The Tycoon's Virgin Bride. Sandra Field
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for me—I’m on the brink of making some sort of name for myself. The alternative is to sink into oblivion, and I’ve worked too hard the last twelve years to risk that.”
She’d met Bryce twelve years ago, in her first year at Columbia’s School of the Arts, she thought with a sudden shiver. She’d been seventeen at the time.
With the ease of long practice, she closed her mind to that long-ago meeting with its lasting consequences. “I’m so sorry. But you know I’m devoted to Samantha, and that’s what really counts, isn’t it?”
“Julie’s going to be disappointed.”
“So are you, by the sound of it.”
“Yeah…you didn’t make it to our wedding, either.”
At which Bryce had been best man. Cursing the day she’d seen the poster advertising Bryce’s lecture at Columbia all those years ago, Jenessa said, “Once the show’s over, I promise I’ll come for a visit. If you’re both still speaking to me, that is.”
“Come off it,” Travis said, “you know we’re not like that. Tell you what—why don’t you let me pay for your airfare? That way you could do the whole trip in a day.”
“I owe you too much money as it is…I don’t want to go any deeper in debt.”
“A gift, Jen. No strings attached.”
“I can’t take any more money from you, Travis—I just can’t.”
There was another pregnant silence. Then her brother said, “You’ll have to accept the title of godmother-in-absentia, then. Because we don’t want anyone else but you.”
Tears pricked at Jenessa’s lids. Her mother had run away to France when she had been just a baby, and from the time she was little, her father had done his best to crush any wayward impulses in his only daughter. Simultaneously, he’d blatantly favored her twin brother, Brent. To this day, she and Brent were as distant as it was possible for twins to be. Travis had been the one who’d been her rock as she grew up, despite his long absences at boarding school. To disappoint him now, hurt her deeply.
But she’d been utterly humiliated by Bryce in his hotel room in Manhattan; how could she possibly face him again?
She couldn’t. It was out of the question.
She said valiantly, “How much does Samantha weigh? And is Julie getting enough sleep?”
Travis was happy to talk at some length about his daughter and his wife, both of whom he openly adored. In return, Jenessa described the new contract she had with her gallery, and the progress of her garden; finally, to her relief, Travis rang off. Slowly she put down the phone.
Once again she’d sidestepped any chance of coming face-to-face with Bryce Laribee. But the cost had been high; deep within her, Jenessa felt the slow burn of anger.
Against Bryce? Or against the young woman she’d been twelve years ago, so impressionable and so frighteningly vulnerable?
Late the following afternoon, Jenessa was down on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden. Tucked behind her tiny Quaker house, it was a peaceful spot, bathed in sunlight and alive with bees. A breeze whispered through the tall maples that bordered her property.
She’d finished the painting that morning. It was technically accomplished, as was all her work, its sunlit details overlying the sense of menace that haunted everything she painted.
She’d slept badly, dreaming of babies crying out from the high cliffs of Manatuck, and of her brother turning his back on her in an empty art gallery. And, of course, she’d dreamed of Bryce.
If only she’d never seen that poster on the bulletin board in the School of Arts…
His name jumped out at her first: Bryce Laribee. Best friend of her beloved brother, millionaire computer whiz. The title of his lecture was incomprehensible to her, although she did gather it had something to do with programming. It was his photograph in the top corner of the poster that held her skewered to the spot. Thick blond hair, gray eyes that looked right through her, a forceful bone structure that made her itch to draw his cleft chin, strong jaw and wide cheekbones.
An unapproachable face that drew her like a magnet.
Her artist’s soul, fledgling though it was, knew she had to see him in person. Perhaps the photo lied. Perhaps when she saw him, she’d realize his face was nothing out of the ordinary, and there was no reason for this overwhelming urge to sketch him.
A portrait, she thought with a surge of excitement. Head and shoulders. In oils. Although she was new to portraiture, she was almost sure she could do him justice.
Realizing she’d been gazing at the poster like a star-struck groupie, Jenessa hurried off to her watercolor class. Telling none of her friends, the next evening she went to the lecture, sitting well at the back where she could see Bryce Laribee without being seen. He was standing full in the light on the auditorium stage; in the flesh, he far exceeded the promise of the photograph.
She had to sketch him. She had to.
But more than his features drew her. His rich baritone sent shivers up and down her spine, his sense of humor made her laugh, while his lucid descriptions almost made her understand what he was talking about. There was a reception in the department lounge after the lecture. She went, again tucking herself in the background, waiting until the crowd thinned to make her move. She’d decided on her first sight of him that she wasn’t going to tell him she was Travis’s sister; he was more than capable of subtracting six years from her brother’s age and coming up with seventeen. If he knew she was that young, he’d never take her seriously. Game over before it began.
Bryce had approached the bar for another drink. She walked up to him, her heart racketing in her rib cage, and said with assumed calm, “My name is Jan Struthers, I’m an art student. I’m wondering if I could buy you a drink after this is over—I’d like to sketch you.”
He looked her up and down, his gray eyes just as unrevealing as she’d expected: deep-set gray eyes over cheekbones hewn with potent masculinity. She swallowed hard. Wasn’t his physical charisma exactly why she wanted to paint him? She couldn’t back down now. That would be cowardly, and she’d never thought of herself as a coward.
His survey of her was leisurely; her heartbeat accelerated. She knew what he’d see: her spiky hair, its tips dyed bright orange, her elaborate makeup, contacts that made her eyes almost purple, and an outlandish beaded leather outfit that more than hinted at a sexuality she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge. For the first time, she found herself regretting she’d succumbed to the peer pressure of the other art students with their outrageous outfits; that her father would be appalled by her getup wasn’t much help.
She should have toned herself down for this all-important meeting with Bryce Laribee.
As if proving her point, Bryce wasn’t bothering to hide his amusement. “You’re quite a creation. A work of art in itself.”
Jenessa looked pointedly at his tailored business suit and impeccable tie. “You have your uniform, and I mine.”
“Yours is more fun.”
“Either way, they’re what we hide behind.”
“So we’re basically the same underneath?”
She bit her lip, not sure what he was implying. “I didn’t say that.”
“And just what part of me did you want to sketch, Jan Struthers?”
She flushed; simultaneously, anger flickered to life. He was playing with her, cat to mouse. She could have told the truth: a head and shoulders portrait. Instead she said, “A good artist never narrows her options before she begins.”
“She stays open to all the possibilities?”
“Of course.”
The sparks