"You know what they say about a watched pot," he began and started around the counter after her. It was the sketch on the refrigerator that distracted him from his half-formed plan to wrestle her to the kitchen floor. "Hey, that looks just like Foolish."
"It is Foolish. Seth drew it."
"Get out!" He hooked a thumb in his pocket as he took a closer study. "Really? It's damn good, isn't it? I didn't know the kid could draw."
"You would, if you spent more time with him."
"I spend time with him every day," Cam muttered. "He doesn't tell me dick." Cam didn't know where the vague annoyance had come from, but he didn't care for it. "How'd you get this out of him?"
"I asked," she said simply, and slid linguini into the boiling water.
Cam shifted on his feet. "Look, I'm doing the best I can with the kid."
"I didn't say you weren't. I just think you'll do better—with a little more practice and a little more effort."
She pushed her hair back. She hadn't meant to get into this. Her relationship with Cam was supposed to have two separate compartments, without their contents getting mixed up together. "You're doing a good job. I mean that. But you've got a long way to go, Cam, in gaining his trust, his affection. Giving your own. He's an obligation you're fulfilling, and that's admirable. But he's also a young boy. He needs love. You have feelings for him. I've seen them." She smiled over at him. "You just don't know what to do with them yet."
Cam scowled at the sketch. "So now I'm supposed to talk to him about drawing dogs?"
Anna sighed, then turned to frame Cam's face in her hands. "Just talk to him. You're a good man with a good heart. The rest will come."
Annoyed again, he gripped her wrists. He couldn't have said why the quiet understanding in her voice, the amused compassion in her eyes made him nervous. "I'm not a good man." His grip tightened just enough to make her eyes narrow. "I'm selfish, impatient. I go for the thrills because that's what suits me. Paying your debts doesn't have anything to do with having a good heart. I'm a son of a bitch, and I like it that way."
She merely arched a brow. "It's always wise to know yourself."
He felt a little flutter of panic in his throat and ignored it. "I'll probably hurt you before we're done."
Anna tilted her head. "Maybe I'll hurt you first. Willing to risk it?"
He didn't know whether to laugh or swear and ended up pulling her into his arms for a smoldering kiss. "Let's eat in bed."
"That was the plan," she told him.
the pasta was cold by the time they got to it, but that didn't stop them from eating ravenously.
They sat cross-legged on her bed, knees bumping, and ate in the glow of the half dozen candles she'd lighted.
Cam shoveled in linguini and closed his eyes in pure sensory pleasure. "Goddamn, this is good."
Anna wound pasta expertly around her fork and bit. "You should taste my lasagna."
"I'm counting on it." Relaxed and lazy, he broke a piece of the crusty bread she'd put into a wicker basket and handed half to her.
Her bedroom, he'd noted, was different from the rest of the apartment. Here she hadn't gone for the practical, for the streamlined. The bed itself was a wide pool covered in soft rose sheets and a slick satin duvet in rich bronze. The headboard was a romantic arch of wrought iron, curvy and frivolous and plumped now with a dozen fat, colorful pillows.
The dresser he pegged as an antique, a heavy old piece of mahogany refinished to a rosy gleam. It was covered with pretty little bottles and bowls and a silver-backed brush. The mirror over it was a long oval.
There was a mahogany lady's vanity with a skirted stool and glinting brass handles. For some reason he'd always found that particular type of furniture incredibly sexy.
A copper urn was filled with tall, fussy flowers, the walls were crowded with art, and the windows framed in the same rich bronze as the spread.
This, he thought idly, was Anna's room. The rest of the apartment was still Miz Spinelli's. The practical and the sensual. Both suited her.
He reached over the side of the bed to the floor, where he'd put the bottle of wine. He topped off her glass.
"Trying to get me drunk?"
He flashed a grin at her. Her hair was tangled, the robe loose enough to have one shoulder curving free. Her big dark eyes seemed to laugh at both of them. "Don't have to—but it might be interesting anyway."
She smiled, shrugged and drank. "Why don't you tell me about your day?"
"Today?" He gave a mock shudder. "Nightmare time."
"Really." She twirled more pasta, fed it to him. "Details."
"Shopping. Shoes. Hideous." When she laughed, he felt the smile split his face. God, she had a great laugh. "I made Ethan and Phillip go with me. No way I was facing that alone. We had to practically handcuff the kid to get him to go. You'd think I was fitting him for a straitjacket instead of new high-tops."
"Too many men don't appreciate the joys, challenges, and nuances of shopping."
"Next time, you go. Anyway, I had my eye on this building on the waterfront. We checked it out before we headed to the mall. It'll do the job."
"What job?"
"The business. Boat building."
Anna set her fork down. "You're serious about that."
"Dead serious. The place'll do. It needs some work, but the rent's in line—especially since we're strong-arming the landlord into paying for most of the basic repairs."
"You want to build boats."
"It'll get me out of the house, keep me off the streets." When she didn't smile back, he shrugged his shoulder. "Yeah, I think I could get into it. For now, anyway. We'll do this one for the client Ethan's already got lined up, see how it goes from there."
"I take it you signed a lease."
"That's right. Why putz around?"
"Some might say caution, consideration, details."
"I leave the caution and consideration to Ethan, the details to Phillip. If it doesn't work, all we've lost is a few bucks and a little time."
Odd how that prickly temper suited him, she mused. It went so well with those dark, damn-it-all looks. "And if it does work," she added. "Have you thought of that?"
"What do you mean?"
"If it works, you'll have taken on another commitment. It's getting to be a habit." She laughed now, at the expression of annoyance and surprise on his face. "It's going to be fun to ask you how you feel about all this in six months or so." She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. "How about some dessert?"
The nagging worry the word "commitment" had brought on faded back as her lips rubbed over his. "Whatcha got?"
"Cannoli," she told him as she set their plates on the floor.
"Sounds good."
"Or—" Watching him, she unbelted her robe, let it slide off her shoulders. "Me."
"Sounds better," he said and let her pull him to her.
it was just after three when Seth heard the car pull into the drive. He'd been asleep but having dreams. Bad ones, where he was back in one of those smelly rooms where the walls were stained and thinner than his drawing paper, and every sound carried through them.
Sex noises—grunts and groans and creaking mattresses—his mother's nasty laugh when she was coked up. It made him sweat, having those dreams. Sometimes she would come in to where he was trying to find comfort and sleep on the musty sofa. If her mood was good, she would laugh and give him smothering hugs, waking him out of a fitful sleep into the smells and sounds of the world she'd dragged him into.
If her mood was bad, she would curse and slap and often end up sitting on the floor crying wildly.
Either way made for one more miserable night.
But worse, hundreds of times worse, was when one of the men she'd taken to bed slipped out, crept across the cramped room, and touched him.