All Fired Up (Stardust) (2 page)

The Joneses had always been her family, of course, her mother having been Lydia Jones’s sister, but Roxanne had never had any contact with them while her father lived. He hadn’t liked his wife’s relatives, apparently, and had cut all ties with them after her death. For sure he’d never spoken of them to Roxanne – never spoken to her much about anything. He hadn’t liked her either. Not that she could blame him. It must have been difficult for him having a daughter like her – must have been hell – even though Sam insisted her father had been wrong to think so.

If only she could believe Sam on that.

Her cousin was so clever about everything else. It was amazing what he’d done with some sawhorses and plywood, a few carefully angled planks, and a long swath of sky blue satin.

Balanced on the balls of her feet on the platform, her back arched and braced against one of the satin covered planks, and her arms spread wide, Roxanne didn’t feel like she was flying. She felt like a crucifixion victim, every muscle tensed and aching from the strain of holding the pose. But when Sam’s painting was finished, she would look like she was soaring effortlessly above the clouds on wings of feathery flame. She would be a
fire angel
. That was art for you.

The thought made her frown slightly. What was the difference between art and life anyway? She knew so little about either, but she suspected the distinction was more nebulous than many people presumed.

“Roxy? Everything okay? We can call it quits for the day if you’re tired.”

Damn, he’d caught the frown. She’d have to watch that.

Glancing down at the tall blond poised behind his easel, she flashed him a smile. “I’m fine. Just thinking too hard, I guess.”

“Ah, and I’ve warned you about that. No heavy thoughts in here, angel. They’ll pull you through the clouds, and you’ll crash.” Sam spoke sternly, but his expression was pure devilment.

Roxanne loved it when his eyes sparkled like that. But then those blue eyes of his were always sparkling, weren’t they?

“I want you to think only light, airy, frivolous things,” he instructed.

Her smile soured. “I don’t know any light, airy things.”

“Sure you do. You know feathers, don’t you? Haven’t you ever gotten a feather stuck up your nose?”

Roxanne felt a giggle building, but bit it back. “No.”

“No nose feathers, huh? Too bad.” His brow furrowed in thought. “What about marshmallows then? Ever dump out a big bag of fluffy marshmallows and walk around on them so they squish between your toes?”

The giggle erupted. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Sure is.” Sam grinned. “It’s also much better.” His gaze moved back and forth from her to the canvas – studying, comparing – then he squeezed a few new blobs of color onto his palette and plunged back into the business of creating a masterpiece.

Terribly impressed, and proud of her own contribution to the artistic process, Roxanne scrutinized the expert way he worked. Not that she had ever seen an artist in action before Sam, but he certainly seemed to know what he was doing. Samson Jones was one talented guy whose paintings hung in collections the world over and sold for thousands of dollars.

Roxanne had been raised in luxury, but ironically never had a dime of her own until her father’s investment firm crashed, leaving him destitute and dead of a heart attack from the shock. With no more funds to keep Roxanne where she had been living, the owners of the place had searched for a new place to dump her and located Cousin Sam, who’d been happy to claim her – who’d given her a
life
– and acted as though
she
were doing
him
a favor. He was paying her to model, for godssake, but still worried about the difficulty of the pose. Like she was supposed to
care
if her muscles cramped or went numb? Hell, she’d have cheerfully lain on nails or hung upside-down in a snake pit if he’d asked her. She owed him everything!

“No, you don’t,” Sam said, never missing a beat with his brush. “You don’t owe anyone anything. This is what family is for. You never should have been in that place to begin with. If I’d had any idea what was going on, you’d have been out of there years ago.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. Precious few people knew that Sam and his twin were psychic, but Roxanne had sensed it right off the bat, and they had debated it a lot since then – had speculated the trait came from their mothers’ family. A very mixed bag, heredity.

“Sammy, are you reading my mind?”

“Didn’t have to. Your expression was an open book. As long as we’re on the subject though, let me offer a little advice. The trick with telepathy isn’t knowing how to read minds, but how
not
to, otherwise you’ll drown in brainwaves.”

“I don’t have that problem. I’m not
that
telepathic. I just get little snatches of things here and there, but never much and never for long.”

“So we’ve discussed,” Sam said carefully. “But you have other gifts.”

Gift? It was a
curse
. But they’d discussed that, too, and talking about it didn’t help.

Sam reached for a palette knife and rag to begin the work of scraping and wiping his palette, then cleaning his brushes.

“Time to land, fire angel. The light’s shifted. I can’t paint anymore today. Need a hand getting down?”

“No, thanks, I can manage.” Slowly, so as not to jar herself, Roxanne lowered her arms and relaxed her arched spine. She’d been holding the pose for twenty-minute stretches with ten-minute breaks in between, but after three hours of this regime felt stiffer than the plywood she stood on. Modeling was hard physical labor, harder than ditch digging, she mused. She’d never be able to look at a figure painting or sculpture again without wondering what the model had suffered while posing for it.

Sinking to a sitting position, she rested a moment before climbing off the platform and reaching for her clothes, navy blue sweatpants and a drab gray T-shirt – loose fit and nice cool colors, the kind she always wore. The only kind she
could
wear. With tawny hair and a fair complexion, Roxanne might have looked better in something brighter, but bright warm colors were dangerous. Anything warm was dangerous. Her life was devoted to keeping cool, and baggy, plain garments seemed to help.

Only not now. Having tied the drawstring of her sweatpants, she was pulling the T-shirt over her head when a hot flash hit. A red alert. She stiffened to attention, like a buck private caught goldbricking by the company commander. Sam stiffened, too. As fast as Roxanne had tried to block the heat, he had sensed it. It would have been impossible not to. The air of the studio had literally crackled for an instant, as though the electrical system had short-circuited.

“Roxy? Are you all right?”

No. She was trembling and suddenly sweating.

“A…a man. I felt his thoughts,” she stammered. “He’s coming down the street to Jileana’s shop…coming
here
.”

Sam leapt back in overblown horror, his expression aghast, his hands flying to his head. “A
man
? God, no! Not a man! Not here!”

Roxanne glowered.

Sam sobered. “Anyway, hon,
you
are the one who’s minding Jil’s shop while she and Jack are away, so don’t you think you’d better unlock the door? I know her regular customers usually call for appointments first, but there’s always room for new business. Never pass up the chance for a sale.”

Before she could balk, he took hold of her shoulders and steered her toward the closed door in the partition that separated his studio from the antiquities dealership housed in the front of the building.

“I…I don’t think he’s looking to do business,” she choked out, her heels skidding against the floor as Sam shoved her forward.

“Then consider it an opportunity to make a new friend.”

“I don’t think he’s looking for friendship exactly either.”

Sam halted and turned her around to face him, his eyes beaming down on her like searchlights. “Not a customer and not a friend, huh? Then what
does
he want?”

“Me,” she said weakly. “Only…only he’s never seen me before. All he knows is my name. He kept thinking” – she gulped – “Foxy Roxy, Foxy Roxy…”

“A Foxy Roxy who is acting like Chicken Little,” Sam muttered. “Well, whatever you are, mystery woman, you have to learn how to handle these situations. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding.”

“I’m not worried about the rest of my life, just the next five minutes – you have too many combustibles in here!” With a frightened squeal, she pulled loose and fled to the opposite end of the studio.

Sam heaved a small sigh and followed at a more sedate pace. “What now?”

“He’s here!” She glanced in panic at the partition.

“Well, we
were
expecting him.” Sam took hold of her shoulders once more.

Roxanne’s breath hitched as a new flood of images swamped her. “He…he’s hoping for a beautiful blonde, like Delilah. Or…or a sassy redhead, like Muffy.”

In the process of skidding her back across the floor, Sam couldn’t help chuckling. Whoever the guy was, he had good taste and was evidently familiar with the Jones family. But Delilah and Muffy were only two of Sam’s four sisters – the two tall ones.

“What about Jil and Buffy?” he asked. “Do you see any diminutive damsels in his head?” He stopped shoving, to give her a moment to concentrate.

“No,” Roxanne finally answered. “But there are a couple of leggy brunettes in there. They look kind of oriental.”

“Really?” Sam’s interest perked up. He had a bit of a penchant for exotic brunettes himself – purely artistic, of course. Maybe he should sneak a mental peek… Nah. He focused his attention back on Roxanne.

“Then it sounds to me like you are perfectly safe,” he informed her.

“How do you figure that?” she ground out as he resumed the shove to the door.

“Because you’re not his type. The guy apparently likes Earth Goddesses and Dragon Ladies, while you” – he paused for emphasis – “are a sparkling little Fire Fairy.”

“Angel,” she corrected glumly.

“That, too,” Sam said. “At any rate, you’ll be okay. And just to make sure, I will stay close by with a fire extinguisher.”

“It better be a big extinguisher,” Roxanne grumbled. Sharp hot prickles stung her. A throbbing pressure filled her skull, like something hammering to be let out – no, wait, the hammering was someone asking to be let in. But that was worse.

A lot worse, because now she was getting visions of the hammerer. Not the inside of his head, but the outside – along with everything it was attached to. And it was attached to quite a handful, all of it hard muscled and radiating raw sexual force. Tall, dark, painted-on jeans, black leather vest and biker boots. The image crashed over her, like a tidal wave, almost sweeping her off her feet.

Sam peeked through a hole in the partition to see the tidal wave in the flesh. “Relax, it’s only Slo Larkin. Slo never stays in town for long. Star gives him hives – something in the water maybe.”

He opened the inner door and nudged Roxanne into the shop.

“You mean
Winslow Larkin
?” she whispered, struggling to process this news. “Mrs. Dixon’s
grandson
?” He knees almost buckled as the man’s gaze met hers through the plate glass of the shop’s street door. “That cute little boy she was showing me pictures of last week?”

“Yeah, well, he’s grown up a bit since those pictures were taken,” Sam whispered back. “But don’t call him Winslow – he hates it. People only call him Winslow when they want to tick him off.” Leaving Roxanne, dizzy and dazed, by the long wooden counter at the rear of the shop, he strode to the street door, swung it open, and greeted their visitor with a blinding solar flare of a smile.

“Hey, Winslow! Good to see you, man. How’s the paintin’ business?” Ignoring a dark-eyed dagger glare, he pulled the glare’s owner into the shop and slapped him on the back. “This guy’s the Michelangelo of the airbrush, turns cars into artwork,” he told Roxanne while slinging a friendly arm over Slo’s shoulders. “He’s got a great hand for portraiture, too, but doesn’t use it much.”

“No time to. But thanks anyway for the vote of confidence.”

Slo shrugged off Sam’s arm. After spending several impatient minutes on the sidewalk, waiting to be let into the shop, he was now wondering how fast he could get out. Foxy Roxy wasn’t so
foxy
after all. She looked more like a scared rabbit. A pretty little thing, he supposed – even if she did dress like a sack of groceries – but the emphasis there was on the “little.”

Little as in young.

Little as in innocent.

Slo had never had much interest in the young and innocent even when he’d been young and innocent himself. He liked women who could hold their own with him, women who knew the ropes, who appreciated a good time and wouldn’t get all bent out of shape when the good time was over…

“Have you met my cousin?” he heard Sam asking, and from the tone of the question realized this wasn’t the first time Sam had asked it. Slo also realized he’d been staring openly at Little Miss Innocent, who’d reacted to the appraisal as any self-respecting, wary virgin would – waxing wide-eyed, backing away and blushing hot pink.