The MacGregor Grooms by Nora Roberts

confidence when it came to his art. He painted what he felt, what he saw, what he knew or wanted to know. It was a rare thing for him to turn away disappointed from a completed painting.
    It was rarer still for him to be overwhelmed with something he’d created with his own heart and hands.
    But Layna overwhelmed him.
    He hadn’t worked from a sketch, but from memory, a moment in time that had lodged in his head, settled there and had refused to be shifted aside until he’d re-created it.
    He’d intended to work on another watercolor, keeping the colors cool, the tone reserved. That was her image, after all. Her style. Her type.
    But he’d found himself prepping the canvas for oil, choosing vivid tones, bold hues, sweeping strokes.
    He’d painted her in bed, her bed. They’d spent more than a dozen nights together now, some in hers, some in his, and most usually in a frenzy of hunger he’d come to acknowledge baffled them both.
    She looked back at him now, the eyes he’d painted were heavy, the mouth soft and faintly curved in female awareness.
    Her hair was smooth and sleek. He remembered how she’d combed her fingers through it to straighten it—a habit of hers—as she’d sat up with the tangled sheets pooled around her. And she’d turned her head.
    Why that single instant still lived so vividly in his mind, he couldn’t say. That simple turn of the head, that hint of a smile, the way the lamplight had slanted across her shoulder. And she’d crossed an arm over her breast, not so much in modesty, he thought, but again in habit.
    That moment of sexual punch, of quiet reserve, of casual intimacy refused to leave him. Out of it he’d created something more than he’d ever done before. It lived. It knew him, and even as he looked into it, it looked into him.
    “Who the hell are you?” he murmured, shaken because he thought he’d known and was no longer sure.
    With something close to fury, he tossed his brush down and stalked to the window. When had she gotten inside him this way? How had he let it happen? And what the hell was he going to do about the fact that he was falling in love with a woman he wasn’t even sure existed?
    How much of what he’d painted was Layna, and how much was what he wanted from her?
    He wasn’t entirely sure of what he wanted from her, but he knew it wasn’t just a body in the night. It had never been, no matter how hot the need.
    She was already a part of his life, and he of hers, though neither of them seemed able to admit it. She’d nudged him into unpacking boxes. He’d bought her a flat of snapdragons and had pushed her intoplanting them willy-nilly along the border of her patio.
    Then they’d sat, in the fragile light of dusk, and admired the results.
    He’d bought a bed, a real one, then had let her convince him to go with the twisty brass headboard, though he’d feared it would look too feminine.
    She’d been right—it had suited the room perfectly. And he’d enjoyed thanking her for her perception the minute the bed had been in place.
    They went to the opera, a street fair, a ball game and the ballet. For some reason that mix of styles and tastes seemed to slide into a perfect union.
    Impossible, he reminded himself. It wasn’t the right time, and she wasn’t the right woman.
    Then he saw her, walking down the sidewalk in long, graceful strides. She’d changed from work, he noted. She habitually wore some trim and stylish business suit during working hours. Now she was in slim linen-colored trousers and a tailored shirt the color of ripe limes. She carried an enormous shopping bag with the Drake’s logo. And looked both ways, he saw with reluctant amusement, before she crossed the street.
    Even as he told himself he wanted to be alone, he pushed open the window and leaned out.
    The sound had her glancing up, stopping. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and though she knew it was ridiculous, suffered a sharp sensory shock from the sight of