True Colors (13 page)

She’d set a stool out for him to sit on, far
enough from the work table and easels so she could circle it easily
and close enough to the wall of glass for the milky morning light
to illuminate his face. His gaze circled the loft, then settled on
the stool. “Am I supposed to sit there?” he asked. He sounded kind
of apprehensive.

“The seat of honor,” she said, flourishing
her hand as if it was a royal throne and he was a king.

“I’m supposed to sit on this stool while you
paint me?” He lowered himself onto it and frowned. “It’s not very
comfortable.”

“I’m not going to paint you while you sit
there,” she explained, crossing to the table for her camera. “That
would be a waste of your time. What I’ll do is take a bunch of
photos of you and paint from them.”

He eyed her camera warily. “I’ve never done
anything like this before,” he said.

He almost made the words sound sexual. Or
else maybe she was just imagining an innuendo where none existed.
Yet she appreciated his willingness to let her see his discomfort.
Maybe she should stop trying to act as if this was just a typical
job for her.

“Okay,” she said, then forced a smile.
“Here’s how it works. I take a bunch of photos of you, and I ask
you a bunch of questions about your dreams.”

“My dreams?”

“Not your bedtime dreams.” She felt a blush
warm her cheeks when she uttered the word “bedtime.”

He didn’t seem terribly rattled by her
reference to bedtime, though, so she soldiered on. “I paint what I
call Dream Portraits. That’s a portrait of you surrounded by the
things you dream about. Like Ava Lowery’s portrait.” She pulled
Ava’s painting away from the wall, where she’d propped it after
framing it, and displayed it for him. “She dreams of being a
princess, so I painted her surrounded by princess things.”

“I don’t dream of being a princess,” Max
said.

Emma laughed. “That’s a relief.”

He lapsed into thought for a moment. “I’m not
sure…I mean, to talk about my dreams? I don’t know. That’s
personal.”

The way we kissed was
personal, too
, she almost pointed out.
Opting for discretion, she said, “Painting you is personal,” as she
returned Ava’s painting to its resting place against the
wall.

“Yes, but…my dreams?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll just talk.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then
closed it, apparently at a loss.

“If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have
to.”

“You
want to, though. You told me you wanted to paint
me.”

“I do,” she admitted.

“Emma.” He stared at her, his eyes so
intense, so focused, his gaze felt like a physical touch. “About
last night—”

“No,” she said quickly. “No,
no, no. Today is about painting. Not about…
that.
”

“Everything is about that,” he said, sounding
unnervingly wise.

“All right. Look. I can
paint your portrait. You can pay me for the painting. Or not,” she
hastily added when she saw his brow dip in a frown. “Because I owe
you for holding art classes in your house. Right?” She was
ad-libbing, trying to read his mind, trying to figure out how to
make the situation feel less awkward and less… Damn it.
Sexual
. Maybe she wanted
to paint Max’s portrait only because painting him was safer than
screwing him would be. Both were intimate acts, though. Both
involved the dropping of defensive layers, the casting aside of
self-protective shields.

He smiled wryly. “How much were you planning
to charge me?”

“That depends on how
detailed the painting is,” she said. “Why don’t I take some photos,
and we’ll discuss your dreams, and then I’ll be able to assess what
the painting will entail.”
Entail
. His word. Now he had her
saying it.

She turned her camera on, listened to its
motor hum to life, and scrutinized him in the pale morning light.
His features would be thrown into stronger relief if she adjusted
his head slightly, but she was afraid to touch him. “Could you just
turn a little to the right?” she asked.

He shifted on the stool. His expression was
pained.

“This isn’t going to hurt,” she assured
him.

“I feel self-conscious.”

“No kidding.” That coaxed a smile out of him,
and she smiled, too.

“I really don’t like being in the
spotlight.”

“Once I have this painting done, you can hide
in the shadows. People can admire your portrait and ignore
you.”

He chuckled.

She started snapping pictures. Usually she
was full of patter and jokes, eager to put her subjects at ease.
But Max wasn’t just any subject, and although she’d managed to
tickle a laugh out of him, she felt as self-conscious as he
apparently did. Trying to come up with clever chatter would tire
her out, so she decided to skip the light stuff and go straight to
the heavy. “Tell me about your dreams.”

“I dream of not being in the spotlight,” he
said.

She smiled tolerantly and continued
photographing him. “Besides that dream.”

He shrugged, then cringed , as if afraid he’d
ruined something by moving.

“That’s okay,” she said. “You can move if you
want. I’m going to take a ton of photos, so if some of them come
out blurry, no big deal.”

“I can move, but I can’t move out of the
spotlight,” he muttered, although his eyes were bright with
amusement. “I don’t know. I don’t dream about big things. Most of
my dreams have already come true,” he said, his smile gone.

He looked so somber, she snorted. “You sure
seem thrilled about that.”

He shot her a look. The motion caused the
morning light to shift across his face. She could gently nudge his
head back to where she wanted it, but she still felt nervous about
touching him, even in a professional way. Instead, she decided to
snap a few photos of him with shadows angling across his features.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when your dreams come true, things don’t
turn out quite the way you expected when you first dreamed
them.”

“Do you want me to paint some disappointments
into your portrait? I guess I can do that. The Dream Portraits I do
are usually upbeat and inspiring. And fun. Like Ava’s princess
portrait. Back in Brooklyn, when I was developing the concept, I
painted a ballet dancer I knew, surrounded by all the roles she
dreamed about dancing. But I suppose I could do a depressing
painting, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course it’s not what I want,” he
retorted. “All right, then. Upbeat and inspiring dreams. Let me
think.” His expression changed again, growing pensive as he
ruminated. He gazed out the window for a long, silent minute, then
said, “I’ve always dreamed of having a home with an ocean
view.”

“Then this must be your dream house,” she
said, trying to capture with her camera the reflective cast of his
eyes, the tilt of his head.

To her surprise, he laughed again. After a bit
more thought, he said, “The two apartments where I lived in
Brooklyn were both a few blocks from the beach. But all I could see
from our windows was the street and the air shaft between our
building and the next one. Where I live in San Francisco—Pacific
Heights—I can see the bay. Not the ocean, though.”

“But you can see the ocean from this house. Why
do you want to sell it?”

“Because I don’t live or work in
Massachusetts?” he suggested, turning the statement into a question
as if he expected her to grade him right or wrong.

“Tell me about your work,” she said. “Do you
have a dream job?”

“Yes.”

That caught her by surprise. She wasn’t exactly
sure what he did for a living. If the ridiculously below-market
rent he was charging her and Monica indicated anything, he wasn’t
the sharpest businessman she’d ever encountered.

“I run a foundation,” he told her.

“Cool!” That sounded grand, both altruistic and
powerful. “What kind of foundation?”

“We focus mostly on education for impoverished
children and immigrants. My parents had good educations in Russia,
even though when they moved here they wound up with jobs that
didn’t put their education to use. But they knew it was important
for me to learn English and study hard. With a lot of immigrant
children, their parents are so overwhelmed that the children don’t
get the kind of encouragement I got. They need extra support. Their
parents need language skills. California is full of immigrants from
Latin and South America and Asia, and my foundation funnels grants
into programs for them. But we work with programs all over the
country. Some programs in Africa, too.”

“Wow. That is so
cool. No—it’s
noble.
”

“Feel free to worship me.”

“I’ll paint your portrait, like the Renaissance
painters used to paint their royal patrons.” She moved behind him
and snapped some photos of his back. He had strong, solid
shoulders. Shoulders she wanted to wrap her arms around, the way
she had last night. She gave her head a brisk jerk, as if she could
shake off the thought like a dog shaking water off its fur after a
swim in a pond.

The fact was, she had bigger problems than
merely the distraction of Max’s appearance, which was as appealing
from the back as from the front. How on earth could she depict his
dreams of educating immigrants in a painting? What was the visual
peg on which she could hang this portrait? If she was going to
create a Dream Portrait of him, she needed more to go on than
educating immigrant children.

“Have you been to Africa?”

“I’ve visited Malawi,” he told her. “We
contribute to a program there, run by Unicef. But I was there for
only a couple of days, just to make sure the funds were being used
properly. We didn’t want our money to wind up in some corrupt
politician’s pocket.”

She sighed. As noble as his work sounded,
Africa seemed like a non-starter for her painting. “Do you have any
hobbies?” she asked hopefully.

He thought for a minute. “I shoot hoops with
friends a couple of nights a week. I go hiking—not too often, but I
enjoy it.”

Wonderful, she thought sarcastically. She could
paint a knapsack.

“I play chess.”

“Of course. You’re from Russia,” she
teased.

“Not all Russians play chess,” he argued. “I
just like the mental challenge. I’m no champion, but I enjoy it.
Sometimes I play against my computer. I usually win.”

“Do you read? Play a musical
instrument?”

He winced. “I studied violin for six years and
hated every minute of it.”

“Six years? You must have been pretty
good.”

“I wasn’t good at all. And I hated
it.”

Maybe she could paint a violin with an ax
smashing through it. Great. A broken violin and a knapsack. She
could call this one a Nightmare Portrait instead of a Dream
Portrait. A chess board had possibilities, though.

“Do you have any pets?” she asked.

“No.”

She thought of him, living all by himself in
his apartment with its San Francisco Bay view. Then she thought of
him not living by himself. “Do you have a wife?” she
asked.

He flinched, then spun around on the stool to
face her. “Do you think I would have kissed you if I
did?”

“Some men would,” she said, trying not to
shrink from the intensity of his stare.

“I’m not one of them.”

“Well. Good.” She smiled, trying to lighten the
moment.

He didn’t return her smile. Instead, he reached
out and snagged her wrist, nearly making her drop her camera. He
pulled her toward him, then rose from the stool. “If I had a wife,”
he murmured, “I wouldn’t be making love to you.”

She opened her mouth to point out that he
wasn’t making love to her. And then she understood what his fierce,
hungry gaze was telling her. Standing so close to him, feeling his
fingers circling her wrist, warm and firm but not forcing, she knew
that hunger. She felt it just as fiercely.

In his eyes, she saw his true colors. He was a
stern, solemn property owner, someone who did good works and obeyed
zoning laws. But he was also a man burning with desire. A man who
would make love to her.

She knew it. She wanted it.

With his free hand, he pried the camera from
her grip and set it on the stool. Then he slid his arm around her
waist and pulled her closer to himself, much closer. So close her
breasts pressed into his chest when she inhaled. She needed that
breath, though, because once he took her mouth with his, breathing
was impossible.

They kissed. And kissed. They kissed like last
night—no, not like last night. This kiss was deeper, wilder,
needier. This kiss wedded not just their lips and tongues but their
souls. Her hands fisted on his shoulders, those broad, strong
shoulders she’d been admiring just minutes ago as she’d snapped
photos of his back, and he cupped one hand over the curve of her
bottom, drawing her against him, letting her feel his arousal. His
other hand made its way to her head, where he tangled his fingers
into her hair, the stubborn waves and curls that had refused to
relax beneath her blow drier earlier that morning. That her hair
was a mess didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

After an endless minute, he tore his mouth from
hers, but only to graze her cheeks, her brow, the soft, vulnerable
skin of her throat. She felt her legs sway beneath her, and he
tightened his grip on her butt, guiding her against the bulge
beneath his fly. He unraveled his other hand from her hair only to
tug at her shirt, skimming it up so he could slide his hand across
the skin of her back. Her skin was warm, but his hand was hot.
Everywhere he touched, she felt a burning deep inside.