Before she could slide off the bed, Zane appeared with a plastic bag filled with ice cubes. The enormous bed depressed as he sat down and placed the ice around her ankle.
She winced at the cold and tried not to love the fact that he was looking after her. “It’s really not that bad.”
He placed a cushion under her ankle to elevate it. “This way it won’t get bad. Just stay put.”
He rose to his feet, his expression taking on a look of blunt possession that was oddly thrilling, and that soothed the moment of hurt when she had thought he viewed her as a problem. She decided that in the rich turquoise-and-gold decadence of the room, and despite his kindness over her ankle, she had no trouble placing Zane at all.
When someone looked like a pirate and acted like a pirate, they very probably were a pirate.
An hour on the bed without anything to read and no chance of drowsing off because she was on edge at being in Zane’s suite, and Lilah had had enough.
Pushing into a sitting position, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She put weight on the foot. A few steps, with the barest of twinges, and she judged it was perfectly sound. The ice pack, which she had taken into her bathroom as soon as Zane had left the room, was melting in the bathtub.
She checked the sitting room, relieved to see that it was empty, and noted the sound of water running, indicating that Zane was having a shower. After changing into jeans and a white camisole, she brushed her hair and wound it back into a tidy knot. Collecting her sketchpad and a pencil, she slipped dark glasses on the bridge of her nose and stepped out onto the terrace. A recliner was placed directly outside her room.
Flipping the pad open, to her horror she discovered that she had picked up the wrong pad. Instead of her latest jewelry sketches, ornate pearl items based on a set of traditional Medinian pieces, she found herself staring at a charcoal sketch of intent dark eyes beneath straight brows, mouthwatering cheekbones and a strong jaw.
Flipping through the book, she studied page after page of sketches, which she had done over a two-year period. Slamming the book closed, she stared at the blank office buildings and hotels across the street. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how fixated she had become.
She had simply drawn Zane when she had felt the urge. The problem was the urge had become unacceptably frequent. It was no wonder that in the past two years she’d had trouble whipping up any enthusiasm for her dates. She had even begun to worry about her age; after all she was nearly thirty. She had even considered dietary supplements, but clearly food wasn’t the problem.
A shadow falling over the sketchpad shocked her out of her reverie.
Zane, wearing black jeans that hung low on narrow hips, his muscled chest bare. “You shouldn’t be out here. I told you, it isn’t safe.”
Lilah dragged her gaze from the expanse of muscled flesh, the intriguing tracery of scars on his abdomen. She was abruptly glad for the screen her dark glasses provided. “We’re twenty stories up, with security controlling access to this part of the hotel. I don’t see how this terrace can not be safe.”
“For the same reason I have bodyguards. The Atraeus family has a lot of money. That attracts some wacky types.”
“Is that how you got the scars?”
He leaned down and braced his hands on the armrests on either side of the recliner, suddenly suffocatingly close. “I got the scars when I was a kid, because I didn’t have either money or protection. Since my father picked me up, no one’s gotten that close, mostly because I listen to what my chief of security tells me.”
She stared at his freshly shaven jaw, trying to ignore the scents of soap and cologne. “Which is?”
“That no matter how sunny the day looks, there are a lot of bad people out there, so you don’t take risks and you do what you’re told.” He lifted her dark glasses off the bridge of her nose.
She released her grip on the sketchpad to reclaim the sunglasses. Zane let her have the glasses, but straightened, taking her sketchpad with him.
Irritation at the sneaky trick, followed by mortification that he might glance through and discover her guilty secret, burned through her. “Give that back.”
She caught the edge of his grin as he stepped into the shadowy interior of the sitting room. Launching off the recliner, she raced after him, blinking as she adjusted to the dimness of the sitting room. She made a lunge for the pad. Zane evaded her reach by taking a half step back.
“Why do you need it so badly?” His gaze was curiously intent, making her stomach sink.
“Those sketches are … private.”
And guiltily, embarrassingly revealing.
The drawings cataloged just how empty her private life had been. He would know just how much she had thought about him, focused on him and how often.
He handed her the pad but instead of letting it go, used it to draw her closer by degrees until her knuckles brushed the warm, hard muscles of his chest.
The relief that had spiraled through her when she thought he hadn’t checked out the drawings dissolved. “You looked.”
“Uh-huh.” Gaze locked with hers, he drew her close enough that her thighs brushed his and the sketchpad, which she was clutching like a shield, was flattened between them.
He lifted a dark brow. “And you would be drawing and painting me because …?”
Lilah briefly closed her eyes. The old cliché about wishing the ground would open up and swallow her had nothing on this. “You saw the painting in my apartment.”
“It was hard to miss.”
She drew in a stifled breath. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
“Because then you could avoid admitting that you’re attracted to me. And have been ever since we met two years ago.”
Gently, he eased the sketchpad from her grip. “You don’t need that anymore.” He tossed the pad aside. “Not when you have the real thing.”
Lilah was frozen to the spot, gripped by the inescapable knowledge that if she wanted Zane, he wanted her. “Maybe I prefer the fantasy.”
“Liar.” His head dipped, his forehead touched hers. “What now?” The question was soft and flat.
“Nothing.” She swallowed, unable to take her gaze from his mouth, or to forget the memory of the kisses that morning.
Just that morning. In the interim a lot had happened. The passage of time seemed wildly distorted, as if days had passed, not hours.
And that was when she understood what had happened.
Somehow she had done the very thing she had worked to avoid. She had allowed herself to get caught in the grip of a physical obsession. And not just any obsession.
She stared into the riveting depths of Zane’s eyes. She had followed a path well-trodden by Cole women. She had fallen victim to the coup de foudre.
That was why she had ended up on the couch with Zane. It explained her inability to say “no” to kissing Zane on the flight and during the press conference.
Somehow, without her quite knowing how, she had allowed sex to sabotage her life.
Zane’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” But she knew.
Her guilty secret had been exposed, the emotions and longings she had kept quietly tucked away—all the better to deny them—had been