of an artist and a man more accustomed to physically working hard for a living. That traitorous curl of warmth licked through her body again. She really needed to get out more, she thought as she tried to quash the attraction she felt toward him. She’d been sequestered in her London home since her father’s death and, aside from a brief trip to New York to support her best friend during the auction of Macy’s famous mother’s possessions, she’d kept social contact to an absolute minimum. Maybe it was time for that to change. In fact, hadn’t Macy told her she should at least meet Marcus, if only for the eye-candy quotient?
Change or not, Marcus Price was too slick for someone like her.
“About the Cullen Collection—” he began after taking a sip of his coffee.
“I’m not interested in selling. I don’t know how I can be any clearer on the subject,” Avery interrupted.
She really was losing patience over this. She couldn’t expect anyone to fully understand just why she was so determined to hold on to the paintings. They were collecting dust in her family’s Los Angeles mansion. Deep down she knew she needed to do something—loan them to a museum or a gallery, anyone who’d appreciate them more than she did. But she couldn’t bring herself to let them go just yet. Her father had amassed the Impressionist works over her lifetime and even as a child she’d understood his satisfaction in acquiring another piece for the collection.
Forrest Cullen had loved every canvas with a devotion Avery had often envied for herself. Oh, she knew her father had loved her in his own distant way, but even after her mother’s death when she was five he’d continued to remain a disconnected parent. She’d always felt her father had had two great loves in his life. His wife and his collection. She wasn’t about to part with the remaining tangible link she had to the man she’d idolized her whole life. It, and the garden here in London that he’d so patiently tended, made her feel closer to him—made his loss less raw.
Marcus interrupted her thoughts, bringing her very firmly into the present.
“I’m sure you’re well aware of what the collection could command from the right buyers.”
Avery gave him a cynical half smile. “Look around you, Marcus. I’m not exactly short of a dollar or two.”
“Then think of it this way. Those paintings deserve to be in the hands and view of people who truly appreciate them.”
She stiffened. Had David told him that she actually didn’t even like most of the collection? No, surely even he didn’t know that much.
“Are you suggesting I don’t appreciate my father’s collection? That’s rather assumptive, wouldn’t you say?”
Marcus narrowed his green eyes and gave her an assessing look. She fought the urge to tidy herself under his scrutiny, to smooth the wisps that, in the curse of fine blond hair, had escaped her ponytail and even now tickled against her cheeks in the light afternoon breeze.
“I’m sure you have your reasons, but I believe that anyone can be swayed with the right enticement.”
She laughed aloud. The sheer audacity of the man.
“I’m not interested in enticement, Mr. Price,” she said, deliberately returning to using the formal version of his name. “Now, if you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll ask Mrs. Jackson to see you out.”
“Are you going back to your painting?” he asked, not moving an inch from his seat.
She felt her guard rise even higher. “I believe I asked you to leave, Mr. Price.”
“Marcus. And you did. Ever so nicely, but—” he leaned forward and traced one finger across a smear of paint on the index finger of her right hand “—I find myself wanting to continue to discuss art, and its many forms, with you.”
For just a moment she was trapped in the thrall of his touch. So light, and yet pulling from deep within her a reaction so intense it took her breath clean away. If circumstances had been different, she’d lean toward him, too, and see whether he tasted as enticing as his words sounded.
The squawk of a bird settling in a nearby tree broke the spell Marcus had woven. She wasn’t into fleeting pleasure and a fling with Marcus Price would be exactly that. A fling. Life was worth so much more—correction, she was worth so much more than that. Avery pointedly looked at his hand before withdrawing her own from beneath it.
“Sadly, I can’t say the same.”
He quirked his lips in a half smile. “C’mon, I bet you’re wondering, even now, what it is that you’re doing wrong with your painting, why it’s not working.”
The challenge hung in the air between them.
“Wrong?” she answered, raising her brows.
“I am recognized as something of an expert in art, you know.”
“Selling it, perhaps.”
“Identifying what’s worth selling,” he corrected, his voice still light but carrying an underlying steel that proved she might have dented his pride just a little.
“So, tell me, what is it that I’m doing wrong,” she challenged. She didn’t for one minute believe he’d be able to direct her any better than she could herself.
“It’s in the way you’ve captured the light.”
“The light?” Oh, God, she must sound like an idiot parroting his words.
“C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Before she could answer he’d risen from his chair and taken her hand in his own. The warmth of his fingers as they curled around hers, holding them lightly but without any hint of letting go anytime soon, felt oddly right. She was helpless to protest as he led her down the shallow terrace steps and back to where her easel stood waiting with its half-finished canvas.
“Actually, it’s more in the way you haven’t captured the light,” Marcus said, pointing to the dappled texture of rich early autumnal tones on the stretched canvas. “See? Here, and here. Where’s the light, the sun, the warmth? Where’s it coming from? Where’s the last caress of summer?”
In an instant she knew exactly what he was talking about and she mixed some paint on her palette and, with a clean brush, swiftly applied her attention to one area of the canvas.
“Like that?” she asked, stepping back.
“Yeah, just like that. You know what you’re doing. How did you miss it?”
“I guess the light’s been missing from my life for a while now,” she said without thinking. “And, I stopped looking for it.”
Two
Marcus couldn’t help but feel the solid wall of her grief as he watched her. He acknowledged it and then swept it to the back of his mind, where he could potentially deal with it later. Right now he had to keep his advantage. He’d been plotting for months to get beyond Avery Cullen’s well-trained guard dogs and he wasn’t about to waste his gain now.
He was close, so close he could feel it in the tingling in the pit of his stomach.
