The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [2]
“You wouldn’t be caught dead in this position,” he said, still staring at it.
Fallon rankled. As if this man knew the first thing about her. “It’s what he’s asking for.”
“Your fiancé set his price, Miss Frost, but not my terms.”
Her throat tightened. “It’s very important he’s happy with it.”
Max ran the tip of his tongue over the edge of his mouth. Balancing his cup on his knee, he pinched the corners of the clipping and ripped it cleanly in two. “I’m not a pornographer.”
Fallon watched with mounting panic as the torn paper fluttered to the floor. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to suggest that—”
“Your fiancé will be happy with the piece,” Max interrupted. “If he has seen my work, he knows what I do. Sensual. Not obscene.”
“I’m sure. It’s just that he’s very particular.” A soft thud scattered Fallon’s thoughts as a cat dropped from the loft onto a tall cabinet, then to the floor. It strolled across the dusty hardwood with an errant push against Max’s shins. He ran a palm down its back, leaving a faint white print on its black fur.
“What’s your cat’s name?” Fallon asked, desperate for a change of topic.
“It is not my cat.”
“Oh. Well, what’s the cat’s name?”
He caught her eyes with his penetrating ones and held them for a long moment, then blinked, nonplussed. “It’s a cat.”
Fallon’s civility was fraying. Everything about this meeting was going even worse than she’d feared, and she could barely recognize herself this far out of her element. Where had the assertive and capable woman she knew herself to be at work and home gone to? She felt abandoned. And stranded.
She studied the man opposite her, trying to make sense of him. His irises were as near-black as the coffee he was sipping. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five, though his eyes seemed older. They were dark, utterly—dark lashes and brows and faintly darker skin and fine lines edging them—making him look as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. Fallon had a disturbing desire for them to snap back to hers. It was a troubling urge, a temptation, that fourth glass of wine at a lousy office party that always seems like a good idea at the time.
She thought of the woman who’d just left, all youth and grace and poise. She glanced down at her worn-out gray corduroys and yellow canvas sneakers, feeling like the antithesis of a French artist’s model. But then again, this was Cape Breton, not Paris. Besides, her clothing was most certainly not this man’s concern.
She cleared her throat. “Can we talk about the process? He’s very eager to know when the piece will be done.”
Max turned to stare pointedly at her, as if trying to guess what Fallon looked like beneath her clothes. And seeming as though he could. “Three months,” he concluded. “Barring geological tragedy.”
“All right.”
“Two weeks for studies and ten for the marble.” He ran a hand over his stubbly chin. “I trust your beloved can live without you for that long?”
Fallon started. “How much of that time do I actually need to be here for?”
“Every moment.”
“Whoa—what? Why?”
“Because that is how I work.”
“Three months?” she asked, awestruck. “How many days a week?”
“Every day.”
“All day?”
He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps six hours a day. Ten o’clock to four. Peak sun. But I’m flexible.”
“It doesn’t sound like you are.” Fallon’s temper flared, just as it always did when she was faced with pushy, self-important men.
“If you’re unhappy with my terms I suggest you find a different sculptor, miss.”
“No,” she said, diminished. “It has to be you. He insisted.”
Max made a face that unequivocally asked, And you’re arguing with me why?
“But I need to be here all that time?”
Max sighed. “Do you have a work conflict?”
“I might.”
“Then allow me to be indiscreet,” he said. “Your fiancé has offered me seven hundred thousand for this commission.”
Fallon gritted her teeth to keep her jaw from dropping.
“American dollars. If he can toss that much away on a statue, I trust he can keep you afloat during an unpaid leave from your job, no?”
“You don’t understand—”
“I am sure I don’t,” he interrupted.