The Reluctant Nude

Dedication

Thanks to MB, who read it first. To Amy, who made it stronger. To my mom, who loved it, predictably. And to Liz, who
corrigez’d
my terrible
français.

Thanks also to my editor, Anne, who chiseled away the excess and polished up the rough bits.

Biggest thanks of all to my husband, for suggesting we visit Nova Scotia. Near-moose-maulings aside, I couldn’t have asked for a finer honeymoon. You are truly a guillemot among herring gulls.

Chapter One

You’ve got to be frigging kidding me.

This
was where she’d be getting naked?

Fallon halted so abruptly her sneakers kicked up two clouds of dust, making it feel as if she’d arrived early for a shoot-out in the Wild West. She gawked at the studio fifty yards farther down the long, gravel drive. It was a saltbox-style house, or had been—less a house now than a solarium. As she approached, Fallon found she could peer clear through the front windows to the backyard, as though it had been gutted of its rooms. Gutted and given more facelifts than an aging D-list celebrity. Dozens of mismatched windows had been installed, so many that the roof looked to be held up more by glass than by walls.

Perfect.
She might as well strip and ride naked on a float through the town center for all the privacy this place offered.

“It’s worth it,” she whispered, forcing herself to believe the words. “Do it for Gloria.” She conjured her aunt’s smiling face. She conjured the memory of every kind thing Gloria had ever done for her, and she steeled herself.

She mounted the front steps and studied the little brass door plaque a moment.

M.L. Emery, Malcontent

And world-renowned classical sculptor, or so she’d been told. Fallon had been picturing a grandfatherly sort of figure…eccentric but benign. Preferably warm and charming, though she was in no position to be choosy.

The fist clenching her tote bag prickled, begging for circulation. With an almighty exhalation, Fallon put her finger to the doorbell and gave it a push, hearing the chime through the open windows.

“A moment,” came the shouted reply.

She shifted uneasily on the doorstep. Above her the wind folded and refolded a Canadian flag with aggressive snaps. It was late summer in Nova Scotia, and the breeze coming off the ocean felt icy and unwelcoming, like a warning. She glanced beyond the rolling green hills to the craggy cliffs, the dark blue of the Atlantic crashing at their feet.

Another curt shout. “Yes, come in.”

She took a breath and pulled the screen door open, surprised to walk in not on the sculptor himself but two models—an elegant young woman and a striking man. The man was just zipping up the woman’s dress and Fallon hoped she hadn’t interrupted a tryst.

“May I help you?” the male model asked in a difficult-to-pinpoint accent, snapping his dark eyes to Fallon’s.

“I’m looking for the artist. Mr. Emery.”

“What do you want that bastard for?” He handed the young woman her purse from the floor.

“I have an appointment. Could you tell him Fallon Frost is here? If he’s in.”

His eyebrows rose with curiosity or realization, and he addressed the young woman with a hand on her lower back. “Excellent work today. I will call you.”

She nodded and smiled, and they exchanged double cheek kisses before she exited with a polite nod to Fallon.

“He’s in.” The man wiped a hand on his filthy pants and extended it.

Fallon shook it, understanding with a small start. “You’re M.L. Emery?”

His hand was warm and strong, coated in a dusty film. “Max is fine.”

Fallon’s insides did a somersault. This man was not what she’d been expecting. Not even remotely. Max Emery was too young, for starters. And he looked more like a rock star destined for a sensationally tragic and premature death than a classical sculptor. He stood six feet tall or close to it, slender but not skinny, with unruly black hair long enough to tuck behind his ears. Clay dust and paint coated his jeans, and he wore an untucked black T-shirt, also filthy. His muscular arms belied something beyond an artistic vocation.
A laborer’s arms,
Fallon thought, and swallowed.

“I apologize that I forgot your appointment,” he said. “I don’t usually have appointments.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No matter. Refresh my memory, Miss Frost. Soon to be Mrs…?”

“Forrester,” she lied, stomach turning. Dear God, what a disgusting thought. The only thing that nauseated her more than that face-saving fib was her real motive for being here.

“And your fiancé didn’t come with you today?”

“No.”

Behind heavy black stubble, his mouth twitched—amused or offended, it was tough to pinpoint which. “Your fiancé is investing a great deal of money in this. Doesn’t he want a say in the piece?”

“He gave me a photo. To give you an idea of what he wants.” Fallon could feel herself blushing already.

Max Emery frowned outright. His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed in a lopsided scowl.

“Is that not…sufficient?” Fallon asked.

He ran a hand through his messy hair. “The money he’s offering can compensate. But I’m not impressed.”

Fallon decided it was the accent of a Frenchman who’d learned English in Great Britain. An accent that couldn’t help its own contemptuousness.

“Sorry,” she said again.

Max flapped a hand designed to dismiss her worries. “No matter. May I make you a coffee?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

Fallon watched him stroll to the far side of the cottage to a huge, industrial sink. He had a lazy way of moving that made it seem as though he’d just rolled out of a bed full of satisfied women. A photograph hung on the wall beside the cupboards, and he paused to kiss two fingers and press them to the frame as he passed.

The studio matched its denizen: dusty and a bit
off.
The walls that would have created individual rooms had been reduced to support beams, lending the house a cavernous, cathedral quality. What had formerly been an attic had been half-removed and converted to a loft, reached by the spiral staircase winding up from the center of the floor. Fallon saw a bed there, positioned under one of many skylights, a mess of sheets and blankets heaped on it. The other half of the studio, from which the attic had been entirely removed, was bathed in light from the proliferation of mismatched windows. Mullioned and louvered, some modern and some less so, they looked to have been scavenged from buildings of any and all types and relocated here, to this sunny patchwork of a residence. Fallon spotted an old, clawfooted enamel bathtub parked immodestly below a tall window in the rear of the house and felt her eyebrows rise.

A kettle wailed.

Max poured steaming water into a French press and grabbed a wooden folding chair from beside the stove. He approached Fallon and snapped it open, setting it at her side.

“Thank you.”

“Sugar?” he asked.

“No. Cream, if you have it.”

“No cream. Black coffee and red wine are normally the sacraments of this house,” he said, as if reciting a proverb. “But you may bring some next time, if you like.”

“Okay.” Fallon sat, clasping her hands, pretending to be entranced by the view through the front windows. In her periphery, Max crossed his arms over his chest, scrutinizing. She met his stare. He seemed to study her with detachment, as if she were some interesting object that he couldn’t quite identify.

“You’re not what I was picturing,” he said slowly.

Before she could echo these sentiments, he turned and walked back to the stove.

A minute later Fallon accepted a chipped mug filled with coffee so black she felt jittery just looking at it. Max dragged a stepladder over and perched on the second step, wrapping an arm around his knees.

He blew the steam off his cup. “So. Do you have this photo of the pose your fiancé is envisioning?” His baritone voice was smooth and rough at the same time, like cement.

“Yes.” Dread gurgled in Fallon’s stomach as she rooted through her canvas tote and withdrew the magazine clipping.

Max took it and studied it and frowned so deeply it bordered on disgust. “This is a joke.”

“No, it’s what he wants.” Fallon agreed that the photo was risqué, a pin-up to say the least, but she hadn’t expected this strong a reaction. She’d seen Max Emery’s work online—nudes, almost without exception.

“You wouldn’t be caught dead in this position,” he said, still staring at it.

Fallon rankled. As if this man knew the first thing about her. “It’s what he’s asking for.”

“Your fiancé set his price, Miss Frost, but not my terms.”

Her throat tightened. “It’s very important he’s happy with it.”

Max ran the tip of his tongue over the edge of his mouth. Balancing his cup on his knee, he pinched the corners of the clipping and ripped it cleanly in two. “I’m not a pornographer.”

Fallon watched with mounting panic as the torn paper fluttered to the floor. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to suggest that—”

“Your fiancé will be happy with the piece,” Max interrupted. “If he has seen my work, he knows what I do. Sensual. Not obscene.”

“I’m sure. It’s just that he’s very particular.” A soft
thud
scattered Fallon’s thoughts as a cat dropped from the loft onto a tall cabinet, then to the floor. It strolled across the dusty hardwood with an errant push against Max’s shins. He ran a palm down its back, leaving a faint white print on its black fur.

“What’s your cat’s name?” Fallon asked, desperate for a change of topic.

“It is not my cat.”

“Oh. Well, what’s
the
cat’s name?”

He caught her eyes with his penetrating ones and held them for a long moment, then blinked, nonplussed. “It’s a cat.”

Fallon’s civility was fraying. Everything about this meeting was going even worse than she’d feared, and she could barely recognize herself this far out of her element. Where had the assertive and capable woman she knew herself to be at work and home gone to? She felt abandoned. And stranded.

She studied the man opposite her, trying to make sense of him. His irises were as near-black as the coffee he was sipping. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five, though his eyes seemed older. They were dark, utterly—dark lashes and brows and faintly darker skin and fine lines edging them—making him look as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. Fallon had a disturbing desire for them to snap back to hers. It was a troubling urge, a temptation, that fourth glass of wine at a lousy office party that always seems like a good idea at the time.

She thought of the woman who’d just left, all youth and grace and poise. She glanced down at her worn-out gray corduroys and yellow canvas sneakers, feeling like the antithesis of a French artist’s model. But then again, this was Cape Breton, not Paris. Besides, her clothing was most certainly not this man’s concern.

She cleared her throat. “Can we talk about the process? He’s very eager to know when the piece will be done.”

Max turned to stare pointedly at her, as if trying to guess what Fallon looked like beneath her clothes. And seeming as though he
could
. “Three months,” he concluded. “Barring geological tragedy.”

“All right.”

“Two weeks for studies and ten for the marble.” He ran a hand over his stubbly chin. “I trust your beloved can live without you for that long?”

Fallon started. “How much of that time do I actually need to be here for?”

“Every moment.”

“Whoa—
what
? Why?”

“Because that is how I work.”

“Three
months
?
”
she asked, awestruck. “How many days a week?”

“Every day.”

“All day?”

He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps six hours a day. Ten o’clock to four. Peak sun. But I’m flexible.”

“It doesn’t sound like you are.” Fallon’s temper flared, just as it always did when she was faced with pushy, self-important men.

“If you’re unhappy with my terms I suggest you find a different sculptor, miss.”

“No,” she said, diminished. “It has to be you. He insisted.”

Max made a face that unequivocally asked,
And you’re arguing with me why?

“But I need to be here all that time?”

Max sighed. “Do you have a work conflict?”

“I might.”

“Then allow me to be indiscreet,” he said. “Your fiancé has offered me seven hundred thousand for this commission.”

Fallon gritted her teeth to keep her jaw from dropping.

“American dollars. If he can toss that much away on a statue, I trust he can keep you afloat during an unpaid leave from your job, no?”

“You don’t understand—”

“I am sure I don’t,” he interrupted. “But I’m an artist, Miss Frost, not a doctor. I have no moral obligation to perform for you. If this is actually important, you will agree to my terms. They’re non-negotiable. Not because I
cannot
change them, but because I
won’t.
Do you see?”

“Why do I need to be here so much, though? It seems excessive.”

“It is all very dull and nonsensical, I’m afraid.” Max sounded as if he himself were bored by it. “I need your…
energy,
here with me. That is the best way I can explain it. You do not have to hold a pose every moment you’re here, but you do need to
be
here.”

“I was hoping you could take photos.” Fallon’s face warmed at the mere idea. “And work from those?”

He smiled, a glorified twitch of his lips. “I think you’ll agree you have three dimensions.”

“Well, could you…”

“Could I what?”

“Could you use another woman’s body? I’d pay you for the model’s time. I wanted to ask about that, anyway.”

Max’s eyes lit up. “What is wrong with yours?” He looked extremely eager to hear the answer.

“Nothing. I just…I’d prefer not to be naked in front of you.”

Another twitchy grin. “I very much doubt your fiancé is paying me a small fortune to play Frankenstein. Surely he wants
your
body, yes?”

Fallon bit her lip. “That he does.”

“Then you’ve got your answer.”

The cat jumped into Max’s lap.

Fallon saw the coffee in her mug quivering from her shaky grip and set it on the floor. Her host stroked the cat languidly—a
Bond
villain, complete with accent. She felt a powerful urge to run. In one corner a pair of eight-foot-tall hunks of white marble stood sentinel on wheeled dollies, looking as if they might stop her if she tried to make a break for it.

She wondered distractedly if Max lived here or if the bed and the kitchen trappings were just conveniences. Or if that bed was designed for dalliances with young models. She glanced at his hands. A couple of thick silver rings but none on that symbolic finger. He caught her scrutiny and returned it, staring pointedly at her own bare, third finger. He set the cat and then his empty mug on the ground and caught her again with those magnetic eyes.