The Reluctant Nude (7 page)

“Nearly.”

She moved on, palms surveying his chest and shoulders again, up to the powerful arms bracketing his face. Those arms… She wanted to see them like in her dreams, tensed and fearsome and struggling against restraints.

From this close, all Max had to do was close the few inches that separated their faces. Fallon gasped as his lips took hers. Heat flooded her chest, but her body’s curiosity was no match for her shock and she pulled away.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she warned, voice low. She hoped her tone would read as anger, not arousal. She swallowed.

Max stared at her for a few breaths, then released the bars of the stairway. It took a concerted effort for Fallon to wrestle her attention from the flexing contours of his bare torso, and elsewhere. She glued her eyes to his.

“You’re walking a very fine line.” She ran her hand over her lips. “And cooperation-wise, don’t think for a moment you just did yourself any favors.”

“How many lovers have you had?” Max asked, apropos of nothing. So typically
Max
.

Fallon kept herself cool, casual, unscandalized. “None of your business.”

He smiled. “You’re not a virgin?”

“Of course not.”

“But you seem unimpressed by the whole idea, yes?”

She shrugged even as her cheeks heated. Having these questions posed was unnerving enough but having them posed by this man, practically naked, still noticeably aroused, his body—his mere
proximity
—so adept at flustering her…

She composed herself. “It’s a bit overrated. I’ve got better things to pour my energy into.”

“Why is it you so dislike being touched?” Max asked, eyes narrowing with curiosity.

“You lack a certain amount of tact, did you know that?”

“I hope no one has mistreated you,” he said.

“No. It’s just…it’s like being pawed at. It’s a mess. Sex is just a big, overrated mess.”

“How Victorian you are. Do you know what I think, Fallon?” Goddamn, why did it always feel so raw, hearing her name in this man’s scratchy baritone?

“I’m happy to say I’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re thinking.”

“I think you have had poor men,” he said.

“And I think you’re getting too personal.”

He dropped his dark gaze. “Very well…”

Fallon hissed out a breath, exasperated. “No. Go on. You’re obviously dying to share your opinions on the topic of my sex life.”

“I’m sure I know nothing of it.”

“Of course you don’t,” she snapped, staring him down. Why didn’t he put his frigging clothes back on already?

He raised his eyes again to meet her angry ones, face placid. “But I wonder if maybe you oughtn’t be on top?”

“
Oh?
” Her hands clenched into fists at her hips.

“You seem worried. Uncomfortable about these men’s hands on you. I think maybe you need your man, your lover, flat on his back. Hands tied. At your mercy.”

Get out of my head.
“Do I?”

“It’s only a guess.” He crossed his strong arms over his chest, businesslike. “How do you please yourself?”

“
Excuse me?
”

“When you touch yourself—”

“That’s too far.”

He paused, running the very tip of his tongue over the corner of his lips. Then, “Your fingers?”

“Don’t.”

“A toy?” he pressed on, brazen. “The bedding?”

“If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll shut it for you,” she said coldly—as cold as her cheeks were blazing hot.

He smiled tightly. “Of course.”

“Good.”

“Just promise me that you do.”

She made her eyes into slits, a warning.

Max pursed his lips a moment. “Have you had a man’s tongue?”

Fallon fought a short battle between pride and shock. “Of course I have.”

“And it couldn’t make up for all those clumsy, pawing hands?”

She shrugged, trying to appear blasé. “I wasn’t all that impressed.”

“That is a real shame.”

“Don’t look so smug. I bet you think you can fix me, don’t you? What, one night in your bed and I’ll transform into some enlightened nymphomaniac?”

“I am not so presumptuous.”

“Your smile says different. And you’re the most presumptuous man I think I’ve ever met.”

“Who is this statue for?” Max asked, surprising her. He hadn’t asked that in over a week. “Who is Donald Forrester to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I doubt that. He’s someone who wants you very much. An old lover? A prospective one? I wonder why it is he cannot simply settle for the real thing.”

“Because he can’t have the real thing,” she said through quaking lips. “Ever.”

He finally stepped into his jeans and hiked them up his legs. “Ah.”

“
Ah?
”

“You don’t love him?” he asked.

“No. And you already knew that.”

“Do you love someone else? Someone who is gone, or who you cannot have? Another woman’s man, perhaps? Or another woman?”

“I don’t love anyone,” she said. “Not like that.”

He buckled his belt. “Have you? Did you?”

She hesitated, feeling the warmth in her cheeks again. “No. Never.”

He nodded, somber. “But this man, he loves you?”

“No. I don’t know. Not love… It’s very complicated.”

Max nodded, slowly, and turned away.

She studied his tattoos.
Infraspinatus fossa. Scapula.
She addressed his back. “Don’t act like you pity me.”

“You read so much into the spaces between words.”

“My sex life is none of your business, anyway.”

He turned to face her again, catching her eyes in that inescapable pull. “Right now, and for the next ten weeks, your body and its history are the center of my universe.
Everything
.” He gestured, fingertips to his chest then waving out to encompass the studio. “It is all in your orbit. And you—your body—you’re as cold as the stone I’m using to render it.”

Fallon bit back a hundred retorts as a flash of heat and anger coursed through her pulse points. She took a deep breath, and slapped him.

Only a slight flare of his nostrils and a coloring where her palm struck evidenced Max’s surprise. He didn’t speak for several breaths.

He licked his lips and cracked a tiny smile. “Better.”

Max let Fallon luxuriate in her anger for some time. He let himself luxuriate in what had happened. She’d surprised him—he hadn’t expected her to agree to touch him. He certainly hadn’t expected to catch her enjoying it.
Reveling
in it.

For the past two weeks, he’d been easy on her. She was good company, he’d discovered. Clever, and a pleasurable if contrary conversationalist, the sort of person he’d been missing for a long time now. He’d dismissed his inclination to unnerve her at every opportunity. Whatever reward brought and kept her here, it was strong, and she wouldn’t be scared off by him. She’d be a challenge, but she wouldn’t waste his time, he didn’t think. Not on purpose, at least. He’d get there with her. Professional and symbiotic, he’d concluded. Acceptable.

But then dear God, those hands on his bare skin. Max hadn’t seen that coming. He wasn’t a prurient man. He wouldn’t have pushed her to that if he’d known how…
affirmatively
his body would respond. But then those hands—smooth and cool, like glass lost at sea for unnumbered years, the opposite of his calloused, scar-rasped ones. He clenched and unclenched his fists in wonder, remembering how impossibly soft her fingertips had been.

She’d set him on fire with that cool touch. The contact had made him give in to fantasies he’d been diplomatically suppressing for two weeks. His wrists, actually bound. Her hands, touching, teasing. Peeling his briefs down, taking him in her hands and stroking until his cock ached for relief. Her eyes on him, equally greedy. He’d caught those eyes on him before, curious and carnal, but always cold. But this time…this time she’d looked so hungry he’d just about felt her lips wrapped around him.

Across the studio, Fallon stared out a skinny louvered window, one of many Max had scavenged and installed in his unending quest for better light. She toyed with the mechanism, the wooden slats casting shadows in wide stripes, then narrow ones, then wide again, across her head and shoulders. She looked calmer but she still buzzed with that electricity he’d felt in her fingertips. He walked over as casually as he could affect.

She turned to look up at him for a moment. She flipped the slats closed with a snap and wandered to the front of the house.

“Aren’t you going to apologize for hitting me?” he asked provocatively, following her.

“Aren’t you going to apologize for
enjoying
that experiment just a little too much?” She turned enough to showcase her condemning expression and stopped before the bay window beside the front door, keeping her back to him.

“Don’t act like your halo is so polished,” he murmured, letting her hear how close he stood behind her. “That touch was not so scientific.”

“Think whatever you want to. But don’t ever kiss me again.”

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“I’m not convinced you’re a man of your word. Now that I’ve seen what passes for ‘connection’ in your book.”

Max put his fingertips on her shoulder. She spun around slowly, more in search of a face-off than to be agreeable, he suspected. She glanced at his hand as if it were a spider.

“You aren’t shaking.” He pressed his palm flat against her.

She watched, unreadable.

He contemplated his next move. He rubbed his thumb along her clavicle. She was steady. He watched her swallow then traced a curled finger down her jugular. Her chin started to tremble.

Max gave her plump earlobe the briefest tweak and took his hands back, tucking them into his pockets. “What did you feel when you touched me?” he asked, stripping any challenge out of his voice and steeping it in pure curiosity.

Fallon looked down, at either his crotch or his safely pocketed hands. “You’re very warm,” she offered with a shrug. Her cheeks and lips flared pink.

“When I touch you.” Max reached out his hands again, inching them forward until he touched her elbows. “You are like fireworks.” He slid his palms up, slipping them inside her T-shirt sleeves and cupping her smooth shoulders. That skin. As petal-soft as a cliché. “You are like those little sticks, dipped in magnesium. That children use?”

“Sparklers,” she said, breath short.

“Yes. Your hands felt like sparklers, running up and down my body.”

“That sounds very painful.” She faked flippancy rather poorly, in Max’s opinion.

“Well, perhaps to you. I thought it felt very nice.” He kneaded the balls of her shoulders tenderly, daring her to start shaking again. When she didn’t, he let her go, satisfied that this was progress. Dissatisfied that such a caress wasn’t allowed to culminate in another kiss.

“It’s probably nearly four now.” He knew perfectly well it was two-thirty. “Why don’t we call it a day?”

“Fine by me.” She skirted past him to gather her jacket and bag.

“You did very well today, you know.”

“Yes, at least one of us can keep things professional,” she said evenly.

He was charmed by her nerve. “How delightful for me that obedience is a requisite of your position. I admire your work ethic.”

She narrowed her eyes a final time and let him open the door for her.

“Thank you for lunch.”

“Thank
you
for dessert,” he said, so happy to be flirting with a woman for the first time in a very long while.

She shook her head, pantomime frustration. “Whatever.”

“See you soon,” he called to her back as she descended the steps. The door eased closed, and he pressed his face into the screen, grinning. He felt the cat rub against his leg and reached down to gather it into his arms. With a wicked thought he pushed the door back open and stood on the top step.

“Hey, Fallon!”

She turned from ten yards down the drive and stared at him.

“So we’ve finally found something you and the cat don’t have in common!” He rubbed its head demonstrably. “What do I have to do to make you purr, eh?”

She gave him the finger and resumed her walking.

“Ooh, she’s feral!”

“And you ought to be fixed!” Fallon shouted over her shoulder.

He watched her walk away, shaking her head. He set the cat down and exchanged a blank look with it. “You’re fixed, aren’t you?” He glanced back up the drive as Fallon disappeared behind the pines, the mere sight of her making his body itch with unprofessional curiosity. “You lucky bastard.”

Chapter Five

“One for dinner.”

Fallon followed the bistro’s hostess and sat in a small corner booth. She scanned the menu with gusto. Hungry, yes, but she also craved anything that might take her mind off the tension that afternoon’s sitting had set loose in her body. When a middle-aged waitress appeared she ordered a beer and a bowl of chowder. The menu was taken away and Fallon studied the tabletop.

She was shocked to find Max staring up at her.

In lieu of a tablecloth, various Cape Breton postcards and brochures and local newspaper clippings were arranged beneath a thick layer of Lucite.

The front-page cutting in question had the
Pettiplaise Gazette
’s masthead at the top. The yellowed article was dated over four years ago and its headline read “Controversial Artist Calls Pettiplaise
Foyer Doux Foyer
”.

The main photo was editorial, and Fallon guessed it must have been taken back when Max lived in New York City, perhaps for a magazine pictorial. In it he was seated in a straight-backed chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, dressed the same sort of way he did now, same hair, same tired eyes, but a slightly younger-looking face. A cigarette was pinched between two fingers, its plume unfurling. His bare arms were on show, just as powerful as they were today. Out of focus behind him loomed white statues and other trappings of a studio. His eyes looked as haunting and raw on aged newsprint as they did in real life, and he stared the camera down, seeming intelligent and dangerous.

World-renowned classical sculptor M.L. Emery gains Canadian citizenship, retains Pettiplaise address,
the caption read.

The waitress approached with a sweating bottle of Keith’s and a glass, and Fallon stopped her before she could pop the cap. The craving hit her hard and fast.

“Sorry—could I change that to a glass of the house red?”

Beneath the main photo were two smaller ones. Each made Fallon’s breath go shallow. The left-hand one was grainy, depicting a boy, unmistakably Max. Skinny and wiry but already with those dark-rimmed eyes that belonged to a man ten years older. He was outside in a tumbledown graveyard, standing beside a statue of an angel as tall as he was.
Emery at age twelve, posing beside the monument that made him famous overnight.
Beside this was another shot, Max seated in profile, a few years older, smoking hands-free, at work with a chisel and hammer. Shirtless. Still lean and wiry, but more muscular, older.
Emery, seventeen, in his first London studio.
Fallon turned to the article.

Maxence Luc Émery (pictured above), better known to the art world as M.L. Emery, was born the only child of René-Luc Émery and Céleste Bedeaux Émery in the coastal village of Manent, in France’s Brittany region. By the time he moved to Pettiplaise a quarter-century later, Emery’s life and hometown would undergo radical changes. Some say miracles.

The circumstances surrounding Emery’s first known sculpture (photo lower left) are mired in rumour and hearsay. All that is known for sure is that he carved the piece in his mother’s likeness. It still stands in the Catholic cemetery in Manent today, despite several thefts and subsequent recoveries. The full-sized marble statue would have been an achievement for any stone craftsman, let alone a child. It was treated briefly as a hoax until Emery was documented creating a second, equally exquisite piece and declared a prodigy.

Once news of the child’s achievement reached Paris and beyond, thirteen-year-old Emery was moved to London to study his craft at the Slade School of Fine Art, among students many years his senior. He never fulfilled the requirements needed to attain a degree. Following a dismissal for “academic noncompliance”, Emery went on to establish a small studio…

Here the article jumped to an interior page, one not included on the tabletop. Fallon read the opening again, then again, nearly five times through before her supper arrived. She didn’t taste her wine or her soup as she ate. All she could take in was the image of Max from over twenty years ago, staring out from that photo. The thin, sour-faced child, the arms and eyes and scowl of his adult self already evident.

When the waitress appeared to collect the empty bowl and glass, she caught Fallon’s fixation.

“People are always staring at that one.” She tapped the plastic above the clipping with an acrylic nail, her hand heavy with costume jewelry. “Our celebrity neighbor.”

“Oh?” Fallon asked, deciding to play dumb.

“Yeah, he lives up the hill in a crazy house with all kinds of funky windows and no rooms. Turned it into Swiss cheese when he moved in. You can’t see it from the road, which is probably best for property values.”

“What do the locals think of him?”

“He’s all right,” the woman said with a shrug. “Quiet, but friendly enough. He doesn’t come here but he goes to the pub every week. Bachelor. Bit odd, but a hell of a looker. Brings in a few well-heeled tourists, so no complaints.” She smiled. “Anything else you want?”

“No, just the bill, thanks.”

When the waitress returned with the check she gave Fallon a conspiratorial glance. “It’s Friday. If you’re looking to take in the local
art scene
, you should swing by The Shack around ten, for the music.” She nodded off in the general direction of the rundown bar Fallon passed each morning and afternoon, walking to and from Max’s. “Every Friday. You might find the crowd intriguing.” She winked, snapping her gum.

“Maybe,” Fallon murmured, and the waitress left her alone. She set her bills and coins on top of the receipt and slid the pile over to hide Max’s time-capsule face.

Max slid a bill across the wood to the barman for his wine and swiveled his stool to face the band, leaning back on the bar. As he crossed his legs and settled into the evening, a finger tapped his shoulder. Fallon plopped down next to him.

“Well, hello.” He returned her smile, surprised. Not so surprised to find her at the town’s only bar on a Friday night, but surprised to find her looking so pleased. Particularly given their parting that afternoon.

She leaned close to his ear to compete with the furious fiddling coming from the corner. “Hey. I thought I might run into you.”

She’d put makeup on, a little shadow and mascara, something to make her lips shiny. She smelled faintly of lilies and her wild hair was down. She ordered a beer and joined Max in watching the set.

They didn’t speak but he surveyed her with blatant glances from time to time. It seemed to amuse her.

Between songs she said, “Your eyebrow’s going to fall off if you keep all that surreptitiousness up. Is there food on my face or something?”

“No. Just looking at you… You look much shinier at night.”

“I see.”

He reached over to touch the space between her collarbones and her eyes grew wide. He flipped her backward pendant over.

“Thanks.” She wrapped her fingers defensively around the chain as he took his hand away.

Another song began and Max reveled in the little waves of energy tossing Fallon about beside him. He gave her a pointed glance, a warning, then reached around and grazed the nape of her neck with his fingertips. This time she turned, clamping her palm over the spot.

“Your tag was out,” he lied.

“What a mess I am tonight,” she said, skeptical but unmistakably permissive.

She faced forward again and Max snaked his hand behind her to lay a palm at the small of her back. She straightened up as though shocked.

“What are you doing?” Her eyes darted between his, angry or very close to it.

“Working.” He turned his eyes back to the music and sipped his wine, but kept his hand and consciousness firmly on her waist. Her body hummed against his palm.

Fallon glanced around, looking embarrassed.

“Who are you wearing makeup for?” he murmured into her ear.

“It’s Friday night. I can wear makeup if I want to.”

“Is it for me?” he asked, shameless.

“In your dreams,” she cut back, but still she didn’t remove his hand. She looked at him openly, and there was something new in her assessment, as though she was reconsidering him. For what, he couldn’t tell. She turned her attention to her beer.

“If it is for me, you don’t need to bother. I like you fine without it, you know.”

“Jesus,” she said, exasperated. “I came here to try and have a normal evening. A weirdness-free evening. Can we just try and be friends? Like
regular
friends, like normal people do, without this being some study of me?”

He considered her request and withdrew his hand with polite regret.

“Thank you.”

“You’re right,” he said. “We’re not at the studio. That was rude of me.”

“Thanks. Let’s forget it now.”

His lips twitched. “But that was better, you know. You did very well just then.” He took a drink to hide his smile.

Her own mouth pursed in disapproving amusement.

For many songs they sat together, exchanging neither looks nor words. Occasionally one would turn to order a fresh drink, or lean over to allow another patron to speak to the barman. After an hour the band wrapped their set and the lights came up for an intermission. Max swiveled his stool around and Fallon followed suit. Together they leaned on the bar.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked. It had been many years since he’d flirted tipsily with a woman in the languid neon of a bar. It made him ache for a cigarette.

“Yeah. It’s nice.”

“Try to not be too hungover for your sitting tomorrow,” he teased as her fourth drink arrived.

“Ditto.”

True, Max would feel the wine when he stood next, but he craved the intoxication. He needed that with Fallon. She’d made her boundaries crystal clear, and he needed at least another glass before he could disregard them.

“You don’t smoke, do you?” he asked.

“No. Why? Are you going outside?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t smoked in many years. But I would have enjoyed breathing in your seconds.”

She grinned, nose crinkling in the most delicious way. “My best friend quit a couple years ago. She still tails smokers on the sidewalk to get a fix now and then. ‘Nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy,’” Fallon added with a private smirk.

“This is from something?”

“It’s from
The Big Sleep.”
She took a deep drink of her beer. “You know how I love those old movies.”

He stared at her, wishing he were somehow allowed to grab her by those full hips and yank her into his lap, wrap those legs around his waist—

“You’re staring again.”

He turned his attention to the corner where the next band was setting up. The bar suddenly lost its appeal.

“It’s very loud here.” He watched his cheap cabernet as he swirled his glass. “Why don’t you come for a walk with me?”

“Where to?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I could walk you home. I haven’t seen your cottage.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s dark out. There are bad men in this town, with bad intentions.”

There was a smile in her voice. “I’m sure there are.”

Fallon was drunk.

She’d had about five drinks in last few hours, and although she
felt
perfectly coherent and charming, she knew she was lacking substantially in the inhibition department. Strolling beside her on the barely lit shoulder of the main road, Max kept his eyes on his feet. He was wearing his running shoes and a fitted gray hoodie whose arm bore the green and yellow insignia of some French soccer team. He looked hip in that enviable, effortless way only Europeans can muster.

“What are you thinking about?” She asked it partly so she could stop wondering for a moment what would happen when they reached her lodgings. She wouldn’t invite him in, that was for damn sure. Or reasonably damn sure.

“I am thinking I am drunk,” Max said with a small laugh.

“Me too.”

“I am thinking, I have to remember not to try to kiss you when we say good night,” he said, conversational.

“Yes, do remember that.” She stifled a very un-Fallonish giggle, amused by how maladroit this elegant man could be sometimes.

“It is only because I’m drunk.”

“Oh, thanks very much,” she shot back, faking offense.

“No no—you know it’s not like that. You know you’re beautiful.”

“If you say so.”

His pace slowed, and she could make out his face, feel his attention turned to her. “You really don’t think so?”

“I’m all right. If you like a wash-and-go kind of woman.”

“I am not sure what that means, but you are beautiful for any kind of woman.”

She ignored the instinct urging her to contradict him.

“I have been with a lot of women,” Max began, and Fallon interrupted him with a caustic laugh.

“Wow, way to go.”

“But you are more beautiful than all of them,” he continued. “I do not know why, but you are.”

“Sure. Let’s just get you a breathalyzer and I bet we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“You’re so lousy at accepting compliments,” he said. “Is this yet another thing that makes you uncomfortable?”

“Probably. But I’ll remind you again, it’s
you
that makes me uncomfortable.”

“I know. I so enjoy it.”

She laughed again. “Jesus…”

Max’s warm, rough hand enveloped hers. A breath stuck in Fallon’s throat and she sobered by a degree, but didn’t pull away. His broad thumb stroked hers with an alarming familiarity. All the signs and buildings along the road seemed sharper, the late-summer chill in the air more acute.

“You know,” Max said, “I’m not even attracted to beautiful things or people. Not usually. That I find you so attractive is worrisome to me.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

His hand squeezed hers tighter. “I want to go to bed with you.”

For once, Fallon could think of nothing snide to say. She let her hand go limp, the tiniest protest. The sign for the cottage property appeared in the distance.

“I won’t ask you to,” Max continued. “Because I do not want to want this. And because you told me never to kiss you again.”