of his sort who had wandered through her gallery. The sea port and the resorts, on islands that dotted the coastline like sandy jewels, drew them like magnets. They came in multitudes, handsome and charismatic, sailors and athletes. Until, by virtue of their number, their uniqueness became ordinary.
Her initial unease, if her reaction could be called that, was simply that he’d caught her unaware. Towering over her as he had, the advantage had been his.
“Advantage,” she murmured, not unduly disturbed by her choice of words, or considering it unusual to think of a customer as having a controlling edge. Mollified by the rationalization, Nicole felt a bit foolish when she thought of the hard-bitten look of danger she’d imagined when she first saw him.
First opinions weren’t always right, were they? It had to be imagination. Right? If not, why hadn’t it occurred to her to be afraid? If he was truly dangerous in his quiet way, why wasn’t she afraid now?
Annoyed by the direction of her thoughts, she meant to resolve her nagging questions and dismiss him. Seeking whatever answers had eluded her, her covert stare ranged over him. From shaggy, sun-bleached hair that looked as if it wanted to curl but dared not, to the tips of his leather deck shoes, she inspected him as thoroughly as one would a stallion at auction.
Except she wasn’t buying. Not today, and not this one.
As if she’d spoken her disavowal, he looked up from a lithograph. A thoughtful smile teased the corners of his mouth, changing the planes and angles of his features, making them more than pleasant, and much, much more than attractive. And if it destroyed the myth that he was no different from so many others, it strengthened the conviction that any perception of danger in that look and that smile could only be the delusion of a mad woman.
Disconcerted that he’d caught her staring, she nodded curtly. As she resisted the temptation to sink farther into ignominy, a vague frisson of recall tugged at her memory, then flitted away.
Perhaps she was mad, after all, for there was still something about him. Something she couldn’t dismiss so easily.
“Nonsense!” The exasperated grumble accompanied a stubborn jut of her jaw as she returned to the work that waited. But work was a poor match for him. As she catalogued paintings and entered them into the ledger, a part of her resisted as another argued he was perfectly innocuous and just a customer. Summoning an elusive discipline she tried to quiet the notion there was anything familiar about him, and attend to the last details of the sale.
Five long, unproductive minutes later Annabelle Devereaux bustled in, her usual good-humored apology and bawdy explanation bursting from her before she realized Nicole was not alone.
“Oops!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, hiding a grin as she looked from one to the other. “Sorry!” she said, and was obviously anything but sorry. “The French libido isn’t exactly a proper topic with business afoot, but I didn’t realize there was business afoot already this morning.
“Wow!” She interrupted herself to lean over the desk. “What are these? No!” She warded off an answer. “Don’t tell me.” Canvases were shuffled slowly and her grin grew wider.
“Ashley!” Rising on tiptoe to shift a haunch onto the edge of the desk, she rested a stack of canvases on her knee. “You did it! Nicole Callison, you did it! Ashley Blackmon painted these, and somehow you’ve accomplished the impossible and convinced him to let us show them.”
“No,” Nicole demurred. “Ashley convinced himself.”
“Whatever. I don’t care, so long as we have them.”
“I’d like to include them in this showing.”
“You mean to sell?” Annabelle lifted an incredulous brow.
“Not this time.” Nicole shrugged. “Maybe never. Still, I’d like to include them.”
“Which means we’ll burn the midnight oil to change the exhibit.”
“One of us will.”
“Wrong!” Annabelle slipped from the desk and straightened her skirt. “Two of us will.”
Nicole laughed. “I knew I could count on you.”
If Annabelle’s grand entrance and conversation commanded Jeb’s attention, Nicole’s laughter stopped him cold. Before, it had been self-conscious and mechanical. But beyond that, he couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh with such abandon and delight.
As he saw her now, in an element she’d created, speaking with this irrepressible woman who was clearly a trusted friend, he knew he’d never seen her as happy.
When this was finished, when he’d done what had to be done, he wondered what would be left of her life.
“Good morning,” a cheerful voice boomed out. “The boss lady suggested that there might be something I can show you.”
Jeb turned automatically toward the woman who had appeared at his side. In his millisecond of distraction she’d moved with an astonishingly quiet step after her boisterous entrance. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“I can understand that. The wolf is beautiful.”
“The wolf?”
A dramatic gesture indicated the massive head of bronze where his clenched fist rested. “Since you’re two of a kind, it’s natural he would be one of your favorites.”
At a bit less than five feet, the woman called Annabelle was a foot shorter than he, but what she lacked in height was compensated for by unrestrained flirtation. As their gazes met, hers was flashing, unrepentantly appreciative. His was as aloof as an autumn mist. “I beg your pardon?”
“Honey.” Annabelle’s eyelids drooped in speculative appraisal. “Any man who looks as good as you, or as bad, has no need to beg anything from me.” A hearty laugh bubbled somewhere in the depths of her bosom as her shoulders shook. “At least, not too hard.”
“Good and bad?” Jeb mused. “An interesting if peculiar analogy.”
“Interesting, maybe. But not peculiar,” Annabelle declared. “Not peculiar at all. On the surface you’re good-looking in a rugged sort of way, but you can’t fool me. Underneath it you’re as wild and wily as the wolf, and twice as fascinating.”
“Wild and wily?” Jeb was chuckling now. The woman was outrageous and loved every minute of it. “Just an off-the-cuff analysis, huh? And if you had more time, you could delve a little deeper?”
“I wouldn’t mind the delving, but it isn’t necessary. Any woman worth half her salt can take one look at you and she knows.”
“But what does she know?”
A bold look moved over him again. “She knows everything.”
His chuckle turned to laughter. “I hope not. Sounds dangerous.”
“Only for the woman, sugar. But taking a crack at taming you would be worth it.” Abruptly her thoughts hopscotched in another direction. “Now that we’ve settled that, is there something special you wanted to see? Besides the wolf and me, of course.”
