The Art of Stealing Kisses (Stealing Hearts Book 2) (10 page)

St.
Clair says, “Grace
is helping me with the final art show for the London College of Art.”

Richard
snorts. “Still
wasting your time on those artsy flights of fancy then.”

“Your
son is supporting a wonderful school,”
I pipe up.
“There
are some really talented artists—”

“What
about the company?” Richard
interrupts me. “Or
are you running that one into the ground, too?”

“We
have company,” Alice
says quietly just as St. Clair’s
phone rings.

He
looks at the screen. “I
have to take this.”

“Of
course you do,” Richard
says.

“It’s
business, father. Remember what it’s
like to have a job?”

I
cringe inside but watch St. Clair leave through the stone archway.
Richard walks out in the other direction without a word.

Alice
looks awkward. “Boys
will be boys.”

I
laugh nervously, not sure what to do here. But clearly, St. Clair’s
mother is a practiced hostess. “How
about we go have some tea?” Alice
suggests. “You
must have had a long drive. We could stretch your legs in the garden,
have a little walkabout?”

“That
sounds great,” I
breathe, grateful for an end to the tension.

Outside,
in what is obviously her sanctuary, Alice seems to come alive. She
shows me her prize rose bushes bursting with color and scent, her
pale blue and white clusters of hydrangeas, the bright yellow and
magenta snapdragons. We settle at a table by the kitchen door, and
she brings out the tea. I can see beyond the garden there’s
a pasture with two horses grazing and a stable off to one side. It’s
breathtaking. “It’s
like a painting,” I
say, awed by the natural beauty. “Or
something I wish I could paint.”

“You
are an artist, too?”

I
shrug, embarrassed. “I
dabble. But I really love art.”

“Like
Charles.” She
passes me a cup. “His
father wouldn’t
let him pursue anything creative, but I’ve
often wondered if he might have gone on to great things if he’d
had the choice.”

I
nod, not sure how much to disclose. St. Clair has not painted a
glowing portrait of the family patriarch. Alice chuckles. “Ah,
so he told you.”

“A
few things,” I
admit.

She
looks out onto the hillside, the dappled gray horses that look small
like figurines in the distance. “I’m
very proud of my son. I do worry he works too much, though.”
She squints
at me. “He
does, doesn’t
he?”

I
smile. “He
does work a lot. But I think he enjoys it.”

She
nods. “Still,
it is nice to see him finally settling down,”
she says, looking at me approvingly.

I
stop. Wait, does she mean me? “Oh,
um, we just started seeing each other.”

She
lifts her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“It’s
still really new.”
I blush.

“Well,
it must be serious for him. Charles has never brought a girl home
before.”

I’m
surprised. “Really?”

She
grins, and I see St. Clair’s
playfulness, a softer version of his dimples in her cheeks.
“Really,
dear.” She
reaches out and pats my hand and I feel how cold her fingers are
despite the sun. “You
be careful with him. He seems like a statue but he cracks more easily
than it appears.”

We
sit a while longer outside, and I tell her about my own childhood –
Mom, and
meeting St. Clair at Carringer’s.
Then she says she better see to dinner, so I head inside to find my
weekend bag, and maybe take a shower. I’m
walking back through the mansion and notice the chinks in the
estate’s
armor: some crumbling stones in the walls, creaking stairs,
chandeliers and sconces missing their crystals, dead flowers wilting
in tarnished silver vases. It’s
a strange place, more like a mausoleum than a home, and I can see why
St. Clair wanted to run far away to start his own life.

I
hear St. Clair’s
voice as I pass the library, and I’m
about to go in and tell him how much I like his mother when I realize
he’s
dropped his voice to a whisper.

I
lean in closer to listen at the open door.

“…can
it be moved without a frame?” St.
Clair asks. “What
are its dimensions?”

I
pause. Any art purchase he’s
making should be going through me, if he trusts me with his
collection as much as he says he does. And paintings aren’t
usually sold without frames – not
legitimate ones, anyway. What gives? I creep closer, looking through
the gap.

“No.”
St. Clair is
saying, pacing back and forth. “No.
That won’t
work, not after the last job. There’s
too much heat in the States, I’ll
be looking in Europe next. Uh huh. Well then you let me know. We’ll
have to figure out how to keep it under the radar.”

My
foot creaks on a floorboard, and St. Clair whirls around.

“Hi!”
I exclaim
loudly, leaning into the room with a bright smile instead of running
away like I want to. “I
was just looking for my bag? This place is so big, I got turned
around.”

“I
put it in your guest room,” St.
Clair says, but his expression is odd. Almost…guilty?
“Right
upstairs, second door on the left.”

“Thanks.”

I
bolt from the room, going upstairs. But my mind is whirling. What was
that conversation about? What ‘heat’
is he running
from back home, and why does it need to stay under the radar?

Could
Lennox be right? Is St. Clair hiding something from me?

The
formal dining room at the St. Clair estate is very Downton
Abbey—brass-framed
portraits of ancestors and British historical figures coating the
walls, heavy cream curtains framing two windows that look out onto
the pasture, and a long dark wood table with twelve chairs.

St.
Clair, his parents, and I sit together at one end, and after our
initial hellos, the silence has gone as thick as this cold potato
leek soup we’ve
been served. I’m
trying not to gag through the smile I’ve
tried to keep plastered on my face. St Clair and his father glare at
each other across the table and his mom slurps her soup and pretends
not to notice.

It’s
so tense, I feel like I need a hammer to break the ice. “So,
those are beautiful horses out back. Do any of you ride?”
God, it’s
so lame, but I have to say something!

“Why
else would we have horses?”
Richard sneers.

“You
may not have them for much longer, if some things don’t
change,” St.
Clair says coolly. “Horses
don’t
pay for themselves.”

Alice
lifts her head. “Is
that true?”

Richard
waves his hand in dismissal. “Don’t
worry, darling. Your son has no idea what he is talking about since
he spends all his time with paintings rather than money.”

St.
Clair’s
jaw tightens. “Some
of us have the resources to enjoy our interests.”

I
try to lighten to mood. “Before
we left San Francisco, Charles graciously donated several valuable
paintings to a hospital wing.”

“That’s
lovely!” Alice
exclaims.

Richard
looks down his nose. “Yes,
he is very good at getting rid of things. Leaving things behind.”

“Where
do you think I learned that, father?”

The
cook replaces our soup with plates of meat and potatoes, thank God.
That soup looked like it belonged in a swamp, not in a bowl. “This
smells delicious!” I
chirp.

The
men ignore me. “My
father built that business from the ground up,”
Richard
snipes, “and
I never once considered leaving or going against his wishes. You are
the one who chose to desert your family.”

“Because
you were smothering me, criticizing every move I made.”
St. Clair
shoots back. “How
was I supposed to learn for myself?”

Richard
takes a long swig of his whiskey. “That’s
the problem. You never did learn.”

“Richard,
honey,” Alice
tries to smooth things over, but he ignores her.

“I
learned a lot, dad. Like how to hold my liquor. But that’s
a lesson you never quite got the hang of, is it?”
St. Clair glares back. My mouth is actually hanging open, I realize,
so I force myself to close it. I don’t
even know what to say.

“That’s
enough!” Richard
suddenly explodes. “Remember
your manners, boy. You’re
under my roof, and you’ll
treat me with some damn respect!”

“You
mean, the respect you show your family?”
St. Clair
spits. He shoves back his chair. “I’ve
lost my appetite.” He
throws down his napkin and storms out.

I
nervously get up. “I’m
sorry, I should go see—”

“Of
course,” Alice
says, and gives me a weak smile. “You
go ahead, dear.”

I
follow St. Clair’s
route upstairs and look for him. But he’s
nowhere to be found. “St.
Clair?” I
call, confused. “Charles?”

“Up
here.” His
voice comes from down the hall. I enter the room at the end to find
furniture covered with drop cloths, and boxes of old toys. There’s
a ladder pulled down from a hatch in the ceiling, and when I climb
up, I find St. Clair sitting in the open window of the attic.

“Hey,”
I say,
placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Are
you okay?”

“You
mean after that disaster downstairs?”
He sighs.
“And
there I was thinking my dad could manage to be civil.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“I
know.” St.
Clair gives me a sad smile. I look past him, out of the window. The
dark hills are serene now, resting under a blanket of stars.

“It’s
beautiful up here.”

“This
is where I used to come as a child. To escape. I would look up at the
stars and pretend I was a million miles away.”

He
takes my hand, and helps me out through the window. There’s
a flat section of roof, and he has a blanket spread out there. I sit
next to him, tilt my head back and gaze up at the Milky Way, the
millions of white spots scattered like paint drops across the sky.
“Beautiful.”

“No
one can see us up here.” St.
Clair slips an arm around me and holds me closer. “It’s
like we don’t
have to exist if we don’t
want to. For just a brief while.”

I
imagine him out here as a boy, butting heads with his dad for being
adventurous, rebellious, too smart for his own good. “Was
your dad always like that? Even when you were little?”

“Always.
He never understood me, never even tried. I wasn’t
like him, so I was a huge disappointment.”

“That
must have been hard.” I
can’t
imagine how much it would hurt to have parents who didn’t
support me. It was just Mom and me, but she loved me enough to make
up for my absent dad.

“He’s
such a hypocrite, too,” St.
Clair sighs. “Giving
me lectures when I take business risks while he’s
out drinking and gambling away our family fortune. Those are the real
risks.”

I
shake my head. “That’s
awful.”

“Do
you know that I pay all their bills now? All this—”
he flings his
arms wide, “paid
for by me, the loser son. And has Dad once said thank you? Or even
acknowledged my contribution?”

I
shake my head.

“Bingo—not
once.”

“I’m
sorry it’s
gotten so bad.”

“And
it just keeps getting worse. The better the business does, the more
success I have, the angrier he gets.”

“Shouldn’t
that make him happy?”

St.
Clair exhales slowly and stares out into the darkness. “I
think he wanted me to follow the family line—be
the same as him and his father. It’s
like he thinks that I rejected him because I didn’t
want to be exactly like him and so he hates me for it. And then I
ignored his advice, did things my own way, and my methods worked.”
He runs his
hands through his hair. “I
just couldn’t
do it, Grace. I tried, but I couldn’t
be a carbon copy kid. I wanted more than that.”

I
take his hand. “You
deserve more than that. You deserve to be who you want to be, who you
really are. You can’t
feel guilty for that.”

“Thanks.”
He exhales
slowly and looks at me, his eyes sad but less angry, and for a moment
I’m
lost in their color, layered with shades of blue, a gradient of ocean
pigments. “How
did you get so wise?”

I
shrug, not wanting to admit all the time I spent on grief websites
and message boards while my mom was sick.
“A
magician never reveals her secrets.”

He
smiles, a glimmer of the St. Clair charm returning. “Oh,
so now you’re
magic?” He
brushes a piece of hair behind my ear. He leans in to whisper, his
hot breath on my neck sending shivers down my spine and lower. “What
else can you do?”

“Well.”
I kiss his
cheek. “I’m
not sure what you have in mind.” I
kiss his neck, just where his collarbone comes together, that spot I
spend so much time staring at when he wears his shirts unbuttoned at
the collar. He makes a low growling noise in his throat and I shiver
with desire. I move my face up to his, our breath mingling with the
night air, our bodies close. “What
was I saying?” I
whisper.

He
kisses me then, his tongue demanding my lips let him in. He tastes
like brandy, sweet, and I can’t
get enough of his lips, his mouth. But it’s
not enough. I want more, to feel his skin against mine.

I
pull at his shirt and we take it off. His sculpted chest glows in the
moonlight and I run my fingertips down his abs. I’m
just slipping my hand under his waistband, already imagining the feel
of him in my mouth, when he pulls my hand away with a grin.

“You’ve
done so much for me tonight, Grace.”
He runs his
fingertips up my thighs and I feel his touch like a trail of heat.
“Let
me make this trip worth your while.”

He
continues to slide his hands up, up, getting excruciatingly closer
inch by inch as I lay back, wanting, needing to be touched. He dips
his head and flicks his tongue along my clit through my panties,
teasing, and I moan. Then he tracks a finger along the lace waistband
and lifts, running his finger along the edge, down, down, and down,
to just glide over the tip of my clit. I let my eyes close, but
instead of giving me more he reaches up to wrap both hands around my
hips and then rips my panties off in one fell swoop that makes me
gasp.