***
Emma seemed to think she’d won the lottery. Her smile, always a thing of beauty, now looked laser-bright, and her eyes glittered like Fourth-of-July sparklers. All because that guy at the community center, Nick Whatever, was allowing her to use a storage room as her studio.
She wouldn’t yearn for that horrible little windowless room—and she wouldn’t have to machete her way through acres of red tape and bureaucratic paperwork—if Max allowed her to remain in the house. He could do that so easily. He didn’t need the money selling the house would bring him. And she did need the house. The loft offered so much space, so much light. If he were painting her dream portrait, it would feature her face, so open, so lovely, her angular cheeks and narrow chin shaping a valentine, and her resplendent hair, and her wide green eyes—glowing not like sparklers but like fireworks bright enough to illuminate the sky. And the dream surrounding her would be the loft in his house, filled with her easels and paints, her energy and creativity.
She was excited about the room at the community center because it was her only option. Max had given her no other choice, and she was the sort of woman who could view no choice as the greatest opportunity in the world.
He hated himself.
One word, one minor change of plans, and the house could be hers. He didn’t need it. She did.
Except that he’d bought that house for another woman. A woman who, he’d learned too late, had loved him only because he could buy her things. He’d been so crazy in love with Vanessa, he hadn’t been able to refuse her anything. She wanted a house on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean? No problem. It was hers.
Emma hadn’t asked for the house. She wouldn’t. Unlike Vanessa, Emma had no idea how easy it would be for Max to give her that house, and three more just like it, if she wanted them. Even though much of his money was now controlled by his foundation, he still had more than he could ever hope to spend in his lifetime. If Vanessa had stuck around, she might have been pleasantly surprised to discover that, despite establishing the foundation, he was still absurdly wealthy.
He ought to tell Emma the truth. He ought to let her see his true colors, just as the song urged. But if he did… It would change everything. She’d stop viewing him as a Russian immigrant who grew up in a Brooklyn tenement and felt uncomfortable discussing his dreams. Of course he felt uncomfortable discussing them, especially with a woman he desired as much as he desired Emma. What was he supposed to say to her? “My dream is to be loved for myself, not for my wealth.” That made him sound so pathetic.
And how the hell was Emma supposed to paint that dream, anyway?
“This is just so cool,” she yammered, her words tumbling over one another in her excitement. “Not only do I have a place to work, but I’ve got another job! Or I will, if I pass muster with Nick’s board. I don’t have a teaching credential, but I’ve got plenty of experience working with kids. In high school and college, I spent my summers as an art counselor at a camp. And I’ve taught art to individuals—in gross defiance of zoning laws. Shame on me!” she added gleefully. “I should get letters of recommendation from Abbie’s and Tasha’s parents. I really hope this committee isn’t hung up on stuff like art education credentials. Nick implied the job pays crap, so they can’t expect me to be some sort of art professor, right?”
She paused when the bartender appeared with a bottle of beer and a slender fluted glass of champagne. The bubbles streaming upward through the pale liquid reminded him of Emma’s personality: round and fizzy, rising as high as they could go.
He felt like shit.
“Of course, I still need to find a place to live,” Emma said after taking a sip of her drink. “But as long as I have a place to work, I’m good. I can always buy a tent.”
“You don’t have to buy a tent,” he said curtly.
“Just joking.” She reached across the table and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “But at least now I don’t have to worry about finding a place to live where I can also work.”
He drank some beer straight from the bottle, relishing its sour flavor. Closing his eyes, he pictured that small, windowless room in the community center, its linoleum floor, its cinderblock walls, its sheer ugliness. She was thrilled because she thought it was her only option. But it wasn’t.
“Look, Emma—if you want, I’ll take my house off the market. I don’t have to get rid of it. If you want to continue to live there…”
She’d raised her champagne flute to her lips, but his words clearly startled her enough to make her lower the glass and gape at him. “But you came to Brogan’s Point to sell the house.”
“It can wait.”
“And I can’t keep teaching there. You said so yourself. There are those nasty zoning laws. And insurance issues, and liability. All that legal stuff.” She pressed her lips together, effectively smothering her radiant smile. “Taking the room at the community center means I’ll be able to teach there this summer in Nick’s program. So I’ll earn a little more money and maybe make contact with more people who might want to commission Dream Portraits.” She shook her head. “I can make it work.”
“You could make it work in my house, too. Stay. Stay as long as you want. We’re not a landlord and tenant anymore. We’ve gone beyond that, haven’t we?”
She stared at him, suddenly wary. “What do you mean?”
He wasn’t sure what was troubling her. “Emma. We’ve made love. Several times.” Several spectacular times, he wanted to add. “You can stay on in the house. Forget about the rent. That’s the least I owe you.”
Her expression went from wary to deflated, from deflated to suspicious. Her voice was cool, barely an inch from icy. “You don’t owe me anything, Max—unless you want to pay me for your portrait. I can’t calculate the cost until I figure out what the painting will…entail.” She seemed to trip over that last word, for some reason. “But as far as the house… I don’t need you to do that.”
“Do what? Take it off sale? It isn’t even on sale yet.”
“You don’t have to let me stay on in the house because we had sex. I didn’t make love with you because I wanted something in return. You don’t owe me anything.” She sighed again. The fireworks vanished from her eyes, extinguished by a layer of tears. Extinguished by Max. “What happened this morning was special. It was freely given, at least on my side. And now you’re offering to pay me for it. I put out, so you’ll let me live on your property rent-free. Just so generous of you, Max.” Her voice cracked and she averted her gaze.
“Emma.” He kept his voice low, as unthreatening as possible. He wasn’t sure what he was dealing with right now, other than an irrational woman. Math he could understand. Computers. Code. But women? He was totally at a loss. “I’m just trying to make things easier for you,” he said.
“Did I ask you to do that? Do you think I need you to make my life easier? I made love to you because I wanted to, because you turn me on, because…because that stupid song convinced me I saw your true colors. But I think I’m seeing them now. I slept with the landlord, and now the landlord owes me a favor. The hell with that.” She slid out of the booth and stormed toward the door.
Max raced after her, shooting the bartender a look he hoped she would read as a promise to return and pay his tab. Yes, he was diligent about paying what he owed—a trait Emma seemed to believe was highly objectionable.
He caught up to her just outside the tavern’s front door—the place where he’d first kissed her, where he’d first realized how much he wanted her. “Emma.” He grabbed her forearm, closed his fingers around the slender limb. “Stop.”
She turned to face him. She wasn’t crying, but he saw a few glistening rivulets streaking her cheeks where tears had skittered down to her chin. “It’s okay, Max,” she said. “I was wrong. I thought I knew you better than I did. The song…” She lowered her eyes and shook her head again, just as she had inside the tavern. “I’m an artist. I see colors. I think they’re true, but maybe sometimes
they aren’t. Artists tend to see things the way we think they are, not always the way they really are. We see dreams.”
“You’re not seeing me,” he argued. “I care about you, Emma. I want you to work in a big, open space with lots of light. I’m offering to let you continue to do that in my house.”
“No, thanks,” she said, easing her arm from his grip. “I’m going to take a walk, Max. I need to clear my head.” She spun away and stalked down the street.
He watched until she turned the corner and vanished from sight. What was her problem? He was trying to make things easier for her, and she was acting as if he were a creep.
Let her take her damned walk, he though as he yanked the door open and headed back inside. Let her walk until her feet ache. He didn’t care.
He shook his head at his own self-deception. The fact was, he cared too much. He cared so much, he wanted to tell her the truth about himself—that he was richer than she could imagine, that he was practically richer than he could imagine. That making her life easier would create no hardship for him. That he could be her patron as well as her lover. That he could arrange things so she would never have to worry about where she would live and where she would work.
And either she would embrace him—because she wanted his money to make her life easier—or she would hate him for trying to buy her. Either way, he would lose .