Sinful Temptation by Ann Christopher Page A

caterpillar. “Why don’t you think about it for a minute.”
    Oh, she was already thinking about a lot of things.
    First of all, there was a silky and disconcerting note in his voice that glided across her skin like a feather’s touch and made nerve endings zing to life all over her body. Second, she’d been so sure that her path for the foreseeable future was set. She’d made her list of priorities, with no room for last-minute deviations.
    She’d been working too hard, she’d thought.
    Life was short and she didn’t want to miss a second of it, so she’d planned to get off the merry-go-round and travel while she could. Choose different, better goals than merely being a successful painter.
    She wanted, in short, to live.
    Third, her superlative deductive skills had led her to one inescapable conclusion: this mural commission was a gambit to get around what she’d told him yesterday. She’d lied and said she felt nothing romantic for him, he knew she was lying, and now he’d manufactured a reason to throw them together.
    He was betting he could wear down her resistance if they spent more time together.
    He was right.
    “Talia?”
    “Why are you doing this?” she asked, low.
    Like magic, the intensity burning behind his brown eyes died out, and his expression became as bland as a bowl of infant rice cereal with milk.
    “Doing what? Proposing something that could benefit both of us?”
    “You don’t really need me.”
    His lips tightened into a grim line. “Is that so?”
    “You’re trying to uproot my life, Tony.”
    “I’m merely making a business proposition to you.”
    “I’ve told you I’m planning to travel for a while.”
    “Then tell me no,” he said flatly.
    She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She closed her mouth.
    He watched her, unsmiling. This moment—this decision—had somehow become too important for petty things like winning or losing, and he seemed to take no pleasure in her struggle.
    “Why me?” she asked finally. “There are a million other artists who’d be—”
    He edged closer, more firmly into her space. There was something predatory about him now, threatening in a way that had nothing to do with her physical safety. It excited her almost as much as it—he—terrified her.
    “Well, now you’re raising an interesting point, Talia. This is a good offer. Lots of other artists would snap it up in a heartbeat. So why are you acting like I’m serving you a plate of nuclear waste?”
    “You’re not answering my question. Why me?”
    “Why not you?”
    “I don’t want to work with you.”
    “Because…?”
    Was he trying to force her to say it? Again? Well, fine. “Because we have different expectations about our—” her cheeks flushed “—relationship.”
    He frowned, looking baffled. “No, we don’t.”
    “You’re not serious.”
    “I am serious. I told you I had feelings for you, you said you don’t have feelings for me, so that’s it. We’re friends only. End of story.”
    Standing there with him, close enough to see the sparks of black-and-gold in his brown eyes and feel the heat from his body, it didn’t feel like the end of any story.
    It felt as though their story was just beginning.
    “So you’ve just…given up. Is that what you’re telling me?”
    “No means no, Talia,” he said lightly. “You stood right there, looked me in the eye and told me you don’t have romantic feelings for me. Remember that?”
    As if she could forget. Even now, the lie clogged her throat, threatening to choke her. “I remember.”
    Though his expression was still unfathomably blank, his voice was the purest spun silk. “You’re not a liar, are you?”
    The funny thing was, she wasn’t normally a liar, and the whopper she’d told yesterday felt as if it was scraping years off her life.
    Could he see it on her face? The longing she felt for him, locked in a death match with her fear of being hurt, her fear of being left, and all the other terrors that