“I’m sorry, Patricia.” Rogan looked down at his ruined handkerchief, then dropped it onto the spread-out sheets of newspaper. “With the show tomorrow, I’ve dozens of details yet to see to.”
“Nonsense.” Maggie shot Rogan a wide grin. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your social hour.”
“It’s not your fault—I’ve simply other obligations. Give my apologies to Marion and George.”
“I will.” Patricia offered her cheek for Rogan to kiss. The scent of turpentine clashed with, then overwhelmed, her delicate floral perfume. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Concannon. I’m looking forward to tomorrow night.”
“It’s Maggie,” she said, with a warmth that came from innate female understanding. “And thank you. We’ll hope for the best. Good day to you, Patricia.” Maggie hummed to herself as she cleaned her brushes. “She’s lovely,” she commented after Patricia left. “Old friend?”
“That’s right.”
“Old married friend.”
He only lifted a brow at the implication. “An old widowed friend.”
“Ah.”
“A very significant response.” For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he became defensive. “I’ve known Patricia for more than fifteen years.”
“My, you’re a slow one, Sweeney.” Propping a hip on the desk, Maggie tapped a pencil to her lips. “A beautiful woman, of obvious taste—a woman of your own class, I may add, and in fifteen years you haven’t made a move.”
“A move?” His tone iced like frost on glass. “A particularly unattractive phrase, but ignoring your infelicitous phrasing for the moment, how do you know I haven’t?”
“Such things show.” With a shrug, Maggie eased off the desk. “Intimate relationships and platonic ones give off entirely different signals.” Her look softened. He was, after all, only a man. “I’ll wager you think you’re terribly good friends.”
“Naturally I do.”
“You dolt.” She felt a rush of sympathy for Patricia. “She’s more than half in love with you.”
The idea, and the casually confident way Maggie presented it, took him aback. “That’s absurd.”
“The only thing absurd about it is that you haven’t a clue.” Briskly, she began to gather her supplies. “Mrs. Hennessy has my sympathy—or part of it. Hard for me to offer it all when I’m interested in you myself, and I don’t fancy the idea of you popping from her bed to mine.”
She was, he thought, exasperated, the damnedest woman. “This is a ridiculous conversation, and I have a great deal of work to do.”
It was rather endearing, the way his voice could go so grandly formal. “On my account at that, so I shouldn’t be holding you up. I’ll spread these drawings out in the kitchen to dry, if that’s all right with you.”
“As long as they’re out of my way.” And their creator with them, he thought. He made the mistake of glancing down, focusing. “What have you done here?”
“Made a bit of a mess, as you’ve already pointed out, but it’ll tidy quick enough.”
Without a word, he picked up one of her drawings by the edges. He could see clearly what had inspired her, how she meant to employ the Native American art and turn it into something boldly and uniquely her own.
No matter how much or how often she exasperated him, he was struck time and again by her talent.
“You haven’t been wasting time, I see.”
“It’s one of the little things we have in common. Do you want to tell me what you think?”
“That you understand pride and beauty very well.”
“A good compliment, Rogan.” She smiled over it. “A very good one.”
“Your work exposes you, Maggie, and makes you all the more confusing. Sensitive and arrogant, compassionate, pitiless. Sensual and aloof.”
“If you’re saying I’m moody, I won’t argue.” The tug came again, quick and painful. She wondered if there would come a time when he would look at her the way he looked at her work. And what they would create between them when, and if, he did. “It’s not a flaw to me.”
“It only makes you difficult to live with.”
“No one has to but myself.” She lifted a hand, disconcerting him by stroking it down his cheek. “I’m thinking of sleeping with you, Rogan, and we both know it. But I’m not your proper Mrs. Hennessy, looking for a husband to guide the way.”
He curled his fingers around her wrist, surprised and darkly pleased when her pulse bumped unsteadily. “What are you looking for?”
She should have had the answer. It should have been on the tip of her tongue. But she’d lost it somewhere between the question and the hard, fast stroke of her own heart. “I’ll let you know when I find out.” She leaned forward, rising on her toes to brush her mouth over his. “But that does fine for now.”
She took the painting from him and gathered up others.
“Margaret Mary,” he said as she started for the door. “I’d wash that paint from my face if I were you.”
She twitched her nose, looked cross-eyed down at the red smear. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, and slammed the door on her way out.
The parting shot may have soothed his pride, but he wasn’t steady and bitterly resented that she could turn him inside out with so little effort. There was simply no time for the complications she could cause in her personal life. If there were time, he would simply drag her off to some quiet room and empty all of this frustration, this lust, this maddening hunger, into her until he was purged of it.
Surely once he’d taken control of her, or at least of the situation, he’d find his balance again.
But there were priorities, and his first, by legal contract and moral obligation, was to her art.
He glanced down at one of the paintings she’d left behind. It looked hurriedly executed, carelessly brilliant, with quick strokes and bold colors demanding attention.
Like the artist herself, he mused, it simply wouldn’t be ignored.
Deliberately he turned his back on it and started out. But the image remained, teasing his brain just as the taste of her remained, teasing his senses.
“Mr. Sweeney. Sir.”