breath caught in her throat. “You live in a tree house!”
Dominic laughed. “Yeah. More or less.” He sounded somewhere between boyish and sheepish and he seemed to be watching her closely.
She couldn’t contain her delight at the apartment with its nearly floor-to-ceiling windows that looked right out over the treetops of Central Park. The living room walls weren’t white at all, but the soft blue of a spring sky, and the paintings on them were not abstract either. There were several, all almost primitive representational pieces.
The largest was one of a large cottage by a broad sand beach that reminded Sierra of Dominic’s house out on Long Island where she had given Mariah a baby shower. Two more were various aspects of a low-slung peach-colored house with white shuttered French doors. The house was set amongst almost jungly foliage and overlooking a tropical turquoise sea. Two more were beach scenes with children playing in the surf. Sierra didn’t know the artist, but she felt an immediate kinship.
“This is your house!” She indicated the painting of the cottage. “How did you get an artist to come and paint your house?”
“My mother painted them all when I was a kid. She wasn’t really an artist.” There was both pride and defensiveness in his voice.
“She certainly was,” Sierra said warmly. “They’re all wonderful. I don’t know about the others, of course. But she’s really captured the spirit of your house.”
In fact she could almost feel the love of the Wolfe family home emanating from the painting. It was a feeling she remembered associating with the house the only time she’d visited it. At the time it had seemed odd. Not the sort of feelings she’d ever have expected to get from anything connected to high-powered, hard-edged Dominic Wolfe.
It was, perhaps, one of the things that had made her think there might be more to him than she’d guessed. She remembered she’d come home from the shower even more curious and aware of him than ever.
“Where were the others done?” she asked.
Dominic’s expression grew shuttered. “Our family place in the Bahamas.”
“It’s gorgeous. I love the Bahamas. I’ve been there on photo shoots. You must go there every chance you get.”
“Not anymore.” He turned away and she felt as if a wall had crashed down between them.
Too late she remembered Mariah telling her that a long time ago he’d been going to get married in the Bahamas and something had happened. She hadn’t been listening then. She’d been telling herself she didn’t want to know anything about Dominic Wolfe. Now she wished she’d paid more attention. Clearly it was still a sore point.
“Well, it’s nice to have it because it’s your mother’s work,” she said after a moment. “And you must enjoy remembering that.”
He turned back from staring out the window and his smile was only a little strained. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So,” she said brightly. “Show me the rest.”
He showed her a state-of-the-art kitchen, a dining area that was comfortable rather than grand. Then he led her into behind the kitchen to what had once been servants’ quarters. One room he had turned into a den with a comfortable sofa, stereo, television and pool table. The other was, he said, “The gear room.”
Sports gear, he meant. There was a bin full of soccer balls, footballs, basketballs and baseballs. The walls were lined with racks containing fishing rods, tennis racquets, baseball bats, hockey and lacrosse sticks—all looking well used. There was a serious-looking backpack hanging from a hook on the wall, and beneath it was a row of cleats, skates, both ice and in-line, tennis shoes and hiking boots.
She remembered a profusion of sports gear at the house on Long Island, too, now that she thought about it. But she’d assumed it was left over from childhood or from his brothers, Rhys and Nathan. She’d never imagined Dominic would take time for it.
“You can put your gear in here, too,” he said. “Or you can leave it with your stuff upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Sierra echoed as he flipped off the light and led the way back to the living room.
“Mmm. I had it moved.” He picked up her tackle box of styling tools and started up the spiral staircase.
It reminded her of Frankie and she knew he would love it. He would love the whole apartment. It looked like it had been designed by a nine-year-old boy. But she barely stopped to think about that now.
She was trying to bend her mind around the “I had it moved”