“True. Then can we start with the portraits in the entry foyer?” she asked. “Who are all those people? You look like some of them.”
She was interested in his past, and he realized he was going to have to crack open and let her see parts of himself. The portraits in the hall were nice, but the gallery above the ballroom would be more impressive.
“Let me show you where we keep the important people,” he said, putting his hand on her back and leading her down the hall to the gallery. It was a large balcony with a gold-plated guardrail that overlooked the rotunda that was the ballroom.
The ceiling was a fresco that had been painted in the 1920s by a contemporary painter who had blended the abstract with modern cubism.
“Wow, that’s impressive. Is the ceiling supposed to be...actually, I can’t make it out? I’m not really good at guessing abstract designs.”
He laughed. “Me either. Dash and I decided that the darkish part on this side was where the evil dragons or Pokémon lived when we were kids, and we would battle them around the walkway to the other side where it’s lighter. They’d be banished, and we’d win.”
“I like it. Is it meant to be a sky?”
“Yes. It’s the artist’s view of Gilbert Corners’ sky in all the seasons apparently. Rory used to know a bunch of facts about it,” he said.
“Do you miss her?” she asked.
He didn’t like talking about her. But that was why he’d brought Indy here. He needed to see if he could open up. He wanted to let her in. “Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about her?”
“No.”
She slipped her hand into his and squeezed. A heat spread up his arm then through him and though he’d vowed to take things slow today, he knew he wanted her. Had wanted to pull her into his arms since the moment she’d stepped out of her room.
“That’s okay. So who are the people in the portraits behind us?” she asked, dropping his hand and turning to the framed picture.
He stood behind her and put his arm on her shoulder, pulling her back into his body. “This is the first Gilbert family who settled here. They came over from England to help settle this colony.”
He kept his arm around her shoulders as he led her circling the rotunda showing her his ancestors through the years, stopping in front of the portrait with him and his parents. He hadn’t looked at it in years. In fact, when he and Dash had played up here, they always ignored these most recent pictures.
She slipped her arm around his waist. “Are those your parents?”
“Hmm.”
She turned so that her body was pressed to his side as she hugged him. “You must miss them. You look just like your dad, but you have your mother’s eyes.”
He hugged her back, both comforted and turned on by her touch. He held her and finally lifted his eyes to the painting. He felt his eyes sting as he looked at his mom and dad for the first time in decades. They looked so young. As a child they’d seemed old, but Conrad was almost the age his father had been when he’d died.
God, he missed them.
Indy hugged him tight and then went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He turned his head and found her mouth with his. Channeling his grief into the one emotion that he felt at home expressing. He didn’t move to surround her, even dropped his arm from her shoulder but she stayed where she was.
He felt her hand on his waist tighten as her tongue brushed over his, and he opened himself to the kiss and the blooming sensuality he felt in her. He kept tight control on himself and turned slightly so her chest brushed against his torso.
She hesitated for a second, then pulled him closer against her as her hands moved down his back to cup his butt and draw him more fully against her.
The blood rushed from his brain, and he stopped thinking and started to give in to the passion, which was never far away when Indy was around. He lifted her slightly off her feet with one arm around her hips and deepened the kiss even more.
Letting loose the tight control he’d been holding on to since the moment he’d seen her today. Desire and lust had been hard to tamp down and he’d surprised himself by how much talking to Indy had just made him want her more.
He would do everything in his power to make her stay with him and to have her in his bed tonight.
She hadn’t meant to kiss him, but the pain had been almost palpable when he’d looked at the portrait of him and his parents. And Indy’s heart had broken for that little boy. Conrad smiled out of the portrait with innocence and pure happiness. Two things that he no longer had.
She cautioned herself to be careful with him. There was so much hidden inside him that he had just let scab over and moved on. She saw it in him because she felt it inside herself every day. They were both broken—or maybe bent, not broken, but in different ways. She didn’t know that their bent pieces could fit together. She was trying to be entirely realistic. Which wasn’t how she normally acted. Of course, as he deepened the kiss, lifting her off her feet so that she was leaning fully into his body with his erection growing against her, she realized there was a way that they would fit together very nicely.
But she wasn’t sure she was ready to get physical with him. She wanted him, but there was still so much about him she was unsure of. It was only Conrad’s sadness that he seemed to allow himself to feel. She suspected he felt something for her but could he express that? As if he somehow was trying to show her what he couldn’t say directly.