скачать книгу бесплатно
Uh-oh. Not good. Remembering the dreams, staring down at Nick’s picture, Jordan felt heat and moisture rush to her core. She squeezed her thighs together, willing the tingling to stop.
Now it didn’t even take the dreams, just the memory of the dreams, to push her to arousal. In the middle of the afternoon. In her office! And that just couldn’t be.
“Damn you, Nick,” she said out loud. “First you came around, haunting my dreams, boinking me silly, and then you don’t come into my dreams. I’m turning into a crazy person!”
This part had to be sheer frustration. While the visions were coming every night, she looked forward to going to sleep, just to meet and stoke the fire with her dream lover, eager to find out whose myth they’d be acting out tonight.
Until a week or so ago, when the dreams stopped. No nightmares, no fantasies, no Nick. Clearly, it was the disappointment over losing her dreams that was making her even nuttier than she was before, even more obsessed.
Jordan gulped and sat up straighter in her chair, deliberately putting the photos aside. “It’s not my fault. It’s just…stress. Stress over not finishing the dissertation.”
But she grabbed the photographs back before they’d even left her hands. She couldn’t not look.
So handsome. So mesmerizing.
In the first picture, the wedding portrait, he stood tall and starkly handsome, in an immaculate long, dark coat with a stiff white shirt and white tie, with a small flower pinned to his lapel. Nick’s posture—shoulders back, chin up, facing square into the camera—was comfortable, assured, maybe even arrogant. Next to him, his new wife looked remote and unremarkable.
Jordan chewed her lip. Who cared about the wife? She was doing her best to block out the fact that he’d even had a wife.
“That’s bizarre,” she chided herself. “Why should you care if a guy from 1893 was married? For all you know, they were the love story of the century. Or he was a jerk, or she was a saint, or…”
But she did care. Because, in her heart, she was having a love affair with him, and she didn’t want him to be married.
For whatever reason, she felt completely connected to Nick. She’d known from the moment she’d spotted those pictures on eBay that he was important to her. The overheated dreams only made that more obvious.
And that was why she continued to moon over his photos during the day, and then toss and turn at night, hoping she could reach the dreams where the two of them tangled together, naked and aroused, in the very positions depicted on the arch.
“The dreams have stopped. So let’s not even think about them anymore,” she said quickly. But she couldn’t stop thinking about them, not when she looked into his face in the pictures. It was that face that haunted her fantasies.
His features were beautiful, with high cheekbones, dark brows, a slightly crooked nose that gave him character, and perfectly shaped lips, a little fuller on the bottom. She really liked the look of those wide, sensual lips, with the hint of a dimple on one side. She remembered tasting and nibbling those lips in her dreams. She remembered those lips trailing fire up her thigh…
“Okay, not thinking about that,” she ordered herself, squirming a little in her hard wooden chair. “Not!”
But if she didn’t look at his lips, then there were his eyes. They were so intense and compelling, pinning her, pulling her in, hypnotizing her. They weren’t exactly safe, either.
The other photo was a little less sharp, but even more attractive, because he was smiling. Hatless, with his dark hair tousled by the wind, he looked carefree and adorable, as if his whole life were ahead of him and he couldn’t wait to jump right in.
It made it that much more affecting to realize he’d died just a few months after it was taken. The more attached she became to Nick, the more tragic that seemed.
“I feel like I know you inside and out, Nick,” she said softly, fingering the hard angle of his jaw in the small photo. “And you know me. Like it’s always been that way. But why?”
She’d felt guilty taking time away from her main research into Isabella and the arch, but she’d done it, anyway, to glean more details about Nick. Not that she’d managed to find much. She knew when he was born and married and when he died. She’d read about his travels to Europe with Isabella from reports in the society columns at that time, and it sounded as if the brother and sister were fairly close. But when he got married to Lydia Trent, and when he died just a year after that in, of all things, America’s first car race, his beloved sister wasn’t there. Not in the list of wedding guests, and not in the list of mourners at his funeral. She wasn’t even mentioned in his obituary.
“Do I keep staring at you because it seems weird your sister didn’t come to your wedding or your funeral?” Jordan questioned aloud. “Or because it’s so hard to think about you dying just a year after your wedding?”
Or because he was handsome and tragic and amazingly hot?
“Or because I am one crazy, mixed-up chick,” she whispered. “Because fantasizing about a guy who’s been dead since 1895 is not exactly sane.”
“Jordan?”
Recognizing the voice, she looked up, hastily shoving the photos back inside her drawer as Daniel edged into her office. Daniel. Her boyfriend. Sort of her fiancé. Really just her boyfriend, though. And she needed to get a grip and stop thinking about Nick and the tree and his thighs and her thighs and his lips and his…
Yeah, time to get a grip.
2
How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 2:
Gossip is great. It’s when they’re not talking about you that you have to worry.
1893
N ICHOLAS B ONAVENTURE T EMPEST was bored. Bored down to the soles of his fine leather boots.
Alone in the third-floor music room of his family mansion, leaning back with his feet propped on a wooden table, Nick aimed and then tossed a souvenir Columbian Exposition half-dollar into an empty china cup he’d set on a piano stool about five feet away. Clink. In again. Just like the past eleven times he’d played this game. After an even dozen, he supposed he ought to move on.
Not for the first time, he reached for the brandy decanter at his elbow. He’d already had quite enough to be thoroughly sloshed, but in the mood he was currently in, there just wasn’t enough liquor in the world. Tedious dinner parties, tedious women, tedious conversation…Even his father’s best Napoleon brandy wasn’t enough to make that nonsense palatable.
“Ah, well. I’m done with it for one more night, at any rate.” He saluted himself with his glass. “Until tomorrow.”
“Nick, darling, it’s already tomorrow,” his sister, Isabella, noted sweetly as she swept into the room.
Nick sat up straighter. One look told him something was up. Trouble was pretty much the norm with Isabella, but the sparkle of mischief in her pretty blue eyes was even more ominous than usual. He hoped she hadn’t fallen in love again. He didn’t need to get into any more fights defending Isabella’s honor. Not that there was any honor left as far as he could tell, or that she cared. Still, a good fistfight might provide a diversion.
“Are you just getting home?” he asked. “A bit late, isn’t it?”
“Not for me. I don’t believe in living my life by the clock. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who has to make an appearance at the store bright and early.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Isabella was clearly too wrapped up in her own good mood to pay attention to his gloom. She discarded her cloak and gloves, dumping them on a nearby music stand. “It’s not my fault you’ve become such a respectable citizen. I warned you time and again that Father would turn you into a drudge if you let him.”
“I’m hardly a drudge. I run the place.”
“You’re a drudge. And you’re much too good for that.”
She began humming some cheery tune, dancing around in her loose artist’s smock, the kind she always wore over her gowns when she was working on a sculpture. That explained why she was coming in so late. When she was in the middle of a project, she didn’t notice anything else. It did not, however, explain her good spirits. Ever since she’d come home from Europe, Bella had been moody and unhappy about her future as a sculptress.
Spinning around to look at him, she set her pretty face in a pout. “Play something on the piano for me, will you, Nick? You’re so much better at it than I.”
“And wake up the entire household? I don’t think so.”
“Not just a drudge but a shriveled-up old prune,” she mocked him. “I want the old Nick back. My dashing brother, always running off after some fast woman or fast horse. He would’ve played me a tune in the wee hours if I asked him.”
“One of us had to grow up,” he commented dryly. “It certainly wasn’t going to be you.”
She shrugged. “I hope I never grow up. It’s quite disgusting.”
Nick managed a smile. Lightly he said, “If everyone in this family were an artiste like you, you’d have no pretty dresses, there would be holes in our shoes, our stomachs would be empty, and we’d all be living in a shack in the middle of the woods.”
“You stole that from Father. I’ve heard him say that a hundred times.”
“Yes, well, he’s right. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. I’ve decided that if it’s my destiny to mind the store, at least I’ll do a good job of it.” Nick purposely changed the subject, both because he was bored with that one and because he was still trying to figure out what mischief Isabella was up to. “What are you working on, Bella? Haven’t seen much of you lately. Must be something big.”
“Not that big,” she murmured.
She unbuttoned her smock and tossed it on top of her cloak, revealing a frilly green dress with a nipped waist and the huge, pouffy sleeves that were all the rage. Isabella might consider herself a rebel and an artist, but she still liked to wear the latest fashions.
“Did you hear that, Nick? The grandfather clock in the hall just rang five. That means it’s not late. Why, it’s positively early. Almost time for you to do your duty and report to the store to play Lord High Pooh-bah.” She raised an eyebrow as she picked up his still-burning cigar resting in a cut-glass ashtray. “Mother will have your hide for smoking up here.”
“Mother never comes up here,” he said coldly, rescuing the fine Cuban before she snuffed it. “Besides, cigars are a mere misdemeanor in the record book of my crimes.”
“Ah. Ducked out of the Trents’ dinner party early, did you?” She made a sympathetic face. “Father won’t like that. He’s determined to deliver you to Lydia Trent all wrapped up like a Christmas package.”
The idea sent Nick straight to the brandy decanter again. “Yes, well, he has visions of a department-store dynasty. Tempest & Trent, purveyors of fine luxury goods, a step ahead of anything Marshall Field can come up with.” Nick scowled, knocking back his drink. “All he needs is for me to marry Lydia.”
“So that’s what’s got you up here at all hours, swimming in brandy and cigars? The specter of a future hog-tied to Lydia Trent?”
“I suppose. It was a dreadful party. Dreadful people. I stayed approximately five minutes past dinner before I pleaded a headache and got out of there.”
“And then what?”
Putting aside his drink for the moment, Nick swung his legs off the music table and took a long puff on his cigar. “And then what, what?”
“Well, you can’t have escaped from the Trents and come right here. You’d have been drinking for, oh, the past seven hours. Even you don’t hold your liquor that well.”
“I checked in at the club, played a few hands of poker, won an outrageous amount of money, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to sell me his new horse, tried again to convince Freddy Montgomery to buy my old carriage…It’s so dull, I’m boring even myself.” Nick tried not to sigh. “Someone’s got to find something more interesting to do in this town or I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Face it, Nicky,” his sister said, fingering the strings of a violin no one ever played. “You’re just not cut out for the workaday world. You need to take me to Paris again. We’re overdue for an adventure.”
He eyed her warily. “When are you going to tell me what your new project is?”
Her lips curved into a very smug little smile. Now he knew he was in for trouble. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean whatever it is you’re working on that has you so excited. So excited you lost track of time and came wandering in at 5:00 a.m. with your hair all disheveled and smudged like a chimney sweep.”
“Nonsense. And it’s not new. If you must know, I’ve been working on it forever,” she said saucily, her smile widening. “That’s why I’m excited. I’m finally finished, Nick. I’ve finished my masterpiece.”
It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not talking about another statue of my hand.”
“It’s an excellent hand, but I’ve moved on to bigger projects.”
“Such as?”
Isabella giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. He didn’t like the sound of that. Finally, she whispered, “I don’t think I should say.”
“Why not?”
Her glance skittered away from him. “Maybe I want it to be a surprise.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “How big a surprise?”
“About six feet.”
The same height as a man. Oh, no. Not again. When she was studying in Italy, Isabella had done several nude torsos of one of her beaus. When she brought the pieces back to Chicago, they’d set every tongue in the city wagging. Now he suspected she’d moved on to the entire body of a naked man, complete with genitalia. Maybe Nick could convince her to add a fig leaf…
“Who’s your subject?” he asked. He wasn’t sure which would be worse—an anonymous naked stranger or someone recognizable by Chicago society. If she’d sculpted the son of a prominent family without his trousers, the entire Tempest family might have to pick up and move far, far away.
“Apollo, Zeus, Eros…” Her words trailed off dreamily. “They’re all there. And they’re spectacular.”
He allowed himself a sigh of relief. Greek gods didn’t sound so bad. Representing them in stone was quite popular, as a matter of fact. Except…Except he knew his sister. “What have you done with these Greek gods? Are they clothed?”
She shrugged, looking pleased with herself. “I told you, they’re spectacular. Stunning. I’ve added something new this time. I’ve added passion . Far and away my best work ever.”
Given the fact that she had sidestepped his question about clothes, he could only conclude that all these Greek deities were, in fact, naked. That wasn’t unusual, either, as far as classical or modern sculpture went. He’d seen enough of it on his travels with his sister to know that much, and also to know that she was fascinated by the human form.
“Is this a commissioned piece?” he inquired, trying to pin her down. “Is someone going to pay for this and hopefully whisk it away to Outer Mongolia?”
“Of course not. My art is intended to be seen. I want people to experience it, to feel and change because of it. This sculpture is definitely going to change people.” Isabella swished her skirts as she began to pace back and forth. “I’m counting on this piece to make my name.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
She shot back, “Don’t mock me, Nick. You wait and see! By morning, when it’s on display, people from around the world—artists and collectors and scholars—will be smitten. I wouldn’t be surprised if potential patrons waving huge sums of money were breaking down my door tomorrow, begging me to create pieces just for them.”
“Where?” he asked suspiciously. Isabella had no gallery, no studio, where buyers could see this supposed masterpiece. “Where is it on display?”
After stewing for a moment, she confessed, “It’s at the Women’s Building. At the fair.”
“But I thought…” Nick stubbed out his cigar. “I thought they didn’t want you there.”
“Well, they didn’t.” She shrugged again. “But Mother got me in.”
Isabella and their mother had argued about this very subject for months. The last Nick had heard, Mother wasn’t budging and was not going to use her influence as a member of the prestigious Board of Lady Managers to find a spot for Bella’s work, specifically because she didn’t approve of her daughter’s preoccupation with nude male torsos or female faces with a lascivious look in her their eyes. So far, thank goodness, Isabella had not combined the strapping males with the provocative females, because that would…
“Good God, Bella, you didn’t.”
All innocence, she inquired, “Didn’t what?”
“What exactly is the theme of this work, this masterpiece with all the Greek gods and goddesses? Have you named it?” he asked impatiently, standing up and advancing on her.
“It doesn’t have a name yet, actually. Maybe you can help me with that, Nick.” Eagerly, she perched on a stool near him. “At first I thought I would call it Erotikos , but then I thought perhaps Sexdecim would be the right name. It has an intriguing ring to it, don’t you think? It’s Latin, though, and I’d prefer Greek, since my figures are Greek.”
“ Sexdecim just means sixteen,” he told her. “How can the same statue fit either Erotikos or Sixteen? Good Lord.” He’d just had a horrifying thought. “You’re not sculpting erotic sixteen-year-olds into a statue, are you?”
“Heavens, no.” Isabella twirled the other way on her stool, avoiding his eyes. “It’s not exactly a statue, anyway. It’s an arch. I’ve intended it as a stand-alone work, something like a mantel for one’s fireplace, but much more beautiful than that. It’s marble. I love working in marble. It’s so unforgiving, and yet so stunning if you get it right. Father had a fit, of course, since it was also wretchedly expensive. But I think it was worth every penny.”
“Sixteen?” he prompted.
