Artfully Yours (21 page)

“Maybe you’ll leave my sister alone and explain yourself instead.”

“You first.” He kicked out a chair and sat down. He picked up a crayon Jenny had missed and started flipping it over and over.

“I’m not the one who just perpetrated a home invasion,” Elle said, “so I’m not exactly clear on what it is you think I need to explain. To you. A guy I met twenty-four hours ago. I don’t think you know me well enough to be demanding explanations. Or anything at all.”

“Weird. Because I feel like I know you
really
well.”

He was talking about the sculptures. “It isn’t me! Muse, not life model!”

“My mistake. Thought it was you. Thought that’s why you got your panties in a twist and decided it was okay to go ahead and gut Alex.” He drummed the crayon on the table.

Gut him?

Elle was used to confrontation. After years in the ER, she’d had all sorts of people come at her. Hell, one old lady had once had tried to poke her eye out with a syringe, screaming Elle was the devil’s whore (very original). She should be more than capable of handling attitude from this guy. Her spine stiffened. She
was
capable. Her eyes went to the drumming crayon. “Can you stop that?”

He didn’t, so she reached out, snatched the crayon off him, and placed it flat on the table between them.

Gabe leaned back in his chair, nostrils flaring. His gaze flickered around the room then settled. He eyed the coffee pot, looked meaningfully from it to Elle and back again.

Not a chance. “I’m not giving you coffee,” she told him. “Although I don’t mind making you a chamomile tea.”

Gabe grimaced, then locked onto the abandoned cup standing next to her laptop. He pushed to his feet and strode over.

“Eww, don’t—” she began, but instead of going for the coffee as she expected, he tipped back the laptop screen, scanning it.

“Huh,” he said.

“That’s private!”

“Nothing’s private, honey,” he said, and hit enter.

He’d sent her email. “I cannot believe you did that!”

“Sure you can.”

“You ruined my big romantic gesture. The
only
big romantic gesture I’ve ever made in my life.”

“You hadn’t made it yet. You were dithering.”

“I wasn’t dithering. How could you possibly know that?”

“Time-stamps on the draft.” Gabe leaned over and propped his elbows on the countertop, computer trapped between them like a mouse between the paws of a playful cat. His shirt stretched tight over his back and his jeans stretched tight over his—

Do
not
look at his ass.

Elle looked, and tilted her head a fraction.

“I can see your reflection in the screen,” he said.

So she could appreciate an amazing ass in worn denim. She was allowed to. She was a woman, she had hormones, it was normal. “Do you check yourself in every shiny surface?”

“I like shiny things.” Gabe’s fingers danced over the keyboard in a rattle of rapid-fire strokes. The screen showed scrolling code for an instant, then it flickered back to the usual display.

“Wait,” she said. “What did you just do?”

Gabe turned to lean against the countertop, long legs crossed at the ankles in front of him. He gave her a slow smile.

“What did you just do to my computer?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. I’m terrible with computers. If I had to guess, I’d say it was an automatic update installing. Nothing to worry about.” He strolled over to the chair and sat down. “Tell me about the romantic gesture.”

“No. Again, private.”

“Again, nothing’s private.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “My
head
is private. My
feelings
are private.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you even doing here, Gabe?” He glanced at the coffee pot again, and she said with exasperation, “
No
.”

He sighed. “Came to tell you to get over yourself.”

“You are aware that this is none of your business. Right?”

“It absolutely is my business. Alex is one of the very, very few things in the world important to me, and I had to sit by and watch him fade, Elle. For a year. Everything he’s done for me, and when it was my turn, I couldn’t save him. Couldn’t do a thing. Then you showed up and all of a sudden he’s awake, he’s alive, he’s a fucking inferno. This is great. But as far as you’re concerned, he’s wide open. No firewall, no shields, nothing. This isn’t great. This makes me nervous.”

“Uh-huh. Still not your business. And I think Alex would agree with me here.”

“Of course he would. You’re both wrong. Tell me about the romantic gesture. You might as well. I get what I want. I can wear you down.”

She met his green eyes and realized with a start that she couldn’t read them. Opaque as a predator’s. Then he sent her a sweet smile and relaxed in the chair. She was starting to get emotional whiplash.

“Tell me, Elle. Like I said, I get what I want. Lucky for you, I want to help.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got it covered.”

He blinked.

“For crying out loud. You read the email. You
sent
the email. What else is there to know?”

“Yeah, I read the email. I know what you’re going to
do
. Progress is being made, and while that plays out, I want to know
why
. If I approve, I’ll allow it to continue. If I don’t, I’ll put a stop to it.” He laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “I want to know your intentions.”

Gabe Sterling had a God complex, didn’t he? “You’re seriously sitting there, asking me my intentions toward Alex?”

“Yes.”

“Are you his chaperone?”

“Self-appointed guard dog. Because Gargoyle is fuckin’ useless.”

“Gargoyle is an excellent judge of character. He likes me. He doesn’t feel the need to come and growl at me.”

“
I
like you. This is my whimsical side. If I was growling, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at a pretty little kitchen table in a cozy little kitchen in the sunshine.”

“Let me guess. A deserted back alley somewhere in the moonless dark?”

He did that single-blink thing again.

Elle could honestly say she’d never wanted to hit someone quite this much. She’d run like hell the minute she did it, but she still really wanted to do it. “How arrogant are you?”

“Very. Now, enough flirting—”

“I’m not flirting with you!”

“Please don’t hurt Alex.” He held her gaze and, for a lightning-short moment, let her see his emotions.

The majority of Elle’s outrage drained away. She knew genuine, to-the-bone
caring
when she saw it. “I don’t want to hurt him. Of course I won’t hurt him. I lov—” she hiccupped on the word, “—I like him. I like him more than anyone I’ve ever liked before. And it would be nice if I could tell him that myself to his face rather than have it extracted from me in this highly inappropriate interrogation.”

“You
like
him, huh?”

She glared.

“All right. I approve. And you need my help. It’s a charming gesture you’re trying to make, except it’s going to be less charming and more a kick in the nuts since it’s going to take too long to set up. By the time you let Alex know all is right in his special little wonderland, it’ll be too late.”

Elle’s shoulders drooped. “I worried about that. How long do you think?”

“For Stephanie to respond to your email? Couple of weeks.”

“Couple of weeks doesn’t work.” She wasn’t waiting a couple of weeks to get her hands on Alex again. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let him spend a couple of weeks thinking she’d rejected him and his art. She was trying to be romantic, not torture the guy.

“Damn straight it doesn’t work. In a couple of weeks, there won’t be anything left. He’s threatening to destroy it all.”

“
What?
”

Gabe wiggled a finger in his ear at her shriek. “Come on, Elle.”

“He can’t destroy it!”

“He created it, he can destroy it.”

“You can’t let him! It’s beautiful, it’s amazing, it’s…utterly incomprehensible and I don’t care because he loves it and that’s all that matters.”

“Calm down. Jesus. So dramatic.”

Elle’s mouth dropped open. “
I’m
dramatic?
Are you kidding me?
Ow. Damn it.” This time, she shrieked so loud she hurt her own ears.

Gabe slowly dropped his hands away from his head, held them poised in the air, ready for her to yell again. When all she did was roll her eyes, he said, “I won’t let him destroy it. I’ll hide his equipment if I have to. Even Alex can’t do too much damage with his bare hands. Besides, I said it’ll take Stephanie a couple of weeks to respond to you. Me, she’ll get back to within the hour. If she answers rather than lets it go to voicemail, we’ll be set within less than that.” Gabe slipped a cell phone from his pocket, keyed something into the screen, and slid it across the table. “All you gotta do is press green for go.”

Green for go. Elle’s stomach swooped in a pulse of nerves. God, she hoped Alex liked this. She picked up Gabe’s cell gingerly. It looked more expensive than her car and house combined.

“Before you call,” he said, stopping her with a light touch on the back of her wrist, “think I can have that chamomile tea after all?”

“Yes.” She was going to brew it extra strong.

“I can get a bit—” he lifted and lowered his shoulders a couple of times in quick succession, “—you know?”

“I know.”

“Okay. We’re good.” He slapped his palms on the table and pushed up.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Going to go and find your sister.”

Elle pointed at the chair. “Sit down.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Alex slumped on his couch and stared straight ahead. For the first time since he’d run into Elle at the store weeks ago, he felt like he’d come to a complete stop. He
ached
with the suddenness of it. Even when he was sleeping, he’d been energized, switched on, alive. His dreams vivid and twisting, impatient to become sculpture, sensation, movement. And then Elle had been so revolted by what she’d inspired in him that she’d run out, and everything had…stopped.

He leaned forward, forearms along his tense thighs, hands clasped hard over the back of his neck. Holding himself down.

He wanted to stride out to the barn and take it apart. Every last piece, strip it to bones and pull the barn itself down on top, bury it. Gabe had made him swear,
swear on our friendship, Alex
, not to deconstruct anything. But he wanted to. He itched with the need to obliterate his complete failure. Wipe it from existence. Sooner or later, that desire was going to become overwhelming. Not today, since today his blood ran slow; today he was barely ticking over. But soon. He’d take it apart, and it would be a fury of destruction.

On the couch beside him, his iPad binged. He glanced at the screen with scant interest. Before it returned to black, he caught the mail notification message, and Gabe’s name. He reached out and turned the iPad face down. He settled deeper into the couch.

The iPad binged again.

Then it binged in a fast sequence, mails sent in perfect time to play a tune: “Shave and a Haircut.”

He hunched lower, then almost jumped out of his skin when Gabe’s voice came from the computer across the room.

“For fuck’s sake, Alex. Check your email!”

Alex turned his head to stare at the tiny green dot across the room that meant Gabe had once again hacked him and was watching through the webcam. “No.”

“Check it.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No. It’s just going to be one of your stupid gifs again. I don’t find them funny, Gabe. I don’t find cats funny. It won’t cheer me up.”

“Even when they’re… Never mind, not the point. Check the email. It’s not a gif. Swear.”

Alex pushed up to his feet and crossed the room. He bent down, eye-level with the webcam. “No.” He added a stream of filth in Russian, snapped his teeth shut, and glared.

“Alex, I’ve asked you repeatedly not to turn me on with your sexy talk.”

He picked up the sweatshirt draped over the back of the chair and dropped it over the monitor and camera lens. He stalked away.

“Where are you going?” Gabe yelled.

“I’m going to get a beer.”

“
Read the email, Zacharov! You have to read it before she gets there!
”

Alex came back to the living room with a beer, paused to unplug the computer, and sat down.

A good two minutes later, Gabe confessed, “I installed a battery backup for you last time I was here. It’ll run for another twelve hours. But don’t worry. I can take a hint.”