The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [7]
“Indeed. Look up at the skylights,” he ordered and she complied. “With that lovely dark ring. And so clear. Your eyes make me wish I worked in color, Miss Frost.”
“Well. Thanks.” She lowered her gaze back to the crossword, blinking away the spots in her vision. She wondered if he was hitting on her in his own strange way. She wondered why it was she didn’t disapprove.
“And I do adore your crow’s feet,” he said, eyes on his work. “How old are you?”
Fallon tensed, trying very hard not to find this last comment insulting. She wasn’t bothered by this first flirtation with aging but the flippant way he’d pointed it out threw her off-balance. “Twenty-nine.” She felt every last day of it at this instant.
He nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Ah.” Her eyebrows rose as she pondered again how a man so relatively young could command such lucrative commissions. She had some research to do on Max Emery, clearly.
“And when is your birthday?” he demanded.
“October ninth.”
He broke into a grin. “So you shall be here for your historic thirtieth birthday, then?” he said, glowing. “I could let you have the day off, of course.”
“I don’t have anything special planned. Yet,” she added, an escape clause.
“Well, perhaps your misogynist of a supposed fiancé could spare you for that day,” Max said loftily. Before Fallon could react to his shamelessness he added, “I do love birthdays.”
Her fingers clenched the newspaper with a rustle as she made a concerted effort to not rise to the bait. “Oh?”
“Ah, yes. Birthdays are fantastic. If you are here I’ll make you supper, how is that?”
“Fine.” She decided then to most definitely take that day off. Fascinating or not, this man was a provocateur, and tactless. Unapologetically so. Like a good many people she routinely bumped heads with. Like the man who’d sent her here.
Max set his pad aside and stood, peeling off his T-shirt—it was late August and the midday sun still asserted the season. Underneath he wore a sleeveless white undershirt and under that lay an impressive landscape of a torso. Fallon swallowed, registering the heat of the studio.
He took up his study again and she couldn’t resist watching those arms. Definitely not the beefy type, though what bulk Max did carry was pure muscle. He had shoulders that made Fallon bite her lip, and she was not the lip-biting sort. A pair of thin lanyards hung around his neck, one suspending a small silver disc, the other an antique key, both obscuring the tattooed lines tracing one half of his collarbone. Just above the neck of his undershirt Fallon could see a fine spray of hair, equally black.
She needed more conversation to draw her attention away from these unsettling observations. “So…”
“Yes?” He looked up but only to eyeball some feature or other before recording it on his pad.
“How long have you lived on Cape Breton?”
“Eh…eight years, now.”
“It’s a beautiful piece of property. I didn’t see a car.”
“No, I never learned how to drive. And I never plan to.”
“Oh.”
“And you came here on foot?” he asked. “I did not hear any engines.”
She nodded.
“I am very glad you do not have a car.”
“Well, I have one back in New York,” she admitted.
“City?”
“Not quite. A little farther up the coast.”
“Good. I hate New York City.” His tone was light and conversational.
Fallon rankled. “Perhaps the feeling is mutual.”
“Oh, it is. Where will you be staying while you are on Cape Breton?”
“Here in Pettiplaise, I guess. My stuff’s at a little bed and breakfast.”
“No no, get yourself a cottage,” Max said. “They are so cheap this time of year. And who can stand eating with strangers every morning? Rent a cottage and you can have your own kitchen. Your own bathroom. You can tell friends to visit you. Your fiancé, so that I may meet him.”
“Um, maybe.”
“Yes, get a cottage,” Max said again, enlivened. “We will be neighbors. One day soon, we will take a walk. We will find you a nice one. I like my prisoners to feel comfortable,” he added