Close Up Read Free

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
    T HAT 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