But, as usual, Hart surprised him. Her fingers drew away, teasing, taunting, before moving closer once more. Her leg skimmed up the back of his, drawing his hips to hers, layers of fabric still separating them below, creating a delicious friction.
Then her fingers touched that small area of skin that sent a jolt of electricity through every nerve ending. Drake caught his breath; pain and pleasure surged through him, exquisite and demanding in its urgency.
Hart raised her head, her mouth grazing his ear. “I want you, now,” she commanded. He was only too willing to comply.
He gave her a gentle push onto the bed, the now rumpled and twisted folds of velvet still separating him from what he desired, what he needed. He knelt between her legs, grabbed both sides of her gown’s hem and ripped the fabric upward. The tearing noise echoed his own desire and finally, she lay naked, open before him.
He didn’t take the time to do more than slide his pants down before he joined her on the bed. She wrapped her legs around him and he was inside her, thrusting with an urgency that had been building all night long. Hart pulled him ever deeper and as he reared his head to give voice to the fury and passion that climaxed within him, he realized this was what he wanted to render in his art, this feeling of exhilaration, of awe over the power of two people joined together. Her face flushed with color, eyes wide as her mouth opened in her own primal scream of pleasure.
The animal who had taken
Steadfast
from him had won a shallow victory indeed. Drake looked upon Hart and knew this was the real prize, this power he and Hart shared, and he would do anything in the world to protect it.
And her.
DRAKE WOKE A
few hours later, his vision filled with the tableau he’d seen earlier at the gala: Hart with Adeena and Denise. The painting composed itself in his mind; he could imagine the layers of pigment, the swirl of the brushstrokes, how he would shape the light and perspective, bend them to suit his needs.
One day he’d recreate
Steadfast
—more for his own pleasure, to prove that animals didn’t rule the world, not his world, anyway. But first he wanted to paint the three women—
Three Graces
he would call it.
Leaving Hart to sleep, he moved into his studio just as the sunrise streamed its pearlescent light through the eastern facing windows. His favorite time to sit and sketch, before the city was fully aroused, before he had to face the rigors of his own work day, while night-soaked dreamscapes and images remained fresh in mind. He draped the remnants of Hart’s dress over an easel where the first rays of the sun caught the shimmer of light trapped in the folds of purple velvet.
He took his pad and, instead of charcoal, grabbed a pencil. These were only preliminary studies, a mapping out of the images he wanted, so vibrant in his mind but so difficult to translate onto paper and canvas.
He let his mind wander as he worked.
Steadfast
had been about capturing and using light to convey the emotion of the piece. He’d experimented repeatedly until he’d developed a technique with pigments and dyes that allowed the canvas to absorb a fraction of the light and reflect the rest. It had been tedious and frustrating finding that right balance between light and light, the solid and the transparent, luminescent, but worth it in the end.
Grace
would be more about shadow he realized as he looked down on his first sketch. Adeena so dark, Denise so fair, and Hart in the middle. As always, Hart would be the crux of the image.
He’d drawn her just as he’d seen her last night: that slightly crooked smile, those eyes that had seen too much to allow any moment of happiness to be disregarded, filled with knowledge that threatened to taint the joy.
Yet it didn’t. And that was the battle, wasn’t it? How to reveal the shadows that clung to Hart’s life, darkness that would have long ago devoured a less sturdy soul, and balance them with the joy she brought to her life—and his.
Shadow and light. His fingers kept moving, playing. A tricky balance to find, to use flat pigments and canvas to express the emotions that fueled a soul.
But now that he knew what he wanted, half the battle was won. The rest was just endless experimentation, trial and error.
With
Steadfast
, he’d unveiled Hart’s courage—which she would deny wholeheartedly, saying she was afraid of almost everything, but he knew better.
Drake looked once more on the face of the woman he loved and felt he had uncovered a new understanding of her. Balance was extremely important to her life. Just as it was for him. He was constantly striving, either as a cop or an artist, to create order out of chaos, to find a balance he could reproduce in his own life.
Adeena and Denise were studies in movement, laughter rippling through them. Hart was the center, moving, responding, full of raw emotion, yet also curiously still.
He was reminded of a film he’d seen in seventh grade social studies class. Whirling dervishes, their faces filled with a calm transfixion as they communed with God while their bodies embraced perpetual motion in a flawless, graceful dance of life. Which came first, the motion or the calm? He wondered and drew Hart’s image once more, this time using a page to render her face alone.
Eye of a hurricane—the calm, serene center of the storm created by raging winds circling around the edge. That was Hart. She had no need to search for balance or strive for it, she just was. It explained why her actions did indeed speak louder than words—they were created by primal forces instructing her in what needed to be done to maintain that precious balance.
The scratch of the pencil was the only sound in the room. Drake filled in shadows, balancing the light, but wasn’t happy with the results. The pencil wouldn’t do. He had the composition he wanted, but the rest of the image would be built by color and texture. Lots of metals—maybe even grind some gold or silver directly into some of the pigment? He looked at the rose blush of light shimmering from the folds of Hart’s dress. No, not silver or gold. Copper.
He thought about seeing Hart work in the cacophony of the ER, watching her during a trauma resuscitation, or when she’d confronted violence. Somehow Hart always kept her equilibrium, knowing what action needed to be taken and doing it without hesitation.
Drake marveled at that. A man on a constant quest for stability in his life, he’d found a woman with a perfect sense of balance.
But the only way to stay centered was to acknowledge the chaos that swirled around her, constantly working to tear into the calm eye of the storm, devour it.
Those were the shadows. The price Hart paid for being Hart, the price Drake would pay for loving her.
He shook his head, banishing morbid thoughts into the brilliant rays of the rising sun, condemning them to a fiery death.
It did not always have to be that way—would not, not as long as the two of them were together.
SINCE BOTH CASSIE
and Drake enjoyed cooking, making brunch for his family was an enjoyable, well-choreographed dance as they moved around their small but well-equipped kitchen. She even saw him smile once or twice—real smiles, not “I’d rather be down at the station chasing the guy who dared burn my work of art,” fakes. Whatever work he’d done in his studio this morning had refreshed his mood.
Maybe it was greedy of her, wanting her soon-to-be groom happy and relaxed before their wedding tomorrow night, but she didn’t care. They’d both been through so much to make it here she refused to let anyone steal this moment from them.
She moved into the kitchen and finished making the coffee while Drake’s family—his mother, aunt, and uncle—gathered around the table, dissecting the press coverage of last night’s events. Soon a tantalizing aroma filled the air. Drake might be the gourmet, but no one made coffee like Cassie. Gram Rosa had taught her how to turn ordinary beans into a thick, strong brew that tasted of ambrosia, not a bitter drop to be found.
She was silent as she walked around the table, filling cups, listening with a smile as Jacob and Nellie decried the
Tribune’s
lack of standards.
“Their headline editor should be taken out and thrashed,” Jacob said, pointing to the banner displayed on his iPad. “Terrorism strikes Fairstone unveiling,” he read. “Garbage. Absolute sensationalistic garbage.”
“But, Remy, the photos of the paintings—even though they’re grainy—are stunning. Absolutely stunning,” Drake’s Aunt Nellie told him.
“I wish I’d been there,” Muriel said, laying a proud hand on her son’s arm. “All those people applauding your work, not even knowing who you were.”
“They do now.” Drake grimaced. Cassie filled his mug. His hand moved to light on her waist and she left a kiss on the top of his head before moving on.
“Still, I’m so proud of you, Remy.”
Cassie returned the pot to the kitchen and leaned on the bar, watching the family—her family soon, she thought. It had been a very long time since she was a part of a family. It was exciting and scary at the same time. There were at least three conversations going on at the table, overlapping, weaving back and forth without missing a beat.
She started the frittata. Drake would graze all day, but life in the ER had taught Cassie to eat a full meal whenever she found time, and she was certain the others would want something more substantial than toast and jam.
As she beat eggs, she wondered at families—everyone had different names, different faces with their families. Drake was DJ—Drake Junior—to other cops, Remy to his family, Drake to everyone else—but he’d once told Cassie that he preferred Mickey, the same name his father had gone by. So, even though he was Drake to her most of the time, she’d begun to call him Mickey when they were most intimate, when emotions were at their strongest. Four names but one man.
She thought at that. His aunt, Eleanor Steadman, was Nellie to friends and family, despite the fact that she was a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist under her maiden name: Eleanor DeAngelo. And Cassie had noted that when they spoke of work, Nellie called her husband, Jacob, by his surname, Steadman—a habit from their days on the newspaper together, she guessed.
Even Cassie had her share of nicknames. As a child the only people who called her Cassandra were the nuns or Gram Rosa when she was in trouble—which was so often that she’d grown to despise the sound of her full name. Friends who knew her when she was a kid called her Cassie. As an adult, most people used her surname, Hart. She’d grown to like the strong sound of the single syllable. It evoked confidence, a sense of competence. Except when Drake used it—then the name seemed to connote the vital organ. She smiled as she thought of the way Drake could make that single syllable sound powerful, thrilling, knowing that he meant her when he said it.
Then there was her first husband, Richard’s dreaded nickname for her, Ella, short for Cinderella.
She whipped the eggs without mercy. Maybe some nicknames were best forgotten.
<<<>>>
AFTER BRUNCH, DRAKE’S
family gleefully kidnapped Cassie, Muriel chattering away about how she couldn’t wait to see Cassie in her wedding dress. They drove to Adeena’s house in Bloomfield where she lived with her Great Aunt Tessa, who had been Cassie’s Gram Rosa’s best friend.
Despite being a low-budget, homegrown affair, the entire wedding was like that—friends and family coming together to celebrate Cassie and Drake’s happiness.
Adeena and Tessa hosted the rehearsal party, scheduled early enough in the day so that all the kids who were participating could enjoy it. The priest presiding over their non-traditional ceremony was retired, but had also officiated Adeena and Cassie’s first communions and confirmations and had been a close friend of Tessa and Rosa.
Cassie thought he’d never agree to perform the ceremony since Drake wasn’t Catholic and she hadn’t been to Mass in years, but apparently Father Serrano had grown more liberal as the years passed. Or Tessa had twisted his arm. Despite being blind and suffering from diabetes, she was just as imposing as Gram Rosa, able to bend almost anyone to her will.
When they arrived at Tessa’s house, Andy Greally was already there, setting up the food for the party. He’d been Drake’s first partner on the police force and, now that he was retired, ran a bar where he enjoyed practicing his culinary skills. Denise Dolan was also there, blowing up balloons that her twins, Bridget and Colton, were having fun floating around the room.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Cassie asked after greeting Tessa, who sat like a queen overseeing things from her chair at the head of the dining room table.
Denise smiled. “He and Drake are working on a surprise for you.”
“Oh no. Drake and I agreed, no gifts. We’re putting all our money into the Liberty Center.”
“Hah, you just want me to tell you what it is. Not going to work,” she replied in a singsong.
Adeena hustled Cassie up the steps to her bedroom where the box that held Muriel’s dress waited. They’d been best friends since second grade and the room hadn’t changed much over the years. The walls had gone from pink to purple to a warm yellow and the decor was no longer magazine cutouts of Hollywood stars, but the furniture was the same maple dresser and double bed that they’d jumped on as girls.
“I can’t believe this is actually happening,” Adeena gushed. “You’re getting married. And on Christmas Eve. It’s just so romantic.” She flopped on to the bed that had shared years of their giggles, secrets, and adolescent angst.
Cassie looked down at her friend’s smiling face. “I can’t believe it either,” she confessed, sinking to the edge of the bed, the dress box propped across her legs.
“Oh no, I know that look—” Adeena sat up abruptly. “You’re not having second thoughts are you? Not about Drake?”
Cassie was silent. Not about Drake. About her. She’d failed so spectacularly at her first marriage, how could she risk a second? When she’d seen all those people downstairs—people here to wish her and Drake happiness, to share in their joy, she realized how many people would be hurt—that she would hurt—if she failed again.