The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [23]
“Thanks.”
“They are very you.”
Fallon didn’t bother challenging his authority on this topic. She took them off and examined them a moment, rubbing away a smudge. “I found them in a thrift shop in the Village.”
“It is only too bad that they hide your eyes.” Given his accent and the formality suggested by his lack of contractions, Fallon thought Max sounded like a lothario when he said things like this.
“Better hidden than bloodshot.” She accepted a dish of crabmeat and wilted greens and fennel. “Goodness.”
He sat and poured them each a healthy measure of red, lifting his glass.
“À la votre,” they said together, the ritual ingrained. The sittings had become times of relative silence, though lunch was for socializing. Fallon found herself anticipating these meals.
“Shouldn’t we be drinking white wine?” she asked after a bite, pointing her fork between the merlot and shellfish.
Max smiled. “You think because I’m French I should be a snob about these things?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I’m Canadian now. And white wine gives me a headache,” he added, grimacing. “Would you prefer it? What do you usually drink?”
“Beer, actually. But red is fine. I’m not choosy.”
He clinked his fork against the bottle. “This is the finest California vintage nine dollars can buy. I save the decent stuff for special occasions.”
“French?”
He grinned. “Naturally.”
“Now there’s the snob I was expecting,” Fallon said, surprised as ever by the playful tone in her voice. She wondered if this might be something beyond mere tolerance and familiarity. She wondered if Max Emery wasn’t growing on her. He looked a little taken aback himself.
“When do you think we’ll start the marble?” Fallon was curious to watch the process. She’d come to know the menagerie of marred statues in Max’s garden intimately in the past two weeks. What he did was breathtaking, astounding. She could admit that now. She wanted to see him at work.
“Soon. We are close. Closer. But we’re not quite there yet.”
“You mean the touching bit?” she asked, body tensing. Since bringing it up Max hadn’t pressured her about it, but she’d been living in fear of the inevitable day when it couldn’t be put off any longer.
He nodded. “I know you’re not thrilled, but I hope you trust it is necessary now.”
“Yeah. I do.” She shivered nonetheless. She wasn’t a great fan of being touched, handshakes and the platonic hugging of friends aside. It was probably why her relationships never made it past the three- or four-month mark. She dreaded to think how uncomfortable Max’s touch would be—his eyes alone often felt like a brand on her skin.
“Perhaps this afternoon we will try?” He cocked a cautious eyebrow across the table at her. “It must be soon if you wish to stay on schedule.”
“Yeah, I do.” Fallon frowned. It had become startlingly easy sometimes to forget why she was here, whose statue she would ultimately be posing for. “But don’t expect me to be comfortable or anything. You may have to sculpt me wincing.”
“I am sure I won’t. It is all that energy nonsense I am sure you’re sick of hearing about.” He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers like a close-up magician. “Nothing personal. In your job, when you’re working outside, what is it you do?”
“A lot of plant and animal collection…checking on populations of weeds and algae and mollusks and things, looking to see what’s declining and what’s thriving in a given area.”
“And what if you had to do that with your eyes closed?”
She nodded. “I get it. It’d be really difficult.”
“And I understand you do not want to be treated like a specimen. But you see what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled deeply in his wicked way. “So you better keep drinking.” He refreshed her glass and gathered their dirty dishes.
As Max puttered, Fallon sipped her wine and tried to imagine what it would be like, having Max’s hands on her. She shuddered, though not entirely from trepidation.
For over a week now she’d been having dreams about him, the sorts of dreams she’d never been disposed to before. Dreams that had her waking up in cold sweats in the early