the lives of those who died took on an equal and overwhelming significance, as we ended up moving to the suburbs outside New York City in December 2002.

Once my son started playing baseball, I attended many games at his school, and noticed a plaque. It’s small, bronze and nailed up on the old wooden wall of the field house. It’s in memory of a gentleman who was on the baseball board for the town and who died on September 11. It doesn’t talk about the attacks, doesn’t say how he died, but instead the words are about his life and his contributions to the league. In that moment, what had been such an infinite and nearly unimaginable tragedy became very, very real.

One life. One normal man coaching on this half-pint baseball field, who hadn’t expected to die so soon, and the people he touched. Not an entire country, not an endless news clip circling many, but one family and one small community coping with the loss of a single person, amidst the tragedy of so many.

Respectfully,

Kathleen

Kathleen O’Reilly is an award-winning author of several romance novels who is pursuing her lifelong goal of sleeping late, creating a panty-hose-free work environment and entertaining readers all over the world. She lives in New York with her husband, two children and one rabbit. She loves to hear from her readers at either www.kathleenoreilly.com or by mail at PO Box 312, Nyack, NY 10960, USA.

INTOXICATING!

BY

KATHLEEN O’REILLY

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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1

SINCE THE SUMMER he turned eleven, Daniel O’Sullivan woke up every morning the same way. With an aching hard-on. After he was married, the first light of dawn became his favorite time. He’d roll over, impatient hands searching for his wife. After making love to her, he’d shower, shave, and together they’d take the subway to work. What more could any guy want?

But then one September morning seven years ago, bright sunlight mocking in the sky, that all exploded, along with two airliners, two buildings and two thousand, seven hundred and forty people—one of whom was his wife.

Gone.

For the next five years he rolled over to look for her, impatient hands searching blindly, and she wasn’t there. And so the hard-on stayed.

The morning wake-up call evolved, the change coming so gradually that initially he didn’t notice it. In those beginning moments of wakefulness, when his brain was more than halfunconscious, he stopped looking for his wife, impatient hands no longer reaching for someone who wasn’t there.

Gone.

Daniel was starting to forget.

Now, if this was any of a thousand other people in the world, maybe that’d be okay. But Daniel wasn’t wired that way. Love was forever. A promise was forever, and so two years ago he shifted the wedding picture to his nightstand as a reminder of exactly how much his wife meant to him.

It didn’t help.

No matter what he did, no matter what he told himself, in those first seconds of the day his hands stayed stubbornly buried under his pillow. That betrayal to her memory shocked him as badly as her death.

And so the hard-on stayed.

Daniel didn’t look at other women, he didn’t flirt with other women and he sure as hell didn’t sleep with other women. Maybe his sleep-bagged mind would betray her, but his body wouldn’t.

His wifeless life settled into a dull pattern that he didn’t dare disrupt. And it was for that reason that when summer rolled in to Manhattan, Daniel didn’t leave like so many other New Yorkers.

July in Manhattan was hell. Hot, humid, and the dense air hung low on the rivers, casting the entire island in a muggy shade of yellow. The hell-like conditions were the number-one reason that most sane people left the city for the veritable paradise of the outlying beaches. The hell-like conditions were the number-one reason that Daniel O’Sullivan was determined to stay, no matter what his two brothers wanted.

“I’m not going,” he told Sean and Gabe in his most serious, “don’t hand me that crap” voice. And in case they didn’t pick up on that completely unsubtle hint, Daniel turned back to the ghostly glow of the computer screen, ignoring them. They didn’t usually gang up on him—actually, up until this point, it’d never happened before.

Stubbornly, Daniel scanned the bar’s monthly spreadsheet, his eyes moving back and forth over the numbers with appreciation for such simplicity. Invoices and deposits showed a nice, tidy bottom line in the black. All in all, excellent news.

The bar currently known as Prime had sat on the corner of 47th and 10th for almost eighty years, and had been run by an O’Sullivan equally as long. Gabe ran the place now, with Sean and Daniel as near-silent partners, except on Saturdays when the three O’Sullivans all worked there—Gabe and Sean to bartend, and Daniel to do the books.

After their uncle, the previous owner died, Gabe had paid up the back taxes on the place, against Daniel’s advice. A bar in Manhattan was a shaky financial investment, but Gabe wasn’t guided by business sense, but more by the desire to see the family legacy restored to its old grandeur. Against his own better judgment, Daniel had set up a desk and computer in the storeroom downstairs, so he could help with the accounting. The tiny storeroom was barely designed to accommodate one person. When you put three full-grown men in there—like now—the tiny quarters were stifling.

“It’d be good for you to get out of the city, meet some people,” said Gabe, leaning back against a tall stack of cases of rum. Gabe, the youngest of the three, was a great bartender—a people person who never quite got the concept of being alone.

“And you could get laid,” contributed Sean, in his own special way. Every man had one gear—sex—but wise men learned at an early age that you had to keep that fact hidden if you wanted to avoid complications in life and love.

Sean had the exact opposite approach to Daniel. With women, he was honest and up front about his sexual needs, and didn’t try to apologize for it. Illogically, women never seemed to mind, which Daniel had never understood. Maybe it was Sean’s law school diploma, maybe the planets had been aligned at his brother’s birth. Daniel didn’t know, didn’t lose sleep over it, but there were times—like now—when Sean’s “I know everything” attitude could be a complete pain in the ass.

“You haven’t had sex since Michelle died, have you?” asked Sean, highlighting the mix of his lawyerlike interrogation skills and his general knack for the truth, tact be damned.

Gabe glared at him, so Daniel didn’t have to. “You said you’d handle this with sensitivity.”

“That was sensitivity,” defended Sean. “I could have gotten a lot more graphic and reminded him about what he’s been missing out on, but I took pity.”

“Get the hell out of here,” ordered Daniel, but neither of his younger brothers moved. At one time, they’d listened to him, obeyed him and respected him. One more thing that changed after 9/11.

How soon they all forgot. When Gabe joined Little League, it was Daniel who taught him how to pitch a fastball. And when Sean went off to college, it was Daniel who had explained all the knobs and buttons on the stove and dishwasher, respectively, without once making fun. And this was the thanks he got for keeping a straight face the whole time?

Daniel turned back to the computer. At least it didn’t nag him.

Sean reached around his brother and turned off the monitor. “I think you need to rethink this monk strategy, Daniel. It’s not working. You’re tense. You’re somber. Think back to the old days when you were—”

“Tense and somber,” Gabe pointed out.

“It’s none of your business,” snapped Daniel, not looking up from the blackened screen. Usually teasing didn’t bother him, but whenever the calendar moved closer to September, something hot, humid and hell-like rose up inside Daniel.

“You can’t spend your whole life locked away,” said Gabe quietly. “Besides, it’s only one weekend.”

The “weekend,” as Gabe so politely phrased it, was a summer share in the Hamptons that Sean had rented, along with ten other lawyer types with too much cash and too much free time on their hands. There would be tanned, curvy women spilling out of bikinis, and eye-crossing amounts of alcohol. It was a more adult, socially acceptable version of Spring Break.

Only in New York.

Daniel shook his head, powered back on the monitor and then went back to work. Freezing them out usually worked, and he assumed that was the end of it, until Daniel heard light footsteps on the stairs.

Then, Gabe’s girlfriend, Tessa, appeared.

His brothers had brought out the big guns.

Daniel silently swore as Tessa squeezed in next to Gabe, blocking his last escape route.

“You have to go, Daniel. I need you to check out a place about a mile down the beach.”

Tessa talked with a soothing voice, her eyes so innocent and guileless, compared to his two more Machiavellian brothers. “I think it’d be perfect for one of my clients, but to get a feel for the place, you really need to be there and see it during the day and night. It’d be a great favor if you could do this for me, Daniel. Please.”

Tessa’s business was real estate and she lived and breathed it like other people inhaled oxygen.

Ah, jeez. The walls were closing in, and Daniel rubbed a hand at the back of his neck, trying to act as if there weren’t ten thousand needles sticking under his skin. It was one thing to turn down his brothers; it was another matter entirely to disappoint a woman. Out of the three O’Sullivans, Daniel was the polite one, the courteous one, the chivalrous one. Right now, he was the frustrated one.

“Getting your woman to fight your battles now, Gabe?”

Gabe pulled Tessa into the crook of his arm. “I’m not proud. It’s one weekend, Daniel, not a lifestyle change.”

“Why aren’t you going, Sean?” asked Daniel suspiciously.

Sean still stuck by his story. “I decided it would be better if we shoved you out of the airplane, so to speak. A free-range opportunity to cut loose for a few days. You could use it, dude.”

Daniel eyeballed his brother. If it’d been Gabe talking, he would have bought it, hook, line and sinker. But this was Sean. “What’s the real reason?”

Sean slugged easily, knowing he was busted. “Ashley invited me to go to Miami. Meanwhile, the time-share group needs a guy to even things out. If not, I’ll get blacklisted for skipping. There’re statutes in place for summer shares and anyone who violates them gets kicked off the island. Since Gabe’s off the market you’re the only brother left.”

Now that sounded like Sean. “I don’t want to bail you out.”

“I’m only thinking of you,” his brother said, wide-eyed with innocence. A man who was exposed to perjury on a daily basis could end up with his moral compass adjusted.

Gabe coughed. “Don’t lay it on too thick, Sean.”

Sean’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to sit back and let him rot down here? I don’t know about you, but I want my brother back. Three years passed, and I kept my mouth shut. Five years passed, I kept my mouth shut. Now, seven years have passed, and I’m done keeping my mouth shut.”

“And aren’t we all grateful for that?” drawled Daniel, clearly surprised that Sean was getting this worked up.

Sean pointed a finger at him. “Shut up.”

Even more surprised, Daniel did just that. He stared at his two squabbling brothers, rubbed his eyes and discovered a new and improved guilt—with extra ulcer-inducing power. He’d done this to his family. Three brothers. As such, they’d always stood together, supported each other, and yes, they fought, because they were normal, but not like this and not because of him. Daniel was the role model, the responsible one. Or he used to be. Like all the other changes in his life lately, that didn’t sit well. He didn’t want much. Mainly to be left alone, but he wasn’t going to have his brothers fighting because of him, either.

“I’d be crap company,” he said halfheartedly. Guilt did that to him. Made him weak.

Sean spread his hands wide, accidentally socking Gabe in the gut. “Nobody will notice. All of the guys are from the office. They don’t know you. Frank is bringing in four babes from a publicity firm in Chelsea that he says are infinitely doable. They’ll think you’re all dark and brooding. It’ll be great. One woman’s crap is another woman’s soul mate. Who am I to judge?”

A soul mate? Man, Sean must have been drinking instead of serving the alcohol lately. A man didn’t meet soul mates twice in his lifetime. Some men weren’t even lucky enough to have it happen once.

“I don’t know,” muttered Daniel, but dammit all, Gabe was looking all happy and pleased, and even Sean was starting to smile. Daniel realized how long it’d been since he’d made his brothers happy. It seemed like forever. Mostly, all he’d been doing was making trouble and sending them on late-night binge-busts to rescue him from anonymous bars around the city and beyond.

Gabe put up a warning finger. “There is one rule. You can’t wear your ring, Daniel. Women who go after the rings…well, you’re not going there.”

“I’m not taking off my ring,” protested Daniel, rubbing the heavy gold band like a talisman. It wasn’t even old, or worn, the metal still brilliant and polished. Almost brand-new.

Tessa nodded. “Sean’s right. You can’t wear the ring. The women will think you’re some sleazeball. It’s three days, Daniel. What harm can three days be?”

Sean and Gabe, he could handle, but he’d never liked saying no to a woman. It didn’t feel right. They were forcing him to say no to a woman. It was his Achilles’ heel, his fatal flaw, and they knew it and were exploiting him mercilessly. It was there in Sean’s smug, merciless smile, and Gabe’s way-too-innocent puppy-dog look.

Three days. It was only three days at the beach.

Daniel stared at them—all that was left of his family, all banded together to put him through their own version of Hell in the Hamptons. And they thought they were doing him a favor?

Fine.

He’d go—with his ring well-buried in his duffel. If he went, it’d make Tessa happy, make Sean and Gabe happy, and then he could return to his well-ordered life, and they would all think things were getting better.

Not a problem.

THERE WAS A Greek god sitting on her beach. He’d been there for hours, nearly motionless in stark contrast to the MTV-worthy volleyball game being played out on the sand next door. In Catherine Montefiore’s current dreary mood, maybe she was more open to twenty-first-century classical eye-candy, she couldn’t be sure. But, as she sat there, glued to the window of her grandfather’s beach house in the Hamptons, the visual was as arresting as anything ever painted by Hopper, Dali or Picasso.

From her angle, she could only see him in profile. A hard jaw that looked chiseled instead of real. He had forgone sunglasses, staring sightlessly into the churning gray waters of the Atlantic, with the sun burnishing him in gold highlights. His hair was short and dark, with a few pieces curling waywardly at the neck, daring any stylist to mar its perfection. Thick black lashes were clearly visible, even from the distance. Lean, angular cheekbones cast shadows on the hard lines below.

And that was only above the shoulders—and what shoulders they were. In Catherine’s profession she saw nude men by the crateload, and she knew sculpted shoulders when she saw them. The hard plane of the trapezium sloped down to a marvelously projected deltoid. His forearms were balanced on his knees, showing off rounded biceps and triceps, not in the wimpy expressionistic manner, but crafted in the more vivid Hellenistic style. Stalwart, capable and brutally real.

With busy eyes, she studied all of him, tracing over the sinews and the tendons that visibly flared when he moved.

Her hands flexed, aching to study, and even more daring, to touch. Eventually, she was unable to resist any longer, and she pulled out her sketch pad and pencil, and her fingers flew, guided by equal parts artistic endeavor and lust.

As his shape began to reveal itself on the paper, she knew she was wrong. Gods were unmarred perfection. No flaws, no scars, all-powerful, all-seeing. This man wasn’t a god, but a mortal, complete with the scars that sprang from humanity.

This man was Odysseus, searching for home so far across the sea. Feverishly she sketched in the face, drawing from perfect memory now. The forehead cast a shadow over the rest of his features, sadness inherent in his brow. She left the eyes for last because she couldn’t imagine the loneliness that echoed there, desperate to see his family, the broad, capable arms so uselessly empty.

Her quick fingers sketched out his body, a warrior’s body, but with him sitting in the deck chair, the anterior view of his chest—along with the complete view of his lower torso—was obstructed. Conventional wisdom said that she needed two yards between her and the subject. In this situation—solitary woman ogling strange man—two yards was too close, but she could do better than her current spot behind the windows. Quietly, she opened the French doors that led out to the wooden deck, careful so that he wouldn’t hear and be disturbed.

The deck was small by Southampton standards. Four wooden Adirondack chairs, a green-and-white striped umbrella that shaded most of the area and a few plants scattered here and there. The plants had to be replaced on a regular basis because although there were many talents in the Montefiore family, a green thumb was not among them.

After settling herself under the umbrella and adjusting the chair to the locked and upright position, Catherine picked up her pad and pencil and stared out toward the western horizon. It was the innocent picture of a woman sketching the sun over the ocean—not a woman fantasizing about the man that was parked on her beach. Catherine tilted her head a mere twenty degrees westward, achieving the perfect view.

Her sigh was louder than she intended, but really, it couldn’t be helped. His chest was powerful and broad, a sheltering bulkhead in any storm, delineated down the long axis by rippling abdominal muscles. His skin nearly bronze in the sun. Dark chest hair formed a narrow line down the sternum, leading to…Catherine smiled to herself. There was art, and then there was man art.

Guiltily, Catherine wiped away the drop of damning saliva that had dripped onto the sketch.

Catherine was nothing if not a product of her environment—her work environment, actually. Her grandfather was Charles Montefiore, owner of Montefiore Auction House, one of the nation’s premier art and antiquities auction houses, thank you very much, and Catherine had worked her way up through the trenches. Starting as an assistant appraiser, then appraiser, and now she was an assistant to her grandfather on special projects, mainly high-profile auctions.

Not that she coasted on the family name, no way. Catherine had graduated with honors from Columbia with an undergrad and masters in art, yet in many ways she knew she was the disappointment in the family. She didn’t have her mother’s style, or her grandfather’s showmanship. Catherine had attended Manhattan’s most elite private school, summered in Europe, but a classical education didn’t solve personality defects. Her mother called her an introvert; Catherine preferred the more elegant “reclusive artist,” but technically both of them were right.

She studied the sketch in her hand with a critical eye. As an artist, it was the male form that captured her imagination. The power behind it, the strength of it, but unfortunately, most of the men she worked with were either gay or nearing retirement. Her exposure to rages of testosterone was limited to twodimensional figures, flat and lifeless, and she liked the safety of the one-way relationship where she was in complete control. In the past eight years, she’d had two relationships in the accepted sense of the word. The one with Leon, which had sadly fizzled into abject nothingness because he was, well…blah, and the relationship with Antonio, which ended when he realized he was a woman trapped in a man’s body.

After the Antonio fiasco, Catherine was faced with a choice. To be aggressive and search out single men in their natural habitat—bars—or resign herself to days spent appraising the male torso and nights spent dreaming about it. Catherine had wisely stuck with two-dimensional men on a sketch pad, or a canvas. It was easier on her ego.

While she was busy on her sketch, a bikinied blonde approached him. Catherine frowned because Odysseus should not be bothered by the obviously fake melons that were bobbing in front of his face. Thankfully, his expression didn’t change when tempted by this modern-day Nausicaa, and the loneliness in his eyes stayed constant.

Classical baroque art would have been altered forever if some Hamptons Hussy had turned Odysseus into Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky Melon-Grabber.

No, Odysseus was worthy of so much more.

The blonde, not appreciating the rare masterpiece on the sand, waved blithely and then flitted away. Eagerly, Catherine went back to her work, shading, erasing, sketching, correcting, until, at last, the piece was finished.

For a moment she was caught breathless by the image on the paper. It was good. Really good. A smile curved her lips because it wasn’t something that she thought often. Even Grandpa would be proud of her for this one. Her sketches were a sideline brought on by too much exposure to great art, and too little talent to do anything serious with it. When you dealt with Van Gogh on a daily basis, Catherine’s pictures of the male form resembled a kindergartener’s. A talented kindergartener, but still—a kindergartner.

But not this sketch. This sketch was special. She had captured the solitariness of him, the weariness juxtaposed against the noble bearing. The more she looked at the man—the live man, not the two-dimensional likeness—the more she wondered about him. She’d never seen one human being stay so still for so long, a master of self-control. People in New York never looked lonely. It was, like, a cardinal rule of the city. How could you be alone with eight million other people? Yet Catherine knew it was possible. Maybe that was why the man intrigued her so. Maybe…

Unfortunately, if she kept this up, she was going to get caught, so she stashed her sketchbook away, pushed on her sunglasses and stretched her legs out in front of her. Finally, he moved, rising to his feet, and she drew in her breath. She was still smiling to herself when he turned around, and quickly her smile disappeared in case he mistook it for an invitation. Catherine wasn’t built like the bikinied, sun-streaked blonde. She was a tall dishwater blond, fifteen pounds overweight on a good day, and she didn’t even want to talk about the bad days. She only bought one-piece bathing suits that minimized her butt, which was where most of her weight settled when she overindulged in cupcakes—something she often did on her bad days.

He looked at her, his eyes skimming over her, not sexually, but automatically, taking in the details of his surroundings of which she was a part. She fought the urge to cover herself. Better to ignore him, as if he were a painting on the wall and nothing more. He paused, and she could sense the indecision, but then he walked forward—toward her.

As he moved closer, Catherine glanced down, making sure her sketchbook was lying innocently closed on the ground. Check. No reason to be nervous at all.

He approached her, bare feet sinking in the sand, and sadly she realized that even his feet were glorious. She’d never sketched a foot in detail before, but now she thought she might.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” he said, and she shook her head as if he had hadn’t intruded on her brain since she’d first caught sight of him.

“You’re welcome to sit as long as you want.”

When he was this close, she could see his eyes. A dark, rainfogged gray. His gaze was detached, not in a cold way, but empty and lifeless like the people captured in paintings by Piero.

“I thought this place was empty, and next door’s been a nuthouse,” he told her, automatically endearing him to her because in her mind she knew next door was a nuthouse. Loud, laughing, filled with happy, beautiful people who splashed away in the pool. Yeah, right. When you worked in art, you learned that anything could be forged.

“Please, don’t apologize.” She spoke graciously, adapting the lady-of-the-manor poise of her mother. “It’s not necessary. Stay.”

Restlessly, he shifted on his feet, so staying didn’t seem to be in the cards. She knew the stance. She’d done it often enough. The man was itching to leave her company, but he waited, as if he knew he was only three words shy of being polite. Again, all familiar territory for Catherine. “I’m Daniel,” he said finally.

“Catherine.” She lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the sun, which was totally a great idea because when she blocked out the glare, and the shadows fell across his face, he seemed more alive. And she could see the neat symmetry in his facial structure.

Oh, yeah, she was going to draw him. Capture the tiny dip in his chin, capture the stubble that dotted his jaw. Oh, yeah.

“Thank you, Catherine.”

“My pleasure,” she answered, because it was.

All polite obligations now out of the way, Daniel went back to his chair, and there he sat for several more hours until the sun set for the day.

Catherine stayed in the lounge, sipping on tea and pretending to doze, and not once did he go into the water.

2

THAT NEXT MORNING, after a mere three hours’ sleep, Daniel rose, rubbing tired eyes. He’d forgotten the infinite joys of a summer share. The long hours of drinking, the bed-hopping, the endless unfunny jokes. In search of peace and quiet, he’d first tried sleeping on the lounge outside, but when Chelsea and Bill went skinny-dipping in the wee hours of the night, Daniel gave up, creeping over to Catherine’s deck before finally settling into a deep sleep in one of the chairs.

Sean was going to owe him for this, and Daniel occupied those first waking thoughts creating endless painful punishments for his brother, almost all involving testicles being squeezed into a vise. Only two more days, he reminded himself, rubbing at the empty spot on his ring finger. Still that didn’t stop the nightmares about losing it. With an empty ring finger, the hole inside him seemed impossibly bigger. Some things just weren’t meant to be left behind.

After a long stretch, he walked back to the nuthouse and was safely on one of the summer share’s loungers when Catherine emerged on her deck. She waved, he waved, and they ignored each other for most of the morning until some dipwad got the bright idea of tapping a keg on the sand, which he couldn’t even do right. Daniel chose not to educate him on the finer talents of keg-tapping. That was long ago and far away. Instead he fled back to Catherine’s beach, praying she wouldn’t mind.

It took her an hour to approach. “You’re having problems next door, aren’t you?” she asked, collapsing down into the sand next to him.

Daniel laughed with little humor. “Yeah. I’d love to go home if I could, but the lawyers would report back to my brothers and I’d just have to do it again another weekend.”

“The lawyers?” she asked, taking off her sunglasses.

“My brother’s firm. Long story. You don’t want to hear it.”

She looked at him, looked out at the water, then looked next door. Eventually, she stared at him again, frowning. “Why are you here?”

“Not by choice.”

“I can see that,” she said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear.

That was what he liked about her. Her quiet. Everything about her was designed to escape notice. Her swimsuit was nearly identical to the sensible one-piece she wore yesterday. Built for swimming, not for looks. Her blond hair was long and unstyled, falling past her shoulders. He didn’t think she was wearing makeup, but Daniel was no expert.

Although he really liked her eyes. Without her sunglasses he could see that she had nice eyes. Big, brown eyes that watched him steadily…until he met her eyes, and then she blinked, looking away, a pale flush rising up her cheeks. Next door, one of the lawyers—Samuel?—chased a woman down the beach, until she turned and let him catch her.

Why did everyone have to be so damned loud? Daniel shook his head. He noticed Catherine watching the people next door. “You want to go over there?”

Quickly, she shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m comfortable here. What about you?”

“I’m happier from a distance. This way I get to study people.”

“Ah, a zoologist,” she said, her lips curving up for a moment.

“People are fairly easy to peg.”

“Really?” she asked skeptically, pulling her legs up underneath her and digging her toes into the sand.

“Oh, yeah,” he answered, as if he were the world’s foremost expert at psychology. Gabe would have laughed his ass off, but okay, Gabe wasn’t here.

“So tell me about the man in the blue swim trunks.”

Daniel thought for a second. He didn’t know these people well, but he knew the types by heart. “Anthony. He’s a clown, goof-off, doesn’t take anything seriously.”

“What about the pale guy, the one who’s going to be hurting from the sunburn tomorrow?”

“Bill. I think. William. Bill. Billy. Something. He’s a little weird. Drinks too much. Works too hard.”

“What about the girl with the dark hair under his arm?”

“Her name’s Chelsea, ambitious, but does things with no half measures.”

“So why is Chelsea, who does things with no half measures, wasting time with weird Bill, when she really wants Anthony?”

“No way,” he said, but then he glanced over at Chelsea and realized that Catherine was right. Chelsea might be spending her nights skinny-dipping with Bill, but when Bill wasn’t looking, her eyes were glued to Anthony. That didn’t even make sense. “Okay, assuming that you’re right—possibly. Then why’s she wasting her time with Bill?”

Catherine moved her head, and her hair fell across her shoulder, following the blue fabric of her bathing suit, stroking along the curve of her breast. Daniel immediately looked back at Chelsea and Bill.

“She doesn’t want to be alone, and she doesn’t think Anthony will like her enough. Most people will latch onto anything rather than learn how to be by themselves.”

“I didn’t think that could be taught.” He’d spent the last seven years alone and didn’t have too many problems with it.

“I think so. It’s a good thing to be comfortable with yourself, knowing what you’re capable of, and what you’re not. You don’t have to waste so much time faking your way through life. Sometimes faking is worth the effort, but most of the time it’s not.”

The quiet voice of reason. Daniel liked her even more. “You do this for a living?”

“No, not even close,” she said, laughing.

“So how come you know so much?” he asked, because she had noticed details he missed. Coming from an accountant, that was just sad.

“Like you said, people are easy to peg.”

He looked at her again, checking for the details he might have missed. She surprised him, but in a good way. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, it was mostly that everyone he met was chock-full of filler conversations that contributed absolutely nothing to anything—or so he thought. Yet here he was, having a filler conversation that contributed absolutely nothing to any thing…or did it?

Catherine’s theory explained a lot. Why Warren in the office took off every Thursday for drinks after work with Thom, when he couldn’t stand the guy. Why Kim went to lunch with Madeline on Fridays, which was about the stupidest thing ever, since Madeline had taken Kim’s job as operations manager. How hard was it to eat alone?

“You have needy friends like that, too?” he asked curiously.

“One friend who keeps seeing her ex, who makes her miserable.” She leaned forward, her hair brushing over her shoulder again, down her breast. This time Daniel looked for a long minute before glancing away.

“Maybe she loves him,” he said, his voice rough. The heat was getting to him, making him light-headed, his skin hot.

She slipped up her sunglasses, her feet digging under the sand until they were completely covered. “She doesn’t love him. She doesn’t even like him.”

“People are strange,” he said, looking away from her, focusing on the waves until his brain righted itself.

“Got that right,” she agreed.

Their conversation drifted on from there, moving from one nothing topic to another, but he definitely liked this. As they talked, the sun shifted in the sky. Daniel leaned back in the chair, relishing the warmth of the rays that reflected off the water. All in all, it was definitely good. Definitely.

Eventually the conversation dwindled, and the silence fell, perfectly balanced to the soothing ebb and flow of the whitecapped sea.

Catherine watched the waves lap up onto the beach, and then cleared her throat. “You’re welcome to sleep here if you’d like.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in and Daniel’s brows shot up at the invitation, in shock, and more than a little fear. She couldn’t have noticed. When it came to hiding things, Daniel was an expert.

Then Catherine glanced in his direction, caught his deer-in-the-headlights look and laughed, a gurgling hiccup of noise.

“Not that way,” she told him. “We have a bunch of rooms, and I don’t play volleyball, or much else. Your brothers would never have to know.”

He sighed, a great explosion of breath. One bullet dodged.

“Nothing to be afraid of. I promise,” she said, and he believed her. The offer was beyond tempting. Her beach house was a shining beacon of serenity compared to the reality show next door. As if God knew and was laughing, one of the lawyers pulled out a karaoke machine and cranked up the volume, singing bad Bob Dylan at the top of his lungs.

“I don’t know. That’d be a big imposition on a stranger,” he said, but he heard the longing in his own voice.

Pleeb.

“I’m actually not that strange,” she answered seriously, which cemented his decision. Anything was better than ten thousand drunken choruses of “Just Like a Woman.”

“You sure you don’t mind?” he asked, not that he was going to let her back out now. She was promising him an escape from more late-night skinny-dipping and the now-permanent ridge in his back where the deck chair slats had eaten into it.

She shook her head, her hair falling again, and this time he didn’t look at all. “I’m sure. I draw a lot out here, so if all you want to do is sit by the beach and stare into the sun, it’s not going to bother me at all.”

“You draw?” he asked curiously.

“Not well,” she answered, pulling her sunglasses back over her eyes, but not before he saw the uncertainty flicker in them.

“Still, it’s something,” he said, trying to reassure her. She looked as if she needed reassurance.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an accountant.”

“Exciting,” she murmured.

Daniel managed a half smile. “Don’t lie.”

She looked at him, black lenses hiding her eyes. “Actually, it suits you.”

“Most people say that as an insult.”

“No, you’re very quiet and thorough and intense. I think those would be good qualities for an accountant to have.”

She sounded completely serious. “Still, boring is boring.”

“Ha. Not likely,” she said so skeptically that he had to look at her twice.

“What do you do?” he asked, thinking that if she thought accounting was exciting, her job must be a complete snoozer.

“Art appraisal.”

Not a snoozer, not even close. “Now see, that’s exciting.”

“Yeah,” she agreed happily. “It usually is. We discovered a lost Picasso last year.”

“Now that’s much better than accounting.”

“But you love it, don’t you?”

Daniel didn’t try to lie. Truthfully, he did love his job. The world needed accountants, like they needed scientists and garbage collectors. “I’m not designed to do anything else. There’s a balance to accounting. Very exacting, very precise. No room for error. At the end of the day, you know exactly where you stand.”

She smiled then, and he noticed that she had a nice smile. A full lower lip, and even white teeth that hinted at years in braces.

“Why do your brothers want you at the Hamptons?” she asked.

“To have fun.”

Catherine laughed. She had a nice laugh, too. Almost hesitant until she got into it and then the sound made him smile and want to laugh along with her, but he didn’t. “I shouldn’t laugh,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth.

“No, really, I think you should.”

“So you’re going to have a miserable time and prove them wrong, aren’t you?”

“It hasn’t been bad,” he answered honestly. Since he’d met her, he had liked sitting with her, talking, under no obligation to be funny, or witty, or charming, or any of those other sterling character traits that Daniel had long forgotten.

“I won’t say anything to your brothers,” she whispered.

“Thank you.”

“So, do you do anything besides accounting?”

Daniel hesitated, because he didn’t tell many people about the bar. There were expectations of a bar owner, more of the fun-loving, pleasure-seeking crap, and Daniel usually kept his mouth shut. But Catherine would understand. He knew it. She was the type of person who invited confidences, the type of person who didn’t demand or judge, and it had been so long since he’d had an ordinary conversation. He was surprised that he remembered how. “I’m part owner in a bar.”

The sunglasses came off again, and he wished she would leave them off; her eyes were strangely compelling. So completely content. “I’ve never met a bar owner before. You don’t seem the type.”

This time Daniel did laugh. “It’s my brother. He’s the type.”

“Ah. Your family must be close.”

“Family distance is highly underrated.”

She smiled at him. “Spoken by someone who is close to his family.”

“When they’re not playing therapist.”

“Do you want lunch?” she asked, and Daniel checked his watch. He’d talked with her for nearly two hours, and never noticed.

“I shouldn’t impose.”

“Puh-lease. You’re my houseguest now. What sort of hostess would I be if I didn’t feed you?”

“You have something beyond snack foods and beer?”

She raised her brows. “That bad?”

“Hmm, it’s not, but I’m thinking your food is probably better.”

Daniel pulled on his T-shirt and followed her through the French doors to the interior of the house. Once inside, he heaved a blissful sigh. Now this was a beach house. There was no television, no stereo, only a couch overlooking the windows, two dainty sticks of wood, which Daniel termed “female chairs,” a wall of rare books and what he guessed was really good art on the wall.

“This is a great place.”

“It’s my grandfather’s. I freeload often.”

“I bet he doesn’t mind.”

“Nah.”

She opened the refrigerator and stared inside. “Eggs, salad, tuna and some berries.”

“Very sensible.”

“I have cupcakes and chips in the pantry.”

“I won’t judge. I swear.”

“Thank you. Actually, I shouldn’t have them,” she said, skimming her hands down over her hips. It wasn’t a seductive move, but a self-conscious one. Daniel’s gaze automatically slipped lower, following her hands, and he felt something stir inside him.

A momentary flicker of heat.

Daniel looked away, and Catherine never noticed.

After lunch was over, Daniel grabbed a paperback thriller and sat out on the beach while Catherine sketched. He was curious to see her work, but she didn’t invite him to, and so he left it alone. He waited until there was a break in the karaoke next door, the lawyers driving off for dinner, and Daniel took advantage, grabbing his duffel.

No one had even noticed he’d been gone. Excellent.

When he walked through her French doors, bag in hand, she looked up from the book she was reading on the couch, as if he had disturbed her. Daniel didn’t usually second-guess himself; he didn’t have to. But this time, he did. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? Don’t worry.”

After that, he stopped worrying and simply enjoyed himself. Dinner was great, and afterward when the shadows of evening had begun to fall, Catherine broke out a bottle of 1982 Rothschild, pouring two glasses. “Grandfather’s got a truly excellent cellar,” she told Daniel. She sat next to him on the couch, curling her legs underneath her.

The wine seemed like the perfect ending to what had been the best day he’d had in some time. Seven years, in fact. Next door might have been When Good Lawyers Go Bad, but here, with the steady sound of the ocean, the quiet of the house, the easiness of her company, Daniel felt peace.

“This has been nice,” he told her. “I appreciate it.”

“You don’t expect much. I like that,” she said, lifting her eyes to his, and Daniel promptly forgot what he was going to say. It’d been too long since he’d been in such a close setting. He could feel the heat under his collar, the slow pound in his blood and the push of his cock against what had been a loose pair of shorts until he had found himself fascinated by a set of wistful brown eyes.

Snap out of it, O’Sullivan.

Even before he could look away, Catherine did. Time for bed.

Alone.

He took a deep sip of wine and then placed it on the table, getting to his feet. “I think I’ll go to bed. Sleepy. Tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night.” He was rambling, pathetically rambling, but he needed to run and fast. The poor kid was probably completely unaware of the ideas that were suddenly flooding his brain.

Catherine uncurled herself from the sofa, and he found himself staring down the front of her bathing suit, which, up to this point, had been sensible and concealing. But now it wasn’t, nope—when a man was staring straight down her front, he saw flesh. Soft, pliable flesh. Soft, pliable bare flesh.

She lifted her gaze again, sending a shockwave through him for absolutely no reason, because it wasn’t as if she was going triple-X on him. No, this was just her being her, and he was suddenly in danger of busting a seam. For nothing. Just a set of dark eyelashes. And the breasts. The soft, pliable…okay, it was really time to leave. Past time to leave.

Daniel told himself to move, but it was too late. He’d found bottles of whiskey that were easier to escape than one single, soulful pair of shadowy brown eyes.

She rose from the couch.

His breathing stopped.

And then she kissed him.

3

DANIEL PULLED AWAY from her. “I should go,” he said, completely and utterly embarrassing her.

Oh God. She had thought…well, who cares what she thought? She’d been so caught up in the rare moment of being in the close proximity of such a man-man and now she’d blown it. Why the heck did she think he’d want to kiss her?

Talk. Yes. Sex. That’s a big No.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She was rambling. Whenever she got embarrassed, she developed a severe case of foot-in-mouth disease, which was a reason she always managed to avoid embarrassing situations.

“It wasn’t that stupid,” he answered, his eyes crinkling up nicely.

“I don’t mean that it was stupid to kiss you, I mean, you’re…” She waved a hand, searching for words, but found none, so opted for a silent adjective and stared a hole in the floor. He could figure that one out on his own. “I meant that I shouldn’t have intruded into your space without an explicit invitation. It’s rude.”

“I didn’t think it was rude,” he answered evenly, making her like him even more. He was so polite, trying to make her feel better, and she did.

“Okay, maybe not rude, but wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong, either.”

“I shouldn’t have done it. Let’s leave it at that,” she stated, trying to extricate herself from this with some pride intact.

“No, I think you should have done it.”

At that point, as nice as his ego-bolstering was, she decided to bring him crashing back to reality. “Which is why I put the fear of God in you and you jumped?” she asked, as nicely as she could have when her words dripped with sarcasm.

He shook his head. “Not the fear of God. Something much more basic.”

His voice changed at the end, turning rough and textured. In fact, she was so caught up in this newly discovered sexualvoice experience that she almost missed the words.

Almost. Her stomach pitched and then steadied, and she wondered if he knew what he’d just done. She didn’t dare look up, but she sensed the change in the air. It wasn’t the salt of the sea or the hint of black fruit in the bouquet of the wine. This was heady and strong, and sent bright bursts of fever rushing through her.

“So this is okay?” she asked, her breath thin and forced, coming from freshly squeezed lungs.

His hand curved around her waist, his fingers stroking softly, straying into the no-man’s-land between her bare back and the elastic of her swimsuit. Her body shivered, nerve endings descending into pleasured chaos.

There was something so private, so personal about a man’s and woman’s gazes meeting, and Catherine didn’t do it often. People thought she was shy, but cowardly was the better description. In her chest, her heart thudded painfully, and slowly, questioningly, her eyes raised to his, her Odysseus. Desire darkened the gray to black smoke, and he didn’t look lonely. Not anymore. Catherine couldn’t look away. Not now. Probably not ever.

Her hand reached out, touching the cotton shirt that covered his chest. One touch, to feel him. To touch him at last.

Her palm rested flat on him, over his heart, and she could feel the heated blood pounding there.

Warm flesh was so much better than art. The hard contours of his body weren’t cold granite, or marble, but overflowed with muscle, bone and blood that called to her. She considered herself an expert on the male body in theory, but she wasn’t even close when it came to the real thing. Right now, she was shaking like a kid. Gently, he inched her toward him, until her whole body was aligned with his, sternum to sternum, pelvis to pelvis, woman to man.

Bliss.

Then he lowered his head, covering her lips with his own.

Oh.

Oh.

She felt his mouth tremble, or was that hers? Catherine wasn’t a virgin; she’d been kissed before, but not like this. Hesitation and reverence melted together under the heat in the air. Automatically she moved into him, his arms closing around her, wrapping her in twin bands of strength and steel.

Catherine sighed with relief, and when her mouth opened, his tongue eased inside, all hesitation gone. He stroked the inside of her lip, slipping back and forth until the drugging rhythm was ebbing through her blood, igniting her skin, pulsing between her thighs.

Her hands explored and she couldn’t believe that this man, this masterful creation, was alive. A momentary doubt stole into her brain, but some things didn’t lie, and the thick erection burning her thigh was proof enough. She wanted that proof inside her.

He broke the kiss, lifting his head, his breathing as ragged as hers, and she thought he was going to leave her.

“You’ll stay with me?” she asked, needy, the doubts stealing back.

His face was tight with tension, his fingers biting into the curve of her hip, but she didn’t care. She wanted his touch, and now the need overcame fear, overcame pride, overcame dignity. Her body needed this.

“Bed.”

Catherine nodded because intelligent speech was impossible. She led him to her room, her nerves simmering, threatening to boil.

He was going to love her, touch her, kiss her, caress her, and she was dizzy with the thought of it. That amazing body that was currently hidden by his clothes was going to be hers. At least for one night.

“Can I undress you?” she asked, the words out before she could think, but how could she think? How could any sane woman think?

“That’s what you want?” As if women didn’t ask to undress him every day. Heckuva job, Catherine.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He was going to think she was obsessed. A nympho ready to pounce, and okay, she wanted him. Badly. But there were other forces at work inside her—namely the desperate desire to see him naked to know if her currently overworked imagination was right.

“Catherine, you don’t have to apologize for everything.”

“I’m—No, I’m not sorry. I wanted to see you because okay, this part is embarrassing, but not exactly for what you’re thinking. You know that I draw, and, well—you have a perfect body for sketching.” Her cheeks burned, and maybe now he thought she was weird, but weird was oodles better than sleazy.

“Really?” he said, as if he didn’t think she was weird…or sleazy. In fact, he sounded…pleased.

“Absolutely. Certainly.” And then, because he was watching her so thoroughly, she drew his T-shirt over his head, struggling to be the artist she told him she was. “See this line here. It’s the axis of your body, your dawn line, perfectly dividing the détente muscle, those are those…uh…little ripples.” Her index finger traced the path, and she nearly sighed, but that would totally snooker the “dedicated artist” image that she was going for.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You should. I do this for a living.”

“Really?” he asked, teasing her.

“Not this, but—” she drew a horizontal line across his shoulders, feeling the heavy muscles jump wherever she touched “—this.”

Her palms felt the hard planes of his chest, absorbed the soft whirls of hair, the tight nipples, and she knew that she could never capture that vitality and strength on paper. Ever. Only in her hands.

She followed the trail of hair down, lower, and she knew the instant that he stopped breathing. Daringly, her fingers delved beneath his shorts, and then she stopped breathing, too.

But her curiosity wouldn’t let her stop. Slowly, the soft boxers slid down hard thighs and then…

Then…

Oh, she wasn’t going to look, but she had to look. She had to see, and heaven help her, she gasped.

Yes, like a total dilettante, she gasped.

For a second she could do nothing but gaze upon him with deep-seated lust, then her eyes studied his face.

He didn’t look happy. He looked stressed.

“Can I see you?” he asked, and she nodded once before she realized that she needed to steer his expectations toward something resembling reality because she wasn’t anywhere close to the perfection that he was.

“I’m not nearly as well-proportioned.”

He drew down the straps of her bathing suit. “That’s an entirely subjective statement. I think you’re very well-proportioned.”

“I weigh too much.”

He slipped the suit off her hips and along her legs and looked at her for a long time, that comprehensive gaze making her nervous. He wasn’t missing a thing. Not the half dozen cupcakes that resided happily on her butt, or her mushy thighs that didn’t get nearly enough exercise or the pooch in her belly that four million sit-ups could easily cure.

“See?” she answered, completely sure he was going to tell her to put her bathing suit back on. In fact, she was so sure he was going to say that, that she reached down to pull it back over her mushy thighs, until he grabbed her hand in a death grip.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.

Catherine noticed the clenched jaw, the eyes that were mere slits of darkness, and began to relax. Eventually, his perfect chest heaved a sigh. “I’m better now,” he said.

“You’re nervous, too?” she asked curiously.

“Not at the moment. Tomorrow, yes. But right now, I’m good.”

“I’m good, too,” she answered.

His mouth took hers again, and he settled over her on the bed. There was another moment when his chest pressed into hers and he froze, and she swore that he was going to fly off her, but then he breathed again, and she sighed. It was very strange having a perfect man on top of her, his mouth kissing her, his hands touching her. But Catherine knew this wasn’t a dream—the ache between her legs convinced her of that—and the way he touched her, almost desperately, convinced her of it, too.

She kissed him desperately, her curious fingers tracing the lines that she had drawn on paper, but the paper was cold compared to the warmth of his skin. No painter, no sculptor, no impressionistic master had ever captured that life, that heat. She caressed the places that she had only imagined, and when she heard him groan, she smiled.

“I don’t have a condom,” he said, raising up on his arms. “I can’t believe I forgot this.”

He was leaving her? Hell, no. Instantly, pathetically, panic gave wings to her speech. “I’m on the pill. It regulates my periods. I have a heavy flow, my—”

Quickly, he shut her up with a kiss, and she really didn’t blame him. Catherine curled her arms around his neck and breathed deeply. He smelled of sandalwood and wine, and she treasured that secret smell, locking the memory safely away. She would remember this. One stolen night that she would remember forever.

“You’re sure?” he asked, and she could feel him, feel the hardness of him poised at her opening. More than anything she wanted to feel him there, inside her. She had to know how this would feel.

“Absolutely certain,” she answered and the velvety hardness plunged between her legs. Once. Hard.

Oh.

Catherine froze.

“You’re okay? I’m sorry. I’m rusty.”

He sounded so apologetic, as if this was all his fault, and Catherine quickly moved to correct that heresy. “It’s me. I wouldn’t know if you’re rusty or not.”

He lifted up again, stared. “You haven’t done this before?”

“Oh, yeah,” she answered carelessly, like four times made her an expert, and Antonio hadn’t been that good, but as her body adjusted, this felt…nice.

Daniel was large and bulky, and she loved how she didn’t feel so tall when he was on top of her.

Again he began to move, with long, easy strokes, and she was fascinated with the idea of it, until it started to feel good—no, this was great.

Her hips followed his, melding together into this heady retreat and advance. Nervously, she met his eyes because he was so quiet. She found him watching her, those careful eyes looking at her face, her mouth, with a thorough intensity that almost frightened her, if it hadn’t turned her on so much. All that—for her.

She felt his hungry gaze on her lips, wanted to feel his mouth, so she took a chance, kissing him, and…

It was exactly like before, his tongue teasing her mouth, seducing her lips, her skin, her entire being, until she couldn’t think anymore, only feel. She grasped his broad back, the hard line of his buttocks, and felt him invading her, possessing her.

Oh oh oh…

Everything turned upside down inside her, and at the moment, Catherine realized why people loved sex.

This was heaven.

He thrust deeper inside her, plunging farther, moving faster, and her blood quickened. She could feel his muscles tightening, feel her own muscles clench and unclench instinctively, in a way that she had never known.

This was better than heaven. Oh, this was so much better than heaven.

Faster.

This was—

Fasterfasterfasterfaster.

Flying. She was flying now.

Fasterfasterfasterfaster.

Ohhh….

She couldn’t speak, her brain liquid. Catherine’s eyes popped open as the world began to collapse around her.

Then she felt his hand between her legs and the world didn’t collapse, it exploded like a star, bursting into huge fiery pieces of color, and this from a woman who lived in a world of cream and beige and gray pencil slate.

Her thighs shook—in fact, her whole body shook.

No, he was shaking. Was he supposed to shake?

He cursed, but in a good way, she thought, as she felt him spill inside her. Warm, liquid, filling her.

Wow.

Wowww….

Then he collapsed on her, his back slick with sweat, his perfect chest expanding and contracting in great waves. “I’m sorry. That was too quick,” he said, his face buried in her hair.

Quick? Quick? He thought that was quick? What happened when it wasn’t quick? Good God, no wonder people got so heated up over this.

Her hand curved over his back, fascinated by the way the muscles bunched under her fingers. She loved this freedom to feel him, touch him, learn what the male body was truly like. In fact, she couldn’t wait to draw him. Completely.

“I thought it was perfect,” she said with a contented sigh.

He lifted his head, and when he looked at her, she saw something different in his eyes. The black had warmed to charcoal, his mouth curved up, smug with satisfaction. So often she’d seen that heady look staring back at her from a two-hundred-year-old canvas, or a black-and-white still photo, blind eyes that never saw her. But this man saw her.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he said, rolling off her to one side, and she missed that completeness, that weight pressing down on her.

“You’re telling me this gets better?”

“Lots,” he answered, stroking her hair. “It can be great, awesome, world-stirring.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” answered Catherine, realizing that she wasn’t a world-stirrer, and she wanted to be a world-stirrer. She loved this newfound lust for life rising up inside her. “Do you think we can make it to world-stirring?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I think we’ll get there before the weekend is out.”

And she snuggled into his chest, feeling the world transform from one-note sepia tones into full-blown impressionistic color, because before the weekend was out, they’d do this again, and Catherine’s world was already starting to stir.

4

FOR MOST OF THE NIGHT, Daniel didn’t close his eyes, but held Catherine tightly. It’d been so long since he held a woman in his arms. Forever. He didn’t want to go to sleep because he was afraid he would wake up and be alone again. That this was all a dream.

He shouldn’t have done this. He really, really shouldn’t have done this, but there was something in her eyes that made “no” pretty well impossible.

And it was that knowledge that lessened the guilt. Yeah, he’d been a creep to take advantage of the situation, but there were words for guys who walked away when they were needed most. Daniel wasn’t one of those guys.

From outside, the sounds of life began to stir. People would be waking soon, but everything here was so quiet, so peaceful. He didn’t want to disturb it, he just wanted to live it.

In the city there was so much noise, and usually he liked the noise, since it drowned out the silence. But this quiet…For a second he listened.

The sounds of the ocean were so large against her quiet breathing, he felt her chest expand against his, the musky perfume of sex hanging in the air.

Man, what a marvelous smell. He hadn’t known that he missed it until now. That smell, mixed with Catherine’s smell—something soapy and flowery, but completely addictive.

Her bare thigh pulled up between his legs, brushing against him, and he sprang to life, fully aroused and ready to go. She was sleeping so peacefully, and he didn’t have the heart to wake her because that would be a selfish thing to do, completely taking advantage of the situation. But then she slid up his chest, her breasts pushing against him in a move that strippers would covet, and her eyes opened.

A lover’s eyes, sly and sleepy.

Daniel knew that he couldn’t live without seeing that look again.

He pushed inside her, saw her eyes go wide and felt a momentary pang of guilt, but then her lips curved, and her hair fell over his face, sliding across his cheek, and the guilt faded. The pleasure began.

THE SUN ROSE IN THE EAST, just as it always did. Daniel woke with an aching hard-on, just as he always did, but there was a woman next to him. A nude woman. A nude, sexually willing woman.

Daniel smiled and reached out a hand to touch her breast. She wasn’t built like Michelle, who’d been short and slim, with what she termed “a lot of junk in her trunk,” and Daniel could feel the differences.

Catherine was tall, with lush curves that filled his hands perfectly, hands that had never felt empty until now. In his opinion, she had the body of a goddess, earthy and rich, solely designed to give him pleasure. Her skin was the color of the morning sky at first blush, soft and warm.

His fingers caressed Catherine’s nipple, feeling it react, and he wondered at that small miracle. A woman’s body reacting. She sighed, her body arching into his hand as if it belonged there.

The sunlight cast a shadow on his empty ring finger, and he felt something stabbing at him, but he brushed it away. Not today. Today he was going to live. It was Sunday. His last day, and he wasn’t going to miss this. When he left, he would bear the weight of the band again, but right now, he just wanted to live like a normal man.

Catherine woke as he imagined she did everything else. Slowly, methodically, with exquisite purpose. Her lashes moved, fluttered up, and then he found himself falling into her eyes once again. She was so soft, so uncomplicated, so irresistible.

He touched, circling her breast, feeling the constant beat of her heart. Her body tensed, still not comfortable with being nude, but he’d work on that.

Whoa.

Daniel frowned, and she touched his mouth. “Something wrong?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Today was it. Nothing more.

“When do you have to leave?” she asked, reminding him exactly how much time he had left.

“I’ll take the late train,” he said, in absolutely no hurry to leave.

“Good,” she answered, moving back the sheet. He had thought she was shy, but the odd thing about her? She seemed to love to watch his body, loved to touch his body, too, and jeez, what man in his right mind was going to object?

She traced a line down his chest, her eyes flaring dark. He loved to watch her, too, loved to watch her mouth grow slack with desire.

It had been so long.

His body jerked impatiently to life, and she smiled.

One day left.

Daniel didn’t wait. He rolled over her, and drove inside, savoring that one second when everything within him converged to this single point, this single moment when his entire body came spluttering back to life, rough and cold and long unused—but not today.

The lashes fluttered closed, her mouth tense, and he watched her, watched the sun filter through the shutters, casting alternating lines of light and dark on her full breasts.

Daniel wanted to be in control of his emotions, wanted to be calm, easy. She needed that, but panic grabbed at him, sharp claws digging in deep.

Just one day.

One day before it all disappeared. Again.

So he thrust deeper inside her, her eyes focused on him, and he wanted to smile at her, wanted to act like everything was normal, but was it?

A rumbling sound came from low in his throat, a rough noise he’d never heard before. And he drilled inside her slick heat, until his mind was black, until his eyes were blind, because his body needed this.

It’d been so long.

His cock burned, the blood roaring through it like a fire feeding on air.

One day left. He moved faster, harder. Oh, he’d missed this. Harder, deeper, needing to touch her, needing to feel her, needing to…Breathe.

He needed to breathe.

He’d never used a woman like this before, not even Michelle. Daniel knew he shouldn’t, but then Catherine’s hands fastened on his shoulders, her teeth dug into her lower lip and her eyes flared with something dark and aware. It was the darkness in her that pushed him on. Raising himself up on his arms, he took. Oh, damn, he took. His head roared, louder and louder, until the pounding in his cock matched the pounding in his head.

Her head listed to one side, the tawny fall of her hair sweeping over the sun-gilded curve of her neck. Her body arched upward with each thrust, shuddering moans of pleasure escaping from her lips. Absorbing him, taking him…comforting him.

Daniel felt his body about to come, but he wasn’t going to do this alone. Not alone. He hated alone. He reached down and flicked against her. Found the place that she needed and watched her body buck.

He touched her, finding where they were joined, and his hand moved faster, and he kept thrusting inside her. She had to feel this. She had to feel the same hopeless need that he did.

Her teeth bit into her lip, and he noticed the blood.

“Come on, Catherine,” he begged, because he needed her with him.

His hand moved, palm against her bone, and her eyes closed, her back lifted, and the moans grew loud and ragged. “A little more,” he said, fighting back his release. She was close. He knew she was close.

She let out a cry, sounds stuttering, and her hips were sliding against him, against his cock, against his hand, until her body jerked once, her mouth opened and he couldn’t resist.

He took her mouth, he took her body, and as the climax fell over them, Daniel surrendered to the darkness.

One day left.

CATHERINE LIFTED her head, stared and then fell back against the pillow. “I think the world was stirred.”

“Thank God,” he said, more of a prayer than a curse.

She reached out next to him and grabbed his hand, tracing over his palms, his fingers. He froze because it was wrong. He should be wearing his ring, but then Daniel forced himself to relax. To remember.

Gradually, the tension left and he closed his eyes.

“What do you want to do today?” she asked.

Right now, he would happily stay in bed all day, but that wasn’t the politically correct thing to say, so he shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

“Could I draw you?”

“That’s what you want?”

She nodded eagerly, and he knew he couldn’t deny her even though the idea of being stuffed in some dainty French chair with his head twisted just an inch to the left would be hell.

“Okay,” he answered, forced enthusiasm in his voice.

“Great.” She rose from the bed. He watched as she covered her body in some shapeless bathrobe, and he felt a momentary sadness. For seven years, he had avoided thinking of female nudity, but now he was back into it in a big way.

Full, high breasts. Long, long legs that could wrap around him when he drove inside…

Daniel shook his head.

She flipped up the shutters on the windows, and the eastern light filtered in. “The morning light is the best,” she told him.

Then she began to adjust him, staring with wide-eyed exuberance. His arm went this way, his head reversed, his fingers like this, and then she looked as if she would be adjusting him there, as well. He moved in and took control.

“What are you thinking about drawing?” he asked her carefully.

“Oh,” she said, drawing the sheet back over him.

Instantly, Daniel sensed that he’d just missed something major. Some huge detail that he’d overlooked. When she looked at him again the exuberance was missing.

Hell.

“You want to draw me nude. Is that it?” he asked, because he’d never been exactly shy, but he wasn’t Sean, either. Discretion. That’s what he believed in.

Nudity was private, and sitting there bare-assed-naked while she sketched him…all while he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about sex?

Hell.

“You don’t have to. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’m around pictures of naked people a lot more than everybody else, and sometimes I forget,” she muttered, her eyes resigned.

“All right,” he said, throwing away every piece of dignity he’d ever had. The exuberance rushed back in her eyes.

The sheet went off, and she adjusted his thighs, his butt, his currently aching cock, and he gritted his teeth until she told him that he needed to relax his jaw.

Easy for her to say.

But eventually she quit touching him and went to work, sitting in a chair across from him, the sun at her back. Actually, it wasn’t as bad he thought, because he got to watch her while she sketched him.

She was pretty. Really pretty, but it took someone with a careful eye to see it. The sun flashed gold in her hair, and when she got frustrated with herself, which seemed to be often, she would comb her fingers through the long strands.

At times, she looked, stared, watched him impassively, and he tried not to be affected. Unfortunately, when a woman watched his currently unclothed body with such single-minded focus, he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t had sex in a very long time and…well, there was a completely logical reason for a man to be aroused.

Heavily, painfully aroused.

Catherine didn’t seem to notice, thank God. When she sketched, she got caught up in some other world that he wasn’t a part of.

Her hand moved to the lower edge of the paper, and she leaned forward, the robe gaping an inch, almost enough…

If he moved his head only a fraction lower, he’d be able to…

She leaned forward even more….

His head followed, and he could almost make out…

“Oh,” she muttered, and then snapped up from the chair, regretfully pushing the robe back into place. Her busy hands were back at his jaw, twisting, her brown eyes all business, studying him again.

“Sorry,” he said, wondering what she would think if he pulled her down to the bed for a momentary intermission. A break to stir her creative juices…maybe.

She shook her head. “The look in your eyes. It’s wrong. Can we put the sadness back?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve got you half-sad, but I’m not quite finished with it, and you look, well—” the nervousness was back in her face “—not sad.”

“I’m very sorry, but you make me…completely not sad,” he said.

That brought her out of her reverie.

“Really?” She looked at him, a pleased smile stretched across her face.

“Really.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t worry about the sad look. Maybe I could draw you like this,” she muttered, looking lower, and then faltering for a second.

Daniel felt his patience coming to an unrepentant, crashing halt, and he was a patient guy, but this was flat-ass weird. “You want the sad back? Keep staring at me like that and stay about four feet away. That’s sad.”

“Wow,” she breathed.

“‘Wow’ was not the word I would use,” Daniel said, fighting the urge to cover himself. Dammit, some things couldn’t be helped, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.

Her mouth pulled into another smile, equally pleased as before, but a little bit wicked, and she slid the robe off her shoulders and climbed on top of him. He showed her exactly how “not sad” he felt.

THEY DID EVENTUALLY make it outside. The late-summer sun burned down on her fair skin, the air was sticky, the sand hot, and the water looked too cool to ignore. Daniel was a good swimmer, not as good as she was—she, who had been the breaststroke champion at St. Ignatius, until Mrs. Crawford, the evil school nurse, had told her that swimming made her body look too much like a boy’s.

Thank you, Mrs. Crawford.

But Daniel didn’t seem to care. He caught her a few times, pulling her under the surface, touching her in ways that told her that he liked her body fine.

Take that, Mrs. Crawford.

Although one thing Catherine did notice was that he was never overt, never committing too much, always watching the lawyers next door with a careful eye. Daniel and Catherine appeared to be two swimmers in the sea, not two lovers lingering on the beach, but she decided that it wasn’t going to bother her. After all, she wasn’t the demonstrative type, either.

As the afternoon sun moved low they came out of the water. Daniel told her more about himself. He talked about his job at the accounting firm, about his brother’s bar. He asked her questions about where she worked, and this time Catherine was the careful one. Normally she loved to talk about Montefiore’s, but with all the talk in the back hallways of the auction house, she needed to be extra careful. So she told him she was gainfully employed at an art gallery in Soho where she did appraisals.

Catherine was always cautious.

Daniel listened, asking her polite questions about the business, and she gave her carefully constructed, socially acceptable tales of the canvas, and he didn’t seem to notice.

She avoided checking her watch, but eventually the sun started dipping lower in the horizon, and she knew it was close to time. Not wanting him to bring it up first, she glanced pointedly at her watch…once—but it was enough.

He met her eyes, and the loneliness returned. Odysseus was back on his travels. “I should get packed.”

Catherine sighed, then stood, dusting off the remains of the sand from her legs. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

“That’d be good,” he said, in a voice best described as emotionless.

This was it. That awkward moment when nothing more is going to come about, but everyone is expected to be adult. Catherine was supposed to pretend she hadn’t given her body to a man who was virtually a stranger, yet she’d never felt a stronger connection with a stranger, never felt a stronger connection with a non-stranger, either, for that matter.

Not many men understood a woman like Catherine. She’d spent so much of her life staring at art, studying art and drawing art. She lived in a quiet, inanimate world and at some point, the world became her, and she became the world. And actually, Catherine was happy in that quiet, inanimate world.

Daniel, with his lonely eyes. She’d thought this man understood her, but with every second that passed she felt him putting distance between them. Yes, she wanted to see him again, but she wasn’t going to ask, and put herself out there. This was one weekend only. A limited engagement.

Daniel followed her into the house and headed for the bedroom where his things were. The unused bedroom.

After Catherine called the cab, she stood over the kitchen counter. Her hands gripped the cool granite. Some part of her didn’t want this to end, but what choice did she have? Eventually, she spotted a bottle of water, helpful for his train ride back to the city, and her genetically propagated social skills came to the rescue.

With the travel refreshment in hand, she went to the bedroom. He didn’t notice her at first because he was engrossed in something entirely new and different—the heavy gold band sitting on top of his duffel bag.

A wedding ring.

Okay, that explained it. Catherine ignored the shooting pains radiating up from her gut to somewhere near her heart. She did hand him the bottle of water. In times of crisis, always best to remember one’s social skills.

She tried to not look at the small circle of gold. However, like the Mona Lisa, it drew your eye like a magnet.

A wedding ring.

Not quite what she had imagined.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, easily reading her mind. Catherine didn’t have the patience to hear excuses, not when she suddenly understood why he hadn’t cared if she talked much.

Catherine Montefiore, walking vagina. That was her.

“Don’t say anything. It’s better that way. I’ll think more highly of you if you don’t try and wangle your way out of this.”

Soullessly, he stared at her, and again she felt it, that complete isolation of his, but now it made more sense. It took a cold man to do what he did.

He nodded curtly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have told you up front.”

“You should have,” she replied tightly. Thankfully, she heard a car horn. “What amazing timing. Taxi’s here.”

He donned his ring, slung the duffel over his shoulder and gave her one last look. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I liked being with you. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like that. It felt good. You should know that.”

Catherine fisted her hands behind her back, her mouth scrunched together. She didn’t want to yell. Not yet. Not until he was gone. What an easy mark. For that she hated herself nearly as much as she hated him.

“You’re right. I don’t want to hear that,” she told him, waiting until he walked out the door and left.

After she heard the rev of the taxi pulling away, Catherine went to take a shower. A long shower because right then she needed nothing more than to get clean.

Sadly, she knew the shower wasn’t going to help.

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