After drying off with City’s plush towel, Cath pul
led on her underwear and shrugged back into the T-shirt. Mostly headache-free and heading toward hungry, she ventured out in search of her host and, she hoped, her own clothes.
The unmistakable odor of bacon wafted through the flat, but the kitchen was quiet, so she peeked in the door next to the bathroom. An empty office. She moved toward the remaining door, which had to be the living room.
Wrong. It was a studio. Canvases were stacked four and five deep along the walls and in front of shelves that were neatly arrayed with paints, paper, and other supplies. The artist was in residence, his body turned three-quarters away from her, utterly absorbed in the large painting on his easel.
Disoriented, Cath leaned against the doorjamb and watched him for a while. She never would’ve figured City had an artistic side. The painting on the easel in front of him was nearly finished, showing a woman working at a desk in an office. He must have painted the picture in his bedroom, too. The style was unmistakable.
He was talented.
Damn, and now her skin was doing that tingling, goose-bumpy thing it did whenever she got the hots for an artist. What was it about painters, anyway? The play of the lean muscles in his forearms, the precision in his fingers as he wielded the brush over the canvas—the whole scene just turned her crank.
It was a purely situational attraction, of course. Meaningless. This was City, for heaven’s sake. She’d never once gone melty over him before. It was just that in faded jeans and a paint-smeared red T-shirt that clung across his shoulders, he looked like a completely different man.
His ass wasn’t helping. The man had a really tidy ass.
Ashamed of the randy teenager who had overtaken her brain, Cath pushed away from the door and crossed the room. “You’re pretty good.”
He turned and looked at her, his face momentarily blank. His short blond hair was tousled as if he’d been running his hand through it, and there was a streak of red paint on his cheek.
Then he smiled, and Cath temporarily forgot how to breathe. City didn’t look like City when he smiled. It was still his face, though with nice teeth and a boyish dimple in one cheek. Pleasant surprises, but there was something else, too. An I’m-going-to-eat-you-up something. Smiling, City didn’t appear altogether safe.
To her dismay, he lit her up like a pinball machine.
Chapter Three
Cath leaned against a table strewn with crumpled tubes of paint and jars full of brushes, pressing her damp palms against the surface and willing her heart to stop pounding. You’re not really attracted to City. You’re just looking for your clothes, and then you’re going home. A blip, remember? This is a blip.
Dimly, she realized he’d spoken. “Sorry, what?”
His lips twitched, and the dimple made another appearance. “I only said ‘Good morning.’ Are you all right?”
She’d been on the money predicting he’d have a posh accent, anyway. Maybe she could blame the hangover for her reaction to the smile. She needed to eat something. Or get laid.
It had been a while. Could you still say that when it had been two years? It had been a while.
“That depends,” she said.
“On?”
“On what I did last night.”
He pursed his perfect lips, a frown line appearing between his eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”
“Not much.” She drew her index finger along the surface of his worktable, as if checking for dust.
“Do you remember refusing to tell me your name or where you live?”
“We talked?” Funny, she couldn’t resurrect any memories of speaking to him. Only his hand, warm and solid, guiding her. Only the way he’d made her feel.
The way he was still making her feel, come to think of it. She was bare-legged in this strange man’s apartment, asking him to reveal the details of what she’d done while drunk last night. The situation ought to have been intimidating. She ought to have been queasy with remorse.
She wasn’t, and she could only conclude the reason was City. He projected calm.
“You kept calling me ‘City,’ ” he said.
Cath nodded. “Yep. That’s what I call you.”