Which would make it all the easier to remember not to blur the lines. He was the toreador and she was the bull. His goal was to keep her eyes on him long enough that she’d forget her obsession with his father. To keep dancing around her in big flamboyant circles drawing her farther and farther from the family he was so desperately trying to protect.
His mother had sacrificed her life raising him. The least he could do was repay the favour and help keep her husband faithful.
If it wasn’t too late.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she mocked, one eyebrow raised, stripping off protective wrist covers and tossing them on her workbench.
He swallowed a smile and glanced at the still-steaming bucket. ‘What are you working on?’
‘It was a practice piece for an ornamental vase. I wasn’t happy with it.’ She pulled the rod and the inadequate creation on the end out of the nearly evaporated water. The glass had completely shattered. She nodded to a series of coloured glass sticks laid side by side on the workbench. ‘Those will be lorikeets mounted around its mouth.’
‘I’ll take it.’
‘It’s not for sale until I’m happy with it.’ She laughed as she tossed the waste glass into a recycling bin off to one side. The two sounds melded perfectly. ‘Besides, you don’t strike me as someone who would appreciate a pink lorikeet vase.’
‘I appreciate quality. In all its forms.’ He lifted his eyes intentionally and locked onto hers. Classic Moore move.
Doubt-lines appeared between her brows, drawing them down into a fine V. But where he’d expected a blush, she only looked irritated. ‘If you still like it when it’s done, I’ll make you a pair for your reception desk. At a price.’
‘I’m not expecting mates’ rates.’
‘That’s good, because we’re not mates. I don’t even know you.’ Her dark eyes shone. ‘But you know me, it seems. What really brought you here?’
Aiden used silence to best advantage in boardrooms. The speed with which an opponent rushed in to fill a thick silence said a lot about them. But the one he unleashed now ticked on for tens of seconds and the diminutive woman before him simply blinked slowly and waited him out, serenity a shimmering halo around her.
Well, damn...
He broke his own rule. ‘You were watching us at the café.’
Those eyes widened just a hint. She took a careful breath, shrugged. ‘Two good-looking men...I’m sure I wasn’t the only one looking.’
The blank way she said it made it feel like the opposite of a compliment. ‘You met my father last week.’
She took a careful breath. ‘Across the street from your offices. Hardly clandestine. Does your father know he’s being monitored?’
‘I was passing by.’ Liar!
‘Does he know I’m being monitored, then?’
Aiden blinked. The woman was wasted in an art studio. Why wasn’t she working her way rapidly up one of MooreCo’s subsidiaries? For the first time he got a nervous inkling that his father’s interest in the pretty blonde might not just be connected to those full lips and innocent eyes. Natasha Sinclair had a brain and wasn’t afraid to use it.
‘Have dinner with me.’
Her instant laugh was insulting. ‘No.’
‘Then teach me to blow glass.’
The shocked look on her face told him he’d just asked her for something intensely personal. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Make some custom pieces for MooreCo.’ That was work; she was a professional artist. She couldn’t refuse.
He hoped.
Those dark eyes calculated. ‘Would I be required to go to your offices?’
It was a risk, putting her so close to his father, but he’d be there to run interference. Moreover, it would allow him to keep her close; where all enemies belonged. Win her over. And gather more information on what this thing between her and his father was all about. ‘For consultation, design and installation.’
She wavered. His own brilliance amazed him, sometimes.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Will you be there?’
Oh, that was just plain unkind. ‘Naturally. I’m the commissioning partner.’
If a humph could be feminine, hers was. ‘When do you want me there?’
He mentally scanned through the appointments he knew his father had, and picked the most non-negotiable one. One taking his father halfway across the city. He named the date and time.
Nothing wrong with stacking the deck in his favour. It was what he did for a living. Find opportunities—make them—and turn them into advantage.
She reached up for her goggles. ‘Okay. I’ll see you then.’ Without waiting for his answer, she re-screened her soul from his view, pressed her steel-caps onto a pedal on the floor and turned towards a brace-mounted blowtorch that burst into blue-flamed life.
Aiden let his surprise show since she was no longer looking. He’d never been so effectively dismissed from his own conversation. Firm yet not definably rude. Had he even had control of their discussion for a moment or was that just a desperate illusion?
Still, at least he’d walked away with what he’d set out for, albeit via a circuitous route. Whatever Natasha Sinclair and his father had going on was thoroughly outed. And he was now firmly wedged in between any opportunity for her to engage with his father.
Couldn’t have worked out better, really.
* * *
If not for his already monumental ego, Tash would have kissed Aiden Moore.
He’d handed her the perfect excuse, the other day, to get closer to her mother’s lost love with his transparent commission. She’d been hit on enough times to know the signs. And the likely outcome. Every guy she’d ever dated had started out by buying something of hers. Or expressing interest in it. She’d lost interest in those kinds of sales—those kinds of men—no matter how lucrative.
She knew from firsthand experience that men with Aiden Moore’s charisma and social standing didn’t plan lifetimes with women like her. Women like her made terrific mistresses or fascinating show-and-tell at boring dinners or boosted your standing in local government in an arts district.
She’d met—and dated—them all.
Not that she cared. Aiden was a Moore and she was a Porter-by-proxy and if he hadn’t already joined the dots he soon would and that would be that. Their families’ feud would only add to the antagonism he so clearly felt towards her.
Because that had to be what was zinging around the room when he was in it.
Nathaniel had told her to put their family differences out of her mind. But it was easy to be dismissive of a family feud when you were the cause of it. She had simply inherited it. So had Aiden.
She jogged up the railway-station steps into daylight and wandered towards the Terrace, her trusty sketchpad under her arm. The excitement of a new commission bubbled away just beneath the surface, hand in hand with some anxiety about seeing Nathaniel again. So publicly. He’d changed an important meeting when he’d heard she was coming in, embracing the opportunity to get to meet her in a work capacity. To legitimise all the sneaking around they’d been doing.
She was sure they both considered it worth it. They spent hours chatting about her mother, about their families, their lives. Nathaniel Moore wasn’t a man to regret his choices but he was human enough to need to set some ghosts to rest. And she was motherless enough to want to hang onto Adele Porter-Sinclair no matter how vicariously.
‘Natasha.