Chapter One
Sky Gordon resisted the urge to fidget in her electric blue sky-high heels. Who wore high heels and a ball gown for brunch? She looked ridiculous, like a child playing dress-up. Although a lot of women were also coiffed elaborately. Why had she succumbed to peer pressure? And professional pressure. These heels were going to kill her or force her to take a dive into a waiter circulating with mimosas and champagne.
She was short. She needed to deal. Most days she did, but this morning was big. Big money. Big donors. Big-name artists. Bigger egos. And she just felt so small. Even though she was a featured artist, she felt like she was pretending, like her father was going to show up any second and remind her how she didn’t belong, wasn’t wanted.
No.
She wanted to kick herself with the hated heels. She was not going to be that bewildered lonely girl anymore, seeking attention, seeking warmth, seeking love from her parents who’d had none to give. All of it had been spent on Bennington. And she’d loved her brother. Hadn’t begrudged his all that love, but she’d wished there’d been a little bit left over for her.
But enough of the past. That was one of the reasons she was here—to kick the past in its tight ass. Move on.
Sky had donated the signature piece to the upcoming auction benefiting the most prestigious hospital in town. She was virtually an unknown artist, but one of the hospital’s premier orthopedic surgeons, Dr. Austen Sheridan, had seen her work at a local juried art fair. He’d come by her studio. Asked her a million questions. Asked her about her life. Her schooling. And then to see her work. All of it—works in progress, but especially the metal sculptures comprising her MFA portfolio. She worked in a lot of sculptural mediums, but metals were her favorite. She loved the fire, the heat, the chemistry, the raw earth-element nature of working with materials from the earth. She felt like she was a part of history when she thought of the thousands of years people had been honing metal to their will.
And now here she was at a brunch art preview—who knew such a thing existed?—with some of the richest people in Scottsdale. This opportunity and event was something she could only have dreamed about last year when she’d come home to Scottsdale—a juried artist with her sculpture, a distressed copper and bronze figure of a bull rider defying gravity and probably other laws of physics, holding center court in a high-end art gallery and being ogled by a lot of women.
Just like the cowboy.
Jerk.
She’d really done exquisite work. That’s what obsession did to a woman and to art. The bull rider looked vividly alive, even a faint smile curved his lips.
Not his corporate shill smile. His real one. The one with the left dimple and the chin cleft.
Damn.
Sky kept her bare back toward the sculpture she’d labored over for months as she mingled with the crowd. Or pretended to mingle. Jonas Richards, the rich boy gallery owner mingled for her, doing all the talking, the smiling, the lingering touches on her bare back and shoulders when he introduced her, steered her around the room like a toy car. Her skin crawled.
He’d picked out this gown and rented it for her despite her strenuous and repeated objections. And now she knew why.
“Smile, babe,” he said through his perfect, bleached teeth. “You’re hot. The patrons will love you.”
Disgusting.
She didn’t want to be hot. She wanted to be gone. Working in her studio. She had preliminary sketches finished for another western theme set of sculptures for the mountain rodeo circuit. Cowboys on bucking broncos. No bull riders, thank God. This smiling and pretending part of the art business would better suit the cowboy who’d inadvertently posed for her sculpture. More of them if she were honest.
No need to go that far.
He was so hot he burned. He could have melted the bronze with his smile, not a forge. He was so charming women creamed themselves just to stand near him. She was a mere mortal, devoid of most social skills. She fought her tremble just standing in a room with so many people. Her breathing was shallow. Sweat beaded in her hairline, and her pulse was a rapid reminder of her fear of crowds, closed-in spaces, and forced socializing.
“You can do better than that.” Jonas looked down at her, his brown eyes narrowed with disappointment.
She nodded and concentrated on her mouth and pushing it into the correct shape, but she was so bad at this. Jonas’s face blurred as she tried to gasp in a breath deep enough to stop the light-headedness. The black dots danced in front of her eyes. Her skin prickled with him standing so near her, but she forced a deep breath, bit the inside of her lower lip to center herself and made her mouth comply with, if not a natural smile, at least a better imitation.
Her face hurt she was so smiled out. And this was just the brunch. Tonight’s event was even bigger. Jonas had chosen a red strapless dress for her for this evening. She grimaced. She knew she should be grateful. This was an unheard of opportunity for a new artist. She wouldn’t get any money, but she would get recognition and cache and access—if she could summon the nerve to seize them. Sky had received so many rave reviews from the press and from many art patrons over her work, as well as admiration for her generosity, but she wasn’t donating the sculpture for a good cause so much as she was giving it away. A cleansing. A quiet middle finger to the man and their past. And the hope that she could finally move on.
“I need to check my phone,” she whispered under her breath.
She couldn’t be unreachable. She had responsibilities that extended far beyond schmoozing to build her career.
“No calls, no texts,” Jonas brushed off her concerns like he did everything else. “I’d feel it.” He patted his pocket, but Sky was too uncomfortable to look down. And she didn’t like the thought of her phone anywhere near down there. Jonas was getting sexually pushy. And no way was that happening with him. She’d flung herself into the deep end once with a dominant and ambitious man. She wasn’t even getting her newly manicured toe wet again.
“I just want to check in with Brandy.”
“Sky, you look enough like a teenager. No need to waste the power of those drop-dead gorgeous baby blues by gluing them to a phone screen. You haven’t even taken a sip of your champagne,” he said, critically. “This is a party. A cel-e-bra-tion.”
She didn’t trust him or the situation. She felt like a Barbie all dolled up according to his specifications. Yeah, she was chasing money and a career as an artist, but she was starting to feel pimped and the last thing she needed was to self-medicate like her mother, who’d done it to cope with her father even before she dove deeper into the bottle after her brother… Sky had to stop thinking about everything except this moment.
Why did she always do that? Fall into the past? Get stuck. She was an adult. Independent. No longer hoping for affection or acceptance, much less admiration from her parents.
“I’d just feel more comfortable checking in,” Sky said in a low voice, clinging to the last of her patience and trying to push down the panic edging her voice. She hated crowds. Being in the limelight. Being looked at and judged. She tried to tune Jonas out. Ignore the conversation, the string quartet, the pop of champagne corks and just breathe.
“Who the hell is that hick with the cowboy hat, and what’s he doing heading into my gallery?”
Sky looked toward the door. Her heart flailed wildly. The “hick” was no hick and mercury eyes slashed hers before he’d cleared the door. Met. Clashed. Melded. Her breath tangled in her throat and four years crashed around her unsteady feet.
Kane Wilder strode through the gallery door. Past the men in tuxes. The women in floor-length sparkling gowns. Black western-style shirt fitted to his highly sculpted athletic form, black Wranglers that hugged his thighs and butt like he was in an ad, black, highly polished, hand-tooled cowboy boots, black Stetson molded to perfectly frame his high-cut cheekbones and the aggressive jut of his jaw, and a tuxedo jacket casually dangled by one finger over his shoulder. The collar of his shirt was open, two buttons undone revealing a strong, tanned neck and enough of his chest to remind her what he looked like and felt like naked when he’d been above her.
She couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t tear her hungry gaze away. It was like watching a crash in slow motion, aware of every detail—his appearance, the way he moved, his eyes that had always sucked her in way too deep, and of course, her reaction to him. Breath knotted uselessly making her dizzy. Her blood scorched her veins, her tummy tumbled sickly and her core heated and slicked as if he’d flicked a switch. And he saw it all. His pale blue almost silver eyes were those of a hunter, and she knew she looked like prey.
“Who does he think he is?” Jonas demanded stepping forward and slightly in front of her as if to intercept. “He’s wearing jeans at a brunch and a gaudy belt buckle the size of Vegas. In my gallery!”
It was completely unconscious, but Sky adjusted her body so that she was still facing Kane, aligned with him and creating a clear path, as if an invisible steel cable connected them—heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul—and she’d be lying if she didn’t admit the rest. The sex. Kane Wilder had owned her body as much as her heart. She’d been his, and even after four years just the sight of him made her melt into a puddle of want and despair.
God, she had lived to touch him. Be with him. Smooth his dark curls away from his forehead. And she’d always, always loved to watch him walk toward her. He made her feel alive. He made her feel like the only woman in a room.
Six foot one plus some of confident masculinity cut through the crowd like he was a knife, and everyone else was butter. His legs ate up the ground, his body long, lean, fluid and so toned. In her first anatomy and sketching class in college she’d learned why Kane moved so beautifully. Symmetry and perfect alignment. His pelvis and spine, head and shoulders were all on the same plane, and as he moved, they stayed there as if he were in his own dimension. Science hadn’t diminished his magic.
And time away hadn’t dimmed his pull.
“That joker doesn’t have an invitation.” Jonas was still talking and he took an aggressive stance as if that would deter Kane Wilder.
Sky tried to stifle a hysterical burble of laughter. No. No. NO. This could not be happening. She wanted to run toward Kane as much as she wanted to run away. She was still crazy. She was done with Kane Wilder. She had to be done. She’d hugged her secret and burned that bridge with a flamethrower. And then tossed a grenade.
Bye-bye.
Hardest thing she’d ever done. Worst thing she’d ever done.
Sky stared, frozen as he continued that rolling stride, his long, honed legs that were used to gripping thrashing bulls ate up the floor until the last possible moment. She could feel the heat from his body, and it was like she combusted.
Her body was no longer hers. She actually swayed toward him like a damn magnet.
In one fluid move he swung his jacket around her bare shoulders, enveloping her shivering frame. His knuckles brushed against her bare skin and then without breaking his body’s flow, he pulled out the jeweled clip that she’d used to twist her long dark hair into some pretense of sophistication and tossed it over her shoulder where it pinged on the ground near some patron’s expensively shod feet.
Sky couldn’t look away from the churning emotion in his eyes. They were turbulent, the gray and darker gray of a brewing storm. No heat and light and amusement like she’d seen since childhood.
Kane Wilder was angry. She hadn’t seen him angry. He’d always protected her. Made her feel safe and cherished. Without thinking, one hand reached up and a finger twirled in one of his dark curls. He’d always worn his hair shaggy. Usually his beautiful glossy curls had brushed his high angled cheekbones or he’d get a little edgier and let his hair grow almost to his jawline, before lopping off length, but now his hair brushed past his shoulders in thick whorls that begged to be speared and stroked and brushed over bare skin, preferably hers.
He looked raw and masculine and timeless and so beautiful her eyes stung. Her heart ached. Her blood burned.
He cupped one large, tanned hand on the back of her head and then ruthlessly reeled her in for a kiss.
Her lips parted automatically, shocked and thrilled and remembering, and he caught her betraying gasp as if it were the price of admission to heaven. His lips were firm and before Sky could even marvel that Kane had appeared back in her life after so many years, his tongue traced her inner lip, sending darts of heat arrowing low in her tummy and peaking her nipples beneath the thin blue material of her gown. The way he stepped in closer, closing even the concept of distance between them, pebbled her nipples almost to the point of pain, and it took all her willpower to not rub against the smooth heat of his shirt.
Sky hummed as she drowned in pleasure from the kiss. God, could the man kiss, and her whole body got in on the action. Her breasts had always been embarrassingly sensitive, and Kane clearly hadn’t forgotten, as one hand splayed rough, hot and hard on her back to press her more deeply into his body. His lips continued to move over hers, tongue stroking. Every cell in her body rejoiced, and she couldn’t begin to muster the presence of mind to shut any of this down.
“Hey, baby.” Kane paused the kiss, but instead of reining in any scrap of sanity, Sky stood on tiptoe and tilted her head back, hungry to reignite the smokin’ hot moment. “You missed me.”
A statement. Typical Kane. No doubt. None.
“No.” Her voice was low, shaky.
He laughed. Smiled. Oh God, not the famous marketing smile—the full-on left dimple, cleft chin, probably insured smile that crinkled his eyes and stretched across his beautiful, masculine face, and that made her want to slap him—but his real smile. The one that kicked up his sensuous mouth at the corners for a second and then painted warmth in his cool, watchful eyes. No dazzle. No sparkle. But that simple smile with the left dimple that had never failed to make her want to rip off his shirt.
He smiled her smile.
“Liar.”
“What the hell are you doing, Sky?” Jonas grabbed her arm and tugged her away from Kane. Or tried to.
Of course she stumbled in the stupid heels. Kane easily righted her. His arm circled her waist, firm, but not digging into her sensitive flesh. His attention honed on Jonas.
“Hands.” Kane’s voice was quiet, but threaded with steel.
“This is my gallery,” Jonas said fiercely, but he did drop her arm, and Sky couldn’t help but try to rub away his touch. Her skin had pinked because Jonas had grabbed her hard. Kane didn’t miss her reflexive gesture as she soothed her smarting skin. Jonas sneered. “And Sky is my…”
“Nothing,” Kane said. “She’s not yours. Not now. Not later. She’s mine.”
Sky startled at that bold assertion. She hadn’t been his in four long, empty years. And he hadn’t lost a moment’s sleep without her. He’d replaced her in an afternoon.
“Who do you think you are?” Jonas sputtered, so outraged his normally precise and well-modulated diction skewed all over the place. “What do you want?”
“Sky’s got something of mine. I’ve come to get it back.”
Panic kicked in. Her newly manicured nails dug hard into her palms. The room swam in front of her. How did he know? What would he do?
“And that…” Kane tilted his head toward the sculpture that rose up like a taunt to physics and to civilized society “…is also mine.”
“The hell it is,” Jonas said fiercely.
Sky felt incased in ice. Kane had come for the sculpture? Not her. He hadn’t discovered her secret. He just wanted his darn image! Figured. Four years later she was still so stupid. Of course he hadn’t come for her, but she’d jumped into his arms and his kiss like he’d just left for the weekend.
Ashamed, Sky willed herself to not inhale Kane’s scent wafting from his still-warm jacket draped around her body—pine, cedar, and sandalwood. She loved sandalwood.
God, Kane was like a drug. She an addict.
And that thankfully kicked up her anger.
“It’s mine,” Jonas said sounding like a truculent fifth grader.
Sky tugged against Kane’s casual hold around her waist. Useless. She narrowed her eyes at him warning him to back off, which he didn’t.
“It’s mine,” she stated coolly as irritated with Kane as she was with Jonas and his posturing.
No way was Kane Wilder striding back into her life and saying squat about her art. “I’m donating it to the Pinnacle Peak Hospital’s Austen Sheridan Guild art auction.
She felt the press of Kane’s body jerk tighter like a cable cranked, but the arm at her waist didn’t hurt.
“And it’s my art and I’m doing what I want with it.”
Trying to erase you from my heart. Finally.
She wasn’t nineteen and obsessed with him anymore, although her body had yet to get on board with that concept.
The guild, her donation along with many better-known artists’ donations, the preview brunch—those were the reasons she was here. The auction was next weekend. She was wearing this Barbie dress and heels for this stupid preview, and even in these stiletto skyscrapers she barely made it to Kane’s shoulder.
Kane had no say.
She was moving on. She had moved on.
See?
She notched her chin at him, like a childhood dare when he or her brother Bennington, Kane’s best friend, had told her she was too young or too little or too much of a girl to come with them on some fantastic boy adventure.
Only now Kane ignored her and instead walked around the piece, his eyes intense, his face lit with concentration. She tried to ignore the lines of his body. Failed. So instead she tried to see what he was seeing. She’d lived with the sculpture for three years. She could trace each line with her eyes shut. Remember the placement of each groove, the etched texture.
The bull rider, left hand high, fingers wide like he was high-fiving God, was parallel and in alignment with the bull’s bucking, writhing body, precariously balanced on one hoof so that it appeared that both man and bull were standing vertical. The rider’s corded thighs gripped the heaving, thrashing animal’s sides, the fringe on the chaps seemed to ripple, and the rider’s sculpted ass kissed air. The two other points of contact were the rider’s hold hand, wrapped tightly in the bull rope that had taken her hours to texturize, and the spurs lightly touching the bull’s sculpted sides.
The sculpture screamed power and grace; the defined muscles of the bull mirrored those of the rider. The energy from the heaving body, counterbalanced the Zen-like fluidity of the rider.
The sculpture had garnered a lot of praise and attention after the press release, newspaper article and the glossy brochure that had been circulating around town. Just like the man. Sky swallowed hard, unable to breathe. She’d never thought Kane would see this sculpture. She knew how much it revealed about her feelings toward him, and he didn’t know half of it.
“Uncanny how you captured the exact angle. Like the photo. Brilliant, Sky. I love it,” he said, finally looking at her, and Sky hated how his praise was like a supernova in her chest, even as it struck terror there as well.
She hadn’t been able to show the sculpture to her parents. It had been part of her final portfolio, yet she’d left it out of her graduate show because if her parents had seen the sculpture they would have known. And they would have been devastated. Beyond furious. One more way in which she would have hurt them. But in the end, they hadn’t even shown up to her MFA showing. The rift she’d created by leaving home and lying and moving across the country to pursue art had just kept growing. She’d stopped trying to bridge the gap that had become a chasm worthy of the Grand Canyon.
More secrets. They’d kept so many from her she’d later learned and then she’d added a few of her own.
“You are so talented, baby. Incredible, but I am not surprised. Not. At. All.”
Tears pricked her eyes at his sincere and open praise. Stupid tears. Stupid swelling heart.
Jonas was clearly pissed, and his tension was starting to attract attention. Conversations faded. People looked. Gravitated toward the center of the gallery as if being sucked into the vortex of the building drama. Or maybe they realized the model, one of the top bull riders in the world, had arrived.
“It’s so raw. The power’s fierce. Radiates,” he assessed her as he made another tight turn, his focus intense, until he flicked his eyes to hers again, and she couldn’t breathe. “You’ve blended metals.”
“You’re no art critic, cowboy,” Jonas derided.
“No. And I’m not an attorney but I got one and I do recognize trademark infringement when I see it.”
“Come again?” Jonas demanded.
“Kane?”
“I remember that day, Sky.”
Obviously.
“Your first win on the AEBR Tour.” She stated. They hadn’t even been a couple yet except in her dreams.
“That’s not the first I was remembering,” he said softly. His eyes lit up with something she didn’t want to think about, but the innuendo made her pale skin flush all the way down to her collarbone, which of course Kane noticed. His smile kicked up and ruined her breathing.
“But for that part at least—” he indicated the sculpture with his head without breaking eye contact “—I was wearing a shirt. And a protective vest although I appreciate the sentiment.”
He ticked his finger at her and mouthed ‘dirty girl.’
It was stupid to blush. She was an artist. She’d drawn hundreds of naked men and women of all ages and sizes. And she shouldn’t be embarrassed about her artistic choices, but she felt pervy now—the sculpture was too revealing: man and bull nearly vertical, symbolizing oneness, half man half beast like a Minotaur. The only hint of clothing, of civilization, was the chaps, the fringe giving the illusion of movement. And boots with spurs prickling the tough hide in warning and daring. A dark edge. A hint of power and violence. Danger lived in every line. Spurring was worth extra points. And Kane was all about extra points.
Sky had still been an undergrad when she’d started the project. Scared. Grieving. Lonely. Broken. Sure she’d never again be whole. Never be loved. She’d felt dead, and the project had started first as a memorial, and yet in the end, she’d felt fierce. Determined to pick up the pieces of her life. Move on. She’d been angry at so many things, unable to articulate any of it, but her roiling emotions had led her to push the symbolism and the sexuality by having the bull rider’s heavily muscled torso bare, to mirror the bull’s musculature.
As a final flourish, she’d precision etched the tattoo of a bull in full competition mode across the rider’s broad, sculpted shoulders. And then the hat. Always the hat, although Kane hadn’t worn a Stetson that day or ever to compete. And he hadn’t worn one around her until she’d bought one for him for his birthday before their first kiss. She’d used a chunk of her summer job money from teaching dressage lessons to have it custom fitted.
“Like hell that’s you,” Jonas jeered interrupting her self-flagellation. “Sky’s an artist not a sports fan. And no way in hell can a man do that. Please. Copyright infringement my ass.”
“Sky was on tour with me that summer. She took the photo. And she sold the rights to the AEBR.”
Sky winced. She’d been nearly nineteen and stupid. Then her art had leaned toward charcoal and oil pastel sketches and photography. She’d sold the picture because the AEBR had wanted it for a future cover of their annual tour book. She’d been thrilled for Kane to be profiled and then on the cover. She hadn’t even asked for money, just a photo credit. She’d received both.
“That pose is trademarked by the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour. You want to use it, you gotta ask real nice.” He ignored Jonas and winked at Sky.
Then he looked away, his eyes caught by someone in the crowd. Sky noticed the tick in his jaw. She followed his gaze, wondering what had upset him as Kane always kept himself in complete control. She’d only seen the tick in his jaw at the hospital the night her brother had been severely injured and Kane had stayed with her while she waited for her parents to arrive.
What had upset him? All she saw was the doctor who had come to her studio. His attention was riveted on Kane. His expression was so strange that she stared back at him. What was it? Unconsciously her fingers danced, imagined quickly sketching him. Awe? Desperation?
“But for you…” Kane looked back at Jonas, his gaze cold, face shuttered, all emotion shut down “…and the hospital fundraiser for the Austen Sheridan Orthopedic…” his low deep voice, always smooth so people told him that announcing for the tour or doing TV or radio commentary would be a natural fit once he retired from the tour, roughened “…no way in hell. The sculpture’s mine.”
Jonas hissed his annoyance. “Get out. Get the hell out or I’ll call the cops.”
Even though Kane had kept his voice low and perfectly modulated, people were noticing. The attention was probably Kane’s fault for being so masculinely beautiful. Charismatic. He looked like a movie star. It would take a giant screen to contain that much sexuality, confidence and magnetism.
“Kane,” Sky said softly, wanting to defuse the situation, but not knowing how, but then she saw Brandy outside the gallery, peering in, holding Montana’s hand along with her car booster seat and a travel bag. Montana saw Sky first, squealed and wrenched out of Brandy’s grip and ran into the gallery, her little light-up sandals tapped out an excited rhythm on the terrazzo floor.
“Mama!”
Sky couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. It was her biggest nightmare.
But seeing her three-year-old daughter rush toward her kicked in her mommy instinct and Sky hurried forward, silently cursing the heels and the long hem of the rented dress.
“Hi. Sorry.” Brandy rushed up, out of breath. “My niece is real sick and had a febrile seizure. My sister called 911 and is in the ER freaking out. Her husband’s on a fire department call, and I don’t want her to have to wait in the ER on her own. I tried calling and texting you.”
Damn Jonas.
Sky automatically picked her daughter up and squeezed Brandy’s hand in reassurance. Jonas hadn’t wanted her to carry her phone around today as she greeted gallery guests and donors so he’d held on to her phone and hadn’t let her know the sitter was trying to reach her.
“Go. Let me know how your niece is doing later,” she said.
Her throat dried and her heart pounded. She didn’t want to turn around, but knew the one moment she had dreaded above all others had inexplicably arrived. Anxiety was alive slithering through her nerves, knotting her stomach, and for a moment she thought she’d throw up. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears and her voice sounded as if she were underwater.
Get a grip.
She was an adult. She had managed her own life for four years without any help, but still her past hurts, her fears, her inability to deal with confrontations crashed around her, and this confrontation was about to reach critical mass at the worst moment and in the worst place imaginable.
He’ll be shocked. You can deal. It won’t change anything.
She turned around, shaking, and reflexively clutched Montana to her chest like a shield. Kane stared at her, and for the first time in her life she had no idea what was going on in his head. He looked at Montana, then back at her and then his eyes fixated on her daughter’s large pale blue almost silver heavily lashed eyes that were replicas of his own. So beautiful and so distinctive that no one would have any doubt. Montana’s dark curls also matched her father’s. And her jutting chin with the little indent already starting to form.
Montana stared back at him. Eyes huge and curious. Then she grinned. Twin dimples whereas Kane only had one.
“Mommy,” she said, pressing her small hand on Sky’s cold cheek and forcing her to look at Kane, who was pale beneath his golden tan. She could see his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths that made him seem human for a moment. He looked like he’d just taken a toss from a bull and then a hoof to the gut. Maybe another to his chest.
Montana blissed out in her toddler ignorance took her wet finger out of her mouth and pointed at Kane like he was an unexpected gift instead of her mother’s biggest nightmare. Fear circled like buzzards ready to pick apart her carefully constructed, hard-won life.
“Look, Mommy, look. Daddy. My daddy.”