“Good. Then you can tell these people we spoke and that I won’t be taking my sculptures out of the window.” Marisol grabbed his arm and walked Ian to the door. “I should get back to work. My opening is in another few weeks and I have a lot to do. It was a pleasure, Mr. Quinn.” She met his gaze and Ian saw a flicker of desire there, a subtle shift in her expression that revealed more than words could say.
“You wanted to know how all this makes me feel?” Ian asked.
She nodded.
Ian drew a deep breath, then slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. A moment later, his mouth found hers, and he kissed her, slowly and deliberately, mustering every ounce of skill he’d ever possessed. When he finally drew back, he watched her eyes flutter open, then grow wide with shock.
“I-I see,” she murmured.
“I’m glad,” he said. He turned and opened the door, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. An instant later, the lock clicked behind him.
Ian walked back down the street to his car, satisfaction slowly growing inside him. He’d handled that quite well. Though it wasn’t the most auspicious beginning, it was a beginning. But as he got closer to his car, the reality of what he’d just done began to sink in.
“What the hell was I thinking?” he muttered. He’d been at her gallery in an official capacity and he’d forgotten every rule of law enforcement because of what was going on in his jeans.
Maybe Marisol Arantes was right. Maybe it was all about a guy’s penis-and the woman who controlled it. Well, at least he’d have a chance to prove her wrong. In fact, he hoped like hell she’d keep her naughty little sculptures in the window. Now that the object of his sexual obsession was living in Bonnett Harbor, he’d have plenty of opportunities to see her again.
“YOU REALLY SHOULD be getting back, Papi. It’s a long drive into the city and it’s late.” Marisol watched as her father wandered around the gallery, stopping in front of each of her paintings, examining them with a discerning eye.
She’d never been bothered by the critics and their opinions of her work. But when it came to her father, his was the approval she sought. In truth, the reason she’d first grown interested in painting was because of him. He’d had aspirations to become a famous artist at one time, but the public had not been kind to Hector Arantes. Though he’d had some success in Europe, he’d hoped for even more in the U.S. So he’d brought his wife and his five-year-old daughter from their home near Lisbon to New York. And from the very moment they’d landed, things had begun to go wrong.
The critics had been brutal and her father, desperate to provide a living for his family, had fallen in with some unscrupulous men, swindlers who had offered him a great deal of money to take part in their schemes.
Though he hadn’t possessed a talent for his own work, Hector Arantes had an uncanny ability to copy the work of other artists. She hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but her father had become notorious for forging little- known works by well-known artists to feed a market in the Far East. When he’d been caught seventeen years ago, it had cost him a prison sentence. He’d been gone from the time Marisol had been nine until she was nearly nineteen. She and her mother, a former Russian ballerina, had struggled, living in a tiny flat in SoHo while her mother taught children’s classes at a small community center.
For all those years, Marisol refused to put him out of her life and when her own art began to gain recognition, she’d refused to heed the advice of her friends and change her last name. The Arantes name had become infamous in the art world, for all the wrong reasons. Still, it was her name, a name she wore proudly.
“Maybe you should start to paint again,” Marisol said. “The market has changed and your work might be accepted now.”
Hector shook his head. “No, it is too late for me to make a career. I have my life in the city, my students, a few friends. I paint murals for rich people’s houses and they appreciate my work. I am the poor man’s Michelangelo. I want nothing more.”
Her father was a proud man, even after he’d been beaten down by life. Marisol had tried to make his life more comfortable, but he’d refused all help. And her mother had put him out of her life the day he’d been convicted. Marisol had been left to keep the shreds of her family together.
“So what do you think?” Marisol said. “It’s a nice space, no?”
“I don’t understand why you moved out of the city, Mari. What is out here but a bunch of bourgeois suburbanites who buy their art to match their sofas?”
That’s what Marisol had thought when one of her patrons had first offered her the chance to have her own gallery. But after yesterday’s encounter with the village police chief, she’d been forced to alter her opinion of Bonnett Harbor. A shiver prickled her skin and Marisol rubbed her arms, making a note to adjust the air-conditioning in the gallery. But even she could admit that her reaction had nothing to do with the room temperature.
Ian Quinn had been invading her thoughts from the very first moment she’d seen him yesterday. How many times had she sat at a stoplight and glanced over to look at the driver beside her? Hundreds, probably thousands. And how many times had that driver been a man who’d been the embodiment of every fantasy man she’d ever had? Only once.
After she’d driven off, Marisol had been certain he would follow her, certain that he’d felt the same intense attraction. And when he hadn’t, she’d accepted the fact that her imagination had been playing tricks on her. Perhaps the stress of opening the gallery and working until all hours of the night had made her delusional.
But after his visit yesterday morning, Marisol knew the attraction was very mutual. In truth, it was more than just an ordinary attraction. When he was near, her body seemed to tingle with anticipation, as if indescribable pleasures were just a heartbeat away.
Marisol had always been quite comfortable with her sexuality. Through her art, she’d made a careful study of the male anatomy, but she’d also enjoyed the pleasures of a man’s body whenever the urge struck her. She’d had lovers in the past, some of them for a night, others for a much longer time. But she’d kept to one philosophy-sexual attraction, especially one as strong as she felt for Ian Quinn-deserved to be satisfied.
“Mari? You’re not listening.”
She sent her father an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I have so much on my mind. What were you saying?”
“I was asking what this place has that the city doesn’t.”
Besides Ian Quinn? “Well, Papi, right across the bay is Newport. I have several clients who summer there and they’ve promised to introduce me to their friends. And Sascha is still showing my work at her gallery in SoHo. I’m just expanding my clientele. Besides, it’s quiet here. No distractions.”
He was supposed to have been the one, the man she could spend the rest of her life with, a passion that would never die. David Barnett was an art dealer and their careers had meshed perfectly, as perfectly as their bodies and their hearts had-or so she’d thought. She’d come home one day and found the Brazilian naked, in their bed, with David. And just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
Now, as Marisol looked back on it, she wasn’t sure whether she’d loved David at all. Maybe she’d just been swept away by the need, by the way he touched her body and piqued her desire. Perhaps she’d confused those feelings with something deeper and more lasting.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She’d learn to separate desire from emotion. And what better way than to test herself on Ian Quinn? He had almost everything she could possibly want in a lover-he was tall and dark, sexy and charming. It remained to be seen whether the sex would measure up, but that question could be quickly answered the next time they met.
“You’re right,” Hector said. “I should get back. It is a long drive.”
They silently walked to the door, then stepped out of the cool interior of the gallery into the humid night. Marisol threw her arms around her father’s neck and kissed him on both cheeks. “Drive safely, Papi. And call me when you get back. I’ll be working all night.”
She stood on the sidewalk and waved as her father drove off in his battered old car. It wasn’t until she turned to go back inside that she noticed the shadowy figure standing beneath a nearby streetlamp. Her Manhattan instincts kicked in and she hurried back to the door, ready to step inside and lock it behind her. But then she recognized the tall, lean form and the perfect profile.
