And Able (28 page)

Claire was relieved to discover that Brett’s house was nothing like his parents’ home. It was a simple, single-story ranch and she liked it. A lot. The living areas all had a sense of spaciousness that she really enjoyed and thought would be great for a family.

The décor surprised her, though. He preferred geometric lines and bright spots of color with warm overtones. The artwork on the walls was a mixture of his and other artists’, but all of it was striking.

“Where do you paint?” she asked as he led her through the living room.

“My studio is in the back of the house. Would you like to see it?” There was an undertone in his voice she didn’t get.

She looked at him questioningly, but said, “Yes.”

He nodded, his own expression so serious and intent that it would have scared her if she hadn’t had all the fear squeezed out of her the day before on a flight no one would call uneventful.

She followed him through a doorway into a huge room. It ran almost the entire length of the back of the house and was easily fifteen feet deep. This man took his need to relax through art seriously. Multiple skylights bathed the room in bright natural sunlight while the walls were covered with paintings in different stages of production.

Some oils were obviously not done. There were watercolors, too, and acrylics…but they all had one thing in common. Their subject: Her.

Every single painting she saw was of her. Some were of her sleeping. When had he seen her doing that? One was of her standing over a burning toaster, her expression resigned. She remembered the morning not long after meeting him for the first time that she had burnt her breakfast toast. He’d teased her because she couldn’t blame it on the toaster. She’d been reading a programming manual and pressed the button down twice instead of taking the toast out when it was done.

She moved around the room, her heart pounding as she looked at one painting after another of herself. Each expressed some different facial emotion. She stopped in front of one that showed her sitting on the end of the couch, her expression vulnerable.

“I was thinking about you.”

“I didn’t know that, but something in your expression called to me.”

She turned and her breath came out in a loud gasp as she saw a life-size oil, definitely finished. “You never saw me naked before. How could you have painted this?”

“I saw you a hundred times in my dreams. Amazing how accurate it is, isn’t it?”

She couldn’t answer. Her tongue wouldn’t work, but he was right. For a man who had only his imagination to go on, he’d done an incredible job of portraying her nude body.

“A gallery in New York has been trying to get me to show for months, but this is my best work and I couldn’t share it with the public, not without admitting that you meant way too much to me.”

She reached out and touched the painting, running her finger along the line of the lifelike curve of her breast to a nipple beaded with desire. “I look like I’m waiting for you to come back to bed.”

In the painting, she was in the middle of a big four-poster bed with sheets the color of the sunset, and while the top sheet covered one thigh, the rest of her body was completely open to his view.

“In my mind you were.”

“I just cannot believe you painted all of these of me.”

“It was the only thing that kept my sanity while I was so busy trying to hide from the feelings you brought out in me. I told myself you were simply an interesting subject.”

She dropped her hand and turned to face him then. “What feelings?”

“I told you, but you didn’t believe me. But I love you, Claire. I have for a long time. I blinded myself to it because…” His voice trailed off and his expression was pained.

“You didn’t want to break your promise to Elena.”

He sighed. “That was part of it, but it wasn’t all.”

“What else?”

“I loved Elena, but duty meant more to her than I did. I was afraid of the feelings I had for you…they were powerful, more powerful than anything I’d ever known.”

“You were afraid I would hurt you?”

He frowned, looking way less than pleased to be discussing this aspect of his emotions, but he nodded. “I sensed from the very beginning that you could hurt me more than she had and that bothered the hell out of me. I was such an idiot, Claire. I told myself I didn’t love you, that I couldn’t, that what I felt for you was better than love.”

“Maybe—”

“It
 
is
 
better than love, or at least the love I felt for Elena. What I feel for you is so much bigger, so much stronger, so much more than what I had with her. You’re the whole package, sugar, the one woman who makes my life complete. Can you understand that? I need you.”

She was going to cry, but she didn’t care. She never would have thought her hardened ex-merc could speak so poetically. “I’m not perfect,” she said with a choked voice.

“And I’m glad, because you are perfect the way you are for me. I love you so much, it scares me.”

“It scares me, too. I love you, Brett. So much.”

“I know, sugar, and I’ll thank God every day for the rest of my life that you do. Do you know that?”

She couldn’t answer and he didn’t seem to need her to.

He kissed her and then picked her up with his lips still locked to hers. He carried her to a bedroom and laid her on a bed and she saw that it was the bed in the painting.

“Is this what you call living out your fantasies?” she asked as he stripped out of his clothes.

He started undressing her, his hands purposeful and insistent as he took off first her shoes and socks and then her pants and top. He left her in her bra and panties, feeling more exposed than if she were completely naked.

He stepped back and looked at her, his expression filled with desire and tenderness. “Every moment with you is living out a fantasy, Claire. The best kind. Now, put your hands above your head, sugar.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to like looking at you that way.”

She laughed, doing as he said, enjoying the way it made her nipples rub against the lace of her bra. “I like it, too.”

“Now, keep them up there while I pull off your panties. Will you do that for me, sugar?”

“Yesssss.”

He didn’t remove her underwear right away, but first he traced all along the edges and then down over her mound, making her arch with need.

“That feels good,” she panted.

“Yes, darlin’, it does.” He played with her through the small patch of silk for a long time, until she was writhing under him and wanting his fingers on her naked flesh.

“Brett, please…”

Hotwire inhaled the sweet fragrance of Claire’s arousal and hooked his fingers in the waistband of her panties. He wanted to touch her silky, wet heat as much as she wanted his fingers there. Having her here, in his bed, was something he’d fantasized about repeatedly, but never let himself contemplate really happening.

But now that she was his, he would never let her go. He started pulling them down her legs, going slowly, letting the silk caress her thighs as he went. “You are going to marry me, aren’t you, sugar?”

Her head was twisting side to side. “You…what?”

The panties came off and she spread her legs in open invitation to his touch.

He fluffed her curls and then dipped one finger into her honeyed heat. “Marriage. You and me becoming husband and wife. You’re going to marry me.”

“I love you,” she groaned.

“And I love you.” He thrust two fingers up inside of her.

She cried out.

“Say yes, Claire. I want to hear the words.” He didn’t know where the strength to talk was coming from, but he needed to know she was done balking at the last fence.

“Yes. Whatever you want, Brett. Anything. Just touch me.”

He crawled up so he was over her, their bodies aligned. He kept loving her with his fingers, but didn’t touch her clitoris or that special spot deep inside. “Now, that’s an intriguing proposition, sugar, but what I need from you is a cognizant acceptance of my marriage proposal.”

Her hands came down from above her head and she grabbed his penis and pulled it toward her opening. “Yes, I’m going to marry you, but I may kill you first if you don’t make love to me right this minute.”

He surged inside of her, kissing her at the same time. They came together almost immediately, their meshed mouths catching the other’s cries.

Afterward, he rolled on his back so she was on top of him.

She nuzzled his chest. “I wonder if we are going to have a girl or a boy.”

“It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not building any dynasties. I just want healthy kids.”

“Me, too.” She lifted her head so she could look him straight in that incredible blue-eyed gaze. “I don’t want a big wedding, like Josette’s. I’d rather get married on the beach with just you and me and our friends. And your immediate family. Okay?”

His heart tightened in his chest. “That sounds great, sugar. Perfect, in fact.”

“Can we go on a honeymoon?”

“Yes. Anywhere you want.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, laying her head on his chest. “I don’t care where. I just want to be with you and know that we’re there because we love each other and want to be together for our whole lives.”

“That sounds good, sugar, real good.”

“Yes, it does.” She hugged him tight and he wrapped his arms around her, accepting once and for all that there was nothing better than love, not the kind he shared with Claire, anyway.

They got married on the beach…in Mexico. His family came, and their friends. Queenie came, too, from her new home near Roswell where she, Josie’s dad, and his wife printed a small monthly newsletter that specialized in conspiracy theories and exposing government cover-ups. After the wedding, Hotwire took Claire to an all-inclusive resort and taught her to snorkel and scuba dive while she helped him perfect his kite-flying techniques.

William Keely died mysteriously while in jail awaiting trial. There were rumors that he had connections that would not like being sold out for a deal he was negotiating with the D.A. The D.A. had been reticent to cut the deal because evidence had been mounting that Keely had killed more than one person in his rise to power…starting with the problematic farmer who had stood in the way of his father’s land development.

Claire was just glad that some kind of justice had been served against Lester’s murderer. When she said so to Brett, he commented that she was awfully bloodthirsty, for a pacifist.

She pointed out that she wasn’t a pacifist.

She was just a woman who, when she loved, she loved deeply, and she was going to love Hamilton Brett Adams to the depths of her soul all the way into eternity.