The Reluctant Nude (4 page)

Odd. Definitely odd.

“Excuse me?”

Morning sunlight glanced off the little table by the coffee shop’s front window. Fallon looked up from her crossword to find the young, graceful model she’d encountered the previous day in Max Emery’s studio standing before her. She wore a half-apron emblazoned with the café’s logo.

“Oh, hello.” Fallon wasn’t sure if she was being approached for coffee-related reasons or social ones. “You’re Max’s…”

“I’m one of his models, I guess,” the woman—girl, really—said with an awkward smile. “I’m Erin.” She extended a slender hand.

“Fallon.”

They shook politely.

“Um.” Erin’s blue eyes darted across the tabletop, from the near-empty cup to the Saturday crossword to Fallon’s phone. “Do you need another drink or anything?”

“No thanks. Not yet.”

“Okay. I could sure use one. And it’s only my first day,” Erin added with a tired laugh. Coffee splatters peppered her white T-shirt and she looked exhausted.

Fallon glanced around the little shop. It was the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch and she was the only patron save an elderly woman adding sugar to a takeaway cup at the counter. Another barista was stationed by the register.

“Would you like to sit down?” Fallon ventured. “I wouldn’t mind grilling you about the town, if you’re not busy…?”

“I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“You’re not. I’m totally stumped on this.” Fallon tapped the puzzle with her eraser and slid it to one side.

“Let me see if I can take a break.” Erin went the counter and came back shortly with a coffee and sat down opposite Fallon.

“I like your name,” Erin said, timid.

“Oh, thanks…” Fallon stalled out, hopeless with chitchat.

Erin came to her rescue. “So, what do you do? Like, for a job?”

“I’m an ecologist. And an environmental advocate, lately.”

“Oh, cool. I love dolphins. Do you work with them at all?”

Fallon smiled, registering how young this woman must be. “No, not directly. I used to spend a lot of time wading around in bays, collecting eelgrass. Fieldwork. That’s about as close as I get to dolphins. But lately I’m mostly stuck inside courtrooms, arguing about conservation reform.”

“Are you a lawyer?” Erin asked, sounding impressed.

“No, just a loudmouth.” Fallon leaned back in her chair. “So, how long have you been here? On Cape Breton?”

“Only a couple weeks.”

“Did you move here?” Fallon asked.

“Well, I hadn’t planned on it. But I’m thinking about it now. I’d like to stay. That’s why I got a job. All my stuff’s back in Ohio, though.”

“It’s really beautiful here,” Fallon offered lamely. “What do you do in Ohio?”

“Well, I’m starting college next month, in New York City, actually. Or I’m supposed to.”

“Wow, exciting! So, you’re only like eighteen, then?” Fallon asked carefully.

“I will be, in a couple weeks.”

Fallon’s stomach gurgled. Seventeen? And Max was how old? Please, God, don’t let him be a creepy old letch. One was enough. “So how did you meet…”

“Mr. Emery?
Max
,” Erin amended, sounding like she’d never called him this to his face but
longed
to.

“Yeah.”

“It’s a weird story.”

“Too weird for a coffee break?”

Erin bit her lip. “Maybe. I’ll try and give you the SparkNotes version. Um, when I was younger, like ten, I had to have this really strange…procedure. It was featured in all sorts of surgery magazines and stuff. Mr. Emery wrote to me a few months ago. He reads medical journals, I guess. He’s sort of weird, you know? He wrote to me and invited me to come and sit for him, you know, for money. I have this really huge scar, on my hip. He thinks it’s beautiful, I guess.” She fidgeted with her cup.

“Wow. That’s pretty brave of you. I wouldn’t have been caught dead with my clothes off in front of
anybody
when I was your age.” Let alone Max Emery.

“When I was younger I had to all the time, for doctors. It’s not that big a deal. Well, I mean…” She blushed deeply, her pale skin burning deep pink. “It’s a
little
weird. With him.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”
Dear God, here it comes—he’s a pervert.

“You know…he’s
so
not a doctor.”

Fallon took a sip of her cold cappuccino, dread wrenching her insides. “How do you mean?”

“You
know.
Don’t you think he’s…
hot
?
”

Fallon nearly sprayed her drink across the table. “Oh, well.”

“I do.” Erin’s eyes were aglow in that way only women who’ve just fallen in love can manage. “And he’s got a hot accent.”

“I suppose.”

“There’s just something about him…”

“It’s called charisma,” Fallon said dryly.

“I know he’s, like, a lot older than me, obviously,” Erin went on, animated, clearly on her favorite topic of conversation. “And he wouldn’t go there.”

Fallon bit her lip. “You don’t think?”

“No, I don’t think he’s like that. Actually,” Erin said, smile fading. “Posing for him… I’ve been over there like a dozen times now, right?”

“Okay.”

“And you know what it’s like?”

“No, what’s it like?” Fallon asked.

“It’s like I’m there, but I’m there with another girl who’s like ten times prettier than me, like I’m invisible.”

“I don’t quite follow.”

Erin spun her cup noisily on her saucer. “It’s the scar, I guess. That’s what he’s into. Not like,
into,
you know—not like
sexual.
But he totally couldn’t care less about me. And I’m like,
naked,
you know? I guess he’s probably seen tons of naked girls.”

“Yeah,” Fallon said, cautious. “And you wouldn’t want to be with someone who’s almost twice your age, anyway. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be with a guy who’s as old as Max—Mr. Emery—is, who’d even be interested in someone as young as you, right?”

Erin shrugged in a distinctly teenaged, apathetic way, and Fallon wondered how she’d ever found this girl intimidating.

“Well, trust me, you wouldn’t,” Fallon concluded for her.

“It doesn’t matter, either way. He called and told me last night that whatever he’s working on now, it’ll take months. He said to go by there so he can give me the money for my plane ride back home.” She gave Fallon a split-second glance and then shrugged, irritated. “I may as well go to New York.”

“Yeah, college is a big deal. Where are you going?”

She sighed. “Juilliard.”

Fallon felt her jaw drop. “Well,
yeah,
that’s a pretty damn big deal. For dance or music or…?”

“Ballet.”

“You got accepted at
Juilliard
for ballet and you’re thinking about not going?”

Erin shrugged again.

“Listen, kiddo,” Fallon said, unintentionally turning into her aunt. “If I catch you still in this town when September rolls around, I’ll knock you unconscious and ship you back there myself. Okay?”

Erin grinned, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

“No seriously, I will. And I throw a mean punch.”

“I get it.” Erin craned her long neck to check the clock above the door. “I better get back to work. You want another capp?”

“No, thanks. I should head out soon, get my day started. Good luck with school. And don’t forget my threat.”

Erin picked up her cup, lingering a few beats. “Are you posing for him?” she asked, not meeting Fallon’s eyes.

“Yeah,” she said, thinking of how ridiculous that must sound to this waif. “But someone’s paying him to make a statue of me. Mr. Emery didn’t ask me to pose, specifically.”

“Oh, okay.” Erin looked relieved, almost haughty. “I was going to ask if you had a scar too. But I guess not.”

“No.” Fallon cleared her throat. “No scars.”

Chapter Three

The encounter with Erin spurred Fallon to head to Max’s earlier than she normally would have—she’d lost her appetite for crosswords and café-lingering. The sun was bright and the air wet and cool, and after a stop at the bakery, Fallon set off along the long dirt road toward the ocean. Max lived about twenty minutes’ stroll from the so-called town center of Pettiplaise, and Fallon’s time would be well spent trying to get her head cleared.

Just as the studio’s many windows glinted in the distance, Fallon ran into Max himself. Or rather, vice versa.

“Is that my baguette?” His distinctive baritone came from behind her shoulder, accompanied by the rhythmic crunch of gravel.

Fallon turned to find him doing something that surprised her greatly—jogging. He had on a T-shirt and track pants and very European-looking sneakers.

“Good morning.” She squinted at him through the midmorning sun. “I never would have guessed you were a runner.”

He dropped to her pace and smiled through his heavy breathing. “My job is harder on the lungs than smoking. I like to make sure they still work.”

A vee of sweat streaked the front of his shirt and Fallon tried very hard not to enjoy the smell of him—that smell of active man. From a biological standpoint she couldn’t help whose scent she found compelling. Yes, that was true enough…this was definitely
not
her fault.

“I didn’t think artists were so inclined. You know, die young and all that.”

Max flashed one of his patented grins, clearly intrigued by her decision to be friendly to him this morning. “Well, I intend to live long enough to die in some more spectacular way than particle inhalation.”

She nodded and they walked the last couple minutes to the cottage in silence.

Fallon set her bag on the counter and handed Max the bread he’d requested when they’d parted the previous afternoon. “I ran into Erin this morning.”

“Thank you. Erin my model? Oh, yes?” Max looked enlivened.

“Yeah, she was working at the café.”

“She has the most extraordinary scar.” It was the tone of a man missing an old lover.

“You said that yesterday. What’s so amazing about it?” Fallon pulled a carton of half-and-half from her bag, and Max put it in the fridge for her.

“I’ll have to show you the article from the AMA journal. Just fascinating.” He went to root around in a paint-splattered filing cabinet. “She was a conjoined twin, you know.”

“Whoa—really?” Fallon blinked a few times.

“Indeed. A Siamese twin, as we used to say.” He withdrew an old magazine and flipped to a sticky-note-tagged page, held it out to her. “They operated and separated her and her sister, but her sister only lived a week before her kidney failed.”

“Oh, God, that’s horrible!” She pushed his hand away. “I don’t want to read about that.”

“Just fascinating.”

“And you’re sculpting that?” Fallon asked, disgusted. “Don’t you think that’s
massively
insensitive? I mean, she’s been through enough, hasn’t she?”

Max raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised. “How is that insensitive?”

“She’s probably been traumatized. You think she really needs some…
artist
fixating on the worst memory of her whole life? She’s only seventeen.”

“No one forced her,” he said evenly. “And I’m not treating her like a medical anomaly.”

“I think you are.” Fallon stared at the journal, irritation snowballing into anger.

“I don’t do grotesques. I study what I feel is beautiful.”

“How is that beautiful? I bet she’d get rid of that scar in a heartbeat if she could.”

“Loss is beautiful,” Max said solemnly, breaking eye contact. “What she’s got is an extraordinary proof of loss.”

“That just seems really callous.
Sick.
Dwelling on someone else’s pain for your own pleasure. Or fascination, or whatever.”

His eyes snapped back to hers again. “I don’t exploit people, if that is what you’re implying. Unlike some men. I would remind you that
you’re
here under duress, arguably exploiting your own body in exchange for a payoff.”

“Are you calling me a
prostitute
?
”
Fallon was almost tempted to laugh. And even more tempted to hit him.

He smiled. “I have studied plenty of prostitutes, Miss Frost. Be assured you lack any measure of their charm.”

Her mouth dropped open.
“Pardon
me?”

Max turned away, busying himself unlacing his shoes. Fallon spun on her heel and marched to the screen door, hurling it shut behind her with a disappointingly quiet slam.

Fallon made it nearly all the way back to town before she calmed enough to remember her priorities, swallow her pride, and return to the studio. She rang the bell, face hot with humiliation.

Max’s distant shout came through the window. “Yes, come in.”

Fallon entered and closed the door with intentional gentleness. As she turned her midsection jolted—in her absence Max had drawn a bath in the tub that sat beneath the far windows. Propped on the rim, his muscular shoulders and arms gleamed wet in the sun. His hair dripped, slicked back from his face.

“Um,” Fallon began then stopped. She became very interested in the ventilation system.

“It is nine fifty-six,” Max announced, voice lazy. “So your sitting has not even begun yet. I think we should pretend that little outburst never happened, don’t you?”

Fallon had no clue if he was being snide or gracious. “Fine.”

“Very good.”

There was a sloshing noise as he stood, and Fallon spun around just in time to preserve his privacy and hide her own furious blush. The rear of the cottage faced east so his body was largely silhouetted, but it was bright enough for Fallon to have taken in far more details of Max Emery’s lean, chiseled chest and abdomen than she cared to. There followed rustling and the rush of draining water.

Max spoke a short time later, sounding amused. “You’re safe now, my little Puritan.”

Fallon turned to find him dressed in jeans and an undershirt once more, tugging on socks. He grinned at her, and she could still see droplets of water along his neck and arms and face.

“I apologize for making you slam my door.”

“Well…I’m sorry I slammed it,” she replied, feeling idiotic.

“No matter. Are you ready to start the sitting? You want coffee first?”

“No, I’m ready.” She’d reached the depths of her own humility back on the dirt road.

Max dragged the worktable over to the brightest part of the studio, and Fallon removed her jacket and shoes. As he hefted a bag of clay from a shelf, she stripped her shirt off. She unzipped her pants and let them drop, folding them neatly as Max strapped on his tool belt. He turned to find her in her underwear, shaking faintly but determined to see this through.

His eyebrows rose. “Well.”

She reached behind to unhook her bra. She set it atop the other items, pretending she was at the doctor’s office. Sliding her panties down her legs, she crouched as demurely as she could manage and added them to the pile. The air of the studio felt cool and dry on her skin.

“Where do you want me?” she asked with affected calm.

Max mimicked her casual tone. “Wherever you like. Get comfortable. I’ll do another bust.”

She nodded. “Um…”

He looked up from where he’d begun kneading clay on the tabletop. “Yes?”

“I’m not comfortable at all. Is that okay?”

Max smiled, eyes crinkling. “Oh, yes, be as uncomfortable as you like. How silly of me. Why don’t you just come and stand for me, like you are now.” He beckoned her with a come-hither finger.

She nodded again and approached, stopping a few paces from the table and clasping her hands in front of her navel, as if waiting at a teacher’s behest.

“Turn around,” Max said with a twirling gesture.

Fallon shuffled in place and focused her attention out over the green hills to the sea. She wondered if she was doomed to still be naked when the postman eventually dropped off the mail at this remarkably window-laden residence.

Max addressed her back. “I am glad you’ve decided to cooperate.”

“It’s worth it,” she said evenly. “It’s worth the discomfort. If that poor girl is brave enough to do it with everything she’s been through, I’ve got no excuse.”

“Well, that’s certainly an improvement.”

Fallon glanced at him over her shoulder. “Did you know she’s like half in love with you?”

“I did not know such a thing,” he said, sounding disinterested.

“Well, she is. And she’s thinking about not going to college so she can stay here.”

“That is a very stupid thing to do.”

Fallon spun back around, putting her fists to her hips but feeling silly doing so with her clothes off. “You have to say something to her, when she comes by here, next. You have to
tell
her to go. Don’t just offer her a ticket home. You need to scare her off.”

“How is that my job?” Max scraped dried clay off the table with a wooden blade.

Fallon’s blood came to a rolling boil. “It’s
not
your job. But it’s what a decent person would do, if they knew they could keep someone from making a big mistake.”

He met her stare. “Is it also my job to tell
you
not to be here, to not compromise whatever it is you clearly are? Why does the onus fall on me to tell people the mistakes they’re making?”

“It’s different with her. You asked her to come here, and she’s enamored of you, though
God
knows why,” Fallon added acidly. “She’s seventeen. She needs
you
to scare her off. You’re the only person who’s got the influence to change her mind.”

Max sighed and thrust his hand out impatiently. “Fine. Give me your phone.”

Fallon was taken aback by his sudden surrender. She suspected he was more annoyed by her argument than morally swayed but she grabbed her cell from her bag and handed it over. Max rifled on a shelf for a scrap of paper and went outside. Fallon crossed her arms carefully over her breasts and stared out the back windows for a couple of minutes, feeling ridiculous.

Max came back in with a furrowed brow and handed Fallon her now-dusty phone.

“What did she say?”

“She is not happy. She called you a very nasty name.”

Fallon’s jaw dropped. “Me?”

“Oh, yes. Seventeen-year-old girls are a mystery to me, but I suspect you are the other woman, as they say.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, you try and do the right thing…”

“There is no reasoning with teenagers,” Max said, smug. “You see why I mind my own business?”

“Well, is she going, then?”

“Yes, I believe so. She said she would come by later for the last of the money I owe her.”

“Good. That’s what matters.”

“Let’s do some work now, yes?”

“Yes,
let’s
,” she shot back. She put the phone away and took her place before him.

“Turn around again, please. Thank you.” Max’s voice took on the far-off quality of a distracted man. Fallon felt his eyes on her skin, her back, her butt. She listened to the rhythmic sound of the clay being turned, of tools being selected and put away. The sun warmed her front, her breasts and belly and legs, the languid eddies of stone particles in the streaming light calming her. She surrendered her awareness to their dance. Quite without meaning to, Fallon relaxed.

“You have extraordinary proportions,” Max announced a few minutes later.

Fallon fell back down to earth with a psychic thump
.
She glanced at her hips and thighs, whose voluptuousness had no business associating with her far tinier top half. “Yeah, I know. My body’s a mess.”

She heard the slap of clay landing unceremoniously on wood then Max’s footsteps approaching. When he rounded and stopped directly in front of her, inches separating their faces, a look of unmistakable anger burned in his eyes.

“What’s wrong with your body?” he demanded.

She faltered, intimidated by his proximity and tone. “It’s all… It doesn’t match.” She clasped her hands tighter and avoided his stare, mortified.

“Match?”

“My butt and my legs belong to some other body.”

“They clearly belong right where they are.” Max took a step back to fold his arms and scrutinize her further. He didn’t look pervy as she’d feared, or even critical. He looked
impressed
.

“Your body is quite extraordinary,” he repeated, as if closing a debate he’d grown tired of. “I will be very happy to render it. Even without any scars,” he added, his smirk designed to show he’d understood Fallon’s earlier contempt perfectly.

“Well. Good.” She prayed he’d stop staring at her.

Max’s eyes caught hers then, making her feel more exposed than they had perusing her naked body. He smiled and they crinkled faintly at the edges, half-kind, half-mischievous. From this close, Fallon thought she could smell his scent even after the bath, and the image of his raw, tight body flashed across her mind. He left her to return to his study.

Max wedged the stoneware for far longer than was necessary. Before him, bathed in the steadily strengthening daylight, he could sense Fallon tensing and relaxing in uneven intervals. Her backlit outline glowed like citrine.

Before she’d said that—that slight against her own body—he’d been grudging about this arrangement. Before that statement he’d been willing to take this commission if only for the challenge of working with this uncooperative woman. The money was amazing. The fun of unnerving someone as cold as the aptly named Miss Frost was a bonus. But now… He narrowed his eyes at her, still turning the clay.

“Did you know,” he said to her back, breaking a long silence. “I have studied dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, all examples of the utterly imperfect. The damaged.”

“Oh?” She didn’t turn and her voice sounded tight.

“Yes. Erin, and many others. Amputees, burn victims. People bearing every physical anomaly I have been able to track down. Bodies that have suffered tremendous amounts of loss. And pain, and humiliation, and self-hatred. Some wear it proudly, others, not as much.”