The Reluctant Nude (6 page)

“You lead a quiet life?”

She nodded. “I guess so. But my job is really physical—the conservation side of it. And the other side, the advocacy, it’s stressful and I have to deal with all sorts of obnoxious people. I probably work about fifty or sixty hours a week, and when I’m off, I just want to be
off
, you know? Well, maybe you don’t,” she added, looking him over. “Your schedule seems pretty loose. Did you even realize it’s Saturday?”

He grinned, glad for her contrary side to flare up again. “I did. I know these things. Tuesday is recycling day and on Friday evenings I walk to the pub for a drink and watch the live music. I pay attention to such things as days of the week.”

“I see.”

“So. Tell me more. You must be passionate about something aside from crossword puzzles and finding fault with me.”

She pursed her lips. “My work is important to me. It’s important to defend the things and people that don’t have a voice.”

“Of course. But nothing else? Nothing frivolous?”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Yeah. Old movies. I love old movies.”

He nodded, pleased. “Black and white?”

“Doesn’t matter. I lived with my aunt when I was a teenager, and that’s what we did together. Especially in the winter, when it was too crappy to go outside for whole weekends. Big, long marathons of classic movies.”

“Which is your favorite?” Max asked.

“Ooh… It’s probably a tie between
My Fair Lady
and
Singin’ in the Rain
.”

“You like musicals?” Max would have thought her far too practical to care for such things.

Fallon nodded and bit her lip, stifling a grin.

“Why are you smiling like that?”

She blushed and grinned down at the sand. “I always smile like that when I think about Gene Kelly.”

Max smiled back. “Now we’re making progress. Do you date?” He immediately felt Fallon slip back into her invisible shell.

“Eh, not much, lately. Too busy.” She clawed absently through the sand until she reached water. “It’s not on my priorities list.”

“What is, then?”

She dug deeper. “Making my mortgage payments. Saving up for whatever’s next, for when my housemate eventually gets engaged or one of us decides to move away or what have you. And being good at my job. I’m where I want to be, for right now. In my life. I just want to do good, and be around other decent people.”

“You’re too close to Manhattan for that,” Max said.

She met his eyes, unimpressed. “So you think. But there are good people and lousy people everywhere. You can’t write an entire place off because of the few assholes you encounter.” She brushed her hands off on her jeans and lay back on the sand, staring into the cloudy mantle. “I think you’re too quick to condemn people.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Would you like to hear my theory about you?” she asked, and Max realized from her tone that she must be tipsy from the wine.

“Yes, I would. What is your theory?”

“I think you find it very difficult to believe that anyone can be decent and worthwhile unless they’re damaged goods.”

“Damaged goods?”

“Yeah. Wounded or traumatized. Like no one’s good enough in your book unless they’re a victim of something.”

“That’s a lot to infer from knowing me for a day,” he said, mildly indignant but nonetheless curious. His gaze lingered over the deep valley of her narrow waist, the sharp rise of her hips. “What else?”

“That’s all I’ve gathered. It’s just my theory.” She closed her eyes and interlaced her fingers atop her ribs.

“It is an interesting theory,” he admitted. “Perhaps you should be a psychologist.”

She smiled, as if to herself. “Doctor Frost and Inspector Emery…”

“I have theories about you.”

She opened her eyes. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

He stared into the bright patch where the sun hid behind the clouds. “I think I’ll be keeping them to myself for now.”

Fallon blinked, looking exasperated. “Suit yourself.”

Max lay down beside her, propping himself up on one elbow, bringing his face close to hers. For the briefest moment he imagined climbing on top of her, knees sinking into the sand beside her hips, his body pressing into hers. Fascinating.

“How do you think you will you like it, being the object of my scrutiny for the next three months? A whole season of your life?”

Her eyes darted between each of his. “It’s hard to say after only two sittings.”

“How is it so far?”

“It’s odd. It’s a bit like being the subject of a scientific experiment, I guess. Except you don’t necessarily want to study me.”

“I don’t mind. You might prove interesting,” he said, teasing.

“I don’t have any scars or disfigurements.”

“I might not be doing this if the money wasn’t so very convenient, I admit that. But this is not torture for me, either. Perhaps you’ll prove to be some middle ground for me.”

“Middle ground between what?”

He thought. “Between the insanity of the commercial art scene and the insular, self-indulgent little world inside my own head, yes?”

“I suppose.”

He cleared his throat. “I have something I must break to you, now.”

“Oh?” Her lips pursed, distrustful.

“I already know that you will hate it.”

“Just tell me.”

He looked at her squarely and wound one of her curls around his fingers. “I will have to touch you.”

She jerked upright, making him yank her hair, hard. “Ow! What? Touch me how, exactly?” She rubbed her scalp.

Max sat up too, hugging his knees and studying her. “Just that. My hands on your body. Not sexual. Just touch.”

“Now?” she asked, glancing frantically around the beach.

“No, not now. Not even this week. But eventually.”

“God.” She looked anxious but not
horrified
. “Is this another of those ‘this is just the way I work’ caveats?”

He nodded.

“You touch all your models, then?”

He nodded again.

“
God.
”

“I did not think you’d be pleased about it.”

Fallon shook her head. “Jesus, you are really weird, you know that?”

“I am whatever way I am.”

“See? You say things like that. You’re
very
weird.” She fell silent, seeming to meditate on her contempt for his weirdness.

“Well, I have warned you now.”

“Fine.”

“Would you like to end this sitting for the day? To go and contemplate the ways in which I displease you?” Max made no attempt to hide how entertaining he found her discomfort.

“I would, as a matter of fact.” She stood and he led them back to the studio, where she rinsed her hands and shouldered her bag.

“Ten o’clock?” she asked, arms crossed protectively over her modest chest.

“Yes, perfect.” Max held the door open and she departed.

He stood on the front steps with his hand in his pockets, watching her stride up the dirt road toward town until she was out of sight. Above him, the clouds broke open and the sun streamed down like some cheap imitation of the divine. He smiled.

Chapter Four

“You are going to kiss my feet for this,” Max said smugly. From across the studio he waved a pair of still-fidgeting crabs at Fallon.

“You haven’t me made a lousy meal yet.”

“And I never shall.” He busied himself with pots and pans, and soon the air smelled of shellfish and sherry and rosemary.

The afternoon of the second Friday in September found them breaking for a late lunch. Modesty was a distant memory for Fallon, at least with the strange man she’d grown so oddly accustomed to these last two weeks. She pulled her sweater on as Max smiled from where he stood at the kitchen counter, his face almost belonging to a friend now. Almost.

Fallon had slipped into a routine of sorts. Though she was bound by her own desperation to spend the first six hours of each day at the studio, evenings were hers. At Rachel’s prompting, she’d made a conscious decision to view the experience as a sort of vacation. Technically it was unpaid, though on the other hand, what she stood to gain from Donald Forrester by cooperating was invaluable.

She tossed a drop cloth over the clay-encrusted worktable. This had become her customary chore, as had gathering the utensils and napkins. On the whole, she was comfortable here now. The only exception was the dust from the dried clay. Since Max had switched exclusively to sculptural studies from sketches, Fallon found it necessary to ditch her contact lenses in favor of glasses.

“I like those.” Max pointed at her cat-eye frames as he set a bottle on the table.

“Thanks.”

“They are very you.”

Fallon didn’t bother challenging his authority on this topic. She took them off and examined them a moment, rubbing away a smudge. “I found them in a thrift shop in the Village.”

“It is only too bad that they hide your eyes.” Given his accent and the formality suggested by his lack of contractions, Fallon thought Max sounded like a lothario when he said things like this.

“Better hidden than bloodshot.” She accepted a dish of crabmeat and wilted greens and fennel. “Goodness.”

He sat and poured them each a healthy measure of red, lifting his glass.

“
À la votre
,” they said together, the ritual ingrained. The sittings had become times of relative silence, though lunch was for socializing. Fallon found herself anticipating these meals.

“Shouldn’t we be drinking white wine?” she asked after a bite, pointing her fork between the merlot and shellfish.

Max smiled. “You think because I’m French I should be a snob about these things?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, I’m Canadian now. And white wine gives me a headache,” he added, grimacing. “Would you prefer it? What do you usually drink?”

“Beer, actually. But red is fine. I’m not choosy.”

He clinked his fork against the bottle. “This is the finest California vintage nine dollars can buy. I save the decent stuff for special occasions.”

“French?”

He grinned. “Naturally.”

“Now there’s the snob I was expecting,” Fallon said, surprised as ever by the playful tone in her voice. She wondered if this might be something beyond mere tolerance and familiarity. She wondered if Max Emery wasn’t growing on her. He looked a little taken aback himself.

“When do you think we’ll start the marble?” Fallon was curious to watch the process. She’d come to know the menagerie of marred statues in Max’s garden intimately in the past two weeks. What he did was breathtaking, astounding. She could admit that now. She wanted to see him at work.

“Soon. We are close. Closer. But we’re not quite there yet.”

“You mean the touching bit?” she asked, body tensing. Since bringing it up Max hadn’t pressured her about it, but she’d been living in fear of the inevitable day when it couldn’t be put off any longer.

He nodded. “I know you’re not thrilled, but I hope you trust it is necessary now.”

“Yeah. I do.” She shivered nonetheless. She wasn’t a great fan of being touched, handshakes and the platonic hugging of friends aside. It was probably why her relationships never made it past the three- or four-month mark. She dreaded to think how uncomfortable Max’s touch would be—his eyes alone often felt like a brand on her skin.

“Perhaps this afternoon we will try?” He cocked a cautious eyebrow across the table at her. “It must be soon if you wish to stay on schedule.”

“Yeah, I do.” Fallon frowned. It had become startlingly easy sometimes to forget why she was here, whose statue she would ultimately be posing for. “But don’t expect me to be comfortable or anything. You may have to sculpt me wincing.”

“I am sure I won’t. It is all that energy nonsense I am sure you’re sick of hearing about.” He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers like a close-up magician. “Nothing personal. In your job, when you’re working outside, what is it you do?”

“A lot of plant and animal collection…checking on populations of weeds and algae and mollusks and things, looking to see what’s declining and what’s thriving in a given area.”

“And what if you had to do that with your eyes closed?”

She nodded. “I get it. It’d be really difficult.”

“And
I
understand you do not want to be treated like a specimen. But you see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled deeply in his wicked way. “So you better keep drinking.” He refreshed her glass and gathered their dirty dishes.

As Max puttered, Fallon sipped her wine and tried to imagine what it would be like, having Max’s hands on her. She shuddered, though not entirely from trepidation.

For over a week now she’d been having dreams about him, the sorts of dreams she’d never been disposed to before. Dreams that had her waking up in cold sweats in the early hours of the morning. Stark visions of this man’s predatory body and dark eyes, rough hands, rough voice. Dreams about commanding him and being commanded.

Across the room she could see the long ridges of muscle flanking each side of his spine, his shoulder blades, his shirt pulled taut against these shapes as he washed dishes. In her dreams those muscles twitched and tightened with other kinds of labor. Fallon hadn’t felt the protracted touch of his skin since they’d shaken hands her first day at the studio, but neither had she forgotten it. Calloused fingers and palms on her bare body. She swallowed.

Max dried his hands on a dishtowel. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she said, heart pounding. “Can we do this in baby steps? Can I keep my clothes on?”

He nodded.

“Good.” She shrugged her sweater off and stood in jeans and a tee in her usual space near the center of the studio. She trembled harder with each step he took toward her. By the time Max was directly in front of her, Fallon was shaking.

“You look terrified,” he said, hands tucked safely in his pockets.

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you might cry.” As he said it, Fallon felt the pressure mounting in her tear ducts.

“I won’t cry.”

“You can if you want, you know.”

“Well, I don’t,” she snapped, more surly toward him than she’d been all week. “Just get started, already.”

Max slid his hands from his pockets and held them out, inviting her to do the same. Her fingers shook visibly. She held her breath as he sandwiched them gently between his palms, and the heat and roughness of his skin made her flinch.

“This is very hard for you,” he said softly, eyes on their hands as his thumbs rubbed her wrists.

“Yes, it is.” She could admit that. What she couldn’t admit was that it wouldn’t be
nearly
this hard with anyone else on the planet. “Only because it’s been built up so much.”

It felt as though Max had been warming his hands by a fire, his skin was so hot. “I hope it is not triggering any bad memories.”

“No.” It was triggering something much different. A breed of sensation Fallon had spent her entire adult life avoiding.

“You’re very cold.”

“I have low blood pressure,” Fallon offered. “Unless you meant that figuratively.”

“No, just your hands,” he said carefully, focused on their point of contact. His fingertips traced small circles over her knuckles. He slid them up to her forearms, raising all the tiny hairs, raising the fear bubbling in her core. She began to shake hard.

“Oh.” Max’s eyes widened and he yanked his hands away, holding them at a safe distance. “You’re not ready for this,” he said, alarmed. It wasn’t an expression she’d ever seen him wear before.

“No, I can do it. I have to. I’ll do whatever we have to do to get this statue made. Keep going.”

“That’s enough for today.”

“No. It’s
fine
.” Fallon’s anxiety spiraled. “If this ridiculous project fails, it’s not going to be because of me.”

“I understand. But understand too, that this is useless to me right now. I don’t need to feel your
body
. I need to feel
you,
all that energy. I cannot do this if you are a mess. You’re not ready yet.”

Anxiety spiked to anger. “I’m doing my best.”

“Well I’m not carving you when you’re like this. I may as well sculpt you out of sand, you feel so unstable.”

Fallon pressed her palms to her neck. “God, this is so stupid.”

“What is stupid?”

“This. All your energy nonsense. The way you make everything so freaking intense and complicated and
weird
.”

“I can’t help that.” His calmness looked as if it was taking a concerted effort.

Fallon groaned.

“Why are you angry?” he demanded. “I’m trying to make you as comfortable as I can, yes?”

“Well, you’re failing.” Fallon narrowed her eyes. “You make me very, very
un
comfortable. You’re going to have to work around it, because it’s not going to change.”

Max stepped away, scraping a chair across the floor and sitting, burying his head in his hands, defeated. He rubbed his eyes and stared up again. “I thought we were making so much progress.”

“We still would be if you’d just keep going. I’m going to be uncomfortable, doing this. Deal with it.
I
am.”

“You have no clue what this is about, do you?”

“I’m proud to say that everything about you is incomprehensible to me,” Fallon cut back. “Especially all this touching BS. But I’m going along with it. Try and extend me the same courtesy, okay?”

Max stood, face steely, patience abandoned. He leaned his back against the rail of the spiral staircase and held Fallon’s eyes.

“What?” she said.

“Touch me, then.”

“You?”

He nodded, neutral.

“That’s supposed to help?” Her gaze zigzagged over him.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But try it, Little Miss Scientist. Suspend your empirical disbelief for me.”

“If that’s what it takes to keep this project moving forward, fine.” She nodded and took a couple of steps closer, studying his face, his arms, the black hair at the collar of his shirt.

“Fine,” Max agreed, that wicked gleam coming to his eyes. “Fair is fair.”

He peeled his shirt up from the waist, revealing that body so maddeningly adept at making Fallon’s heart skip a beat. Tossing it aside, he reached down and unbuckled his thick belt. Fallon felt her eyes widen, embarrassed but transfixed as he lowered the zipper and eased his jeans down over slim, toned hips. The garment dropped to the floor and Max stepped out, toying with the waistband of his gray boxer briefs, eyes glued to Fallon’s, demanding her answer to an unspoken question.

“No. Stop there.” Even as she said it, her eyes roamed to his arms, his navel, the bulge between his thighs. She stopped breathing for several seconds.

“Go on, then.” His voice was shallow and sharp, a challenge. “Touch me. You can bind my hands if you like.” As if to illustrate this offer, he crossed his wrists and raised them, grasping the iron bars of the staircase behind his head, so disturbingly reminiscent of Fallon’s dreams. A slow smile overtook his lips.

She swallowed and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

He caught her eyes with his. “This isn’t about sex, you know.”

Like hell it wasn’t.

“This is about sensation,” he said. “Connection.”

“Fine,” she muttered, feeling as though she was both winning and losing this strange battle of wills. With a steadying breath, she fanned her fingers and set them on his shoulders. The heat of him shocked her anew. Max kept solemn, eyes following her hands as she grazed his neck then traced the tattoo along his collarbone.
Clavicula
,
read the miniscule label. She ran her palms up and down those powerful biceps. His chest was hard and warm under her palms, and she felt his heart beating fast, giving him away behind his veneer of self-control. She melted into the act as she surveyed his tight abdomen, flesh tensing at her touch. She cupped the crests of his hips, feeling the power there, finding it so very easy to picture these muscles pumping hard, flanked by her own legs.

“Keep going,” he whispered, the rasp in his voice sounding unintentional. “Do you feel what I’m talking about? Do you feel my energy?”

She nodded, awestruck. His entire body was vibrating, imperceptible but nevertheless unmistakable. “I can feel it.”

Fallon’s curious hands explored his ribs and waist, the outsides of his thighs. She blushed, then let herself touch his backside. Hard, like the rest of him. His hips tensed. Behind the soft cotton of his briefs, he was growing for her. Her blush deepened, warming not just her cheeks, but her breasts and belly and down between her legs. Her fingertips flirted with the dark curls that trailed from his navel down, mere centimeters from the rigid curve of his erection.

“You still say this isn’t about sex?” she asked softly.

Max’s mouth quirked to one side.

“Do you want me to keep going?” As her thumb edged along his waistband, she wasn’t sure what answer she was hoping for.

“What do you want?” he asked, breath short.

His body was so close and ready. No man had ever made Fallon feel this way so…
violently
before. Ever. Not even close.

“Have you proven your point yet?” She feigned contempt, studying his powerful body as haughtily as she could muster.