Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

8

Wavy

I’d thought that spilling pie all over Ian DeRose, and then wiping his crotch, had been the most mortified I could be in front of him. I’d thought the same thing again when I’d attacked him with the tray. And one last time, when he’d had to unhook my safety-pinned bra, proving I wasn’t adult enough to remember to buy undergarments when I needed them.

Turns out, I felt most idiotic just by trying to do something nice for him.

I couldn’t say that he’d been rude to me when he’d taken the pie. He’d taken it, thanked me . . . and then promptly shut the door in my face. Not rude, but definitely not a recognition of any closeness between us.

No sign of the man who’d treated my feet so gently. Or who’d been struggling in the little cave with some demon I hadn’t been able to see.

Ian had bigger things on his mind. I knew that. Hell, the bullets flying at us had proved it. But I’d still felt like an idiot when he’d shut that door in my face. I’d kind of wanted to cry, but I’d forced myself to keep it together, and gone and done what I always did instead.

Paint.

My studio over the lawn and garden store couldn’t be called an apartment by any stretch of the imagination. It was a massive space, which was great, but it wasn’t zoned for residential living. It happened to have a sink in one corner, and I’d set up a cot on the other side. There was a toilet, roughly functional, but with only a thin screen separating it from the rest of the room.

I’d been told by the fire marshal that no one was allowed to live here, so I didn’t claim this as my permanent address, although this is where I spent pretty much all my time when I wasn’t working. Legally, I still lived with my mom. Even more pathetic than living in a not-zoned-for-humans building.

I couldn’t say that I loved this space—the lighting wasn’t great, plus it was hot in the summer and freezing in the winter—but it at least allowed me to do what I loved to do. And what I was going to do now.

I grabbed a new canvas and put it on the easel. I tried not to think about the tiny little painting I’d left for Ian in the box with the pie. It was about the size of a sticky note. Something I’d painted for him earlier today and wanted to give him.

I loved colors, and he needed more color in his life. What he didn’t need, evidently, was me in his life. That’s what had hurt about him closing that door in my face without a personal word.

I looked at the blank canvas in front of me. I knew I should practice painting more classic pieces. Things that might actually make a living for me eventually. But today, I wanted more colors.

I grabbed my paints and started. My brushstrokes were timid at first, with softer colors. But that wasn’t right. It wasn’t what I wanted.

I grabbed my reds, purples, and made my strokes bolder. Screw the soft, gentle colors and strokes.

I was pissed.

I didn’t get angry very often, but right now, it was all I could see, and definitely all I could paint.

Ian DeRose wanted to close a door in my face when I was being kind? Fine. His choice.

This painting was mine. At least it wasn’t hurting anyone.

My mom called; I could tell by the ringtone. But I ignored that. Lexi called too, but I didn’t answer. It didn’t happen a lot, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody right now.

More of the deep colors swirled onto the canvas, covering the pastels I’d started with.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was mad at myself too. Ian hadn’t done anything wrong—why should I be so upset? Why should I care what he did? He didn’t owe me anything.

But logical or not, my emotions were churning because of him. I realized the deep-blue burst I’d created at the center of the canvas was Ian—his ice. His control. Then all the strokes dancing around it were the emotions I couldn’t seem to contain around him.

I don’t know how long I was at it. Long enough that my arms were getting heavy and my strokes were becoming less bold, less angry.

Banging on the door finally caused me to turn away from my canvas. I looked out one of the small windows. It was late afternoon already.

“I’m coming,” I called out. That had to be either one of my brothers, or . . . Actually, it had to be one of my brothers. Besides my mom and Lexi, they were the only ones who knew about this place. And neither Mom nor Lexi would be banging like a crazed chimpanzee.

Another bang. Good Lord. I snatched the door open. “Why in the world are y—”

Ian.

He was a little bit sweaty and had the start of a black eye. He was holding up the tiny painting I’d slipped into the pie box.

“What is this?” he asked.

I tried to grab it out of his hand, but he snatched it back too quickly. “Nothing. Give it to me.”

“No. Tell me what it is.”

“What does it look like, asshole? It’s a painting. I must have accidentally slipped it into the box. It happens.” That was much better than telling him that I had thought he needed more color in his life. “Thanks for returning it.”

I held out my hand for him to give it to me but he didn’t. I tried to shut the door.

He held out his hand to stop it. “I’m sorry, Wavy.”

“You don’t owe me an apology. You don’t owe me anything, DeRose. I don’t know how you found me here, but thanks for stopping by.” I tried to shut the door again. Again, he wasn’t letting it budge.

“May I come in?”

“Why? There’s no need. I get it. You’re not here for me. You’re here for the job. You’re here to shut down Mosaic.”

He looked surprised.

“What?” I asked. “Did you think I didn’t get it?”

“You basically said the same thing I’ve been repeating to myself for the past thirty-six hours.”

“Great. Then we’re both saying it, so that must make it doubly true. Thanks for bringing the little painting back. Hope you enjoyed your pie.” His arm wasn’t budging from the door, keeping it open with remarkable ease considering I was putting a ton of effort into trying to close it.

“Wavy, I’m sorry. You did something nice for me, and I acted like a jerk.”

I let out a sigh. “You didn’t act like a jerk. You were polite. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did do something wrong, and we both know it. PS, Landon knows it too.” Ian reached up and gingerly touched his eye. “He and I have been in the sparring ring for the past couple of hours. Your brother and Zac Mackay got quite a kick out of watching us go at it.”

I stopped pushing at the door. “You were fighting?”

He shrugged. “Sparring. There’s a difference. We needed to work out a little bit of our stress. Nothing has been going right since I saw you last. We’ve had one hang-up after another with Mosaic.”

He was stressed. He took this stuff with Mosaic seriously. Who was I to be upset about him not wanting to spend time with me when he had so many other important things he was trying to do?

“Look.” I let out a sigh. “Really, it’s okay. There’s no harm done. I hope you enjoyed the pie.”

“Landon wouldn’t let me have any of it.” Ian actually looked sheepish. “He said I didn’t deserve it after how I’d treated you.”

“Wow. No pie. Harsh punishment.” I couldn’t stay angry; it wasn’t in my DNA. I stepped back from the door and gestured with my paintbrush for him to come in.

“I made the smile fall from your face. That was a bitch move. Smiling is your natural state of being. And for me to have taken that . . .” He walked forward a few steps, running his fingers through his thick hair, standing it on end, before turning to look at me with a shrug. “I’m not good with gentle. I’m not good with fragile. Landon is great.”

I pointed the end of my brush at him, some of my heat back. “Gentle and fragile are not the same thing.”

He nodded. “You’re right. They’re not. And you’re not fragile, you’ve proved that already, but you are gentle.”

“I’m not going to apologize for that.”

“I would never want you to.”

“I like to laugh, to smile, to live. My life has a lot of color to it.”

He took a step toward me. “I know that. I’ve known that from the moment you tried to clock me with that tray.”

He took another step closer, and I instinctively took a step back. Not because he scared me, but because . . . I didn’t know why.

Because him being close to me was overwhelming. I didn’t know what it was about him. I’d been around alpha-male-type guys my whole life, but Ian DeRose was different. How I felt around him was different.

It was time to get this conversation back on track. “Thank you for the apology. I appreciate it. But I know you’re not here because of me. You have bigger things on your mind.”

Damn it, he took another step closer. I was caught between the need to back away to protect myself and the need to touch him, to let him know what gentleness felt like. What color felt like.

“I may not be here in Oak Creek because of you,” he whispered. “But I’m very definitely in this building right now because of you.”

“Why?” The need to touch him won. My fingers stroked up his arm, feeling the tight muscles underneath. “Why are you here, Ian?”

“Because I can’t stay away from you. Because I don’t want to stay away from you. Because I want to ask you out. Because I had to see if you taste as sweet as you look.”

His arm snaked around my waist, and he pulled me closer. There was no yanking. If I had stepped back, he would’ve let me go.

But stepping back very definitely wasn’t what I wanted anymore. I wanted to touch him, not just to let him feel my touch, but because I wanted to feel his.

His kiss wasn’t gentle. He’d obviously been fighting all day—with bad guys, with friends, with himself—and was at the end of his control. But skating the edge of his control made the kiss all the more enticing.

My arms wrapped around his neck, brush still clenched in my fist, as he pulled me closer. The kiss deepened—hot, raw, honest. Everything the man was too.

“You do,” he said, as his lips finally broke away from mine a few seconds later. Both of us were breathing hard.

“I do what?” I couldn’t remember my own name, much less what we’d been talking about before his lips met mine.

“You taste as sweet as you are, Wavy Bollinger. That shouldn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me.”

“Oh.” I tried to find something more profound to say, but there was nothing.

He stepped back a little, trailing his fingers down my arms, and glanced around. He was obviously trying to slow the pace a bit. “I want to take you out on a date. That’s why I came here. To apologize and make it up to you with dinner. Soon. If you’ll let me.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him since it was what I wanted too. “Then yes, I’ll go out with you sometime.”

He smiled, and I couldn’t help the smile it brought to my own face. “So, this is your studio. You live here too?”

“Most of the time,” I said, “But don’t tell the fire marshal. This isn’t zoned for residential living.”

“Do you mind if I look around?”

I wasn’t going to lie; it made me nervous. Eighty percent of the space in here was taken up by my paintings. If he said something negative, that would hurt my feelings. But I nodded. I needed to prove, probably to both of us: that my words had been true when I said I was gentle but not fragile.

The pieces I had taken to the art agent who’d rejected me were still out, the most noticeable. Ian looked at those first, studying them for a long time.

“I’m not really an art expert,” he said. “Do you like doing still lifes like this? Landscapes?”

No, I didn’t. They bored me, but I also knew they were probably the most likely way to make a living as an artist. “That’s what I learned to do and focus on in art school. It’s generally the most commercially viable.”

He nodded. “Understandable. Is that what you want—to make a living as an artist? I noticed that you didn’t really mention your art the last few times we talked.”

“I’d like to make a living with my art rather than waitressing, sure.” While his attention was elsewhere, I spun the easel I’d been working on with my foot so he would be less likely to see today’s work in progress. “But it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.”

“But these paintings don’t excite you.” He pointed at the two in front of him.

“Honestly?” I shrugged. “No, not really.”

“What were you working on when I knocked on the door? It took you a while to answer, like you were caught up in what you were doing and irritated to be interrupted. Plus, you have your rainbow on again.”

“My rainbow?”

He walked over and brought my wrist up, so that I could see the pattern of paint on it. “You also have some on your cheek too. Double rainbow.”

“Yeah, I sometimes get messy.”

“Will you show me what you were painting today?”

If he didn’t like my still lifes, he surely wouldn’t like my abstract stuff. “Sure. As long as you promise not to laugh.”

“I promise.” Those brown eyes fairly burned with sincerity.

I walked over to my easel and spun my blob of color so he could see it. Blob was really the only way to describe it. Oranges and reds, some purples thrown in with a splash of blue and some green.

He stood silently, staring.

“I don’t know why I paint like this,” I finally said when he didn’t say anything. I had to give him credit, he didn’t so much as snicker.

“I do,” he responded, staring at the canvas. “This is you. On a canvas. Vibrant, alive. Passionate.”

“Well, the only art agent I showed it to thought that people wouldn’t ever be interested in buying it. That it was junk.”

“Well then, that art agent was an idiot,” Ian said. “I would buy this a thousand times over the most skilled landscape.”

He walked closer, still staring.

“You were angry. It’s obvious by the color choice.”

“Yeah,” I admitted, “I was pretty angry when I started this.”

He looked at the purples and greens. Ran his fingers near them. “You were hurt too.”

Now I was staring at him.

He saw me in the painting. In a few seconds, he’d seen beyond the blobbiness of it to what it really was: me. It was unnerving. It was . . . what made me nervous about him. He saw too much.

He turned to face me. “I don’t like thinking about you being angry or hurt, but I can’t lie. I like knowing I bring out this sort of passion in you.”

The heat in his eyes couldn’t be denied. What sort of colors would I choose if caught in the throes of making love to him? My tongue dashed across my lip, and his eyes fell to my mouth.

It didn’t take a genius to see he was thinking the same thing. He took a step closer, reaching toward me.

But then his phone rang. Ian kept his eyes pinned on mine as he brought the phone up to his ear. “You better be about to tell me the world is coming to an end. Otherwise, I’m hanging up right fucking now.”

I couldn’t hear what was said, but I had no doubt he was talking to Landon. His eyes dropped from mine at whatever Landon was saying. Maybe the world was coming to an end.

“Okay. I’ll be right there.” He disconnected the call.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Kendrick and Neo finally made a break in the Mosaic case with the computer drive they’ve been working on, but there’s some sort of emergency. There’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting at Linear Tactical.”