Shopping for an Heir

by Julia Kent

  “If you’ve got good dirt on my brother, I need to know.”

  “Non-disclosure agreement.” He almost called him sir, but caught himself. “Sorry, Declan.”

  Oblivious to the twenty-seven sets of eyes on him, Declan took stock of Gerald. He knew how the guy worked. This was banter, word play, a man’s-man kind of joking around.

  “Fight you for it.”

  See?

  “What’re the terms?”

  “Pool. Two out of three games. You win, you get me as a nude model for every class. I win, you give me one juicy detail about my brother. Something actionable.”

  Having a set model for every class would make the sessions flow better, and allow Gerald to get into advanced sculpting techniques. On the other hand, he liked having varying models. Light, shadow, contour, and all the finer points of sculpture could be assessed and taught with variation.

  “I’ll pay extra if he’s the class model for all eight weeks!” crowed Agnes.

  Murmurs of furious assent filled the room.

  “You better be good at billiards, Mr. Clean!” Corrine chimed in.

  “Mr. Clean?” Declan’s eyebrow went up.

  “Keep that face. I want it like that for the entire hour pose.”

  One side of Declan’s mouth twitched, but he kept the perfect arch.

  “Ladies! Ladies! Let’s get down to business.”

  “I thought you were!” Agnes gave him a creepy smile. “You’d better be good at stripes and solids, mister. My husband was a pool shark. Too bad he’s dead, or he’d teach you a few things.”

  Declan walked through a small door right behind the instructor’s platform.

  “Where’s he going?” Corrine asked sweetly. All the heads in the class turned to track him. It was like watching sunflowers follow the sun.

  “To get ready,” Gerald said, setting down his clipboard and looking out at the sea of faces. What a boon.

  And as a matter of fact, he was a damn fine pool player.

  Shark, even. That’s how he made some extra money in high school.

  Play stupid and let people underestimate you.

  Then you have them at an advantage.

  Declan emerged wearing a plain white bathrobe. The room filled with whispers.

  “Welcome!” Gerald clapped his hands once, bellowing out the word. The commanding voice got their attention, heads swiveling toward him. They wore smocks and poked at the clay in front of them, uncertain but eager. Half the women looked at Declan like they were here for an appetizer rather than a lesson, but that was his model’s problem.

  Gerald was here to teach.

  “I’m Gerald Wright, your instructor. Before you at each student’s place, you’ll find the necessary supplies for all eight classes, including a folder. Please take the notecard inside, fold it in half, and write your name on one half, facing it toward the front of class. Normally, we introduce ourselves, but the class is so big that we’d lose an entire session, so let’s use name tags and go from there.”

  For the next two minutes, students shuffled notecards and pens, writing and folding, until all twenty-seven had little inverted Vs on their tables.

  He walked in front of Declan, who now sat on his posing stool, still berobed.

  Declan was frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” Gerald asked.

  Following the billionaire’s gaze, he quickly got the lay of the land.

  Twelve women had written their phone numbers on their cards, instead of their names.

  “Fascinating, ladies,” Gerald said dryly. “So many of you have the first name 617. Must have been popular sometime in the early 1960s.”

  The laughter that filled the room was genuine.

  One minute later, actual names were on the cards, and Gerald got down to business.

  “Unlike most classes, we don’t spend our first day learning theory. We dive right in.”

  Someone in the back whistled.

  “This isn’t a Pats game,” Gerald said.

  “Hope not! Don’t need to see any deflated balls,” Agnes cracked.

  Declan’s face was stone.

  “Or a Red Sox game,” Gerald said, trying to change the subject.

  “You got a Green Monster under that robe?” Agnes asked Declan, grinning madly.

  “What does that even mean?” Declan hissed. He turned to Gerald. “And stop with the sports comments. I don’t want to know what she comes up with for hockey.”

  Agnes chortled.

  Gerald had to get his class under control.

  “Ladies!”

  Someone in the back had just entered the room. Two guys cleared their throats meaningfully.

  “And gentlemen,” he added with a nod. The two guys took their seats and put on aprons.

  “Welcome to Nude Sculpting 101. This is a class for beginners. That said,” he continued, his voice growing firmer, “this is a class where respect for the model is Rule #1.”

  The tittering simmered down.

  Gerald mustered his old commanding voice, the one he had eased out of himself for the past ten years. From the gleam in a few eyes, he’d need it more than he did when he was in the Navy.

  “You will not make jokes about the model’s body. If this were a female model, you would never dare. Why should it be different because it’s a man?”

  Agnes started to open her mouth. He spun on her, finger pointed, and before she could speak, barked, “That was a rhetorical question.”

  Her mouth snapped shut.

  “We are here to be artists.”

  Someone sighed. It was a happy sound.

  “We are here to learn to connect what the eyes see with what the hands do.”

  More sighs and a few uncomfortable looks.

  “You will learn about shadow and curve, form and realism, and how to find the deeper eye within you that guides the body toward what it knows it can recreate from memory, from stored touch—”

  A sound of appreciation between two black women who had been chattering in whispers almost made Gerald smile. They gave him their rapt attention.

  “You are artists,” he repeated. “Not office workers or retirees or stay-at-home parents or college students. In this class, ninety minutes a week, you are creators. You are visioneers. You are sensual and grounded in the core essence of what it means to be human. Your hands and arms will take what you know, what you see, and give it life through the clay.”

  Now he had them eating out of his hand. He paced in the space between Declan and the first row, eyes on the students as he walked back and forth, slowly, but with deliberation.

  “Let’s see what you find within yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what art is—self-exploration through expression. Connection by touching others through the visual, the tactile. Welcome to the world of art. And our arts center thanks you—your tuition money helps fund arts programs for kids and seniors, so the enthusiastic attendance is a welcome sight.”

  He stopped and looked at all the faces.

  “Let’s begin.”

  As if on cue, Declan dropped the robe.

  The class gasped.

  Gerald grinned.

  Chapter 2

  “I can do this,” Suzanne Dayton muttered under her breath, standing outside the decrepit arts center, pacing back and forth, trying desperately to find her old military voice. More than ten years out of the Navy after a two-year stint, and that world was like a different lifetime. Three years of law school and seven years as a practicing attorney—now a full partner at one of Boston’s best firms—and here she was, trembling with anxiety at the thought of walking into a nude sculpting class.

  The nude part? No problem.

  The class part? No problem.

  The instructor? Big problem.

  And what she needed to deliver to him?

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. “How did my life come to this?”

  The paperwork had come through to her early last week, a simple bequest. Suzanne worked in
estate law, and this kind of inheritance wasn’t uncommon. A non-relative inheriting an object with meaning. Clear. Easy. A transaction that happened all the time.

  But the combination of this artifact, the billionaire who left it to an heir, and the heir himself left Suzanne shaking and nervous, acting like a first-year law student before final exams.

  When she’d opened the paperwork and seen the name Gerald Wright, she’d closed the papers quickly, shoved them into the envelope, and asked Letitia to get her a rescue latte. Life was too confusing to do it without proper caffeine levels in her bloodstream.

  “Cool!” Letitia had said, grabbing her purse. “Now I have an excuse to try that new coffee shop. Mind if I go to Congress Street?”

  That meant a walk across the big bridge.

  “Why so far?” Suzanne had been distracted by the sound of Gerald’s absence echoing in her head. Silence does, in fact, make a sound, she’d learned. It sounds a bit like your heart breaking, over and over, endlessly.

  “Great new coffee shop. Hear it’s totally worth it. And they sell macarons,” Letitia added. She was such a closer.

  “Sold. Get me my usual and a half dozen of the chocolate kind.”

  Letitia was off in a flash, all bright primary colors and big grins.

  Suzanne had stared at the paperwork until it blurred.

  No amount of coffee had helped, not even the orgasmic latte from Grind It Fresh! Stupid name for a coffee chain, but they could get away with it.

  She would never drink any other chain’s brew again.

  “Letitia, can I ask you to serve these papers?” she’d asked, knowing the truth was buried on page five.

  Letitia had pointed out the clause, eagle-eyed paralegal that she was. “Look, Suzanne. Right here. Says Suzanne Dayton must serve the papers.” Letitia’s brow had furrowed. “Why you?” Great at speed reading, she’d skimmed the document.

  Suzanne had waited for it.

  “The object in question is a what?” Letitia’s eyes bugged out of her head. “A gold religious artifact worth how much?”

  “Nearly nine figures. Less if melted down and sold for gold and jewels. The cultural implications of what’s inside the figurine are what make it so valuable.”

  Letitia had let out a low whistle. “Mr. Gerald Wright is about to have one damn fine afternoon.”

  Suzanne let out a laughing groan.

  Oh, Letitia.

  If only you knew.

  “I can’t deliver it, though.” She’d shook her head. “Not that I wouldn’t like to. This would be like delivering the news that you won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Mr. Gerald Wright is going to love you forever, Suzanne.”

  Love you forever.

  Right.

  He’d said that before. So many times.

  When Suzanne didn’t answer, Letitia touched her arm. “Suz? You okay? Is something wrong with this case?”

  How could she answer that?

  He hadn’t loved her forever, after all.

  Giving Letitia a weak smile and grabbing her paperwork to bring home, brief bag stuffed to the gills, Suzanne had spent the better part of a week figuring out the simplest way to deliver the papers to Gerald, her ex-fiancé, without having any contact with him.

  When the head of your firm says you need to deliver legal documents personally, you do it.

  Now here she was, standing outside the Westside Center for the Arts, struggling to get up the courage to go inside. Damn it. She’d been able to command a team in Afghanistan, and now she couldn’t do a simple inheritance delivery.

  This was all about strategy. Do it in public. Do it somewhere she could escape from easily. Do it in a place where Gerald would be preoccupied and unable to follow her.

  Not that she thought he would. The guy dumped her, after all. Ten years of questions, ten years of self-doubt, ten years of pain.

  Ten years of heartache.

  So why did a tiny part of her wish he would follow her?

  “Pah!” she exclaimed, impatient with herself. “Just go in.”

  The building was ancient and smelled like chalk and burning hair, the scent of old educational institutions with radiators and structural problems. As she walked down the hallway, following the signs to the office, she smelled paint, turpentine, and heard children laughing. A quick peek in one classroom showed parents sitting behind toddlers, hands immersed in clay, all of them smiling.

  Her heart tugged.

  That should be her.

  Squaring her shoulders, she shoved her emotions into a locked box and strode with purpose. Find the office. Locate Gerald. Serve the papers. Walk away.

  Simple.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, striding into a cluttered little office with desks that looked like something issued to an Afghanistan mobile unit. Suzanne paused. Nah.

  These were older. Much older.

  A fresh-faced blonde teenager looked up from her crouch, her face flushed with exertion, a pile of textured paper in her arms. “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Gerald Wright.”

  “Gerald’s, um, teaching right now.”

  “Which room is he in?”

  “Three thirteen.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you can’t just go in there!” the girl called out as Suzanne made her way to the stairs, mind nothing but the loop of the number, over and over.

  Just keep moving forward.

  “Miss!” the young girl said. “It’s a closed class! Only enrolled students can go in there!”

  Suzanne ignored her.

  By the time she was at the top of the stairs, the girl had given up. One less obstacle. Who cared about enrolled students? Suzanne wasn’t there to learn how to make a pear or form a horse head out of modeling clay. She knew Gerald must be teaching sculpture. The man lived for his art.

  And those hands.

  Oh, those hands of his.

  “Stop it,” she muttered to herself, pinching her wrist. “That will only get you into trouble.”

  Three eleven... three thirteen. She peered in through the wire-mesh-filled window and saw a packed class. Good for Gerald. She knew from a quick Google search (ok, more than a quick Google search...) that he worked in security for Anterdec, protecting the McCormick family men at Boston’s famous Fortune 500 company. The art teaching must be on the side.

  Standing before the door, she braced herself. Her legs began to tremble and below the calves, blood turned cold. She was wearing a work suit, heels, and had retouched her makeup before coming over.

  None of that mattered if she couldn’t move.

  No one in the classroom talked. The angle of the door made it so she couldn’t see Gerald, and there was a large curtain separating a small platform. She wondered what the subject was.

  Should she knock?

  No. Just do it. Be bold.

  And so she was, opening the door, the creeeeeak of the un-oiled hinges announcing her arrival.

  “Excuse me. Are you enrolled?”

  Her knees melted. Gerald’s voice could do that to her after all these years.

  “Ah, no,” she said, still unable to see him. All of the students whipped around in their seats, staring at her.

  One step at a time, she told herself. Just one at a time.

  “Then I’m afraid we’re full, and—”

  Gerald’s words stopped as she came into view.

  There is a point where looking at someone is like having all of the insides of your soul poured out onto an endless terrain of eternity, as if they use their eyes to pick you up and shake you hollow, all the pieces of yourself shining under an unrelenting sun without shadow.

  Suzanne felt that once, ten years ago.

  And again, now.

  The point of contact between her and the man she’d loved so fiercely wasn’t a tangent. There was no touch. Just eyes, the direct path of visual connection, the moment explosive and calm, like the eye of a tornado.

  All the chaos inside her wen
t impossibly still when he looked at her.

  Just like that.

  “Jesus. Suzanne? What are you doing here?” Gerald’s voice went impossibly soft, his hands on his hips, a clipboard resting crooked in one hand, jutting out from his waist. Decorum said that gasping aloud at the sight of his chiseled form, the clay-smeared shirt conforming to the ridged muscle of his chest and belly, his faded jeans hanging on hips like they’d won a coveted spot, would not be the best approach right now.

  And she was trying her best. Really.

  He still shaved his head, and in that strange way that time changes when the mind needs it to, she wondered if he’d ever grown it out even as she knew she should say something. Anything. But her mind decided to take a detour, and she didn’t have an emotional GPS that would reroute her appropriately right now. She was along for the ride.

  Suzanne had seen pictures of his natural color, a wiry blond mane the color of ashes mixed with turmeric. But in their years together, she’d never run her hands through his hair, deprived of the simple luxury so casually taken for granted in most relationships.

  Those eyes. As she moved beat by beat, time lost to emotion, she finally found herself looking at his face, the bones the same, his fierce handsomeness baked a bit by life. His nose was still crooked, broken long ago in his teen years. That nasty scar along the right side of his face, from earlobe to jaw, plagued her. She remembered when it was a fresh wound, the result of shrapnel from an IED. Now it was a thick white line marking time.

  Time had filed off some of the hard corners, made him more approachable.

  Shock and lust and joy and guardedness all stared at her through gemstone irises the color of the sky.

  “Mr. Wright?” She used the title because she needed a boundary, no matter how invented.

  Calm and cool, she took two more steps.

  And froze.

  Because just past Gerald, a vision of nude perfection stood on an elevated platform, a flesh-feast for the eyes, and Suzanne Dayton might have been nervous, but she wasn’t dead.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice low and impressed by the class model, a man with dark green eyes, thick brown hair, and a chiseled body that made the David look kinda just okay.

  You know.

  Meh.

  Skin not just kissed by the sun, but French-kissed with a reach-around thrown in for good measure, went on for miles. The man on the stage was tall and browned, muscles braided into cords that curled and straightened, tightened and loosened, the kinesthetic calibration a muscular symphony without sound. A feast for the eyes, and as he turned in place, she watched the domino effect of ribs and intercostal muscle rippling down his torso, the hypnotic effect triggering a deep ache.