Chapter Fifteen #2
The detective he’d worked with at DCPD had used his resources to try to uncover Ryder’s real identity. Whoever he’d paid to help him change his name had been skillful. Nick was no closer to finding out who he really was or what he was hiding.
Soledad, decked out in a shining strapless silver number, met Ryder halfway across the gallery floor, offering him a glass of bubbly and an auction catalog. As he wrapped his fingers over hers on the stem, he used it to pull her closer and lay his lips over hers.
Nick raised a brow. Bold move for a shy guy, he noted. Ryder hadn’t exactly appeared comfortable with public displays of affection at the Bootleg. What was rallying his confidence tonight?
A face from the crowd tilted up toward his.
The detective, Rick Finbar, from the local PD, acknowledging Ryder’s entrance.
Nick gave him a slight nod. He sought another form belonging to the executive of the security firm, Todd Olsen, who had brought his art-loving wife, Kelly, to the event.
His windswept hair hid an earpiece that allowed him to communicate with the guys in the security van outside, monitoring the scene with cameras they’d hidden during the installation of the new security system.
If Ryder made a move toward the storeroom, they would alert Olsen, who would cue Detective Finbar and his team.
The Coltons were out in force. He heard the pealing laugh of Sherry on the arm of her husband, James.
Gathered around them were their children, Ryan and Ava, with Chayton close by.
Nick spotted the Colton patriarch, Sam Colton.
He’d surprised a good many people by bringing Susan Baylor, introducing her as his girlfriend.
Nick wasn’t sure how his sons Jacob and Noah felt about the arrangement.
The two had been watching the couple warily throughout the night.
Sassy’s parents were in attendance, too.
The faceless mannequin garbed in the elaborate Navajo ceremonial dress her mother, Bly, had sewn for the occasion stood directly underneath the blown-glass chandelier, a showstopper in its own right.
Bly was drawing admiring looks, too, dressed in one of her own designs, a dress of stunning blue with shining metal buttons.
Her ornate turquoise necklace dripped over her bodice.
She touched it often as she hovered near the mannequin, answering questions from bidders in her calm, informative way.
“It’s going well, I think.”
Nick turned on the stairs. He did a double take.
He hadn’t seen Sassy since she’d ducked up the stairs before the doors opened to change into her evening garb.
Speaking of showstoppers, Nick thought dimly as he took her in. She left him speechless.
Bly had supplied her with another one of her designs.
This one screamed for attention, with a bright yellow velvet bodice lined with metal studs down both sleeves and along both edges of the collar.
They marched across the bodice in a symmetrical pattern.
Four quatrefoils of turquoise dripped in a line from her throat and nearly reached the line of her wide belt.
Its gold discs stood out in relief, crowned by beads of turquoise.
It snatched her waist. Beneath, the fall of her vivid skirt tumbled to the stairs with a sheer lace overlay in red-orange.
The underlay was yellow like the bodice and looked as soft as satin.
Twisted tassels of red, white and black draped over each hip, and her mohawk dragon braid and large beaded earrings crowned the look.
She was a desert marigold. Nick thought of the woman in the painting—her painting—standing strong against the erosion of nature and life’s elements.
His heart wasn’t his own. It felt outside his body, yet every part of him rang with its hard, insistent knells. She was always the most beautiful woman in the room, but tonight she eclipsed everything—the guests, the artwork, the spiral chandelier.
Nick knew in that moment with absolute certainty that he was doomed. He’d never find anyone who would make him feel this way. There was no one else on Earth like Sassy. He wanted no one else.
And he needed her like his next breath.
She touched the top of the three-dimensional braid. “Is it too much?”
“No.” The answer leaped out of his mouth, unbidden.
He felt unharnessed. His mind had fled the paddock.
It bolted freely from one thought to the next, all circling her in that magnificent dress.
He said the first word he could reach for.
The first word that made any sense at all, the Navajo greeting she’d taught him at the lunch table that first day they’d shared a meal. “Yá?át?ééh.”
Her expression softened. He thought he saw her eyes dilate, darkening to delicious umber.
“Aoo’ yá’át’ééh,” she replied in a silken voice that arrowed straight to his restraint.
She came down the steps farther, stopping on the tread above his.
On the hand rail, their hands rested centimeters apart.
His skin hummed for the silken texture of hers.
Her gaze followed the line of his shoulders. She reached up to brush something from his dinner jacket, a smile tugging at the corner of her cherry-red mouth. “Riot hair,” she indicated.
“Ah.” He lifted his chin, watching her down the long line of his nose as he drew the fragrance of nighttime roses into his lungs and held it there.
“You’re a picture,” he said, trying to do her justice.
She was the subject of a painting who had walked out of the canvas to wreak havoc on him.
If he touched her sleeve, would the velvet soften under his fingers?
Or would she vanish like a midnight pumpkin?
She pressed her lips together and raised a brow, avoiding his eye. “Looks like a date. Talks like a date. Margot would be proud.”
“Did you hang it?” he asked, voice caught in a reverent near whisper.
She nodded. “For now, it’s in my office. When the auction’s over, I’ll find a place for it in the gallery.”
“Good,” he said. “She’s right, you know. It deserves to be seen.”
She fussed with his tie, still avoiding his unerring gaze. “You look like the cover of GQ.”
The urge to kiss her brought him up to his toes.
She stilled. He reined himself back by the skin of his teeth.
Bite the bit, Nerd Boy, he told himself firmly.
All of Dark Canyon was in the space below.
Her mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, clients…
and he’d sworn he would never lay his lips on hers again.
There might never be another woman in the world for him, but he dared not cross the line again for fear of losing her completely.
She bent slightly at the waist, just enough to break the barrier between them.
His breath hitched as her lips grazed his cheek.
When she pulled away, she wiped the lipstick from his cheek. Then she took his hand and said, “Wanna be my arm candy?”
He didn’t think. He just grinned. “As you wish.”