The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [14]
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?”