Drawing Lessons

by Julia Gabriel

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’m sure I’ll think of something. I’ve been busy—”

  His thumb gently closed her mouth, and it was all she could do not to suck it in between her lips. The inch of space between them sizzled with energy.

  “But a parking lot isn’t the place to discuss them. Is there somewhere nearby we can go? For coffee or a drink?”

  Marie thought for a moment, unable to take her eyes off his lips, unable to move her eyes up to meet his. “Someplace quiet,” he added.

  She had lived in the Washington area her entire life and now she was drawing a blank on where there might be a restaurant or coffee shop. It was a struggle to think with him standing this close to her. That was the problem. If she leaned forward even just a hair, her breasts would touch his chest.

  She wanted her breasts to touch his chest. And other parts of her body, too.

  “There’s a 24-hour pancake place on route seven,” she managed to spit out, finally. “It’s not fancy, but it probably won’t be busy at this hour.”

  “Bon. I don’t care whether it’s fancy or not.” He took her hand and began to lead her back the way he’d come.

  “Wait.” She pulled her arm back. “I have to take my car.”

  He looked at her skeptically.

  “If my parents come out later and see my car here, there will be an all points bulletin out for me.”

  He nodded, looking disappointed, but he took her hand again and walked her back to her car. He tugged open the driver’s side door. Marie climbed in quickly, bumping her knee sharply against the bottom of the steering column. She winced at the pain. He would think better of this once he got on the road. She was going to find herself sitting alone in her car, like an absolute idiot, in the parking lot of a strip mall. She just knew it. Sexy French artists were not interested in women like her.

  “Marie.”

  Regardless, she would remember forever the way her name sounded on his lips. She turned and was surprised to find him leaning into the car, his face just inches from hers. In an instant, he closed that tiny distance with a hot devouring kiss, his tongue pushing at her lips. She opened her mouth and let him in, let him push her head against the seat and grind his lips against hers. She dug her fingers into his hair and kissed him back, tasting his lips, enjoying the spikes of heat that were driving through her body. Kissing him felt just so damn good.

  Then, like someone had flipped on a light suddenly, she remembered her parents and Richard. And Maya. Most of all, Maya. She could be walking through the parking lot right this very minute. She would see Marie with this man’s tongue down her throat. She would see the frenzied look on Marie’s face, desire and craven weakness. She would take a picture of it.

  She pushed Luc away. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Chapter 5

  “Why did you kiss me back there?”

  They were seated in a rear booth at the Pancake Palace. “Palace” was perhaps overstating things. But it was quiet and mostly empty, a few bleary-eyed truckers at the counter and some slightly drunk teenagers crammed into a booth at the front, where the manager could keep an eye on them.

  “To make sure you’d show up here,” Luc replied.

  She looked at him incredulously. “I didn’t think you’d show up.”

  “I asked you to come. Why wouldn’t I show up?”

  The lone waitress set down two cups of black coffee between them. Marie pulled hers across the formica and wrapped her hands around it. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “You’re you and,” she gestured at herself, “I’m me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She shrugged again and he bit back the impulse to reach across the table and hold those shoulders still. But if he touched her ... if she hadn’t pushed him away back in the parking lot, he would have climbed into the car with her.

  “You’re a senator’s wife, yes? A senator’s daughter. And you hang out with people who have more money than God. What are you doing here, Marie? Sitting with a man you barely know—” he looked around the garishly decorated restaurant. “In Pancake Hell.”

  What was he doing here? Sitting with a woman who was still technically married, according to Sam, and who seemed to belong to fairly powerful people connected to the U.S. government. Luc had acquired his citizenship a few years back, but he imagined that dallying with a senator’s wife—even an estranged one—might be grounds for revocation.

  “Um, I ... you said you had some suggestions,” she said nervously. “For why I could take drawing lessons. Other than that my friend paid for them.”

  The way she sunk back into the orange vinyl of the booth, clearly regretting her last words, concerned him. He leaned forward, his elbows shoving their way across the table, trying to bridge the distance between them.

  “Are you afraid of me, Marie?”

  “No. Yes. No.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “No.”

  “Three no’s and one yes. So some of the time, you’re afraid of me.”

  When she opened her eyes, there was a dull weariness in them. She waved a hand off to the side. “Some of the time, I’m afraid of everyone.” She picked up her coffee and stared into the dark liquid before taking a sip.

  “Did your husband mistreat you?”

  Her hands jerked in surprise, causing her coffee to slosh over the side in a thin trickle. She carefully set it down on the table and wiped up the small spill with a napkin. Then she shrugged. Again.

  “Depends on your definition of ‘mistreat,’ I suppose.”

  “Did he ever hit you?”

  “No.”

  She had hesitated a beat too long.

  “But there were times I thought he was going to.”

  The waitress returned to top off their coffee.

  “I don’t really want to talk about this,” Marie said. “I thought we were going to discuss my lessons.”

  “D’accord. But in order to teach you, I need to know what makes you tick. I need to know something about your life.”

  “But you haven’t decided that you’re going to teach me yet.”

  He regarded her porcelain skin, her pink lips—the taste of them still fresh in his memory. Truth be told, teaching was the last thing he wanted to do with Marie Witherspoon. He wanted to push that pretty yellow sweater off her shoulders and unzip that slim dress. Roll her stockings down over her hips and thighs, peel them off her lovely toned calves ... he felt a tightening in his groin.

  What was going on here? She appealed to him in a way no other woman had since Grace. But why? She was beautiful, yes. But she came with more baggage than a 747. Not only an estranged husband, but one who was a member of Congress. He had issued that ultimatum last week to send her away, to get the temptation of her lips—and the way she had pressed her breasts into him—as far away from him as possible.

  And he had regretted it all week. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t about to send her away again. He was too weak a man. He wanted her, and he would give in until he found out why.

  She was looking at him expectantly. But her guard was up, too. She was waiting for him to turn her down. She wanted him, too. That had been plainly evident in the kiss. Both of them. She might not really want drawing lessons, but she definitely wanted him.

  “Why did your friend give you the lessons?” he asked, stalling for time. He had racked his brain on the way here for these suggestions he had promised, but come up with nothing. He was always shooting off his mouth like that. It was how he had ended up in the United States in the first place. He’d said unforgivable things, things that had neatly excised him from his own family when he was younger. It was how he had lost Grace. Unforgivable things.

  “She remembered that I took some studio art classes in college. She thought it might cheer me up.”

  “You were depressed over your marriage ending?”

  She shrugged yet again. “I was more surprised, I guess. I guess I thought he would stop seeing he
r after awhile. No one marries their mistress.” She laughed bitterly. “Or that’s what my mother keeps telling me.”

  “You would have stayed with him then, if he’d given her up?”

  Another shrug. He was going to have to teach her not to do that.

  “Probably,” she admitted.

  He pulled a pen from his inside pocket and slid it across the table toward her, then followed it with a napkin. “Draw yourself, please.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Now?”

  “Yes. Just a quick sketch.”

  He sipped at his cooling coffee while she slowly drew. When she finished, he pulled it from beneath her fingers and looked at it. “Not bad,” he allowed. He held out his hand for the pen, then made his own sketch of her on a fresh napkin.

  “How do you do that?” She shook her head in amazement. “I thought mine was pretty good but compared to yours, it doesn’t look anything like me.”

  “You have some skill, Marie, but you don’t see.”

  “You’re talented. I’m not. I just like to draw.”

  “My family would tell you that I am an untalented hack. That may be true. But I was taught to see the way an artist sees. My grandpère taught me.”

  Suddenly Marie’s eyes lit up. “Can you teach me that? To see like an artist?”

  Something inside Luc swelled near to bursting. Hope or dismay. One of the two, he couldn’t tell. But she had a reason now and he would get to see her again. She would come back to his studio and he would teach her. He would resist her appeal. Or not.

  He reached across the table and pulled her small, soft hand into his. He circled his thumb over the pulsing vein beneath the skin of her wrist. His dark eyes met her lighter ones. Maybe that was it. There was about her a quality of—not innocence, exactly—but uncertainty, a sense of someone beginning to try her wings for the first time. Grace had been that way, and he had crushed her wings.

  He sucked in his breath as her fingers gently curled around his. Her skin was so soft, the bones of her fingers so delicate. So fragile. So breakable. He should run and tell her to run, too. Eventually, he would do something unforgivable.

  But he was a weak man.

  “Oui. I can teach you that, Marie.”

  Chapter 6

  The following Saturday, Marie arrived at Luc Marchand’s studio promptly at nine in the morning, as he had requested. The door was ajar. She knocked lightly on the frame.

  “Mr. Marchand?”

  “Come in,” came the reply.

  When Marie stepped into the studio, darker today because of the cloudy sky outside, Luc Marchand was sitting at the large half-finished canvas she’d seen the previous weekend.

  “Or should I call you Monsieur Marchand?”

  “You should call me Luc.” He turned around with a welcoming smile. “But also feel free to call me bastard, asshole or son of a bitch as the occasion arises.” None of which sounded all that terrible undergirded by a French accent, Marie thought.

  He took her overnight bag and placed it in the corner of the studio. “You can stay until tomorrow?” he asked. When Marie nodded, he added, “Bon. Immersion is the best technique for learning a language, and the same is true for drawing. Plus, you’ll be drinking. It won’t be safe for you to drive home.”

  Today Luc Marchand was wearing paint-spattered khakis, the cuffs rolled up to reveal bare ankles, and a worn chambray shirt faded almost to white. He looked over Marie’s outfit—her best-fitting slim jeans and a pale yellow silk blouse that didn’t entirely hide the lacy bra beneath. Dark coral polish on her toes peeked out from her wedge sandals. She had tried on four other pairs of shoes before finally settling on these.

  “Come,” he said, picking up a thermos and a backpack and heading for the door. “We’ll start outside.”

  Marie followed him to the low stone wall where they had drawn the last time. And where he had kissed her. She felt a bud of heat begin to unfurl in her chest. Would he kiss her today?

  She sat next to him on the wall while he unzipped the backpack, pulled out two coffee mugs and proceeded to fill them with coffee from the thermos. Marie gratefully accepted the mug he offered, wrapping her fingers around its welcome warmth. Beneath the clouds, the morning air was laced with a damp chill. Her blouse was not warm enough and a shiver convulsed her body.

  “It’s not this cold back in Loudoun,” she said.

  “I think there’s a cold front coming in. We’re supposed to get rain later today. Take a deep breath,” Luc suggested. “Relax into it. It’s only cold because you’ve been conditioned to think it is.”

  Marie gave him a skeptical look but did as he asked. She filled her lungs with the cool air, then let it all whoosh out.

  “Better?”

  “Not really,” Marie replied.

  “Good thing we have all weekend, then. If you want to see things for yourself, you have to start with what’s all around you. So the air is a little chilly. But how uncomfortable is it, really? It’s not outright painful, yes?”

  He stretched out his legs in front of him and Marie noted that he hadn’t put on a jacket or sweater himself before coming outside. He was wearing just his khakis and that thin, worn shirt.

  “Relax your arms. Let yourself feel the air on your hands. Through your blouse. Let yourself enjoy the way it feels. Find pleasure in it.”

  Marie tried to do as he said, but it was hard to stop her mind from thinking it was cold. The skin on her arms pulled up tight into gooseflesh.

  He nodded at her coffee mug. “Drink.”

  When the hot liquid hit her taste buds, she nearly spit it back out.

  He smiled and said, “Take another sip. Hold it in your mouth for a minute.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. This stuff is sludge.”

  “Humor me.”

  Marie imagined lots of women had humored him over the years, but she did as she was told and filled her mouth with bitter coffee. She tried not to focus on how terrible it tasted.

  “Okay, you can swallow.”

  Marie shuddered from the scorched aftertaste.

  “How was your week?”

  “Fine,” she replied.

  “What did you do?”

  “Work. And I started school this week, in the evenings.”

  He gazed up at the heavy grey clouds speeding past. “School for what?”

  “Business school. I started on my MBA years ago. Then I got married and had to stop.”

  “Do you have children, Marie? I never asked.” Luc pulled a sketchpad and some pencils from the backpack.

  She shook her head sadly. “No. That was supposed to be the reason behind my quitting school and work. We were going to start a family right away. But then Richard met Maya.”

  “Ah. I see. So now you’re picking up where you left off?”

  “Trying to. My parents are still hoping for a reconciliation. They don’t think my husband having a mistress is that big a deal.”

  “A lot of politicians have them.”

  “Well, Richard decided he wanted to marry his.” She stared off at the mountains in the distance.

  “Your husband made the wrong choice.” Luc reached over and turned her face toward him, his thumb lightly stroking her cheekbone. “She is nowhere near as beautiful as you are, Marie.”

  She looked at him, surprised and embarrassed by this unexpected display of tenderness. Disappointed a little, too. Part of her had been expecting—hoping—that he would rush her the minute she arrived and kiss her passionately. Instead, he was acting as though they had never kissed. Not here two weekends ago, not in her car in the parking lot. Maybe he’d forgotten. A man like Luc Marchand probably kissed so many women, they were all a blur after awhile. Or maybe he regretted it and was hoping she wouldn’t bring it up.

  He let his palm fall away from her face, leaving her cheek suddenly naked and bereft. “Here. I’ll trade you,” he said. He handed her the pad and pencil and took back her coffee mug.

  She was glad
to be rid of the foul stuff he called coffee.

  “Do I get to draw now?” she asked flipping open the cover of the sketchpad to a pristine sheet of paper.

  “Draw away.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Whatever you want. I just want to see what you can do, as a baseline.”

  Marie spent the rest of the morning and afternoon sketching. A cluster of buildings on a neighboring farm. The sky as geese flapped against it. The rounded stones of an old crumbling foundation. Inside Luc’s studio, she drew carafes and baskets of fruit, paintbrushes standing in a jar like cut flowers, the crusty sandwiches he fixed for their lunch.

  Through it all, he said nothing about anything she drew. Often he wandered away from her entirely, leaving her by herself to stare hard into the heart of an object, trying to will its lines and planes to flow through her fingers and onto the paper. She was making peace with the idea that he wasn’t going to kiss her again, although every time she looked at him her body ached with the need to touch him.

  That was okay, she told herself. She was here for drawing lessons. It was unreasonable to expect romance too.

  She needed drawing lessons, that was for sure, she thought as she flipped through her pathetic attempts at art. Her geese looked more like unmanned drones, paintbrushes like spindly weeds. Maybe Nishi should have given her cooking lessons, instead. That would have some practical application, at least. She was ready to stuff the sketchpad deep into her overnight bag and sneak out the door to her car, never to return, when Luc appeared next to her and gently tugged it from her clutches.

  “Come. Help me with dinner.”

  Marie nearly melted. Help me with dinner. How did he manage to make those four words into the sexiest thing she’d ever heard fall out of a man’s mouth?

  An hour later, the old farmhouse table in Luc’s home was set with a large serving bowl of pasta, dressed simply in garlic, olive oil and freshly-grated parmesan; a platter of hot fragrant bread and a second bottle of merlot.