Close Up. Erin McCarthy

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СКАЧАТЬ why was she panicking? She was a grown woman, damn it, and Sean wasn’t going to bite her. She didn’t think. But it was a knee-jerk reaction she always had, to run away from an uncomfortable situation. It was her specialty, a family trait passed down from her father and her father’s father. The Zimmerman motto was definitely when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Right out of the room. Or state. Or country.

      It was something she was working very hard to no longer do, so she swallowed and collected herself. The shock of seeing Sean was wearing off, replaced by pure embarrassment. And an ache that sprang out of nowhere, which she refused to acknowledge. “Hello, Sean. How are you doing?”

      The sign slipped in her hand again and Sean took it from her. She resisted for a second, but he tugged hard and relieved her of its weight. Then held it up to study it. His eyebrows rose. Kristine knew exactly what he was looking at—a dozen people covered in soot perched in a tree. Naked. Personally, she found Ian Bainbridge’s work intriguing, but she knew a man like Sean, who saw things in black and white, would find it bizarre.

      But he didn’t say anything about the photo. He just propped it against the nearest wall and turned back to her. “I’m fine. You look well, Kristy.” He reached out and brushed a stray hair off her cheek.

      Kristine felt herself heat under his scrutiny, goose bumps rising on her flesh from his simple touch. He touched her the way he had all those years ago, naturally, as if he had the right to, with a tenderness she hadn’t been expecting, and it made her feel myriad emotions. Surprise, appreciation, melancholy and even arousal, as if her body remembered, despite the gap in time how it should respond to him.

      “Thank you, I am,” she managed to say, forcing her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “You, too. So what brings you by the gallery?”

      He didn’t answer the question immediately. Instead, he lifted his arms and put his hands firmly on her shoulders. “It’s good to see you.”

      Then he leaned forward and brushed his lips over her cheek. Oh, God, he was kissing her cheek. He was so close, so familiar, yet...not. She was opening her arms to hug him in return when suddenly he was gone. The warmth on his face disappeared and was replaced by a neutral expression.

      “Tim will be in charge of the security team,” he said. “He’ll be here by seven on Friday to station my men. You have a lot of entry points to the gallery so that is my only concern. I suggest you lock the front door whenever you’re working in here alone the rest of the week and Friday until you’re ready for the guests to arrive.”

      Blinking, Kristine stared at him for a second, trying to process the sudden change from personal to business. Not that he had said anything truly personal, really. But he had looked at her in an intimate way. Disappointed, then annoyed with herself for the feeling, she nodded. “Sure.”

      Who gave a shit about security?

      She certainly didn’t. Not at the moment. Well, actually she did give a huge shit, considering this was a super important event for the gallery, and if she screwed this up, she would be fired, and then she would be destitute and living on the street. But at the moment, that didn’t matter. All she could think about was that Sean’s dimple seemed to have disappeared. Was that possible? Could a dimple simply fill itself in?

      It just seemed to her that after ten years, the small talk might extend beyond an obligatory query into her health and a generic compliment before skipping straight to business.

      “Will the caterers be here again tomorrow?”

      Apparently, he didn’t feel the same way.

      Focus. On work, not Sean’s serious sexiness. She could do this. Moving forward, that was her, and he obviously felt the same way. He didn’t appear to have any interest in an extended stroll down memory lane. He didn’t even seem to want to jog it, let alone stroll.

      “No,” she said. “They’re only setting up. They’ll be back around six on Friday with the food.” She strove for a breezy and casual tone, studying him from beneath her eyelashes. It was bizarre to see the man he had morphed into, to realize they had once been intimately connected, physically and emotionally. It felt surreal to finally see him face-to-face. She had been back in Minnesota for only three weeks, and she had been wondering how to go about contacting Sean. Even though it had been a decade, she wanted to be courteous and give him a heads-up about the divorce papers he would be served, but she hadn’t been sure what to say. Whether to be matter-of-fact, funny or friendly.

      It didn’t feel necessary to tell him her exact reasons for suddenly filing. That she had realized in order to grow and become the success she knew she could be, she had to let him go. Walk away from the security he had been and still represented to her. Mostly, she had rehearsed phrases like “moving on,” “wanting to allow you the freedom you deserve,” and “long overdue.”

      In all her considered and discarded thoughts on approaching him, though, never once had she visualized she would be in an art gallery surrounded by a mass-nudity exhibit while they discussed the catering access to the event. It was so surreal, she couldn’t be entirely sure she wasn’t dreaming. She glanced down to make sure she wasn’t standing there in her underwear.

      Which suddenly and inappropriately reminded her of just how smoking hot the chemistry between the two of them had been during their relationship. Sean had been an excellent lover, and he’d been only twenty-one at the time. She briefly imagined all the bedroom skills he might have improved on over the years and shivered at the goose bumps that rose on her skin.

      Not a good way of thinking. Moving forward, that’s what she was doing.

      The divorce papers were supposed to be served to him tomorrow, which made this a perfect opportunity to broach the subject with him. Truthfully, she should be glad he had been put in her path. Now she didn’t have to call him to discuss it. She could tell him in person, which was better anyway. You didn’t marry someone then dissolve that union without at least looking each other in the eye as you discussed it, no matter how much time had passed. Once they were done with the business details, she would ask him to go for a cup of coffee so they could talk.

      That was the right thing to do, and it reflected her new determination to face tough choices head-on, instead of hiding or running away.

      Sean stopped eyeing the gallery and slid his hand into his pocket, the picture of casual confidence.

      “Do you have a list of the employees the caterers are sending?” he asked.

      “No.”

      “You should.”

      She supposed that made sense. But frankly, it hadn’t occurred to her. She had been too worried about all the other nine thousand little details that came with planning a party of this size. The security issue seemed like something that, well, the security firm should handle. Her mind just didn’t work in those ways. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how her mind worked. That was half the problem. She had been a flaky kid raised by a flaky mother, and now she was a flaky adult.

      It wasn’t that she meant to be flaky. It’s just that she wasn’t very organized. She liked to think her talents were more in creative ventures and in making people happy. Since she was little, everyone had always commented she made them smile, that she was a ray of sunshine.

      “Okay,” she said when she realized the pause had stretched too long and his relaxed posture had tensed. Sean was smiling at her, but Sean was also smoldering. Whether СКАЧАТЬ