No Holds Barred (8 page)

They
showered,
washing each other between kissing and exploring as if they’d left a desire still covered and were desperate to find the elusive hiding place where it lay in wait like a treasure. He drained the bath because she joked they’d drown if they tried to finish the fantasy and instead ended up curled around each other in his big bed, waking once in the night to make long, slow love before drifting off to sleep with him still inside her.

Chapter Six

Ella woke up alone and stretched, rolled over and buried her face in his pillow. No one smelled as good as Jake
Truhorn
. The man was entirely delicious and probably making coffee at this moment.

The coffee was cold and he was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t eaten anything either because the kitchen was still clean. She made a fresh pot of coffee, poured two cups and went searching.

He was in his studio, standing in front of a very large canvas doing a preliminary sketch using several smaller sketches propped close enough for her to see when she came through the door. He smiled sheepishly when she walked in.

“I couldn’t sleep. I got the idea for this last night and I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this excited about a project.”

“You’ve been down here since last night?”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, cocking his head, concentrating on a line she hoped wasn’t her breast but was afraid it was. She swallowed hard and willed away the panic.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“That’d be great,” he turned and took the cup, kissing her quickly and taking a gulp before returning his attention to the sketch.

“Have you eaten anything this morning?”

“I’m not really hungry—but go ahead and eat. I’ll be up as soon as I get your torso right.”

“One word,” she mumbled to herself as she left, “airbrush.”

“I told you, that’s photography,” he called after she closed the door.

She ate some cereal because she didn’t have much of an appetite after seeing all those sketches of her naked self decorating his studio.

There was no getting around the fact that Jake was going to be handsome when he was eighty. She on the other hand had stopped trying to convince herself that next year she’d be beautiful. Next year she’d grow into her nose or her feet or she wouldn’t look so top-heavy. Well, she wasn’t top-heavy anymore—her hips had evened that out.

Oh God, she was glad he hadn’t gotten to her hips yet. She didn’t think she wanted to see that. Maybe he’d stop working on it but he’d already told her that when he was on a new project he was single-minded. A cold chill skittered up her spine and all the euphoria from last night sat in a congealed lump in the pit of her stomach.
Single-minded.
Obsessive.
New project.
She was putting her bowl in the dishwasher when the panic hit her.

She knew she was being stupid but unless they made love nonstop she was never going to forget that no matter what she did she had forty-one-year-old gravity-challenged breasts, a round belly no amount of exercise was going to change and the hips of a Sicilian peasant.

You’ve had a very good five days,
she told herself.
Hell, you’ve had better than a very good five days. You’ve had five days with a very single-minded beautiful younger man who is sexually inexhaustible. You should be happy he was obsessed with you. Don’t whine. Don’t be clingy. He thinks he loves you now because you’re his latest project and he is obsessive.

You, on the other hand are a forty-one-year-old woman with a great career and her own apartment. You don’t have to pick up anyone’s socks and you can have ice cream for dinner if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

Now, get your ass up those stairs, pack all your toys and your toothbrush and make up some excuse for leaving early. Yeah, you’re going to have to work at this one because usually you just leave and they don’t bother calling back. But remember the obsessive part. He’ll call.

She put her bags in the car and walked down the drive to his studio. He’d started on her hips. She stared at her rounded tummy, her thighs.
Said a silent prayer that he didn’t paint the cellulite in.
Oh hell, he could paint the cellulite she just didn’t want him to show it to anyone.

“Jake,” she had to say because he hadn’t turned around when she opened the door. “I just got a phone call. There’s an emergency and I need to get back.” He turned around, frowning with a paintbrush between his teeth. “Home,” she said, wondering if she needed to bother clarifying.

He took the paintbrush out of his mouth. “You’re going back to Chicago?”

She started to tell him she’d temporarily lost her mind but he was standing there, beautiful and obsessed with his newest project—her. He might not try to change her physically but thanks to his therapist parents he knew more about relationships than most of the men she’d known and emotionally he could tie her into knots. That was why her chest was constricting. It had to be.

She knew it was habit. She tried to feel good about it but the euphoria of knowing she was doing the right thing slipped around the edges of her panic. It would come. It always came. She took a deep breath but the pressure was starting building in her chest. She was going to hyperventilate any minute now.

“I need to leave right away.”

“What’s the matter? Do you want me to go with you?” He put his paintbrush down and looked so worried she felt guilty and then she felt stupid again and then she was just damn confused.

“No, I can take care of this myself. I’ll call you,” she said, edging back but he followed her until he looked down and grimaced at the fresh smears of flesh-colored paint on his shirt. He peeled it off, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, hard and sharp.
A claim.

“I doubt there’s much you can’t take care of, Ella, I was just giving you the option. Now, do you want me to go with you or not?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” she said because any minute now she was going to need to start blowing into a paper bag and she didn’t know if it was because leaving felt wrong or because she needed to leave so her chest didn’t feel like it was going to explode.

“Call me when you get home so I know you’re okay,” he said when she slid into the driver‘s seat, but he was frowning. There was a last desperate kiss through the open window before he let her go and she almost did stop breathing.

He was still frowning as she drove away. Ella knew because she glanced in the rearview mirror. She pulled over twice to cry before driving all night. She hadn’t wanted to get on a plane all teary-eyed. With her luck they’d want her to explain why she was upset and she was in no mood for questions she didn’t know the answers to herself.

She just wanted to be alone. She needed to think.

Halfway home she realized she’d left her phone on his charger. She’d probably done it on purpose because she knew she would have called him by now and she wanted to be a little more rational when she did. Not as panicked.

* * * * *

She’d taken longer to panic than he’d thought but she’d also left her phone, a good sign. The part of Ella that wasn’t terrified of loving him so much that she’d lose herself had left that small significant connection. Jake painted in the line of Ella’s curvy hip and growled when he smudged it.

He’d always called her landline before and when he started leaving messages that’s where she would find them. Because when Ella got scared old patterns comforted and he knew now running was a familiar solution when she was afraid. He’d figured it out and he’d bet a bottle of her favorite massage oil Ella was on the verge of figuring it out too.

He wiped away the smudge and concentrated on Ella’s anniversary-of-her-fortieth-birthday present.

He called her later that evening to wish her happy birthday and tell her she’d left her cell phone. When she didn’t call back the next day he wasn’t too worried but by the second day his patience was shot.

The airline wouldn’t tell him anything and neither would any of the car rental agencies she could have used. He picked up the phone and punched in her number. “
Goddammittohell
Ella, just call me and let me know that you got home safely!”

* * * * *

She dropped the rental car at the agency and took a cab home only to find her beautiful blonde sister Francesca seated cross-legged on her white couch, eating Rocky Road out of the carton with a soup spoon. Her teary blue eyes were red-rimmed and she was halfway through the pint.

“What are you doing home?” she sniffed.

“I live here.”
And I had designs on that ice cream.

“I brought Green Tea but I traded you when I found the Rocky Road.”

“Thank you, my thighs thank you. Now what are you doing sitting on my couch eating ice cream at midnight?”

“Because I’d rather go to the gym every day this week instead of having a hangover.
Besides, I figure calcium is good for my bones and I’m not getting any younger.”

Panic attacks ran in the family. “Okay,
who’s
this about,” Ella asked because asking
what
was getting her nowhere fast and as much as she loved her sister she just wanted to collapse.

“That’s just it, there is no
who
. I’m thirty-seven years old and there’s no one. I thought by now they’d stop looking at my chest when they told me I was beautiful, I thought by now I’d stop being a trophy for their arm.” She scooped another spoonful and plopped it into her mouth.

“I’m going to become celibate,” she burbled.

Ella raised a tired brow. “And this will help?”

Francesca raised her dripping spoon but at least had the grace to keep it over the carton and said, “The next man I sleep with will be the one who tells me I’m beautiful while he’s looking me in the eye. He’ll call me at one o’clock in the morning to tell me he loves me…” She stopped her rant and blinked.

“Oh hell, you’ve got messages. Some guy sounds pretty worried because he can’t get hold of you. He says you left your cell phone on his charger and you owe him two more days,” she said, glancing from Ella’s knapsack to her face before her eyes narrowed. “You ran again, didn’t you?”

“Leave it alone,
Frannie
,” she warned. “You want to cry about the shits you’ve been dating fine, we’ll have a round of ‘Let’s Eviscerate the Assholes’ and eat all the ice cream in the freezer but I’m not talking about this.”

“Too late,” she said smugly, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve listened to the messages. What happened, Ella? Didn’t he pass the hair dye litmus test? He sounded like he cared if you got home in one piece. You scared this one, Ella.”

This time when the panic hit she knew why. Jake had been proving he loved her for a year and she’d let one moment of panic throw her back into the same old familiar pattern of hit and run.

She was almost numb when Francesca kissed her on the cheek and placed a fresh carton of Green Tea ice cream and a spoon in her hand.

“I don’t want to be here if you screw this up. I’d be tempted to commit murder and I’m the only lawyer I know who could possibly get me off so it’s out of the question.”

Ella heard the door close and she still couldn’t move until the condensation from the carton made an audible plop on her shoe. She put the carton back into the freezer and when she turned around she saw her reflection in the window, the harsh overhead light stark in its assessment. Jake’s words came back to her.
“I’ve never understood wanting to change something that was perfect already.”
She’d entrusted him with so many secrets why couldn’t she trust his judgment? How many kinds of a fool could one person be?

Panic was what she did. Running was a comfort she sought whenever it happened. She’d been brave enough to let him see the real Ella but she hadn’t been brave enough to really see Jake. Love was about two people, not just one. This week had been about two people and she’d fallen into the old habit of only considering herself, running before she could be hurt.

There were those who would always argue that sex was nothing more than an itch to be scratched. She knew because she’d been one of them. With Jake it became the deepest connection two people could achieve, a safe place where brutal honesty could leave your soul naked and free.

Through his eyes she’d seen the woman she used to be and a glimpse of the woman she was capable of becoming. She’d missed trusting so much she wasn’t afraid to give, experiencing everything fully, not just the bits and pieces she’d allowed
herself
over the years.
Happy Birthday Ella.
He’d given her a gift she hadn’t been expecting.

There were three messages on her answering machine from Jake and two emails on her computer. She printed out the emails and couldn’t bear to erase his messages, got the ice cream back out of the freezer and proceeded to have a pity party she knew she didn’t deserve.

It was two in the morning when she dialed his number and his cell phone went straight to voice mail. “Hi Jake, I’m home and everything is fine. Well, not fine but I’m dealing with it. I loved our time together. I love you. I trust you.”

Her phone rang at six a.m. “You still owe me two days but we’ll tack it onto the rest of our lives. Your birthday present will be finished in two weeks, I’ll be there then.”

Chapter Seven

Ella decided tough love was the answer. Her soul was naked and free. Her body was a different matter. She walked around her apartment naked all weekend and forced herself to look into every mirror she passed. Nope, she still looked the same, gravity was a bitch. She put on soft music, hard rock, Celtic harps—mood music didn’t make it any better. Candlelight was a marginal difference as were two glasses of champagne with peaches.

She stood in her bedroom looking into the full-length mirror that never lied and punched the button on her answering machine, played back his messages and smiled, started to laugh and then she started to cry, ridiculously happy. Jake
Truhorn’s
eyes were a mirror if she had any sense she would never want to escape.