The MacGregor Grooms by Nora Roberts Page B

Filled with him. She studied canvases, streaks of color here, clashing shapes and textures. Another that was brooding shadows, and yet another that was bright and foolish and joyful.
    She couldn’t understand them, not really. But they made her feel. That, she supposed, mirrored exactly her reaction to the artist.
    “Moods, yes, I see.” She wandered to an easel. “You have a number of them. That would be part of what makes you what you are.”
    He turned back to study her studying his work. “And you, stable, balanced. That makes you what you are. What the hell are we doing together, Layna?”
    This was expected, she reminded herself as she continued to stare at the canvas. That he would come to that conclusion after she had convinced herself it didn’t have to matter, after all.
    “I often ask myself the same thing five minutes after we’re not.” She shrugged a shoulder, determined to be practical. “It’s just what we said from the beginning. Basic attraction. Physical.”
    “Is it?”
    “This is.” She gestured toward the canvas he’d completed only hours before she’d come into his life and changed everything. “This is all feeling, all passion. It’s raw and dangerous and not entirely comfortable.”
    “It’s
Need,”
he murmured.
    “Yes. Needs are met, and then they change.”
    “Even when you’d prefer it otherwise. Come over here.” He held out a hand. “And tell me what you see.”
    She crossed the room, but didn’t take the hand he offered. Touching him would be a mistake, she was certain, when they were coming to the end. And the ache in her heart was like a burning.
    “Tell me what you see,” he said again, and because she wouldn’t touch him, he put a hand on her shoulder to turn her toward the canvas, and herself.
    Shock came first, causing her to lift her arm, cross it over her body in a near reflection of the pose in the painting. Her heart stumbled, her throat closed.
    “It wasn’t what I expected to paint,” he said quickly. “Or to see. Or to feel. I’d just finished it. Then I looked out the window and watched you walk down the street.”
    “You … you’ve made me beautiful.”
    “You are beautiful.”
    It was too … intimate, Layna thought with a flutter of panic. The woman in the portrait had no shield, no mask. And the woman he had painted knew things she didn’t.
    “I’m not like that.”
    “That’s how I saw you, in that moment. Full of power and pleasure. It isn’t what I meant to paint,” he said again, “but it’s what came out of me.” He touched her cheek, then slid his fingers down until he cupped her chin. Lifted it. “It staggers me. Why haven’t we burned each other out, Layna? Why can’t I get enough of you and move on?”
    “Was that the plan?”
    “Damn right it was. It’s not working. You’re starting to worry me,” he murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers. Gently, softly, barely a whisper of a kiss. It rocked her down to the bone.
    “We should take a break from each other.”
    “You’re absolutely right.” His other hand lifted until he’d framed her face.
    “We’ve been seeing each other constantly for weeks.” She leaned into him, circled his waist. “We should ease back a little, take stock.”
    “Makes sense.”
    She sighed, rested her head on his shoulder. “That’s not what I want.”
    “Me, either.”
    “I don’t want to fall in love with you, D.C. I’m not equipped for it, for you. It would be a disaster.”
    “I know it.” With his eyes closed, he rubbed his cheek over her hair. “How close are you?”
    “Awfully close.”
    “Me, too.”
    “Oh God. We can’t let this happen. It’ll ruin everything just when—”
    And his mouth was on hers, taking her away from reason, muddling her thoughts, driving feelings to the surface where she couldn’t escape them.
    “Just be with me, Layna.”
    This time it wasn’t a wild ride but a dreamy one. There were no fierce bursts of heat, but shimmering