Close Up

Maybe it was just something on her To Do list that she’d finally gotten around to. Divorce Sean Finally. Check.

While he had been mulling over all of that, and the fact her address listed on the divorce papers was one in Minneapolis, not that far from his own condo, he had seen her name on the contract for the gallery event as he’d gone through the paperwork with Michigan.

Those three pieces of information had created more awareness of Kristine than he’d had in years, and before he’d given much thought to it, he’d decided he wanted to—no, had to—see her.

So here he was, agitated and not entirely sure why, his tie feeling too tight, hand in his pocket to hide the way his thumb drummed on his thigh. He didn’t like feeling out of control. At all. And the way he dealt with feeling out of control was to wrest it back by throwing other people off their guard. It was how he had built a successful business. It was what he was doing here now, watching catering professionals in the back of the gallery bustle about setting up tables, with crisp white linens and champagne flutes turned upside down on their rims.

But he was determined not to let Kristine see how unnerved he was. That was the rule in business. You kept your hand close to your chest and you charmed, with a casual attitude, as if the outcome of the deal didn’t matter to you one bit.

He wasn’t even sure why this outcome did matter. But before he signed those divorce papers, he wanted to look Kristine in the eye, see the woman she had become. Call him nostalgic. Call him a masochist. Call him simply curious.

Michigan was scrolling through his phone. “I’ll go ask the staff where the event coordinator is so you can speak to her. What’s her name again?”

For a second Sean didn’t answer, because the door to the back room had opened and Kristine had emerged from it, a sign in her hand almost as big as she was, shielding her beautiful and curvaceous body from his view. But he could see her face, and it punched him in the gut to see the harried smile she gave a staff member, her fiery-red hair piled on her head, tendrils falling down the back of her neck as she turned and pointed to something on the table.

She looked more mature, her style more refined, the angles of her face sharper, her narrow skirt emphasizing her hourglass figure. It was hard to believe, but she was even more beautiful now than at nineteen.

It didn’t surprise him that, in addition to the powerful wave of confusion he felt, there was an instant desire for her, making his mouth hot and his dick hard. Even from across the room, his body responded to her, and he flashed back to all those nights where she had snuggled up against him in bed in their lousy studio apartment, her bright smile taking the edge off whatever dilemmas had come his way during the day. Kristine was not pencil-thin, but sported some serious curves, which, when she turned sideways for a minute, were perfectly displayed for him. Curves that she seemed to have learned to show to advantage in the tight knee-length skirt she wore and the floral button-up sweater. There were hips and breasts and a whole lot of mouthwatering backside.

She had been a pretty and sparkling young woman when he had married her, but damn, she had grown into an absolute bombshell. Sean itched to touch her. Everywhere.

“Her name is Kristine Zimmerman Maddock,” he told Michigan. “My wife.”

“Excuse me?” Michigan asked, sounding very confused. “You’re married?”

Yes. And no.

But Sean didn’t answer him, because at that moment, Kristine glanced toward the front of the gallery and spotted him. Even from twenty feet away, he saw her start, her hands slipping on the sign and almost dropping it. A man in the black-and-white waiter uniform moved to help her, but she waved him off, her eyes still on Sean.

He smiled and raised his eyebrows and nodded to her in acknowledgment. “Michigan, you can go back to the office. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“You want me to leave?” Michigan sounded nervous.

Sean didn’t need to look at him to know he would be pushing his glasses up on his nose. It was a nervous tic he had when he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Normally, Sean was patient with him, and encouraging, because he thought Michigan showed a lot of potential as a businessman, but right now, he couldn’t be bothered. All he could think about was Kristine. Standing in front of him for the first time in ten years.

Without responding, Sean strode forward.

Kristine darted a glance left and right, as if she was looking for an exit route. Her cheeks were flushed pink. For a second, he was distracted by the sign, which announced the exhibit with a photograph of a group of people naked in a tree. The woman straddling that tree trunk did not look comfortable at all. But Sean shoved that thought aside as he approached the woman he had loved, and promptly invaded her personal space.

“Hello, Kristine.”

2 (#ulink_2acefaeb-4a6d-5d27-9aa1-5b002308e6dd)

THAT VOICE.

Kristine felt a shiver rush through her, further flustering her. That voice was exactly the same as she remembered it, whiskey smooth, confident, sexy as hell. The voice she had heard in her dreams night after night for the first year after she had been stupid enough to run scared away from him during their big blowout fight. One of her trademark impulsive moves.

She couldn’t believe Sean was right in front of her. Standing, frankly, too close for any sort of appropriate public behavior.

Her heart was racing. Her palms were sweating, the Plexiglas-covered sign in her hands slipping. Her cheeks were burning. Her nipples were hard. And she was speechless, which for her was a rare event, occurring only once a decade during a full moon. Or the season finale of The Bachelor.

Oh, God. Speak, she commanded herself. Say something, you total idiot.

“Sean,” she said. Only it wasn’t a confident and professional-sounding statement. It was a breathy, sexy, “lay me down in the tall grass and make me forget your name and mine” kind of whisper.

His nostrils flared. His eyes darkened.

Her arms wobbled and she blamed it on the weight of the sign. But the truth was it was Sean.

He was just as gorgeous as she remembered, though he looked older, obviously, and more put together. His jaw sterner, his hair, once unruly, now short and controlled. He looked as if he had filled out, his arms more muscular, shoulders broader, more commanding. When they had been together, he had favored jeans, expression T-shirts and Converse sneakers, but now he wore a designer suit in black, his dress shirt a blue pinstripe, the tie a rich dark blue. It didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t chosen a red tie—he would probably think it a cliché. He looked better in blue anyway. It made his pale blue eyes that much more arresting in contrast to his dark hair.

So much so that she glanced away, unable to hold his gaze. It made her feel way too vulnerable, way too confused in a way she wouldn’t have expected. So much time had passed, she hadn’t expected to feel much of an emotional reaction to him, despite the fact she had been madly in love with him once upon a time. Maybe it was just the sheer unexpected appearance that had her off-kilter.

What the hell was he doing here anyway? This event was small, a tiny drop in the ginormous bucket of his business ventures. When she had been hired by the gallery as their events coordinator two weeks ago, the previous employee had already set up the bulk of the Bainbridge event, including security, given the photographer’s notoriety for attracting protestors. Because of her history with Sean, she had felt a bit voyeuristic to see Maddock Security in the paperwork, but even when she had to re-sign an addendum to the original contract, she hadn’t expected that Sean would ever be made aware of her hand in the party.

Wrong. She had been oh-so clearly wrong.

The urge to drop the sign and run into the back room was overwhelming, and clearly Sean knew it.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a charming smile. He took another step toward her.

Instinctively, Kristine shifted back, panicking at the thought of him getting close enough to touch her, close enough that she might smell his masculine scent.

“I have work to do. In the back.”

“That’s not much of a greeting after ten years, Kristine. At least say hello.”

God, 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?