His Brand of Beautiful (3 page)

“So that explains how you failed kindergarten art class.”

“Richard—that’s my father—hasn’t got an artistic bone in his body. Neither do I. I was crap at art in pre‐school. I haven’t improved with age.”

“Not like your wines then?”

“My brother’s the winemaker. He got all the artistic talent. He can’t dance though.

Two left feet. He’s been petrified about the bridal waltz for months.” She smiled. “I’m the business brain. Michael’s my half‐brother, Richard and Saffah’s son. Lacy’s fiancè.”

Tate rubbed his chin and moved his gaze from her face to her painting. “You’re mixing too many colours. Do that long enough and everything turns calf‐crap brown.”

“Thanks for the tip, Mr Newell. Or should I say, Mr Rubens?”

His blue eyes seemed to pin her in place. “Of all the Masters you could choose... why Rubens? I mean, there’s Da Vinci. Van Gogh. Rembrandt?”

She thought about lying, then raised her chin: “I like the way Rubens drew his nudes.”

“Hmm.” Tate ran a finger along the top of her easel. “So do I. He drew his women
real
. And it’s
Sir
.”

A little acid slipped into her tone. “You’re letting this acting gig go to your head,
Sir
Newell.”

Laughter rumbled from his chest, the most genuine sound she’d heard from him all night. “Not
me
, wise‐arse. It’s
Sir
Rubens.”

Another giggle bubbled from her lips. His eyes dropped to her mouth and she felt her heart start impersonating a bouncing rubber ball.

Lily Malone

“I thought you looked hungry,” Marlene interrupted, snuggling as close as she could to Tate’s chest without getting covered in paint, a loaded plate in her hands. He picked up a baguette, tore a crust then dipped it into a bowl of olive oil and balsamic glaze. A drop of olive oil fell to the hand he cupped beneath the bread.

Christina tried not to watch him chew—his mouth was way too distracting. But that meant she found herself ogling his chest—and that didn’t help her heart rate either.

In the end, she chose to check out the other girls’ paintings. The good thing about this was it gave her new angles to surreptitiously study the tattoo on Tate’s bicep. What was that? Some type of lizard?

“Christina?”

She jumped. “Sorry?”

“Can you write everyone’s name on a piece of paper and put them in here?” Tate emptied an ice bucket into her sink. While she scribbled, he tapped on a wine glass and announced to the room: “I’m going to pick two names out of this bucket. The first person I pick gets to name a dare that the second person I pick has to do. Okay?”

The room hushed.

Tate dipped his hand. His watch scratched the edge of the bucket. He pulled out a scrap of paper, flicked it with a finger, looked up and smiled. “Marlene.”

Marlene Langton clapped her hands like a kid at Christmas. “The next person you draw out of that bucket has to lick the paint off your nipples.”

“Marlene!” Christina blurted.

Lacy’s mother’s plump hand shot skyward and she shouted: “Pick me, oh pick me!”

Christina began: “I really don’t think Tate signed on to have his nipples—”

“What CC?” Marlene challenged. “Is licking nipples too
wild
for you?”

Obviously they’d all had too much champagne to listen to any voice of authority. “It’s not too wild for me, Marls. It might be too wild for him.” She threw Tate a hopeful look. “I’m sure it’s against your union rules or something.”

“No rules in my union.” He gave her a grin that would have corrupted Snow White.

She wanted to slap him.

“Come on, CC,” Annabell pleaded, eyeing Tate’s chest like it was chocolate coated.

She couldn’t blame the girls, they didn’t know Tate wasn’t Nate, or that she had to
work
with this guy. And God knew he’d played the gig like a pro. Unless she wanted to be the biggest party pooper on the planet, she had no choice.

“Oh, go on then.” The chief executive inside her hoped like hell it wasn’t her name he picked. The woman? Well, she wasn’t so sure. Christina crossed her fingers for luck.

Tate dipped his hand in the bucket. He picked a scrap of paper out. When he looked up and their eyes met, a giant fist twisted her insides into rope.

“Chris
tin
a.” He made those three syllables sound elastic.

“Yes! There
is
a God,” Lacy yelled.

Christina’s palm whacked so hard against her sternum, it hurt. “I can’t lick paint. It’s toxic.”

“Lacy used edible body paints,” Tate said, parking his backside on the bar stool. “I made sure.”

She couldn’t seem to catch a breath and every time she tried it felt more like a shudder.

“Come on, CC! You’ve kissed a
frog
for a good cause. You can lick a bloke’s nipple!”

Lacy said.

“That frog was
endangered
,” Christina groaned.

Eileen Graham hollered: “Forget the damn frog. I’m the one
in danger
here. Of self-combusting!”

“Let’s redraw with
all
our names in the hat,” Marlene suggested, whip in hand, tapping the fluffy pink pass‐the‐parcel handcuffs still wrapped in their box and bow.

“Over my dead body, Marlene,” Lacy said with a wink. “Christina’s not chicken. Not Miss I’ll‐try‐anything‐once.”

“And I thought tonight wasn’t about me.” Christina’s legs felt like lead weights. She dared a glance at Tate’s face and caught a flash of the grin he tried to hide.

He doesn’t think I’ll do it
. It was enough. He didn’t know her. He had no idea what she was capable of. With that thought strong in her head, she straightened her spine.

She stepped between his legs and grasped a bicep in each hand, not caring when he winced. Her right hand partly obscured his tattoo—the lizard’s tail swept below her thumb.

Yellow paint—a lemon or maybe the sun—mocked her from his right nipple. Strands of chestnut hair escaped her cap and fell across his shoulder and she scooped them with one hand, trapped them against her cheek. His breath grazed her forehead.

“Your fingers are freezing,” he said.

“Bet her tongue isn’t,” someone mumbled, maybe Lacy’s mum.

“Here goes nothing.” Christina moistened her lips with her tongue, closed her eyes and bent lower. The smell overwhelmed every other sense—banana, raspberry, citrus—it was like stuffing her nose in a child’s fifty‐cent bag of lollies.

She poked her tongue out and searched for his skin.

****

It felt like she’d tasered him with her tongue.

Her fingernails were embedded in his bicep like claws. The sting was a good thing, he needed the distraction.

Christina lifted her head and licked her lips. “Mmm. Banana. You’re all just jealous.”

He heard Marlene roar: “I said lick the paint
off
his nipples, CC. Clean them up!”

There was a rustle of skirts and nylon as the girls jostled for a better view.

Christina surveyed his chest, her head tilted to one side and when she ducked lower, a loose hair tickled his throat. She licked his right nipple, once. Did it again. Then he felt the same silky slide across his left and he wondered how the hell he was meant to stay still when all he wanted to do was taste her like she tasted him.

He never thought she’d take up Marlene’s dare.
Never
thought she’d do it. Talk about a way to break the ice. Looked like the joke was on him.

Her hip bumped his inner thigh. “Chocolate.”

Someone muttered: “Get a room.”

When the doorbell buzzed he didn’t know whether to thank God or curse him. One of Lacy’s sisters said: “The Limo’s here.”

“Actually, that Limo is a fully restored 1955 S1
Bentley
.” Christina stepped back. Her finger brushed a fleck of brown paint from her lips. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She turned instead to find Lacy.

“You hired me a ’55
Bentley
?” Lacy threw her arms around Christina’s neck.

Lily Malone

“There’s another bottle of bubbles and fresh glasses in the car,” Christina murmured to her. “I’ll just settle the—” she swallowed —“bill.”

“Don’t be long,” Lacy responded, loading a sideways glance at Tate. “I don’t want my mother pissed before we even get to the Club.”

“Thank you.” The bride‐to‐be said to him as she kissed his cheek. Then she raced for the door, caught Marlene—hovering with a wet towel and welcoming smile—around the neck and dragged her from the room. Eager hands found bags and coats. Heels slapped down the hall.

Only Christina hadn’t moved.

The front door clicked shut. For the first time since she’d touched his body with her tongue—and
that
thought stoked the flame in his belly—green eyes locked with his.

“What the heck just happened?” Her words were slow and thick, like cooling caramel. Her eyes huge and—was that frightened?

He closed the space between them.

His fingers found the smooth ear lobe beneath the rim of her velvet cap; traced the outline of her cheek and like a cat responding to its owner’s pat she returned the pressure.

Her eyes closed under a curl of the longest damn lashes he’d ever seen.

“Lucky frog.” He traced her lower lip with his thumb.

Her eyes opened, the iris ringed in a thin rim of charcoal. “What?”

“Lucky frog. To get to kiss those lips.”

She laughed, a little shaky. “That frog wasn’t lucky. It was stuffed. That’s why the cameraman—”

He let his hand fall. “You kissed a
fake
endangered frog?”

“Well the cameraman couldn’t—”

He turned away, trying to breathe without the scent of her clouding his nostrils. He glanced down at the mess smeared across his chest. It had been fun while it lasted. Now he felt like a fool. Fake fingernails. Fake frogs. How much of this woman was real? And hadn’t he known that answer before he even got out of the Jeep?

“I thought you had a schedule to keep,” he muttered. “Where’s my shirt?”

“A few minutes won’t hurt and the driver will wait. You’ll ruin it if you don’t get cleaned up first. Do you want to use my shower?”

“Just get me a towel and I’ll sort it out myself.”

“Hey don’t blame me,
Sir
Rubens. It was
your
idea to turn human canvas. The idea of paint parties as I understood them is for us to paint you. Not paint
on
you.”

She snatched the towel Marlene had discarded and stalked to the kitchen, past crappy paintings abandoned far faster then they’d been drawn. With each step she whacked the rolled‐up linen in her palm like a copper’s baton. He was half a metre behind her when she turned and slapped the cold, wet towel across his collarbone.

“
Jesus
.” He sucked in a lungful of air. The towel came away the colour of mud.

“Would you look at that,” she said, voice like melted butter. “Mix too many colours and it
does
turn calf‐crap brown.”

On the street, a car door slammed. They both stopped at the sound, feet planted in the middle of her kitchen, squared‐off like gladiators, fallout from the party all around.

And they laughed at the same time.

“Sorry for being a prick,” Tate said, running a hand through his hair.

“Me too. You’ve done me a huge favour. I really am grateful.” She gave him a big, wide smile and its power hit him between the eyes like a thunderbolt. Not that she noticed.

She was already in the lounge collecting his clothes from her couch.

“We’d better hurry,” Christina said, staring at the pool of blue silk in her hands for so long he thought she might bury her nose in it.

She crossed back into the kitchen, the shirt waving in her hands. He half‐turned and held out his arms and she helped him into the sleeves like it was the most natural thing in the world, then reached for his shirt tails, started deftly slotting buttons. He could feel her breath on his chest.

“And this?” He let the tie sway in his fingers.

Christina stretched on tiptoes, a serious expression on her face, looped the tie beneath his collar. He knew she’d done it countless times because her fingers were expert.

He didn’t want to think about for whom. She shimmied the knot at his throat.

Velvet‐clad breasts brushed his chest. Her knee bumped his and he felt every point of heat where they touched, through belly, breast and thigh.

He exhaled over her sequined cap. “I want you, Christina.” And he heard her inhale, a sound like the rush of an ocean wave.

The Bentley’s engine roared.

He couldn’t see her face beneath the cap’s peak, but he could feel her tension. She quivered just outside his arms like a bow strung too tight.

“It’s Lacy’s party. I have to go.” But she didn’t step away. She stood clutching his tie with white fingers, a shake in her bare shoulders.

“You started something here.” He unwrapped her fingers from his tie and flattened her palm over his heart, trapping her hand beneath his own. The beat was brutal. It bashed at her. They stood like that, saying nothing, for what felt like an age, until he said: “We have unfinished business.”

There was only one handbag standing on her dining table and when it burst into
Give
Me Shelter
they both started. He released her hand and it fluttered up to straighten her cap.

Her eyes slid away.

“I don’t know how we’ll work together after this. I can’t think straight,” she said.

It brought him back to business with a jolt. “Christina I don’t—”

She stopped him by putting her index finger against his lips. “Of course you do, Tate.

Everyone mixes business with pleasure. This is Adelaide.”

****

Tate dug in his jacket pocket for the Jeep’s key, one eye on the boot of the beautiful Bentley where it turned at the deli on the corner of Three Oaks Lane and Hutt. Slim hands waved at him from the rear seat like some kind of albino octopus. The smell of fruit jubes was a cloud around him that he wasn’t sure he wanted to wash off. That would mean washing away the memory of Christina’s tongue.

There was an Irish pub on The Parade not far from his office where his staff had Friday drinks after work. He headed that way, although he wasn’t sure he wanted company.