Destiny by Design (4 page)

Frustrated that the cooler water was having no effect on his rising lust, he pumped liquid soap onto his palm and wrapped his fingers around the base of his engorged cock. With a tightened grip, he slid his fist up and down his shaft, giving in to the images that played through his mind…

Ellis, standing in his bedroom, shimmies out of her hip-hugging jeans, pushes her black thong underwear down her thighs and kicks them off her feet. She stands there naked from the belly button down and winks before she pulls her tight T-shirt up and off. She isn’t wearing a bra. She runs her hands over her pert breasts, stopping to pinch her nipples, down her creamy flat stomach and stops at her thighs. She giggles and sprawls naked on his bed.

Simon held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut tight to capture the erotic picture of Ellis in his mind.

She crooks her finger at him. “Oh Simon, could you help me with this.” She opens her legs, inviting him to look at her, wanting him to see her secrets, taste her gleaming wet pussy.

Panting, Simon pumped harder, bracing his other hand against the shower wall. His thigh and ass muscles clenched, poised for his release.

Ellis licks her middle finger then slides it through her tawny curls, moaning with pleasure as she rubs herself.

He groaned and dropped his chin to his chest, letting the water pound against the taut muscles of his back and shoulders. His forearm burned with tension as he quickened his movements.

Ellis rubs herself with two fingers, frantically, moaning and crying for him to come with her. She gyrates her hips, arches her back, convulses.

Simon pounded his free hand against the wet tile as he shot his seed almost to the top of the shower stall.

“Good God,” Simon gasped as the cool water washed away his fantasy. “How on earth can this woman be responsible for giving me both a hard-on and a headache?”

* * * * *

“There’s too much orange,” she explained, arms raised like a game-show hostess. “See how it argues with the floor?”

“Argues?”

“Yes, argues. Look in the direction of the grain and let your eyes travel up the wall.”

Simon emitted a throaty groan, more of a growl. He took a sip of steaming coffee from a takeout cup. At least she had the forethought to have a hot coffee waiting for him when he arrived. It took the edge off the crankiness caused by lust for this confounding woman.

He played along and took a hard look at the colors and he had to admit, after looking at the walls in the early morning sunlight, she had a point. Only Ellis could describe a wall and a floor arguing and have it actually make sense.

Pretending to further scrutinize the arguing colors, he relied on his peripheral vision to admire Ellis. For someone who didn’t get much sleep, she looked good enough to eat, even in a wrinkled T-shirt and baggy denim overalls. The morning sun shone on her mussed shoulder-length hair. He had thought it was brown but that one simple word couldn’t begin to fairly describe it. Like a piece of polished, exotic wood with a rich grain, her hair was shot with streaks of amber and gold, red oak and maple. She looked fresh, young and entirely sexy. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the picture of her naked,
in his bed
, out of his mind. He wondered if her honey complexion would taste as scrumptious as it looked. He wondered if he ran his tongue along the curve of her jaw, it would lose its stubborn set—

“So do you agree?”

Simon raked his fingers through his hair, a mixture of lust and frustration. This woman had him completely off balance.

“Oh yeah, I see.”

“But do you
agree
? Because there is no harmony, and if there’s no harmony, there’s no mood. And we already know that if the room isn’t in a good mood, it won’t work.” She continued, despite Simon’s raised eyebrows. “Now, if we add a little bit of a deeper gold, like in this sample called Divine Caravan, I think we’ll nail it.”

“Won’t it be too dark?” Simon suggested, hoping desperately not to have to repaint.

“This is a large enough room to support the tonal depth.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that it’s not too dark,” she stated firmly.

“Problem is, Ellis—can I call you Ellis? I usually call the women who I’ve shared my morning coffee with by their first names.”
And women I masturbate to
, Simon thought.

She nodded in embarrassment, giving Simon a glimmer of satisfaction. Damn, how can a woman who’d spent the night on an air mattress in a house reeking with paint fumes possibly look so damned perky? And edible.

“Problem is, Ellis, I don’t know if I can pull Jeb off another job. He’s on a pretty tight rotation between all the designers,” and before Ellis popped a vein, he added, “but I’ll certainly see what I can do.”

“It just has to get done Simon! We’re running out of time!”

“Well you should have thought of that before you chose Caramel Sundae!”

“But it worked on the sample board and—”

“Enough,” he interrupted, in no mood to argue with her. “I said I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” she said humbly, her eyes locked on his. That little glint of anger she saw made her pulse quicken and pushed her to ask, “Are there a lot?”

“A lot of what?”

“A lot of women with whom you share your morning coffee?”

Simon leaned in close—close enough for her to smell the fresh scent of his wet hair. Close enough for his heat to make her knees wobble.

“None as annoying,” Simon said in a husky voice, “or as gorgeous as you.”

He crushed the empty cup in his fist and strode from the room without a backward glance.

Chapter Four

Ellis adeptly placed a shard of burnt umber tile onto the mosaic she was creating around the hearth. She fought to stay focused, to concentrate on the perfect placement of tile chips to get the effect she envisioned, frustrated that she wouldn’t complete it before her four o’clock appointment. She was scheduled to meet with Valentina, the designer in charge of the children’s suites, which included both a bedroom and adjoining playroom-nursery. Ellis gave a passing mention of having a visual baby monitor linked to the office and Val loved the idea. Today, in a matter of hours, they would meet to finalize the integration of the system into their perspective rooms.

Ellis dug her trowel into the bottom of the pail and sighed in resignation. The cement compound was stiffening up as she struggled to work at her normally spry pace. It was Simon’s fault. His eyes, those shoulders, the way the worn denim of his pants accentuated his solid thighs…she just couldn’t get him out of her head. More than once over the past few days, Simon had appeared just as she’d immersed herself in a project, distracting her, making her say stupid things. When he left, she couldn’t get the sexy scent of him out of her nose or his devil-may-care grin out of her mind. He was making a mess of her typically steely concentration, her ability to block out the world and be in emotional harmony with the rooms she decorated.

She hadn’t seen him since their early morning meeting but the image of him with damp, curling hair and a day’s stubble on his angled jaw kept repeating in front of her like a slide show, interrupting her artistic flow. She felt the warmth rise from her groin to her cheeks just remembering his gravelly morning voice, telling her she was gorgeous. How could she get him out of her head?
Oh hell
, she thought with a ripple of humor,
maybe I should have wild, hot monkey-sex with him and get him out of my system
. She imagined running her hands over the ridges of his well-defined abdomen, tracing her fingertips down the line of hair that disappeared under the waistband of his jeans.

“You okay Ellis?” Remi asked, looking down at her from his perch on the stepstool where he was mounting a curtain rod. “You’re looking a little flushed.”

“Fine, it’s nothing.”

“Come on, girlfriend, tell Auntie Remi what’s got you all hot and bothered. And don’t lie to me because you’ve not been yourself in days.”

“Nothing, it’s just—”

“Hey,” Simon poked his head around the corner. “Someone in here order a cabinet?”

Simon stepped aside to let Marco and his crew haul in the pre-made sections of Ellis’ built-in. Remi, vexed at the interruption, noticed a blush creep from Ellis’ neck to her hairline.
Ah ha! So that’s what’s been bothering her.
He should have known. There were some strong vibes bouncing between these two lately.

“I thought it wasn’t coming until tomorrow!” Ellis rose from her kneeling position and unconsciously brushed the ceramic dust, and the blush, from her cheeks.

They stood back while the men bolted in the supports, then began to piece sections of the cabinet together using glue, nails and screws. Ellis watched with giddy pleasure as the unit began to take shape. She was relieved that Simon had left the room while his men installed it, leaving her to continue the mosaic in peace. Mr. Callon had a talent for causing complete uproar to her emotional nervous system with his mere presence. Every time he had stopped by during the past few days, she found herself babbling inanely and asking him for silly favors, just to cover her nerves.

An hour later, the carpenters had the pieces installed, the hardware mounted and the holes puttied. The hearth mosaic was only three quarters complete and Ellis had just enough time to splash some water on her face and grab a coffee before meeting with Val.

“Those two.”

Surprised, she turned to see Simon standing in the room. Lost in her work, she hadn’t heard or seen him come in. He separated two landscape scenes from the six framed pictures that were propped against the opposite wall.

Ellis had borrowed two abstracts, three landscapes and a large still life from a local gallery, intent on seeing how they looked in the changing light before making her final decision on which prints to hang. She hadn’t quite decided what she preferred, and was interested in Simon’s rationale. “Why those?” she asked, fully expecting him to say something inane like he was partial to the pretty colors.

“They’re reminiscent of RGK’s Northern Africa works, my favorite of all her periods.”

Ellis stared, stunned. “Are you telling me you’re familiar with an obscure artist like Regina Gertrude King?”

“Sure,” Simon grinned, showing off his stunning teeth. “And she’s hardly obscure. She was one of the foremost women painters of her time. Although, not many people knew the paintings were done by a woman because she only signed her initials.”

Ellis shook her head in disbelief. This burly alpha male, who should have been spewing the latest football stats, was actually giving her a lesson on a woman painter whose career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This had to be a lucky coincidence. Perhaps RGK was mentioned in
He-Man Weekly
—“How to Hook a Chick at an Art Show”.

“Really?” asked Ellis, a hint of skepticism in her undertone. “I didn’t know she was trying to hide her gender. I assumed her name was too long to sign on canvas.”

Simon realized that he’d confounded Ellis and felt the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement. He was going to make her work for this one.

“Oh no, she probably wouldn’t have sold much if her sex was common knowledge. Did you know her husband was a British diplomat and she traveled around the world with him, painting landscapes in all the exotic places he was posted—the Far East, India, Northern Africa, even Bermuda. Personally, I didn’t like her Bermuda works. They were too pastel-y for my taste.”

“How can you possibly know all this?” Ellis asked, suspicious.

“My sister.”

“Is she an artist?”

“Nope, she’s a curator at the Atlantic Museum of Arts and Antiquities.”

“Your sister works at AMAA? So you like art too?” Ellis was visibly impressed.

“Not initially.” Leave her hanging. Make her beg.

“I don’t follow.”

“Claire is almost ten years my senior. Our parents worked so she was saddled with me a lot. Instead of sitting me in front of the television like most babysitters would, she dragged me to every museum, gallery and art exhibition within a hundred miles. I spent hours sitting in stuffy old halls full of ancient paintings while Claire scribbled notes for her art history classes, lecturing me every chance she got. Eventually, I guess it stuck.”