Believing Again (21 page)

“This is Liz Fairchild, Marius. She has a gallery in Portland where I have some of my work. And this is Amanda St. Claire. She shows her work at The Fairchild, too.”

“Everyone knows Amanda St. Claire’s art glass. And I’ve read about your gallery, Liz. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve the pleasure of three beautiful and talented women joining me but whatever it was, I hope I do it often.” He gestured toward the table. “Please. Sit. Let me flag down a server and get you something to drink.”

Liz took the chair next to Marius and Amanda sat opposite her, leaving the place across from him for Cynthia. She moved the chair back from the table a bit, sure that if he went back to the slouch he’d been in before he stood, she’d be brushing knees with him and she didn’t think she could handle that.

But instead of inhabiting the chair with a casual sprawl, he sat up straighter, his forearms on the table in front of him which put her hands, not her knees, in danger. Even without touching him, Cynthia was unnerved by being this close to him. She played with the strap of the shoulder bag in her lap, twisting her fingers in it, trying not to watch him. But she wasn’t able to keep herself from sneaking peeks at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Cyn, what do you want?” Amanda’s voice broke through the heated mist that had obscured every other thought as soon as she’d seen Marius. “We’ve ordered our drinks and some food to share. The server’s waiting for you.”

“Sorry, a glass of house red, please.”

“Make that a bottle of the Malbec I’m drinking,” Marius said to the server before asking Cynthia, “Is that okay with you? I’m drinking red wine, too, and with you and Liz ordering red, it makes sense to have a bottle.”

“I’ve never had a Malbec,” she said, “but sure. Sounds fine.”

“Most Northwesterners who drink red wine stick to local pinot noirs. But this is one of my favorites. It’s from Argentina, from a high altitude vineyard in the Andes. I think you’ll like it.”

“So, Marius, now that we have that settled,” Liz began, clearly finished with the wine discussion, “I’d love to know more about you. You commissioned a piece from Cynthia in Seattle, but are hanging out in Portland. Do you live in Washington or Oregon? Or do you slide back and forth across the Columbia at will?”

He seemed to take Liz in stride, merely smiling at her as he answered. “I live in Seattle. I’m in Portland for a coffee convention.”

“There are conventions for coffee?” Liz said. “Who knew?”

“Coffee’s big business. Especially now that Starbucks has taken it out of the supermarket and made it gourmet. My family has been in the business for several generations and we’ve seen the change. Benefited from it, to be honest.”

“You sell coffee?” Liz asked.

“Not in the sense I think you mean. We’re brokers for coffee plantation owners in Central America. We arrange the deals between coffee roasters here and plantations there.”

“Coffee roasters like Starbucks?”

“Don’t I wish. No, we have several dozen clients in and around Portland, same in Seattle, and a growing number in California.”

“Is your family in Seattle?” Amanda asked.

“Miami. My family came from Cuba when Castro took over.” Before Liz could ask another question, he went on, “My grandfather started the business. My father and uncles run it now and my brother, a cousin, and I are next in line. I was sent to Seattle to open a West Coast office to handle all the business your coffee culture was bringing us. It’s only me, a couple computers, and an assistant but … ” His self-deprecating smile didn’t really match the rest of his confident body language.

Which was what Cynthia was staring at — his body. Especially his shoulders. His gorgeous shoulders were clad in a jacket that never wrinkled when he moved, like it was part of his skin. She was sure he had his suits made for him. The one he wore today was brown, the perfect complement to his milky-coffee skin. The fabric looked expensive, imported from someplace like Italy. His cream-colored shirt had French cuffs held together with chunky gold cuff links. She wanted to touch the fabric of the shirt; it looked so soft, so smooth. Maybe it was silk, like his tie, which she thought was Prada.

What the hell was wrong with her? First obsessing about her clothes, now his? What men wore had never been of any interest to her. Women’s clothes barely held her attention for more than the ten minutes it took for her to throw on jeans and a T-shirt every morning. She had to pull herself together. Liz and Amanda were having a normal conversation with this man while she sat like a lump, too busy thinking about things like his clothes — or what was under them — to say anything, much less anything intelligent.

“I guess you must find Seattle a bit of a change from Miami,” Amanda was saying when Cynthia tuned back into the conversation.

“You have no idea. Just about everything’s different, from the weather to people’s idea of fun to the politics. I’ve gotten to like it now. Except for the beaches. Even after two years, I still miss Florida beaches.”

The wine arrived; he tasted and approved it. The conversation went on, mostly around Cynthia not with her. She’d made some progress toward normalcy — she’d stopped obsessing about his clothes. Now, she was intent on making sure no part of her body touched any part of his. When he handed her a glass of wine, she took it without coming in contact with his hand. She kept her knees clenched tightly together and primly set to the side of her chair so there was no chance they would brush his. She avoided eye contact.

But the one thing she couldn’t get away from was the smell of his aftershave or cologne or, who knows, maybe pheromones, wafting across the table. He smelled like some exotic spice she couldn’t name. She had never, in her entire life, smelled anything that good. It was irresistible. Like every other part of him was, from the crown of his head to the just-got-out-of-bed dark stubble on his cheeks and jaw that would feel wonderfully scratchy on her skin. From the body under that custom-made suit she’d stopped thinking about until now, when she started thinking about it again, to his voice that was like a good piece of music, deep and resonant, layered with meaning. And his eyes, oh God, his eyes …

“Cyn, is something wrong? You’re so quiet.” Amanda sounded concerned.

Before she could answer, Cynthia caught the expression on Marius’s face. Damn. He knew exactly why she was quiet, why she was sitting like some well-behaved schoolgirl. It seemed those brown eyes could see into her heart and soul.

“I was thinking about a new piece I’m working on. Sorry.”

He raised an eyebrow and buried his half-smile in his glass of wine.

“Is this for my gallery or are you going to waste it on that place in Seattle where you still have your work?” Liz asked.

“It’s a commission that came from Max’s gallery, that place where the owner has been as good to me in Seattle as you’ve been to me in Portland. And didn’t I just bring you my Victorian neckpieces no one else has seen?”

“I guess I’ll take that as some sort of atonement for giving him your Cleopatra collars first. Not that anyone in Seattle would ever appreciate anything like that.”

A Cleopatra collar was exactly what Marius had commissioned from her, but demonstrating he was as smart as he was sexy, he only winked at her and stayed out of the discussion.

The conversation moved on to subjects less likely to make her discomfited. In response to his questions, Amanda explained to Marius some of the fine points of kiln-formed glass art. In return, he answered hers about coffee buying. In her usual outrageously flirty manner, Liz encouraged him to come to her gallery before he returned to Seattle. Cynthia said little unless prompted by her friends and even then made only brief comments, still tongue-tied by sitting across from him.

An hour later, Marius glanced at an expensive-looking watch, re-buttoned the top button of his shirt, tightened his tie and apologized for having to leave for a business dinner. Before he left, he shook the hand of each of the three women, seeming to linger with Cynthia longer than with the other two. At least it felt like he lingered, taking her smaller hand between both of his, holding it in what felt more like the clasp of a lover’s hand than a good-bye handshake. She noticed, as she had when they first met, that in spite of the beautiful clothes, he had calluses on his hands that could only come from some kind of physical work. It added an aspect to him that fascinated her even more.

She hoped he hadn’t noticed how her hand trembled when he held it.

• • •

Marius couldn’t believe his luck. He’d been trying to find a way to get back to the Erickson Gallery for weeks so he could do what he should have done when he’d picked up the gift for a family friend — ask the beautiful artist who’d made the piece to have dinner with him. But he’d been traveling on business for most of the past month, ending up in Portland, where he’d been bored and counting the days until he could get back to Seattle.

Until he decided to kill time before his dinner meeting with a glass of wine. And there she was.

In only two brief encounters, Cynthia Blaine had managed to intrigue him. Curvy where most of the women he’d met lately had been long and lean, her face was clean of make-up, her eyes clear of calculation about what his net worth might be. He had his pick of arm candy, but going to dinner with women who were conventionally beautiful, fashionably dressed, and often more ambitious than he was — which was saying quite a lot — had worn thin. Not that he was looking for a long-term commitment. But someone real seemed like a nice change. And Cynthia Blaine was that — real and talented and beautiful.

When he’d first met her, he’d thought she was equally attracted. But he had wondered if she’d written him off because he was obviously buying a piece of expensive jewelry for a woman even though he kept emphasizing it was for a
friend
, hoping she’d get the inference
.
Today he thought the message must have gotten through. The way she’d flushed when he smiled at her, held her body back from touching him, looked away so he wouldn’t know she’d been staring at him all seemed to say she felt the same attraction.

What he hadn’t been able to do was cut her out of her herd of friends without being too obvious or obnoxious. So, he scribbled a note on the back of a business card and left it with the server when he had the bill for the women’s drinks charged to his room. She assured him she’d get it to the woman in the purple dress with the long braid.

• • •

Marius was barely out the door before Liz turned on her friend.

“Cynthia, what the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you tell us about him?”

“Why would I tell you about him? He was just another customer,” she replied. “Can I have the last bit of that cheese?” She reached for the plate. Liz pushed it out of her reach.

“Don’t change the subject. How could you not think we’d be interested in one of the most handsome men ever put on this earth?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tried for the cheese plate again. And failed, thanks to Liz’s determination. “I just sold him a neckpiece for his girlfriend.”

“The girlfriend part, I grant you, is a shame. But, my God, girl, just run down the list of the other virtues: killer good-looking, charming, polite, interested in what we have to say, willing to ignore phone calls while he talked to us, the good taste and money to commission work from you and buy that suit. What’s not worth talking about on that list?”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

Liz snorted. “Right. You were stunned into silence just sitting across from him.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Don’t bother, petal. No one will believe you. It was too obvious. Not that I blame you. You could drown in those eyes. And his smile gave me some idea of what it’ll feel like when I get old enough to have hot flashes.” She fanned herself to make her point more obvious.

“Did you notice his hands?” Amanda asked. “I love the way he talks with them. They’re so big and graceful. I bet he could palm a basketball with them.”

Cynthia’s hand was still trembling from the handshake. Oh, yeah, she’d noticed his hands all right.

“A basketball? Honey, he could palm anything I have with them,” Liz said. As the other two women burst into giggles, she added, “Please don’t repeat that in front of Collins. He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when I make comments like that.”

A half hour later, Liz went to pay the bill and learned that Marius had taken care of it, adding one more item to her list of reasons Marius Hernandez was God’s gift to the world. The three women parted at the parking garage across the street from the concert venue, Liz headed for Southwest Portland where the man she lived with waited; Amanda to Northeast Portland, her husband and her new baby, and Cynthia for the freeway back to Seattle.

• • •

The dinner hostess at the Heathman always rearranged the desk to suit the way she liked things before she started her shift. Tonight, while she was moving things around, she found a business card with a note written on the back. No one seemed to know who it was for or why it was there. She pitched it into the recycling.

To purchase this ebook and learn more about the author,
click here.

For more from this author, see
Together Again
,
Loving Again
, and
Beginning Again
.