Born in Fire by Nora Roberts Page B

stalked up to her front door. Pulling him away from his work, from his obligations. Did she think she was the only artist he represented?
    He pounded on her door until his fist throbbed. Ignoring manners, he pushed the door open. “Maggie!” he called out, striding from the living room to the kitchen. “Damn you.” Without pausing, he stamped through the back door and headed for her workshop.
    He should have known she’d be there.
    She glanced up from a workbench and a mountain of shredded paper. “Good, I could use some help with this.”
    “Why the hell don’t you answer the bloody phone? Why have the damn thing if you’re going to ignore it?”
    “I often ask myself the same thing. Pass me that hammer, will you?”
    He lifted it from the bench, hefted the weight a moment as the very pleasant image of bopping her on the head with it flitted into his brain. “Where the devil’s my shipment?”
    “It’s right here.” She dragged a hand through her untidy hair before taking the hammer from him. “I’m just packing it up.”
    “It was supposed to be in Dublin yesterday.”
    “Well, it couldn’t be because I hadn’t sent it yet.” With quick, expert moves, she began to hammer nails into the crate on the floor. “And if you’ve come all this way to check on it, I have to say you don’t have enough to do with your time.”
    He lifted her off the floor and plunked her down on the workbench. The hammer clanked on concrete, barely missing his foot. Before she’d drawn the breath to spit at him, he caught her chin in his hand.
    “I have more than enough to do with my time,” he said evenly. “And baby-sitting for an irresponsible, scatterbrained woman interferes with my schedule. I have a staff at the gallery, one whose timetable is carefully, even meticulously thought out. All you had to do was follow instructions and ship the damn merchandise.”
    She slapped his hand away. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn about your schedules and timetables. You signed on an artist, Sweeney, not a bleeding clerk.”
    “And what artistic endeavor prevented you from following a simple direction?”
    She bared her teeth, considered punching him, then simply pointed. “That.”
    He glanced over, froze. Only the blindness of temper could have prevented him from seeing it, being struck dumb by it on entering the building.
    The sculpture stood on the far side of the room, fully three feet high, all bleeding colors and twisting, sinuous shapes. A tangle of limbs, surely, he thought, unashamedly sexual, beautifully human. He crossed to it to study it from a different angle.
    He could almost, almost make out faces. They seemed to melt into imagination, leaving only the sensation of absolute fulfillment. It was impossible to see where one form began and the other left off, so completely, so perfectly were they merged.
    It was, he thought, a celebration of the human spirit and the sexuality of the beast.
    “What do you call it?”
    “Surrender.” She smiled. “It seems you inspired me, Rogan.” Whipped by fresh energy, she pushed off the bench. She was light-headed, giddy, and felt glorious. “It took forever to get the colors right. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve remelted and discarded. But I could see it, perfectly, and it had to be exact.” She laughed and picked up her hammer to drive another nail. “I don’t know when I’ve slept last. Two days, three.” She laughed again, dragging her hands through her tousled hair. “I’m not tired. I feel incredible. Full of desperate energy. I can’t seem to stop.”
    “It’s magnificent, Maggie.”
    “It’s the best work I’ve ever done.” She turned to study it again, tapping the hammer against her palm. “Probably the best I’ll ever do.”
    “I’ll arrange for a crate.” He tossed her a look over his shoulder. She was pale as wax, he noted, with the fatigue her bustling brain had yet to transmit to her body. “And handle the shipping