If she closed her eyes she could feel it slide inside her. The water hadn't cooled much, but she shivered in anticipation. Tonight, the time hadn't been right. But tomorrow would be.

AT 6 A.M. HER PHONE RANG, but she'd been up since five, shaving and moisturizing. Preparing. She picked up the receiver, but there was nothing but a dial tone. She smiled. Good. He was pissed off too. Probably hadn't been turned down in some time.

The smile stayed on her face as she made her way out of the hotel and into quiet Main Street. She took a deep breath and realized that she felt more relaxed and happy than she had in quite a while. She loved the city, but taking a break from it every once in a while wasn't a bad thing either.

Especially if she was doing the breaking in Sam Marshall's bed. He didn't bother to look up from his canvas when she emerged from behind a row of grapes. The white tarp was still on the ground, but today he'd exchanged his pencil and pad for oils. He had two canvases going side by side, and his hands were already covered with color.

He didn't utter so much as a "hello" or "good morning: Again, Vanessa couldn't help but admire the way he didn't waste words. She spent so much of her life with bullshitters-heck, she was one of the very best in the business-so Sam's silence was a rare treat. Without waiting for his direction, she pulled her thigh skimming white sundress over her head, dropped her panties on top of the dress on a nearby chair, and lay down on her back with her arms as a pillow for her head.

"You always wear white' he said finally, still not looking at her.

In spite of that, she'd never been more conscious of a man's attention.

''Angels always do:' .

Her eyes were closed, but she knew when he looked at her. It was the exact moment that the sun rose over the barn roof. Between the bright golden rays and the heat in his eyes, she felt warm all over. For the next several hours, she relaxed into her job as artist' muse. Rather than being bored by her work, she enjoyed challenge of it. He was right. Her muscles ached and her to buzzed and she wanted to roll over, to move, to change position.

Finally, even though her will was strong, her stomach rebelled with a loud growl.

She opened her eyes and turned her head. "Got any food around here?"

He started at her words. She was pleased by how absorbed he was with capturing her on canvas. She liked to think that if she'd been alive a couple hundred years ago, it would have been one of the masters immortalizing her.

"I forget food when I'm working' he said by way of an apology, but she didn't care about that, she just needed to eat. She stood up and slipped back into her dress, leaving her panties on the ground. He put down his brushes. "I picked up some pastries earlier. They're in the barn."

She followed him into the big, old wooden building, and it took a long moment for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness. She sat down on a couch in the corner and grabbed a croissant, pulling off a flaky piece and stuffing it into her mouth.

He handed her a cup 6f coffee, and it was hot, strong, black. lust the way she liked it.

"You're a good model," he said, and you would have thought she'd won the Nobel Peace Prize for how much her heart swelled at his words. She took a moment to swallow down her unexpectedly emotional response along with a bite of pastry.

"It's difficult, but it feels good," she said.

She held his eyes as she said it, and they both knew that the time was coming. Soon. For more things that felt good. For both of them.

They ate in silence, but it was a surprisingly companionable silence. Albeit heavy with desire. But that, Vanessa sensed, was just the way things were between them.

Comfortable and yet terribly uncomfortable at the same time. It was a delicious paradox, one she wanted to explore. At length. Too bad the weekend was so short. Then again, that's What made this all so exciting. It was a break from the normal.

She didn't know how she'd function if she were this aroused all day every day.

She grinned at the thought of being on the edge of an orgasm twenty-four-seven. Might not be bad, actually, she decided as she watched Sam flip through a box of paint tubes for more colors.

"Can I look at the paintings?" she asked, and he nodded absentmindedly.

"If you want." He really didn't seem to care either way, pulling a tube of paint out, studying it for a moment, then discarding it for another.

She liked that distracted thing Sam had going on. He was the polar opposite of her. She was a master of multitasking, he was so focused he lost sight of everything else. She was an always moving target, he stayed right where he was. Hot damn if they weren't going to fit together in the sack like puzzle pieces. Figuring there was no point in waiting to see the finished product-might as well see what all of her cramping muscles were good for-she brushed the crumbs from her hands and brought her coffee cup outside. What she saw made her gasp, and for the first time, she was oblivious to Sam's presence. Vanessa had a keen eye for art, and she knew at once that she wasn't the woman in the paintings. Her hips weren't that full, her br**sts weren't that lush. And yet, he'd captured her essence in a way that no photo ever had. The woman he'd painted was on the edge. Of what, exactly, it was wasn't clear. But it was big. Really big. As if she were going to try and leap off the canvas at any moment, into life. She'd been painted in shades of white-she didn't know there could be that many, that white could be black and red and orange-but " around the woman was a mass of color.

Vanessa was tempted to run a finger over the woman-over herself, she supposed to see if she really would come to life.

"She's beautiful'

"I know," was his reply, and for the first time in her life she didn't know what to do. She stood there, hating her uncertainty but stuck in it at the same time. lust as he'd helped the young waitress, he guided her into action. "Let's change things up," he said. She still stood there, and he added, "Naked again," so she stripped back off her dress, but this time she found herself sitting cross-legged, facing him, a thick bunch of newly picked grapes on her lap, covering her. He didn't touch her, but the way that he told her exactly where he wanted her arms, her hair, the grapes, made her feel as if he'd rubbed every inch of her skin with his hands. With his lips.

She inhaled a ragged breath and accepted that she, the unstoppable, imperturbable Vanessa Collins, very well might have gotten herself in over her head with a man. With every hour that passed, as the sun moved over the barn's roof to high in the sky and then back down behind an oak tree, her world turned increasingly inside out.

Soon, her stomach was empty again, and without thinking she reached down and popped a grape into her mouth. It was large and juicy, and her mouth couldn't contain all the sweet liquid. The juice dripped down her chin, falling to her chest, a lazy stream of purple-tinged liquid sliding down between her br**sts. The sun was still behind the oak tree, but her skin was on fire.