Close Up. Erin McCarthy

call it that.” Sean shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t deep enough to comprehend the bigger meaning, but having two hundred people naked together in one photograph, looking like a herd of sheared sheep, did not project any sort of message to him other than awkward. “But it’s highly commercially successful, so the artist knows what he is doing. As does the gallery.”

      Under other circumstances, he might have found it amusing. There was nothing he loved more than seeing a quirky idea take off on the open market. Not to mention he had no objections to nudity, though he preferred his naked encounters to be one-on-one. But today he was distracted by the papers that had arrived unexpectedly in the morning, jarring him out of an ordinary day’s work and straight backward to the previous decade.

      Back to Kristine.

      “How many people are attending this event?” Michigan asked.

      “Two hundred.” Sean glanced around the neat and upscale gallery, noting there were multiple exits, one presumably to a back storeroom, and two directly to the exterior. The front of the gallery was all glass, which was, of course, problematic for security, but generally speaking, he didn’t think Maddock Security would have any issues securing the opening night of the Ian Bainbridge exhibit and charity fund-raiser.

      He didn’t need to be here, frankly. His team had already done their research on the event and the facility, and had put a plan in place for the party Friday evening, but Sean hadn’t been able to resist stopping in himself for a look when he saw the name of the event coordinator who had hired the firm. Kristine. His former wife, who wasn’t technically his former wife, since they had never legally filed for divorce, despite it being ten years since their impetuous and short-lived marriage had ended. They had parted ways after a rip-roaring fight, two headstrong personalities barely out of their teens, and as far as he knew, Kristine had been living in Vegas since their split, heading west on impulse. That was Kristine—action first, thought second.

      It was one of the things about her that had made him fall in love with her initially—that she was so much the opposite of him. He was methodical, pragmatic, a self-made millionaire who had been accused of being coldhearted a time or two. Though, back when they had been together, he had been broke, with nothing more than a vision and a determination to work hard. He hadn’t been as cynical, as remote as he was now, and there had been nothing cold about him when it came to Kristine. She had made him hot with passion, and warm with the most intense emotion he’d ever known. He didn’t fall in love easily. In fact, it was safe to say he had not been in love since, which was why he’d never bothered to pursue tracking her down and obtaining a legal divorce. The technicality didn’t matter, because he hadn’t been serious about another woman in the following years, maybe because, at the tender age of twenty-one, he had learned there was something to the adage about fools and love. He had fallen hard and gotten his heart ripped out of his chest and stomped on.

      Not to mention, somewhere in the back of his mind, Sean had always assumed Kristine would come back and they would resume their relationship because he hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They’d had essentially a juvenile fight that had exploded beyond all comprehension, and surely that couldn’t be the end of their relationship.

      Yet, ten years had managed to slide by, one day at a time while he had been building his business from the ground up and pretending he wasn’t lonely. He had no idea what Kristine had been doing.

      Sean hadn’t known she was back in town until divorce papers had arrived at his office three hours ago, and it had given him a hell of a jolt. Most days, the past was relegated to the past, and he didn’t give much thought to Kristine, so to have her suddenly thrust into his day had been very distracting. It surprised him that she had the callousness to serve him papers without at least a phone call. So much time had passed—she couldn’t possibly think he was still angry over the way their relationship had ended. They had just been kids. Then again, maybe it was so long ago, she didn’t think it was important enough to let him know she was finally requesting a divorce, which, frankly, should have happened years ago.

      Maybe it was just something on her To Do list that she’d finally gotten around to. Divorce Sean Finally. Check.

      While he had been mulling over all of that, and the fact her address listed on the divorce papers was one in Minneapolis, not that far from his own condo, he had seen her name on the contract for the gallery event as he’d gone through the paperwork with Michigan.

      Those three pieces of information had created more awareness of Kristine than he’d had in years, and before he’d given much thought to it, he’d decided he wanted to—no, had to—see her.

      So here he was, agitated and not entirely sure why, his tie feeling too tight, hand in his pocket to hide the way his thumb drummed on his thigh. He didn’t like feeling out of control. At all. And the way he dealt with feeling out of control was to wrest it back by throwing other people off their guard. It was how he had built a successful business. It was what he was doing here now, watching catering professionals in the back of the gallery bustle about setting up tables, with crisp white linens and champagne flutes turned upside down on their rims.

      But he was determined not to let Kristine see how unnerved he was. That was the rule in business. You kept your hand close to your chest and you charmed, with a casual attitude, as if the outcome of the deal didn’t matter to you one bit.

      He wasn’t even sure why this outcome did matter. But before he signed those divorce papers, he wanted to look Kristine in the eye, see the woman she had become. Call him nostalgic. Call him a masochist. Call him simply curious.

      Michigan was scrolling through his phone. “I’ll go ask the staff where the event coordinator is so you can speak to her. What’s her name again?”

      For a second Sean didn’t answer, because the door to the back room had opened and Kristine had emerged from it, a sign in her hand almost as big as she was, shielding her beautiful and curvaceous body from his view. But he could see her face, and it punched him in the gut to see the harried smile she gave a staff member, her fiery-red hair piled on her head, tendrils falling down the back of her neck as she turned and pointed to something on the table.

      She looked more mature, her style more refined, the angles of her face sharper, her narrow skirt emphasizing her hourglass figure. It was hard to believe, but she was even more beautiful now than at nineteen.

      It didn’t surprise him that, in addition to the powerful wave of confusion he felt, there was an instant desire for her, making his mouth hot and his dick hard. Even from across the room, his body responded to her, and he flashed back to all those nights where she had snuggled up against him in bed in their lousy studio apartment, her bright smile taking the edge off whatever dilemmas had come his way during the day. Kristine was not pencil-thin, but sported some serious curves, which, when she turned sideways for a minute, were perfectly displayed for him. Curves that she seemed to have learned to show to advantage in the tight knee-length skirt she wore 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.