True Colors (12 page)

The evening air was pleasantly cool, briny
from the ocean breezes drifting up from the beach beyond Atlantic
Avenue. Two couples strolled up the block, talking and laughing,
and edged past Max and Emma to reach the bar’s door. Max waited
until they were inside and he and Emma were once again alone on the
shadowed side street. He waited because he wasn’t sure what he was
going to do. He waited because the dusk light had an orange glow
that made Emma’s hair shimmer like curls and swirls of flame.

Then he stopped waiting. He cupped his hands
over her shoulders, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.

Her mouth tasted even more delectable than it
looked, sweet and soft, like the flesh of a nectarine. Her lips
parted and her hands skimmed his sides and circled around to his
back, holding him close. She kissed him as eagerly as he kissed
her.

This was why he’d declined
the MIT president’s invitation, and told Stan he couldn’t remain in
town for dinner. This was why he’d skipped checking into the Hyatt
Regency in Cambridge. It had nothing to do with buying a damned
toothbrush. It had been
this.
This obsessive, encompassing, mind-boggling need
to kiss Emma.

He wasn’t sure how long the
kiss lasted. Minutes. Hours. An eternity. Less than an instant.
What he
was
sure
of was that when they finally came up for air, he believed he
wasn’t the same person he’d been before.

“Max.” Her voice was softer that a breath, so
soft he couldn’t tell if she was angry or upset or turned on, or
all of the above.

“Should I apologize?”

“No.” She lowered her eyes and shook her
head. The lush waves of her hair captivated him. He couldn’t stop
himself from lifting a hand to the top of her head and stroking his
fingers through the thick, fiery locks.

She sighed, angling her head slightly,
allowing him to caress the skin behind her ear. “I couldn’t stop
thinking about you all day,” he confessed. “It’s crazy. I hardly
know you, and what I know, I’m not sure I like.”

That got a laugh out of her. “Well, I hardly
know you, either. But one thing I do know about you is, you’re
honest.”

Not as honest as she believed, but he didn’t
argue the point. Instead, he pressed a kiss to her hair, which was
cool and silky against his lips, and then to her forehead, which
was warm and smooth and made him want to kiss every square
centimeter of skin on her body. “All right,” he murmured, then
touched a kiss to the outer corner of her left eye. “I’ve got a
king-size bed at the Ocean Bluff Inn.” A kiss to the outer corner
of her right eye. “I also happen to own a house here in town, and I
know it’s got a few beds in it.”

Her sigh sounded almost like a purr, a deep
vibration in her throat. She tilted her face so his mouth could
find hers again. “No,” she said just before locking her lips to
his.

He kissed her for a long, luxurious moment,
then pulled back. “No, what?”

“No, I can’t go to bed with you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” He grazed her chin with a
kiss.

“Won’t.” She brushed her lips against the
hollow of his neck. “You’re not my type, Max.” Her fingers flexed
at the small of his back, sending an electrifying jolt of arousal
through him. “I’m an artist. You’re a landlord.”

“I’m a hell of a lot more than that.” He
tightened his arms around her, pressing his hips to hers, letting
her know what she was doing to him.

She made that purring noise again. “You’re a
businessman. You’re someone who cares about insurance and liability
and stuff like that.”

“And you’re someone who obviously doesn’t.”
He smiled in spite of himself.

“I mean, it’s not like we’ve got some grand
relationship going.” Her hands slipped an inch lower on his back,
and his dick grew an inch harder. “It’s just—”

“Chemistry,” he said.

“I was going to say animal attraction.”

“I think chemistry, you think biology.” He
used his thumbs against the delicate bones of her jaw to raise her
lips to his once more.

They kissed deeply,
hungrily. Drawing back, she said, “Let’s call the whole thing off.”
He must have looked appalled, because she grinned. “It’s an old
song. ‘You say
po-tah-to
, I say
po-tay-to.
’ You think chemistry, I
think biology.” She sang, “Let’s call the whole thing off,” in a
lilting melody.

“I like ‘True Colors’ better,” he told her—an
admission that surprised him as much as her. He hadn’t thought he
liked that song at all. Yet it had brought her across the tavern to
him, hadn’t it? It had delivered her into his arms. For that alone,
he loved it.

“I do, too,” she admitted, edging back a
step. She jerked her hands from him, as if they’d been glued to him
and she’d had to exert herself to break the adhesive. Another step
back, and he could see, even in the waning light, that she was
flushed, her lips glistening, her eyes not quite focused. “I really
have to go,” she said. “Monica is waiting for me.”

That was a lame excuse, but he didn’t
challenge Emma. If she didn’t walk away from him, she would wind up
in his bed—either at the inn or at the house. And she wasn’t ready
for that. Physically, maybe, but not emotionally.

He wasn’t ready for her emotionally, either,
but he didn’t care. He wanted her, anyway.

He would have to wait. Maybe while he did, he
would come to his senses and realize that pursuing anything with
Emma, physical or emotional, was a stupid idea. In a matter of
days, he would have the house listed. He would be back in
California, living his life. An interlude of hot sex would be
terrific, but he didn’t need it to survive, and he wouldn’t chase
Emma if she didn’t want to be caught.

She reached for the door to the bar, but when
her fingers curled around the handle, she turned back to him.
“About tomorrow, I have to go to the community center in the
afternoon. They may have a room I could use as a studio. So come
early.”

Come early?
Oh. Right. She meant
come
to the house
. Because she was going to
paint his portrait.

And he was going to…what? Pose while she
gazed at him and analyzed him and moved his hand this way and his
leg that? He was going to sit as motionless as a vase or a bowl of
fruit while she objectified him on a canvas?

Of course he was—because he’d said he would.
Because posing would mean spending more time with her, getting to
know her better, maybe finding out that they were more than a
conflict between chemistry and biology.

Because while she was gazing at him, he could
be gazing at her, imagining her naked, imagining her lying beneath
him.

Imagining her seeing rainbows when she
came.

The next morning, Emma was still freaking
out.

She hadn’t slept well. More accurately, she
hadn’t slept at all. Infused with a nasty mixture of adrenaline,
bewilderment, and sweat-inducing arousal, she’d lain in bed, trying
to figure out what the hell had happened between her and Max
outside the Faulk Street Tavern.

Inside the Faulk Street Tavern, too. The
whole thing had started when that damned song had started
playing.

That blessed song.

She was in love. No, she wasn’t.

She was in lust. No, it was more than
that.

She was in trouble. That much was
certain.

Good God. Who would have guessed that Max
Tarloff could kiss like Casanova on steroids? She couldn’t recall
ever being so turned on by a few kisses. She couldn’t recall ever
being so turned on at all.

And he was her flipping landlord. And she was
supposed to paint him. Definitely, she was in trouble.

She hadn’t told Monica about the encounter
outside the pub. When Emma had rejoined her friend at their booth,
Monica had immediately started pumping her for information about
her conversation with Nick Fiore. Emma had welcomed the
distraction, happily discussing the possibility of scoring some
studio space at the community center. “If you can work at the
center, you’ll probably attract a lot more students,” Monica had
pointed out. “You can post class schedules on the bulletin boards
there, and in the center’s newsletters. This could work out
fabulously, Emma! Not only would you have space to teach, but you’d
generate a lot more income. People would go to the center, swim a
few laps, and then spend an hour painting—and paying you.”

“If
,” Emma had emphasized. “First I have to see if there’s a room
at the center I can use.” Even if there was, Emma’s housing problem
would not be solved. But if the community center worked out, she
could live in someone’s basement or above someone’s garage and not
have to worry about breaking zoning laws by conducting her art
classes in a non-commercial venue.

For all his fussing about those stupid zoning
laws, Max seemed to have no objection to her beginning work on his
portrait in his not-zoned-for-commercial-use house. Of course, all
she would be doing today would be photographing him and
interviewing him a bit, so she could get a sense of what his dreams
were for the background imagery.

The thought of interviewing him made her
queasy. The thought of being alone in the house with him made her
giddy. She was tempted to beg Monica to take the day off and stay
home, but then she would have to explain why. What would she say?
“Max and I need a chaperone so we won’t jump each other’s bones the
minute he gets here.”

She couldn’t talk about her steamy interlude
outside the Faulk Street Tavern with Max, not even with her best
friend. Not until she’d made sense of it—which seemed pretty
freaking impossible.

Tired of lying in bed, battling insomnia
while her brain tied itself in macramé knots, she’d arisen at five
and gotten to work framing Ava Lowery’s painting. The frame she’d
purchased after she and Monica left the pub yesterday evening
complemented the painting beautifully. Ava’s parents would be
pleased. Ava—the little princess—would be ecstatic.

Emma waited until after
Monica had left for the Ocean Bluff Inn and she had the house to
herself before showering, attempting futilely to tame her hair with
a round brush and her blow-drier, and fretting far longer than
necessary about what to wear. Her baggy, paint-speckled jeans and
overalls made her look like an artist, but they weren’t exactly
flattering. Her few skirts
were
flattering, but they would set too formal a tone
for her morning session with Max. She tried on three different tops
before settling on a cotton sweater in a bright turquoise shade and
a pair of khaki slacks that had seen better days—but then, all of
her clothing had seen better days. Once she and Claudio had broken
up and she’d had to fend for herself, her budget hadn’t allowed for
splurges at New York City’s boutiques and department stores. Even
the consignment shops in her Dumbo neighborhood had been too pricy
for her.

She fussed some more with hair before giving
up and letting it curl any which way it wanted. She checked her
watch four times. She tested her digital camera to make sure it
didn’t need new batteries. She choked down a cup of coffee, then
brushed her teeth. Not that she and Max were going to kiss again.
She just didn’t want to have coffee breath.

At a few minutes past nine, the doorbell
rang. She gave herself a mental slap on the cheek and a stern
reminder that she was a painter and this was a professional
engagement, that if Max decided to go forward with the project, she
would charge him for her time and talent, that—for God’s sake—he
was her landlord. That his willingness to consider having her paint
his dream portrait and his offer to help her find studio space had
meant nothing more than that he’d fallen under a weird spell cast
by a Cyndi Lauper song in an antiquated jukebox with peacocks on
it.

The song’s weird spell was why they’d kissed,
she reminded herself. Yesterday’s spasm of lust wouldn’t have
occurred if “True Colors” hadn’t suddenly escaped the jukebox and
filled the air when he’d stepped inside the bar.

You are an artist,
she lectured herself as she descended the stairs.
Glimpsing Max on the front porch through the narrow sidelight
framing the door, she added,
you are a
tenant.

One more deep breath, and she opened the
door. “Hi,” she said brightly.

His smile was hesitant. Did he want to back
out? Did he want to run for cover? She wouldn’t blame him if he
did.

But she hoped he wouldn’t, because he was so…
damn, so gorgeous. The sky was overcast, but enough morning light
seeped through the filmy white clouds to illuminate the striking
geometry of his face. Such piercing eyes, such a strong, sharp
chin. All that thick, dark hair, as disheveled as her own. Had he
blow-dried his hair, too? Had it fought all attempts to tame it,
the way hers had?

“Come in,” she said, doing an admirable job
of behaving as if nothing R-rated had occurred between them
yesterday.

He followed her down the entry hall, his
footsteps slow but steady. If he wasn’t racing up the stairs to the
loft in an eager rush to pose for her, he wasn’t bolting in
retreat, either. He’d dressed in jeans and a ribbed gray sweater
that teetered on the narrow line between geeky and stylish but that
made her unfortunately aware of his lean, beautifully proportioned
physique.

At the top of the stairs, he gazed around.
She’d tidied up the loft, although with her art supplies stacked on
open shelves and the rumpled drop cloths blanketing the floor, the
open space was never going to look neat—not until Max kicked her
out and reclaimed the house for himself.