What's Yours is Mine (34 page)

It was an empty room, true, but it held such promise. Sunlight streamed in through huge windows onto the pale gray concrete floor. The ceiling was a jumble of exposed pipes. One wall was exposed brick. The matte tin ceiling had a hint of gleam, with embossed squares in an endless repeating pattern. It was a backdrop fit for a smoke-filled bar, a party in a fancy loft, or an artist’s studio. That stream of sun was delicious. It slid along the floor, licking the room with brightness. Dust mites twirled along the beam of light.
 

Raven set her bag and the package on a table against the sidewall and stepped into the ray of sun, drawn to it. She twirled in it, flung her arms out wide, and soaked in the beauty of it.
 

She was here. This was real. She might be dizzy with fatigue and hunger and shock, but she danced a dance of freedom and newness and delight. Because she could.

~*~

Finn slammed out of the office, his fingernails digging into his closed fists. Numbers swam in his brain. The more he looked at the accounts, the worse he felt. Enough.
 

That box of kefir starter should have gotten here by now. Finn closed the office door behind him and started downstairs—but paused, catching movement out of the corner of his eye.
 

Someone was in the warehouse room.
 

The memory of Alison’s exploits darkened his vision around the edges. He felt the gorge rise in his throat.
 

Nobody was taking advantage of him. Not Alison, not anyone.

He swung the door open all the way.
 

And stopped, dumbfounded.
 

A woman swayed in a swath of sunlight, arms outstretched, dancing to music only she could hear. Dark hair swirled with her graceful movements. A T-shirt clung to her curves. Her jeans had holes in both knees and paint stains down the thighs. She was beautiful in an entirely unexpected way—off-kilter and quirky, with dark slashes for eyebrows and a wide, generous mouth, tipped up in a blissful inward smile.
 

She danced in his loft space like she owned the place.

He stepped into the room, compelled. Wanting and not wanting to break the spell.
 

She turned, twirling on her toe as if her shoe were a ballet slipper and not a mud-stained work boot. He could tell the moment she saw him. She toppled off her toes and stood flat-footed. “I shouldn’t be in here, right? It was too much, though. All this lovely space, and the light. I couldn’t resist. Okay, I didn’t want to. But it was wrong of me.” Her voice was mellifluous, with a hint of New England earthiness in the vowels.
 

“It
is
nice light.” He’d never noticed before. The sunlight. The view of the river. The quiet sense of space.
 

She went over to a small pile of things she’d set down on the long table. “You’re Finn McKenna, I’m guessing?”
 

“And you’re…?”

“Raven. I was looking for you. I got distracted.” She picked up a box, proffering it.
 

Right. She must be the courier. The thought was disconcerting, as if she shouldn’t have such a prosaic role in life. He took the box. “Where do I sign?”

She handed him her electronic pad, then, as an afterthought, the pen that went with it. As he reached to take it, she flushed. Their fingers grazed—an electric spark like a jolt of attraction—and the pen fell to the floor.
 

They reached for it at the same time, then both pulled back in a comedy of errors. She grinned at him with a hint of wickedness in the curve of her mouth and the tilt of her slightly pointed chin, and he felt himself smiling back, almost unwillingly.
Mental note: bike couriers can be sexy as hell.
 

He picked up the pen, and they both stood. She stepped back to let him sign for the package. He was conscious of her like a heartbeat thrumming through him. He should not be so acutely aware of her. A stranger. Awareness was trouble. Awareness was stupidity.
 

So he handed the pen and pad back to her and picked up the box. “If you want a pickle or something, ask on your way out. Tell them Finn said you could.”
 

The box felt cold in his arms. Not surprising, given the half-dozen ice packs keeping the kefir starter fresh. He should get this into the kitchen.
 

He went downstairs without looking back. That moment, seeing the woman in his warehouse dancing, it felt like playing the saxophone. Like rippling music. Like escape. He couldn’t afford it, and so he didn’t look back.

To read more, buy
Draw Me In
at the usual set of retailers.
 

(Link takes you to Amazon.)
 

Excerpt from No Peeking

Miles and Alanna were lovers briefly as teens. It ended badly. Now Alanna works as a graphic artist for the ad agency where Miles is de-facto creative director.
 

Working together, their old feelings return in a rush, driving them both insane with longing, but they can’t act on them. An ironclad company policy forbids fraternizing, and Miles is wary of trusting his heart to Alanna a second time.
 

When
No Peeking
begins, Miles has a girlfriend, Sophie. By this point in the story, though, he’s broken up with her because of his feelings for Alanna.
 

Alanna doesn’t know this.
 

Sophie and Alanna are of a similar height and build, and both have blond hair.
 

As this excerpt begins, Alanna is heading into work late to drop off some artwork.

~*~

Alanna brushed an errant strand of hair back from her face and smoothed her skirt against her legs. Keep it professional. Keep a discreet distance from the man with the girlfriend.
 

She stepped out into the unseasonable, unreasonable heat and headed to the glass-and-steel skyscraper. To Miles. No, to the job. There was a difference. There was.
 

As she opened the door to his brightly lit inner office, Alanna heard his voice calling out from behind her. “Sophie! Wait, I’ll be right back.”
 

Alanna whirled around. The girlfriend was here? Was she going to have to deal with that sickening display of affection again?
 

But Sophie wasn’t there.

Miles was on the other side of the big main room, his hand still up in a half wave. Waving at her? He was already turning away, heading toward the break room.
 

As she entered Miles’s now familiar office, Alanna put her hand up to her hair. Coiffed, upswept. He’d seen her from the back and thought she was Sophie. Wow, this was going to be embarrassing.
 

She pulled the printed image out from between cardboard protectors and laid it carefully on Miles’s desk. Through the open door, she could see him approaching across the main room, passing rows of empty desks. There weren’t many people left in the office at this hour; all the assistants and day workers had gone home.
 

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. Once. Twice.
 

And went out.
 

All the lights. Inside Miles’s office. In the main office. The buildings and streetlights outside. Everywhere. All dark, hushed, except for a faint echo of traffic cacophony far below.
 

The world consisted of shades of black and gray. A laptop computer sleep light pulsed in the main office, dimly lighting the space around it. She could hear exclamations, then footsteps as people raced toward the stairwell door, presumably to clatter down the long flights of stairs. Outside the window, the cityscape was dormant. Skyscrapers loomed like silent black behemoths. Alanna could see her hands on the desk more as shadows than as form. The room was blocks of shape, leached of color or definition.
 

Footsteps came toward the small office. One set. Male, judging from the weight and cadence. He stopped in the doorway, a dim silhouette. “Still here?”

Alanna opened her mouth to reply. Then she breathed out. He thought she was Sophie.
 

Everyone else was gone, and Miles was here with a woman he thought was his girlfriend.
 

Alanna murmured low in the back of her throat, a wordless assent.
 

“Oh. Like that.” His voice was soft. He took a step into the room. Another. Then he was there. Right next to her.
 

A powerful current jolted through her body. She could hear his harsh breaths as he got close. He was turned on too. At the thought. Like her.
 

She should tell him. Should stop this right now. She opened her mouth again, determined to say her name, to clear this up. To—

He touched her. Light, gentle, tracing the line of cheekbone and jaw. He brushed her lower lip with his fingertip. It felt like the most intimate touch of her life.
 

Oh hell.
 

She leaned forward, tilted her head up, and kissed him with everything she had in her, all the pent-up longing, heartache, frustration. Like it was her last time ever kissing anyone. Acutely aware of his sandpaper chin against her own, his soft, generous mouth against hers.
 

It was dark, and he thought she was Sophie, and it was the only chance she’d ever have. So she kissed him.

~*~

This was pure sin, and he couldn’t get enough. Alanna was here in his arms, flicking the tip of her tongue against his lip. Sin. Miles groaned and pulled her closer, twining his tongue with hers as he tasted her cinnamon-and-coffee-flavored goodness.
 

He’d known the truth the moment he stepped into his dark office, when she’d murmured a soft response to his greeting. Her voice was indistinct, but her stance, outlined against the gray-blue skyline, gave her away. She stood with her legs braced—a warrior, not a lady. And she smelled like Alanna, musk and linseed oil and body warmth.
 

But why so quiet?
 

Then he remembered calling to Sophie a few minutes earlier when the lights were still on, and he’d caught a glimpse of upswept blond hair, thinking she’d come to drop off her keys to his apartment. But it wasn’t her. It was Alanna. And yet she hadn’t corrected him. Her blurred whisper, that was deliberate.
 

And he realized, right now, in the dark, he could touch her without consequence. He brushed her cheek, the edge of her jaw, with his fingertip. Heard her quick intake of breath.
 

Then she kissed him, and the delicious shock of it stunned him.
 

She wanted more than a touch. She wanted him to kiss her. To embrace her. To make love to her?
 

Rash impulse and insanity. How like Alanna. How unlike him.

He kissed her back because he could. Cloaked in night, concealed by mystery, unknowable, untraceable. For once in his adult life, he could do what he wanted with no painful backdraft. He could be with this woman. He drowned in the swirl of sensation: her scent, her body against him, the ragged tone of her breaths, and once he started, he couldn’t—or was that wouldn’t—didn’t want to, didn’t seem to know how to—stop.
 

His hands crept up under her shirt to check if her nipples were as tight and aroused as they felt against his chest. They were, and her breasts felt so good under his palms. She gasped and arched up toward him, an invitation. At the same time, though, she whispered, “Miles,” with a note of doubt. “Miles, wait, you should know—”

“Shhh.” He kissed her, erasing the words. If she spoke, if she revealed herself, she broke the spell. This was the perfect moment. The only one they could have.
 

To read more, buy
No Peeking
at the usual set of retailers.
 

(Link takes you to Amazon.)
 

Acknowledgments

The physical act of writing may involve one person sitting in a quiet room. Or perched on a bench in a loud church basement while waiting for her kid to be done with his class. Or in the living room while the rest of the family bustles around her. But the process of writing is entirely different, and for that you need a community. A posse.
 

My heartfelt thanks go to:

Daniel Valverde, who read the original opening and told me to dig deeper. And he was right.

Alaya Dawn Johnson, whose perceptive comments took this book to where it needed to go and whose enthusiasm gave me the drive to take it there.
 

Magdalen Braden, whose analytical pass strengthened the foundation and made the plot ring true.

AJ Larrieu, who asked the right questions to give insight into my beloved edgy Darcy, and who
got
the story.

Linda Ingmanson, who is more than a copy editor, but who is also a damned good one.

To the Firebirds, aka the Golden Heart® class of 2012, aka my posse.
 

And Damian. Because.

About the Author

Talia Quinn began her writing career as a screenwriter but switched to prose after she started writing an online journal
 
for fun. This led to writing fiction, which led to writing romance.
 

She is a two-time finalist for the prestigious Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart award, and won the Golden Heart in 2012.
 

She now lives in New York City, her childhood hometown, with her husband and son.

Other Works by Talia Quinn:

Draw Me In
, a Greenpoint Artists prequel novella

No Peeking
, Book One of the Greenpoint Artists
Miles and Alanna were lovers briefly as teens. It ended badly. Now Alanna works as a graphic artist for the ad agency where Miles is de-facto creative director.
 

Working together, their old feelings return in a rush, driving them both insane with longing, but they can’t act on them. An ironclad company policy forbids fraternizing, and Miles is wary of trusting his heart to Alanna a second time.