The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [9]
“I spoke to him on the phone last week, for a few minutes. He struck me as a person I would very much like to watch fall down a flight of stairs,” Max said casually. “And I daresay you do not care for him, either.”
“That’s one man’s uninformed opinion.”
“Just admit it—you don’t have a fiancé. Not that man, at least. I will not think any less of you. Quite the contrary.”
Her nostrils flared. “Fine.”
“That’s better. Was that really so hard?” He raised his eyebrows and took another drink. “So.”
“What?” Fallon demanded, at the end of her very frayed rope.
He grinned. “So, do you tell me now about this mysterious patron who is so desperate to get his hands on the next best thing to your naked body? Or will that take more than just the one bottle?”
Fallon blushed and took far too deep a gulp of her wine. “You’re overstepping your bounds,” she said after a breath. “Unless that’s yet another thing you desperately need to know in order to make this statue?”
“No, I am just nosy.” His eyes glittered.
Fallon’s skin went warm, fevery from the alcohol. “Well, get used to not knowing.”
They fell silent, eating. Fallon tried very hard to find the food unpalatable but it was too delicious to deny. The wine heightened her senses, or perhaps it was the strange, intense energy vibrating out of her companion.
“This is fantastic,” she admitted politely a few minutes later, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the bowl.
“I’m glad you think so. Do you eat meat? You seem like perhaps you would not.”
“Not generally,” she said, unnerved yet again. “How can you tell?”
“Your shoes and your belt, your bag. All canvas. No leather. Just a guess.”
“You’re a very perceptive man.” It was a thought she wouldn’t have shared a few minutes earlier. She took another drink, the sensation of the alcohol warming her blood an odd complement to the combative exchange. “You ought to be a detective.”
The corners of Max’s lips curled. “Sometimes I suspect that I am. Do you eat seafood?”
“As long as it’s sustainable.”
His face lit up with triumph and he pointed his fork at her. “I knew you were a biologist. That is good. There is fantastic shellfish here. Oysters, mussels. Crab. I will spoil you rotten with local delicacies.”
Fallon let herself stare openly at him for a few moments. Everything this man said sounded like a cross between a threat and a seduction.
“So, tell me, Fallon Frost… You have no fiancé. Whoever this patron is, he is not your lover. Is there someone else? I would ask for you to think of someone you long for,” he said between bites, “when you are posing for me in a week or two. When we find the right position.”
Fallon felt quite certain that most of Max Emery’s models wouldn’t need to conjure the image of a man they craved when they sat for him—they probably only had to open their eyes to locate such a muse.
“I’m sure I can think of something,” she said evasively, deciding now that her mental inspiration would be someone as unlike this man as possible. A beefy, blond, blue-eyed jock.
“More wine?”
Fallon was shocked to find her formerly generous glass empty. “No. That’s plenty.” She passed him her bowl and fork, and he cleared away the dishes and bottle. The cat startled her, brushing her calf. It sniffed her fingers.
“Oh, hello.”
Max frowned over his shoulder and addressed the animal. “Eh! Laisse-la tranquille.”
The cat abandoned Fallon to rush to him, leaping onto the counter expectantly. He nudged it affectionately with an elbow as he dried his hands. “Qu’est-ce que tu veux? Eh, you nuisance?” He pulled a covered dish from the fridge, arranged some sort of meat on a saucer and placed it on the floor where the cat set upon it with gusto.
“You say it’s not yours, but you feed it like it’s a pet.”
Max returned with a private smile on his lips. He grabbed a hefty bag of gray clay from a shelf and tossed it with a loud slap onto a worktable. He looked to be savoring a joke only he was in on.
“Yes?” Fallon prompted.
“I was just thinking,” he began, unknotting the