The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [10]
Fallon was torn between seething anger and amusement—his playful tone made it impossible to interpret how mean he was trying to be.
Max met her eyes. “And if I stroked either of you the wrong way, I doubt very much that you’d hesitate to sink your claws into me.” He began wedging a ball of clay against the tabletop. “Funny, no?”
“Hilarious,” she said, cold. “I can’t imagine why you keep letting us in.”
“It’s only that I find one of you so very pleasant. And the other,” he added, staring blatantly at her, “will just have to grow on me.”
Fallon held down the three button on her cell phone and listened to the tone as it speed-dialed. She glanced around the inn’s far-too-quaint bedroom, praying Rachel was home from work by now.
“Well, hello, weary traveler!”
Fallon didn’t think she’d ever been so relieved to hear her best friend’s voice. “Hey, Rache. Greetings from Cape Breton.”
She heard stretching behind Rachel’s words, the sounds of her getting comfortable. Probably on their ratty, overstuffed sofa. Homesickness hit Fallon like a truck.
“So, how does it feel?” Rachel asked. “Being a famous artist’s muse?”
Fallon let rip a sigh of utmost exasperation. “Oh my God, what am I doing here?”
“Wish I knew, Fal. Preserving your childhood, if I understood you correctly. More importantly though, what’s he like? This M.L. Emery character? Norman Rockwell or Andy Warhol?”
“Neither. He’s…odd. Really odd.”
“Artist,” Rachel said, as if this were an affliction with a predictable set of symptoms. “Naturally. But details, please? What sort of oddball’s gawking at your nakedness?”
Fallon flinched. “He’s not, yet. I need you to Google him for me. There’s no internet at my bed and breakfast.”
“Ooh, what about him?”
Fallon heard a chair scrape on the other end of the line and the chime of a computer waking up. “Just the basics, I guess. I was massively unprepared today.”
“I thought you looked him up before you left.”
“I looked up his work, so I’d know what sort of thing I was getting myself into. Then all I saw was naked people and I kind of ran away from the computer.”
“You’re such a prude.” The sounds of typing, then a pause. “Wow, he’s only thirty-three?”
“Yeah. That was the biggest surprise.”
“Right…”
Fallon itched with impatience. “So?”
“Sorry, just reading. ‘M.L. Emery, thirty-three, born in the village of Manent, France. Discovered at…’ Whoa!”
“What?”
“Sorry. ‘Discovered at age twelve and brought by a benefactor to England to study classical sculpture.’ Wow, a phenom.”
“What else?” Fallon toyed with the fringe bordering a throw pillow.
“Let’s see…moved into his own London studio at age fifteen, New York at nineteen, blah blah gallery names, blah blah eccentric, press-shy, recluse, blah blah blah. Bunch of name-dropping, mostly.”
“Nothing else?”
“Let me try another site,” Rachel said.
“Wife? Kids?”
“I’m working on it—holy shit!”
“What?”
“Dude. He is seriously sexy.”
Fallon rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on.”
“‘The artist in his studio,’” Rachel said, apparently reading a caption. “I mean, damn. Is that why you want to know if he’s married?”
“No. Definitely not. I just…I don’t get him. I was curious.” She groaned, flustered. “I was expecting some old guy, you know, and he’s like… I don’t know.”
She heard more clicking on Rachel’s end.
“Is he tall?” Rachel demanded, always her first question about any friend’s new love interest.
“Dunno, a bit. Six feet?”
“Tall enough,” Rachel said. “Does he have an accent still?”
“He’s got a couple.”
“Hot, Fallon. Does he need anyone else to get naked for him? You know, for art?”
“Ha ha, easy for you to say. He’s like, way too intense.”
“And how is that not hot?”
“You know me,” Fallon said. “I don’t do intense.”
“Who do you do, then?” Rachel asked in a bored voice, followed by more clicking. “Jesus, Fal, can I come for a visit?”
“Take a cold shower, please.