Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
“Oh, of course.”
I moved to the chair behind my desk and unlocked my laptop.
They got back to work, moving on to the next painting, this one over the fireplace.
I pretended to look at my screen, but I looked at her instead, and so did the guys. Her wedding ring was absent once again. As I stared at her, I noticed the melancholy in her eyes, the same sorrow that had been there since the moment we’d met. That meant she and her husband were still having problems…or she didn’t have a husband.
I hoped it was the second one.
An hour later, they finished the last painting, and my once-bare walls were now full of the disturbed paintings that no one else valued. When others saw horror, I saw beauty…misunderstood beauty.
The guys filed out first and returned to their truck outside.
Astrid looked around at the paintings one more time before she approached my desk. “So, what do you think?” Her hands came together at her belly button, her shoulders back and her spine straight, a professional with a hint of elegance. It was hard to take her seriously when she was so damn beautiful. I was unsurprised to learn she was married to a rich man, because women like her were always promoted to trophy wife, a position they were happy to take because of all the perks. But in her case, it seemed like she actually loved her husband, which made the whole thing sadder.
The idiot didn’t know what he had.
“You did a great job.”
She turned around to take another look, admiring the paintings in the dark space, not realizing just how tight her ass looked in that skirt.
My eyes dropped to stare, wishing I could have a painting of that ass on my wall.
“Everything you chose really does fit the space perfectly.”
“You mean, fit me perfectly.” Dark. Disturbed. Enigmatic.
She turned back to face me, that hint of melancholy in her eyes once again.
I stared back at her, holding her eyes like I was squeezing them in a closed fist. There was a magnetic pull to her, affecting every object in the room with her, like the sun pulled on every planet in our star system.
She could hold my stare without looking away, which was what most women did. Whether it was across the bar or in a crowded room, they looked away the second our eyes connected. Sometimes they spoke to me, and sometimes they accepted my drink—but they couldn’t sustain the eye contact.
She could.
I could stare at her all day…like another painting in this room.
She cleared her throat. “I guess this concludes our business.”
“It does.” I left my desk and walked past her, catching a whiff of her perfume, wet roses in spring. My decanter of scotch was on the table where I’d left it, but I went to sit without pouring a glass. I sat at the side of the couch, one arm on the armrest.
She moved to the armchair, the seat I normally occupied.
I didn’t usually ask a woman to dinner, to a place where we could talk over candlelight, because I wasn’t much of a talker. Never had been and never would be. I had no desire for a relationship except for the fuck-buddy kind, where you would get that random phone call in the middle of the night to fuck.
But I wanted to ask her out again.
She sat with her ankles crossed, her delicate hands in her lap, looking like a queen without a crown, invisible weight on her shoulders. Her chin was tilted down, and her thick lashes curled away from her cheek.
I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t.
I wanted to ask what had happened with her husband, but I didn’t.
I wanted to know everything about her, but I had to accept I never would.
She lifted her chin and looked at me again. “Are you free tonight?”
My expression didn’t change, but I felt an uptick in my heartbeat, a subtle change in my pulse. “What did you have in mind, sweetheart?”
“Thought I could take you out to dinner.”
No woman had ever said that to me, and it was really sexy. “I have to reject the offer, sweetheart.”
Her stare remained steady, but I could see a hint of disappointment.
“Because I’m the one taking you to dinner.”
She parked her car at my villa, and we went together.
I assumed that meant she intended to stay over, but I would never assume that until her dress was on my bedroom floor. Until her heels dug into my ass because we were in too much of a hurry to take them off.
I drove us in my blacked-out Range Rover, the vehicle I preferred to take because it was a special build, the windows and the body bulletproof. She was beside me, her legs crossed in her little black dress, the material up dangerously high.