Blaze of Winter: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (45 page)

Wrong. It was a studio. Canvases were stacked four and five deep along the walls and in front of shelves that were neatly arrayed with paints, paper, and other supplies. The artist was in residence, his body turned three-quarters away from her, utterly absorbed in the large painting on his easel.

Disoriented, Cath leaned against the doorjamb and watched him for a while. She never would’ve figured City had an artistic side. The painting on the easel in front of him was nearly finished, showing a woman working at a desk in an office. He must have painted the picture in his bedroom, too. The style was unmistakable.

He was talented.

Damn, and now her skin was doing that tingling, goose-bumpy thing it did whenever she got the hots for an artist. What was it about painters, anyway? The play of the lean muscles in his forearms, the precision in his fingers as he wielded the brush over the canvas—the whole scene just turned her crank.

It was a purely situational attraction, of course. Meaningless. This was
City
, for heaven’s sake. She’d never once gone melty over him before. It was just that in faded jeans and a paint-smeared red T-shirt that clung across his shoulders, he looked like a completely different man.

His ass wasn’t helping. The man had a really tidy ass.

Ashamed of the randy teenager who had overtaken her brain, Cath pushed away from the door and crossed the room. “You’re pretty good.”

He turned and looked at her, his face momentarily blank. His short blond hair was tousled as if he’d been running his hand through it, and there was a streak of red paint on his cheek.

Then he smiled, and Cath temporarily forgot how to breathe. City didn’t look like City when he smiled. It was still his face, though with nice teeth and a boyish dimple in one cheek. Pleasant surprises, but there was something else, too. An I’m-going-to-eat-you-up something. Smiling, City didn’t appear altogether safe.

To her dismay, he lit her up like a pinball machine.