The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [47]
“Sometimes I feel like…I was unconscious. For over a decade. Like a coma. Like I fell asleep when I was twelve and woke up in this other life that didn’t belong to me. I feel a bit cheated, if I’m honest.” Incensed was a more accurate word, but Max didn’t want to come off too self-pitiful.
She nodded. “It sounded like it was really chaotic.”
“Yes. This life I have now, I am grateful for it. And I think I earned it too… Did you know, after my mother died and I was plucked out of my childhood home and taken away to London, I was called a visionary.”
“Oh?” She sounded cautious.
“Also while I was there I was given cocaine and Ecstasy, and I lost my virginity and stopped believing in God, all in one year.”
“Whoa. You were busy.”
“And do you know what else happened that year?” he asked, looking over at her.
Fallon met his eyes. “No. What?”
“I turned fourteen.”
“Oh, God.”
“I won’t even bother telling you how New York went. So now I need everything to be simple. And quiet. And just less. If I ever have a family someday, I will be one of those obnoxious, overprotective parents who do not want their child to ever lose its innocence.” He smiled, amused by this, charmed by thoughts of such extraordinary normality, of family.
“You want children?” Fallon asked, clearly surprised.
“I would. Very much. But it’s hard for me to relate to people sometimes, in those normal ways. I spent my formative years high on praise and success and drugs and all those endless changes. I never did the normal things normal people do between twelve and twenty-five. I suspect I’m quite maladjusted,” he added, grinning at her.
“I feel sort of stupid now. Being upset about my roommate moving out.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do.”
“No, of course not. But you know…I dunno. It’s good to hear that, I guess.”
“Lie down with me,” Max said.
She surprised him by replacing the cap on the Thermos and complying. She lay down facing him, tucking her knees into her chest and pressing her forehead into his shoulder. He unclasped his hands and stroked her upper arm through her jacket.
“It’s so quiet here,” she mumbled.
“I know. That’s part of why I love it. You know, you should cry, if you want to.”
She shook her head against him.
“All right.”
“I have to get back to my cottage tonight,” she said.
“I won’t keep you.”
“Maybe in a little bit.” She yawned. “After the stars come out. When it gets too cold.”
Max gazed blankly into the darkening sky, running his palm up and down her arm. He wondered if she had really come for the beach. Probably. He took his hand away, tucking it politely below its mate. He cleared his throat and listened to the ocean, tried to keep from wondering again about the man who’d sent this woman to him.
Chapter Eight
“Tonight,” Max said, putting away the morning’s coffee cups.
Fallon shed her clothes as though it were nothing, then marveled anew at how much she’d changed since first arriving here. “What about tonight?”
“It is your birthday.”
“It is indeed,” she confirmed, returning the mischievous smirk that curled his lips. “What about it?”
“Do you have plans tonight?”
She shook her head.
“I thought maybe you would be willing to sit for a couple of extra hours, stick around until suppertime? I would like to take you out. My treat. Thirty is such a nice, round number.”
“I don’t really want to make a big deal about it,” she said, all at once shy.
“I won’t make a big deal. No cake. No singing.” He crossed his heart and it seemed sincere.
In the two weeks since Rachel had come to visit, things between her and Max had cooled back down to manageable levels, leaving Fallon both relieved and disappointed.
She shrugged. “Okay.”
Smiling triumphantly, he began setting up the materials for the day. He wheeled the steadily winnowing hunk of white marble over from the corner and fetched a spray bottle and his tools, strapped on a pair of safety goggles. He wrapped the pads of his hands and his wrists in cotton bandaging, like a boxer. Apparently the chiseling was murder on his joints. He tossed Fallon a particle