Clay, on the other hand, seemed to smolder on the canvas—she'd always wondered why the fabric didn't smoke beneath the paint. It was him, in all his dominant, self-assured, unbelievably sexy glory. His head was just slightly cocked, chin down, one coal black eyebrow raised the tiniest bit. He really had too big a nose and too prominent a jaw line to be considered classically handsome, but that expression would be enough to stop the heart of any woman, from eighteen to eighty. That was partly why Elodie almost always kept it at the back of her closet—because that look was just too intense for comfort.
She'd portrayed him the way she always saw him—in jeans and his cowboy boots—but had taken the liberty of making him look much more rumpled than she had ever seen him—as if he was just recovering from a particularly deep, sexual kiss, and was about to reach for her to turn her onto the desk beneath him. The usual flannel shirt was pulled out of his waistband, and several of the buttons were open, so that the material hung just artfully enough to display the smattering of chest hair over the tanned, muscular ripples beneath. He was leaning back against a desk, his arms folded on his chest, and Elodie always imagined that that must be what he looked like either just before sex, or just before he delivered a spanking.
That painting wasn't so much a portrait as a wish unfulfilled. It was the way she wished, in her heart of hearts, that he would look at her.
It was funny, because if he ever did look at her like that—as if he was going to sweep her up into his arms and carry her to their bedroom to ravish her—Elodie would turn tail and run into the next state. It wasn't that she didn't want Clay—she did. More than almost anything in the world. Her passion for him was as deep and true as her passion for painting, but it was also more raw and uncontrolled. That was one of the reasons why, even though she had always been close to April and maintained that even during her sister's marriage, she had never allowed herself to become particularly comfortable around Clay.
Her feelings wouldn't allow for comfort, and seeing him too regularly, being reminded of that which she would never—could never—have, was just a bit too much. April had noticed that Elodie tended to refuse to go to dinner with the two of them, and that she rarely made an appearance at the house if she thought Clay was going to be there, and she told Elodie outright that she understood. That Clay made a lot of people nervous.
Elodie had choked on the hard lemonade she had been drinking, and managed not to disgrace herself by telling April that the reason she was uncomfortable around Clay was that he could make her wet just by his mere existence. She let April think what she wanted to think. No one in this world knew just how vulnerable Elodie was—or could be—to her former brother-in-law.
Most particularly not the man himself.
She got up and poured herself a Diet Coke, coming back to stand in front of her version of Clay and eye him with a glare she would never dare to use in real life. She loved him. She wanted him. But at the same time, she hated him because he'd found and fallen in love with her sister… instead. Elodie had to deal every day with the fact that she'd been beside herself with jealousy while he and her sister had been married, and now that April was gone, she had to deal with incredible guilt about the fact that she coveted her dead sister's husband. A miniscule part of her worried that, somehow, April had known about the lustful thoughts that had filled Elodie's mind whenever Clay was within a three-mile radius. That somehow, she'd caused April's death with those naughty, taboo thoughts. That maybe her punishment for being such an awful sister had been God taking April away from her forever.
And yet, despite the guilt that sometimes snuck up on her, Elodie still coveted him, although, as far as she was concerned, he was just as off limits since April had died as he had been while she was alive. He didn't want her. He didn't need her. He kept seeing her out of the goodness of his heart, and because she was the family member he was closest to. Elodie snorted. She was the only one who had stayed in town; it wasn't like he had much choice. Everyone else in the family had moved away, or died.
"Why do you torture me?" she whispered at the portrait. Sometimes she hated him at least as much as she loved him.
Elodie stood there, tears dripping down her cheeks, and stared at her image of perfection, of what she ached for but could never have, as it seared its way slowly through her heart.
Chapter 3
Clay threw his reading glasses down onto the top of his solid mahogany desk, pinching the bridge of his nose hard, when that was just why he'd removed the damned glasses. His eyes settled where they always did when he gave them free rein—which wasn't often in the past five years—on the picture of April he loved the most.