“What you do isn’t a shtick.” She’d never seen him in action, but he couldn’t have achieved all this—he owned a Monet, for God’s sake—with mere magic tricks or smoke and mirrors.

“You’re right, I should erase that word from my vocabulary.” She swore she could see him silently do that. Erase erase erase. “I truly do believe every word I say, every piece of advice I give.” He smiled at her. “And the rest is history.”

“You make it sound so easy. As though anyone could build an empire and make billions.”

Pulling her hands down, he held them and locked his gaze on her eyes. “You can. Believe in yourself. Push for what you want and deserve. It will manifest.”

Her head spun at how quickly he’d twisted the focus around to her, making her feel slightly uncomfortable with the intensity of his gaze. Or maybe, if she was being totally honest with herself, she wasn’t uncomfortable with Sebastian, but with all of the big changes she could see coming down the pike. His words from the first day he’d come to her workshop replayed in her head: We won’t just unveil your work, we’ll unveil you to the world too.

Her roof might sag, but her life had been comfortable. Of course she wasn’t averse to being a big success, but was she ready for it?

“I’m already manifesting,” she quipped in an effort to relax a bit about it all. “You saw my dragon in Chinatown and now here I am, poised to create something amazing.”

“Definitely amazing,” he murmured as he pulled her into him, his arm deliciously warm across her shoulders. “Tell me more about yourself. From the way you speak of your parents, I can tell they were good ones.”

“They really were. My dad taught me everything about welding. My mom taught me everything about cooking.” She grinned at him. “Only one of them succeeded at getting through to me, though.”

Though he smiled back, by the way he slid his hand through hers as he asked, “Where’s your dad now?” it was obvious that he already suspected the answer.

The familiar ache bloomed in her chest. “He died of cancer seven years ago. With Hospice help, Mom and I took care of him to the end. We let him die at home the way he wanted to.”

Sebastian squeezed her hand and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You’ve very brave, Charlie.”

If anyone should know about bravery, it was Sebastian. But their pasts weren’t something to compare, so instead of saying that, she simply leaned into his comfort. “I loved my mother before that, but it brought us even closer.” They’d created an unbreakable bond, weeks where they were everything to each other, offering support, one holding the other up when she would have fallen, sharing a glass of wine at the end of an exhausting day after her father had finally slipped into sleep. All that despite her mother’s debilitating arthritis.

“And where’s your mom?”

Sebastian had revealed his worst to her. Now it was her turn. “I had to put Mom in a home two years ago.” The agony of that decision—and the overwhelming guilt—squeezed her heart inside her chest. “She has osteoarthritis, but hers is extremely severe and started in her forties. She’s in constant pain.” She winced at the memories of her deterioration, but her mother was stoic. What on a scale of one to ten would have been a nine for Charlie, Mom smiled right through. “I hate what the disease has done to her.”

It was doubly hard to know the extent of her mother’s pain and not be able to do a thing about it. She wanted nothing more than to take care of her mother herself, but her place was more substandard than Shady Lane. Her mom had reached the point where she needed help dressing, washing, even putting on her shoes. Charlie’s bathroom had an old clawfoot tub that, as strong as Charlie was, she had trouble getting her mom in and out of. It was an accident waiting to happen. Then there were all the times her mother had been alone because Charlie had an irregular schedule—teaching during the day, with night classes three evenings a week, often not arriving home till eleven o’clock. She’d had visions of her mother falling and then lying there for hours before Charlie returned.

While she’d explained about her mother, Sebastian had caressed the back of her neck, giving her warmth and comfort that eased the knot of tension. Now, he folded her into his arms, his tenderness bringing her close to tears when usually she tried to be as stoic as her mother.

“Can she take pain meds?” He soothed her with long, sweet strokes down her back.

Charlie shook her head against his chest. “She’s already on a bunch of stuff, but you build up a tolerance in time, and it doesn’t do much.”

“What about an operation?” His voice was a warm rumble against her ear.

“She’s had them all. There’s only so much they can do.” She pushed away from his comfort and put the flat of her hand on his chest. “But with the money you gave me for the chariot, I can move her into a great place in Los Gatos with beautiful gardens to stroll through. She pushes herself to do a mile every day with a walker in the hallway. Otherwise she’d be in a  wheelchair.”

“Now that is amazing. And so are you.” He held her with his dark, beautiful eyes. “It’s incredibly selfless to use the money for her care. I should have doubled what I gave you.”

He was too much. Not only that he listened with such attentiveness when most people had to jump in with their own story—but that he was moved enough to even think of handing her more than he already had.

“You’ve already given me more than anyone else.” She savored the strong beat of his heart beneath her palm. Sharing with him didn’t take away her mother’s pain, but somehow it eased Charlie’s anguish. “It’s more than enough. More than I can still wrap my head around.”

Just as she could barely wrap her head around the heat the two of them generated, simply sitting on the couch talking about their pasts.

As he ran his hands up her arms, over her shoulders, into her hair, and cupped her nape, she was palpably aware that her inner voice, the one reminding her to keep her hormones in check, had long since shut itself down. She’d wanted to make sure that she and Sebastian had clearly carved out the lines between business and pleasure before they became lovers—and she’d wanted to make sure she wasn’t letting herself fall into another relationship where she started out refreshing and ended up with her heart broken.

Though she didn’t have nearly all the answers to her questions, what he’d shared with her had touched her deeply.

She still didn’t want to risk messing up the business arrangement between them by jumping into bed, especially not when her mother’s future care depended on it. And yet, drawing in a deep breath of his scent, all male with hints of soap and raspberry trifle, she could no longer repress the part of her that was dying for a kiss. One heady kiss she could dream about at night.

His mouth was so inviting. And when he said her name—“Charlie”—barely above a soft whisper but heavy with need, she simply couldn’t resist the pull of his desire any longer.

He leaned close, but she was the one who closed the final distance between them. She parted his lips. Or he parted hers. She couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted.

His tongue danced with hers, his taste drugging her. She moaned and his arms wrapped her close. Her fingertips to his jaw, she rubbed the soft end-of-day stubble. The length of his body was hard against her, all that relentless muscle. And she couldn’t help letting herself go, throwing her arms around him, pressing her breasts to his chest, her leg against his thigh.

He consumed her, kissing the very breath from her. It was, she silently acknowledged, what she’d wanted from the moment he’d stood outside her workroom, the sun blinding her and turning him into a silhouette of metal calling her to shape him, mold him, take him, make him hers.