Brush Strokes (6 page)

Nothing about his expression reassured
her. And only now did she realize he stood outside in just a pair
of jeans; shirtless, not even shoes covering his feet. Hell, she’d
just managed to slip on a pair of flip-flops before they hastened
outside. Other residents came out in similar states of undress.
Thank goodness the early fall weather accommodated their
attire.

Above the annoying fire alarm still
screaming maniacally inside, additional sirens approached their
location. If the fire department headed their way, all hopes that
this just might be a drill vanished. Maybe though, someone just
burned some popcorn in a microwave. Or maybe there was a small fire
in a trash can out back. Nothing that would threaten their home.
Her livelihood.

Fine time to worry about her future.
What had she been thinking back there? Certainly not about meeting
an almost impossible deadline. She’d allowed herself to be swept up
by Joe’s attention. Not just his attention, his kisses, his touch.
By the unspoken promise of much, much more.

“
Don’t,” he
cautioned.

A fire blazed in her eyes. She felt
the heat and he must have seen it. “Don’t what?”

He grasped her arm and pulled her away
from the growing crowd. “Don’t put any regret in what we just did.
Don’t make it something other than what it was.”

“
What was it? A chance to
let off some sexual steam?” She glanced toward the fire truck
pulling to a stop. “You come to my house, take off your clothes and
I ogle you for hours at a time. There isn’t gonna be some tension
between us?
Right
.”

Her words tumbled out, one
right after the other, without any input whatsoever from her brain.
If she’d listen to it, phrases like
stop,
you idiot
might prevent her from lashing
out at the person who’d been her support when she needed
it.

Men poured from the fire truck before
it came to a full stop. Someone yanked on a hose larger than her
thigh, unrolled it and rushed the end to a nearby hydrant. Another
man waited there, the cap to the hydrant already dislodged, and
together they mated connecting ends. One waited for a curt nod from
an older fireman near the truck and slowly released a flood of
water.

Joe shifted into her view. “Is that
what you really think? You think that we crossed a professional
line simply because of some tension? Like we’re teenagers who can’t
control their fucking hormones?”

She could still feel his kisses. Taste
his skin. Their memory infuriated her. “Joe, you are a gorgeous
man. Fine enough to be…” Nothing useful would come. “A model. What
red-blooded woman wouldn’t react to some attention from
you?”

“
You are equally stunning,
if not more so. But this isn’t just about physical beauty,” he said
roughly. He drew in a deep breath and lowered his voice. “At least
not for me, it isn’t.”

Unable to process his words, she
tilted her face away. She didn’t want to know what he meant. Didn’t
have the energy to split her attention between him and the danger
to her home. Everything she owned resided in that apartment. Every
penny she’d ever earned had been recycled into more supplies, into
stabilizing her living. One, maybe two more art shows backed by Mr.
Killian and she’d have enough to venture out on her own.

A collective gasp from the crowd drew
her attention to what they’d obviously been paying attention.
Flames licked inside an upstairs window, the bright orange glow
reverberating into the evening air. Smoke slipped through a small
gap in between the glass and the pane, billowing outward with a
promise of more to come.

“
Oh God,” she
whispered.

Joe stepped closer, the comfort of him
blanketing her back. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Are you
sure you want to watch this?”

She nodded, too disabled to find her
voice. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the progress of the
firemen. The city’s bravest. Her respect for them kicked up several
dozen notches. If they saved her art, her home, she wouldn’t know
how to repay them.

Joe’s arms crossed her chest, pulling
her against him and offering his support. Again.

Together they stood like that watching
while the men did their jobs. At one point, a second level window
exploded, a spray of glass striking some of the crowd below. As a
precaution, they were forced to move away from the building, but
bless him, Joe didn’t allow her to turn away. He backed them up,
keeping their bodies connected, her trust placed squarely in him.
In his ability to make sure they remained safe in the crowd, no
matter how they stood in the middle of the street.

Hours passed. She expected him to pull
away at any minute, to say he needed to leave. The only people who
still lingered were those waiting for the all-clear to go back
inside to assess the damage. They’d already been informed the fire
had been doused. However, they still waited on news of how much it
had claimed before being extinguished. She figured a lot of the
upstairs had been gutted. She prayed the downstairs had been
spared. She’d offer up her home to anyone who needed a place to
sleep, just please, let her paintings survive.

It was a horrible, selfish thought and
it made her stomach twist in knots. Ever in tune with her silent
emotions, Joe squeezed her in a fierce hug.

“
I can’t believe I’m
sitting here thinking about something as stupid as paint on canvas,
when people around me have just lost their homes.”

“
Shh,” he
soothed.

Tanya shook her head, her eyes filling
with tears. “There are people here who have no place to sleep
tonight. Hell, maybe me too, but all I can think about is the
months of work that might have gone up in smoke.”

He dropped a kiss on her temple.
“Sweetheart, you’re not the only one having those kinds of
thoughts. Look around you. No one is mourning the loss of a door or
a kitchen sink. Those things can be bought again, paid for with
insurance. The grief you see in everyone’s eyes is for those things
they can never get back. The irreplaceable item someone’s mother,
lover or child gave to them. The one-of-a-kind gift they can’t get
back.” The wind picked up around them and he hugged her again. “One
day you’ll look back and be grateful that no one lost their life in
the fire. Today, though, today it’s okay to miss what you’ll have a
hard time replacing.”

“
It doesn’t make me feel
less guilty.”

“
Let’s just wait and see
what we’re working with here, first.”

She nodded, unwilling to acknowledge
his use of “we”. His empathy, his support she cherished, but still
had a hard time wrapping her mind around. He didn’t have to be
here. She still couldn’t figure out why he was. If he had a right
mind to it, he could stop on almost any corner grocery and pick up
a cheap shirt and flip-flops to get him home. Why wait around at
all?

The heated words they shared not long
ago still echoed in her mind. He’d said the intimacy they shared
went beyond just attraction to her, but what did that mean? They’d
exchanged not much more than passing conversation when he posed.
Maybe a few dozen lunches together when he insisted on a break.
Then again, he’d hugged her as any friend would the times a piece
had been accepted to show in a local display. He’d also offered her
sympathetic smiles when she received disappointing news,
too.

Turning to him for sexual release felt
as natural as breathing. He was gorgeous. He was safe. He was
nearby.

Her stomach rolled at the
thought.

Nearby?
Could she really find no better excuse for
allowing herself to be caught up in a whirlwind of, despite what he
said, hormones and emotions when she let things go a little too
far? And how much further would she have allowed him to
go?

Well, hell. Probably all the way. Joe
made her feel good. He boosted her confidence in her art. His
attraction hoisted her confidence in herself. But she knew about
celebrities who, after working closely together for months, fell
into ill-fated relationships just because they had no one else but
themselves for support during an intense time. Watching a man’s
nudity for months at a time didn’t get any more intense. Someone
who observed them from the outside might suggest that their
circumstances brought them together, not any kind of simmering
affection.

“
What are you thinking?”
His voice was tender, a silky stroke against her spine.

“
I—” She faltered, not
knowing what to offer. When she glanced down, though, she saw the
spray of goose bumps covering his arms. So caught up in her own
world, her own sorrow, she failed to remember that he kept himself
wrapped around her, keeping her folded in his warmth. In the
meanwhile, he stood shirtless, his bare back to the brisk autumn
wind, the temperature dropping as the hours passed. “I’m so sorry,
Joe. You must be freezing.”

He shrugged, an idiotically macho move
if ever she saw one. “I’m all right.”

“
And your feet,” she
groaned.

“
Will you chill? I’m all
right.”

She turned, ready to give him her
mother’s best bland look but commotion near the security tape
caught her attention. “Are they letting us back in?”

Her heart swelled as the tape dropped.
As one, the crowd started to move forward. Joe released her so she
could move with them, but slipped his hand in hers.

They made their way past a fireman
giving instructions to the residents of the second floor. Their
feet sloshed through puddles left behind. Her breathing became more
labored, her body trying to acclimate to the smoky air. The
atmosphere was damp, hot. Probably very similar to what a swamp
felt like in the middle of summer.

In their haste to leave previously,
they’d failed to lock the front door. Not like she had anything
worth stealing anyway. In retrospect, since she’d left her keys
behind, an unlocked door was probably a good thing. Except now the
door stood gaping, its charred mass an ominous greeting.

“
Joe?” She didn’t know if
she could move forward. Cement blocks replaced her feet.

He squeezed her hand. “Let’s take this
one step at a time. It may be worse out here than
inside.”

She already knew it wasn’t. Her pulse
raced because nothing good would be behind the mess of a
door.

Crossing the threshold was like
stepping onto a sponge. The cheap carpeting was ruined, the
underpadding beneath a soggy mess. The blackened walls and the
furniture’s skeletal remains a tell-tale of what transpired. The
fire had been here too.

Her legs threatened to buckle, but Joe
moved his hand to her waist, holding her tight against him. She
kept her sight on the doorway, the one that led to her studio. Her
body seemed incapable of movement on its own. It was Joe, her Joe,
who propelled her into taking the first step and then the next. He
forced her to face her future—whatever it would be.

In the doorway, they stood side by
side, staring at what was left of her livelihood.

Joe didn’t like the haunted look in
her eyes one bit. How could her rich, beautiful skin pale to a
sallow that left him wanting to pull her in his arms and hold her
until the hurt faded away? Her grief rolled off her until his heart
ached as forcefully as the rest of him. She stood there, wide-eyed
and disbelieving. He had no idea how she felt, but what he imagined
probably tore her in two inside.

Most of her supplies lay in ruins.
What hadn’t been consumed by fire had been stomped into uselessness
by the boots of firemen. And beyond that, canvas both used and
fresh, lay sodden because of a fire hose turned on them. With any
luck, some of the wood frames might be salvaged if they managed to
dry them out properly. Otherwise, they would bow in the drying
process, rendering them as useless as everything else.

Tanya shifted, her focus moving to the
paintings—what used to be her paintings—still stacked as neat as
coffins against the wall. From here he saw the massacre, what
remained of her work. She didn’t need to see. Not now.

He touched her elbow, urging her to
look at him instead. “There’s nothing to be done here, tonight. Why
don’t you go pack a small bag and come with me?”

“
I-I have t-to…” The
hitches in her words punched a hole in his stomach.

He kept his voice low, soothing.
“Gather your valuables, anything someone might want to steal and a
change of clothes. We’ll lock the door as best we can and come back
tomorrow. This will still be here when we get back.”

Fat teardrops rolled down her cheeks,
but she nodded. He waited, torn on whether to stay at her side and
help her or to remain behind to make certain she didn’t return.
Anything she wanted from this room, he would retrieve for her. He’d
spare her the agony of prying through the damage for as long as
humanly possible.

She dragged herself to the doorway,
pausing when she crossed the threshold. He tensed, ready to block
her line of sight if she turned to give the room one final perusal,
but she kept moving into the other room. A quick visual sweep of
the destruction as he went to the doorway sent another ripple of
anger through Joe. Holy hell he never expected a fire to cause this
much damage. Even if she managed to salvage anything in here, the
stench would stay with her stuff for weeks.