Hands On (7 page)

Harry started, surprised at the vehemence in Todd’s voice. He hadn’t realized how much Jaye Rae’s involvement had affected his people. He’d been so wrapped up in his own problems, not to mention the sell-offs and company reorganization, that he hadn’t paused to consider they might have strong feelings about his ex.

Harry looked Todd in the eye. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

Todd gave him a look that was full of enough admiration to make Harry a bit uncomfortable. “Of course not. Why do you think we all agreed to work for you after you sold off some of our favorite parts of the business?”

“Masochism?”

Todd made a rude sound, but Harry was relieved to see his cocky grin had returned. “Thinking about kinky sex, boss? A pleasant memory, perhaps?”

Which, of course, made Ginnie’s naked body broadcast itself all over Harry’s mind. “None of your damn business.”

“That’s what I thought. So, is it a serious thing?”

Harry saw the flash of worry in Todd’s eyes. He shifted the Kenton file from one hand to another. “I’m done with serious. I
do not
make the same mistake twice.” He whapped Todd on one shoulder with the folder. “Back to work, wretch.” Harry steered him out of the conference room.

For the rest of the day, though, his thoughts kept returning to Ginnie. Her scent. Her body. Her smile. The sound of her voice. She was like a song he couldn’t get out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.

In the harsh light of the next afternoon, the broken house looked as if a giant had stepped on it. The roof sagged, where it was still intact, and few of its decorative wood bits were still attached. The walls remained upright, but the bungalow didn’t resemble the home she’d rented. Yellow police tape encircled the entire heap and much of the yard, as if it was the scene of a particularly gruesome murder.

She’d lived there. And now, too abruptly, she didn’t. The hollow feeling in her stomach intensified. She’d loved that little bungalow.

Ginnie turned her back on the scene, glad she’d gone over and poked around before the officials arrived and the police put up tape to bar her and everyone else from the home “for her own good”. She’d retrieved some clothes and her purse and files and things in the pre-dawn light, listening for any sound of further collapse. There wasn’t any. She’d hoped there wasn’t much more to fall down on her.

The hollowness became a prickly hurt in her throat. The cute little house had represented her dreams, her hopes for a new beginning. A new life.

A happier life.

The final break had come not when Rick had finally raised his hand to her, or when she’d told Rick it was over, or even the awful scene when she’d informed her mother. It had come when her key opened her new, cute, private home’s door.

Nothing but a dangerous shack now.

Of course, it could have been worse. It could have been her tomb.

She got in her Volkswagen and drove the few blocks to Harry’s house, thoughtful. Her hurt receded as she contemplated the mystery of him.

The man was a fascinating combination of contrasts. A strong, tough man who knew how to be tender. Caring, but elusive.

Great for her physical well-being. Dangerous to her emotional well-being.

But just the thought of him made her hurt disappear. All she had to do was close her eyes and she felt his hands on her body, his breath on her skin. Last night she’d even dreamed of him instead of having the usual nightmares.

Ginnie exited her car and walked into Harry’s house. She smiled. Or maybe it was just the pure, spacious beauty of Harry’s house.

Ginnie inhaled, scenting new leather and polished wood. She could get used to this. Exquisite furniture. Lovely rugs over gleaming hardwood. It really was a privilege to be surrounded by such a tasteful, color-balanced, beautiful…

Ginnie frowned, her gaze snagged on something. That painting. The one she’d noticed the evening before.

She walked to where it dominated the room despite its medium size and awkward, off-center placement near the teak armoire. An ugly oil painting. The colors, clear and cheerful primaries juxtaposed with muddy browns that may or may not have been intentional, combined to create a polo scene. The illegible signature was a proud black slash across the lower right corner.

But the odd thing, aside from such a clearly amateurish picture encircled by an elaborate gilded frame, was that she could see numbers through the paint. The number four where the tan of a bamboo mallet thinned. A barely visible seven on the Velcro strap on a rider’s leather knee guard.

It was a paint-by-numbers picture.

Someone had finished it with sloppy disregard for staying within the lines and then framed it. And Harry hung it where it’d be the first thing anyone saw.

“Huh.” Ginnie wondered what she was missing. Was it a child’s effort? The large, aggressive signature seemed to suggest otherwise. The overall effect struck her as modern and even daring, as if it was a sly mocking of art by virtue of sheer ugliness. Ginnie hated it.

It really did dominate the room horribly. What a waste of a gorgeous frame. She wondered if Harry would mind if she moved the picture. Just to a less conspicuous place. Like a closet.

No, that would be rude. She’d just see how the room looked without the atrocious thing, then put it back.

Before she could change her mind, she’d pulled a chair over to stand on. She lifted the picture slowly from the wall.

She was so involved with trying to remove it without scraping the wall, she didn’t hear Harry until he spoke directly behind her.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Ginnie froze. “Um. Helping?”

She felt his anger in the brusque, hard way he seized the picture from her. “Get down,” he said.

She did, quaking a little inside. Why was he upset? “I’m sorry.” She hunched, backed away from him. “I didn’t mean anything.” Her brain and heart fell back into a familiar unpleasant routine.

He took one look at her and immediately set the painting down. “Oh. Hey. It’s okay.” He showed the palms of his hands, as if to demonstrate he held no weapons.

Ginnie smiled wryly. She made a conscious effort to square her shoulders. “Don’t mind me. Sometimes I get…nervous.”

“You looked scared. Scared of me.” Harry half-smiled, as if the idea was ridiculous.

Maybe it was ridiculous, but it was difficult to control her reflexes. She changed the subject. “I was only moving the picture. To see if it’d look better somewhere else.”

“Why?”

Something about the way his blue eyes held hers, so steady and calm, set her further at ease. “Your house is decorated beautifully. I’ve never seen such a lovely living room…except for this painting. I wanted to see how the room would look without it.”

“So would I.” But Harry bent to retrieve the painting and re-hung it.

She looked at him quizzically.

“Oh, I know it’s cheap and ugly. That’s the point.” He smiled at her confused look, but the smile had some sadness in it. “You haven’t been down to the basement yet, have you? C’mon.” He steered her, and at the warm touch of his hand, her body wanted to arch into his—but he was steering her like a car.

She dug in her heels. “Bossy, aren’t you.”

He stopped, considering. “I am a boss.” He looked at her, not removing his hand. “But I don’t believe I’m bossy.”

“I’m a boss too,” she said. “I have two employees at Helping Hands.”
For the moment, anyway.

She wasn’t sure what she was objecting to or why she felt the need to defend herself. Something in her rebelled at being controlled, as if to acquiesce would be giving away a critical part of her soul. “Sorry,” she repeated, wishing she could just be easygoing and unsuspicious and go with the flow.

Of course, if she were like that, she’d still be with Rick.

“I’d like a tour of your house now, Harry.” She placed her hand on his, sandwiching it between her palm and her arm. It felt nice. “To the basement,” she commanded.

But Harry didn’t move right away. Instead, he tilted her head up to his, examined her face. “You know, you have serious control issues.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded agreement, which dislodged his hand.

His sexy lips quirked into a small, ironic smile. “Well, you’re honest at least.”

“Basement?”

“Right.”

He led the way down a stairway, then through another door, and the basement opened before her. Clean, finished and non-musty despite all the recent rain, the first and largest room seemed a natural extension of the house, and easily three times the size of hers. Or, what hers used to be. It even had its own separate entrance into the backyard.

When he waited for her to proceed, she moved forward, past the workout equipment to the wooden workbenches. She thought she’d seen something familiar.

“Little Jeffrey!” She rushed forward. Her beloved puppet sprawled, broken but recognizable, in the middle. Around him were the other marionettes she’d been able to grab yesterday. “How in the world…? I thought we left him behind. How did you find him?”

“Same way you found this.” Harry held up the purse she’d left sitting on the end of the workbench. “I went back into a certain dangerously unstable house last night. There are more still down there that don’t appear to be buried too badly, but I figured you’d want that one right away.”

Gratitude and awe coursed through her, leaving a pleasant warmth behind. He’d gone back after she’d fallen asleep, probably. His stamina astonished her, even as his thoughtfulness made her heart warm. “Harry,” she said, letting her affection, her admiration, color his name. “Thank you.”

His eyes sparkled in the basement’s dimmer light. He handed her the purse. “Don’t mention it.”

“But I want to.” She reached up to cup his face the way he had hers earlier. “You’re so sweet.”

Looking into his eyes, she could feel herself falling for him, a tugging ache in her heart that made her want to cook him something, or maybe have his babies. But something had scarred him in his past, and she was pretty sure it probably had to do with a relationship. So she just gently patted his cheek.

“That picture, upstairs. Does it have anything to do with why a handsome, heroic specimen such as you is living in this big house all by yourself?”

Harry lifted her hand from his chin, fully extending her arm. He kissed her knuckles, once. A gallant gesture before he turned toward the workbench and took a few steps.

Her hand tingled. She followed in his wake.

And what a nice-smelling wake it was too. She knew from his clothes that he didn’t dig ditches for a living—as if the big fancy house wasn’t enough clue to his white-collar employment—but his clean, musky male scent confirmed it. Maybe it was pheromones. His scent attracted her more than cologne ever had.

Intriguing, gallant, sensitive, good-smelling, fabulous lover… If she weren’t careful, she’d get her heart broken. He’d warned her of the possibility, since he wasn’t looking for a relationship.

He must’ve been in a very bad relationship. Worse than hers, even.

She approached the smooth wood where her marionette lay, her hands almost automatically clearing the tangles from the strings and taking in the extent of the damage. Bad, but not irretrievable.

Harry watched her hands.

She would need tools, glue, rags, paints…most of her supplies, really, but the damage wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. She could scavenge an arm from Odie, a little-used boy puppet, and at least replace that crushed limb.

She worked and talked at the same time. “So. Who was she, and what’s the deal with that ugly painting?”

“As you surmised, the two are related.” His lips thinned. Disapproval. Distaste for the woman, the artwork, or both? “I managed to get involved with the most conniving, lying gold-digger on the entire West Coast. Worse, I offered to marry her.”

Ginnie glanced at his ring finger.

“Oh, we didn’t get to the altar. Almost but not quite. Thankfully not quite. But you wanted to know about the painting.”

She wanted to know about everything. Absolutely everything there was to know about the fascinating man. “Uh-huh.” Her hands continued to work as she listened carefully.

“Jaye Rae lays waste wherever she goes. She’s beautiful, of course. Honey-tongued. Talented at the art of being arm candy. Not so good at oil painting, which was her hook. A passionate
artiste
”—Harry pronounced it “arteest” with such contempt that Ginnie froze for a moment—“in search of a real man who could understand her unique artistic temperament. So needy. So controlling. Anyway,” Harry continued, “it was a long time ago.”

When Ginnie glanced at him, she could see the muscles in his shoulders all bunched up. He looked at his watch.

“But what happened?” she asked quickly, before he made an excuse to leave. He didn’t want to talk about it, obviously, but he needed to. She knew. Plus she was dying to hear what happened.

He paused, then answered, his voice clipped. “Long story short, she was an actual artist like I’m a bunny rabbit. She painted her contempt for art, and called it art. There was a period of time after she moved in that this whole space down here was supposedly her studio. She’d come down sometimes to keep up the deception. Painted crappy pictures with the help of pre-numbered templates. I kept one of them after she left.”

Ginnie waited, but when no more info was forthcoming, she nudged him with her elbow. Her puppet bobbed with the movement. “And?”

“And what? She moved out.”

“You broke up because you didn’t like her taste in art?” There had to be more to it than that.

Harry turned a cool look on her. “Of course not. We broke up because she’s a publicity hound. Jaye Rae loved the spotlight, but I’m a private man.”

Ginnie stared at him, astonished. “She was famous for those paintings?”

Harry stared back, strangely intent for a moment. Then he glanced away. “You’d be surprised at the public’s gullibility.”

“Maybe.” Ginnie had the feeling she’d missed something.

She also had the urge to hug him. He could use a hug. So could she, for that matter. She wanted to feel their bodies together again, the full length of his pressed against the full length of hers. Clothing optional.