The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [36]
When he returned he was wearing cleanish jeans and a black sweater.
“Have you ever done a self-portrait?” She’d seen a few statues of men when she’d done her initial search for M.L. Emery online, but that was long before she’d been able to recognize him.
“No. And I doubt I ever shall. Unless you would like to pay me seven hundred thousand dollars to do so? As a souvenir of your trip, maybe?”
“No.” She swallowed, unsure why she was about to say this. “But anyway…you’re certainly built for it.”
“Oh?” He looked intrigued. “How so?”
“You know. You’re very…sculptural.”
“Like a Greek god,” Max said through an outrageously self-satisfied sigh, clearly kidding.
Fallon laughed. “Well, no, maybe not. More like a rugby player,” she said, trying to qualify his raw, lean, muscular body. Like an underwear model, she added to herself.
He smirked. “I remember being very lousy at rugby as a child. But my job… If I carved monuments and not people, I would be a laborer. You aren’t here much of the time, to see me really at work. Lift, lift, lift,” he said. “Stacking and shelving and moving twenty-kilo boxes of clay and great hunks of rock. Chiseling, sanding, polishing. I am just a mason with a prettier job title. You come back and find me in thirty years, when my lungs and wrists and back are a broken old man’s. Then you will see what cruel trade owns this body.”
She nodded.
“Ready to go?” He stood and took their cups.
“Yup.”
“Excellent. Show me what you like, Fallon Frost.”
Max tore his mesmerized eyes off the waves at the sound of a loud splash, in time to see Fallon getting back to her feet after slipping and dunking herself. She’d been wading around in the knee-deep water with her pant legs rolled up, collecting and examining the rocks and shells, looking as contented as a four-year-old. Now she was soaked head-to-toe, though not a bit less charming. She turned to where he stood on the shore, sheepish, hair and clothes dripping.
“Smooth, huh?” She wrung her sleeves out, sloshing toward him.
The beach was their final stop on Fallon’s day out. After they dropped the bicycles off, Max had insisted on it. He liked to observe her near the ocean. She made sense near the ocean. The sun was beginning to fade, the early-autumn evening bringing its chill.
“You must be freezing.” His lips couldn’t hide a smile, and his mind couldn’t help but wonder what this might mean for tonight.
“I’ll be fine.” She laughed as she pulled back her wet curls. Already she was shivering. “I’ve had worse.”
“Perhaps, but I would prefer you didn’t catch pneumonia while you’re my guest. Let’s get you back.”
She pulled her socks and shoes on. They walked up the beach, mounting the weather-beaten steps to the grass at the edge of Max’s property.
She glanced over at him. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
She grinned and Max felt something alien fluttering in his chest.
“For letting me have a day off,” she said. “It’s been nice, you know. Not being your model for a change. You’re not as bad as I thought you were at first.”
“Oh?”
“Nah. You’re okay.”
He appreciated the effort he suspected this compliment took. “You’re okay too.”
“And thanks for the movie. I miss that stuff.”
He nodded. Neither of their cottages had a television but Max had taken them past the library so Fallon could select a film, and he’d convinced the bartender at The Shack to play it on the TV mounted behind the bar during lunch. They’d been the only customers, anyway.
“How accurately would you say An American in Paris reflects the typical artist’s lifestyle?” Fallon asked studiously as she squeezed the water from her sweatshirt.
“Quite accurate. When you’re not here I am forever dancing about with Parisian school children.”
When they reached the studio Max ran a hot bath beneath the rear windows. As the tub filled, he got the fireplace going and unfolded a wooden clothes rack in front of it.
Fallon’s eyes darted between the fire and the bath, shy.
“Afraid