Then he looked at me with a searing gaze. “That’s not how I wanted this to go.”

Was he regretting it already? I wasn’t sure what to say.

He cleared his throat. “I mean, look at you. Gray and brown paint all over your beautiful body from my smock.”

I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. Sure enough, oil pigments were smudged all over my chest, abdomen, and thighs.

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t understand. I wanted to have you in a bed, where we could go slowly, where I could gaze into those eyes…”

Though my heart had finally slowed down after the fucking, it now sped up again with full force.

Silence for what seemed like a long time, until my tummy growled again.

That got a little smile out of him. “I promised you food.”

“It’s late,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Nope. I promised, and I always keep a promise. I’ll order something. What do you like?”

“Everything. From chateaubriand to pizza. I like everything.”

“How about Thai? There’s a great place that delivers quickly.”

“Will they deliver this late?”

“Yup. I don’t exactly keep normal hours. When inspiration strikes, I paint, and meals wait until I can take a break. I’ll call them. In the meantime, you can use my bathroom to take a shower if you want.”

Did he know he was being a little dismissive? He hadn’t even asked me what I wanted from the Thai place. Of course, I’d said I ate everything. As long as it didn’t contain goat cheese—not exactly a Thai staple—I’d be good. “All right.”

“There’s some grapeseed oil on the bathroom counter. It will help get the oil color off you if you have trouble.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. Then again, I’d never been covered in oil paint. I held up the robe. “This is ruined, I think. I’m sorry.”

“So what? I’ll get more.” He smiled.

And my heart started pounding all over again. He was surely the most beautiful man in the world. Why wasn’t he a model like his sister? He was perfect.

“Uh…okay. I guess I’ll take a shower, then.”

I walked out of the studio, back to his bedroom, and into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and—

“Oh my God.” My reflection stared at me. My hair was in complete disarray, and yes, my body was smudged all over with oil paint, mostly shades of silvery gray. He truly had been trying to get my eyes exactly right.

I stared at my eyes in the mirror.

Blue-gray eyes, a little too small, nothing special. While not my worst feature, they were far from my best.

But Roy Wolfe saw something in them, something I couldn’t define.

Silver? I laughed quietly as I shook my head. They weren’t silver.