The curve of his lips branded my neck with male satisfaction. “I’ll take that as a no.” He dipped his thumb, ever so briefly, in the tiny gap between my stomach and the waistband of my jeans.
“Open your eyes, Stella. The photographer’s watching.”
My eyes flew open right as I heard the distinctive click of a camera shutter.
The event photographer.
The sound came from my left, which meant the angle was perfect for capturing an intimate couple moment between me and Christian without showing Christian’s face, which was buried in the right side of my neck.
An icy bucket of realization doused the fire in my blood.
This wasn’t real. None of this was real, no matter how good of an actor Christian was.
This was business, and I would do well to remember that.
I shrugged him off me and finally turned to face him.
“Nice job.” I smoothed a hand over my front, trying to wipe away the lingering memory of his touch. “That was the perfect setup. Do you think the photographer will let me post the picture? With credit, of course.”
Christian’s eyes narrowed. A faint flush colored his sculpted cheekbones, but sardonic coolness laced his reply.
“I’m sure he will.”
“Perfect.”
Awkward silence filled the previously charged air before his gaze drifted back to the painting over my shoulder. “You don’t like it just because it’s beautiful.”
It wasn’t a question, but I welcomed the change in topic. It was safer than whatever had transpired between us a few minutes ago.
Already, the breathless, lust-driven woman who’d melted beneath a simple touch seemed like a fever dream gone awry.
I didn’t lose my mind over men. I didn’t think about their hands on me or wonder how their kisses would taste.
“It’s the piece that speaks to me most,” I said after a brief hesitation.
I ached too much for the woman in the painting to consider it a favorite, but it entranced me in a way few things did. It was like the artist had crawled inside my mind and splashed my fears onto canvas for all to see.
The result was equally liberating and terrifying.
“Interesting.” Christian’s tone was unreadable.
“What about you? What’s your favorite piece?” A person’s taste in art revealed a lot about them, but he hadn’t shown more than a cursory interest in any of the gallery’s works.
“I don’t have one.”
“There has to be one you like more than the others.” I tried again.
His stare could’ve frosted the inside of a volcano.
“I’m not an art enthusiast, Stella. I’m here purely for business, and I have no desire to waste time assigning preferences to objects that mean nothing to me.”
Okay, then.I’d struck a nerve, though I had no clue which one.
Christian wasn’t an expressive person by nature, but I’d never seen him shut down so fast. All traces of emotion had disappeared from his face, leaving only practiced blankness behind.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize art was such a touchy subject,” I said, hoping to warm the sudden chill in the air. “Most people love it.”
At the very least, they didn’t hate it.
“Most people love a lot of things.” Christian’s tone said all he needed to say about his thoughts on the subject. “The word is meaningless.”
Don’t worry, Ms. Alonso. I don’t believe in love.
His words from the night of our arrangement floated through my mind.
There was a story there, but extracting blood from stone would be easier than getting that story out of him tonight.
“Not an enthusiast of art or love. Noted.”
I didn’t look at another piece, and Christian didn’t speak to anyone else. Instead, we walked toward the exit, bound by an unspoken agreement that it was time to call it a night.
It wasn’t until we stepped outside that his shoulders relaxed.
He slanted a sideways glance at me during our walk to his car. “It feels good to leave the house, doesn’t it?”
I sucked in a lungful of cold, fresh air and tilted my head up at the sky. The moon shone high and bright, bathing the world in silvery magic.
The night lurked with dangers, but those shadows seemed to disappear whenever Christian was around.
Even when he was moody and intractable, he was a source of security.
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
STELLA
Despite my reluctance toattend last week’s art gallery opening, it did break my self-imposed ban on not leaving the house.
I also hadn’t heard a peep from my stalker since the first note, which helped. By the time the following Wednesday rolled around, I’d relaxed enough to venture into public on my own again.
That was the thing about humans. We were hard-wired for survival, and we took every opportunity to convince ourselves that our problems weren’t as bad as we thought they were.
Hope and denial. Two sides of the same coin. They kept us from falling into a well of despair even in the darkest of times.
I visited Maura, shopped for groceries, and met Lilah for coffee, where I picked her brain about everything fashion design-related.
The only person I didn’t see was Christian, who was busy with work. At least, that was what he said. Maybe he was as discomfited by our interaction at the gallery as I was.
My pencil paused at the memory. The roughness of his voice, the heady scent of leather and spice, the way his touch seared through my clothes and into my skin…
Restlessness bloomed in my chest.
I shifted in my seat and shook my head before I channeled the ceaseless buzz into the task at hand—a stack of unfinished fashion sketches I’d dug up from the depths of my drawer after my meeting with Lilah.
I’d collected dozens of them over the years. I started each one intending to finish and make it the piece that would launch my brand, but inevitably, self-doubt and imposter syndrome would hit, and I’d abandon it for another photoshoot or a blog post. Things I knew I was good at and that had a track record of success.
But not this time.
Trying and failing is better than not trying at all.