Drawing Lessons

by Julia Gabriel

  Her mother shot her a stern look but Marie no longer cared. She stomped out of her mother’s office and back to her own. The first call she made was to Nishi.

  “Richard’s being primaried,” she said by way of greeting.

  “That’s great news! Why the glum voice?” Nishi replied.

  “He’s called off the divorce.”

  There was dead silence on the other end.

  “So you file.”

  “I don’t have the money. And he’s threatening to kill funding for my father’s contracts in committee.”

  Marie closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples. Now that the initial shock of adrenaline was subsiding, a monster headache was building, wrapping its tentacles around her scalp.

  “Well, then, you have to make him want to refile the divorce papers.”

  “How do I do that? Short of flying out to Pittsburgh and offing his opponent?” She sighed. “I’m actually thinking of emailing Maya, just to be a snide bitch. But I know I shouldn’t be that kind of person.”

  Nishi snorted on the other end. “So let me. I’ll send her a fake press release announcing that Sen. Richard Macintyre and his wife are reconciling in advance of his re-election campaign.”

  “Won’t that get you in trouble at work?”

  “Gah. No one likes her, Marie. Only Richard. And apparently not that much anymore.”

  Chapter 16

  Her mother’s office door was open when Marie strode down the hall, coat on, bookbag slung over her shoulder. It was three o’clock and she was leaving early, daring her mother to stop her. But Eileen Witherspoon did not so much as look up from her desk as Marie passed.

  “See you tomorrow, Maeve.”

  “You’re leaving, dear?” The receptionist looked up from her phones.

  “Yes. I’ve got a killer headache.” A killer headache named Richard Macintyre.

  “Well, take an aspirin, dear, and get some rest. Some hot tea. That always works for me.”

  Maeve put Eileen Witherspoon to shame in the motherhood department. I can’t believe she was negotiating with him. The nerve!

  She jogged around the corner to where she had parked her car that morning. There was a parking ticket stuck beneath the windshield wiper. Well, that certainly fit with the general direction in which her day was headed. She tugged it out and tossed it into the back seat. Maybe Richard could take care of that for her, hmm? She had to get something out of the deal. She laughed out loud as she turned the key in the ignition. Or perhaps that was the way to get him to refile for divorce. She could run up unpaid parking tickets all over the city. That would be ridiculously easy. DC’s city government was famously efficient when it came to parking enforcement. Maya would happily—no, gleefully—have a field day with that. Are senator’s wives exempt from the law? Then why does Marie Witherspoon owe thousands of dollars in parking fines to the city? No one should be above the law!

  Some hot tea did sound nice, she thought as she settled into the passenger seat and turned the key. And a hot bath. Maybe a shot of whiskey, she mentally added, even though hard liquor had never been her thing. Maybe if she put the shot of whiskey into the hot tea ... Richard could drive anyone to drink.

  She made her way through the streets of Georgetown, down to M Street and then over the Key Bridge into Virginia. She picked up route 66 to the Dulles Toll Road, the late afternoon sun bright in her eyes. Toll road traffic was heavy but tolerable.

  She wished upon Richard a lifetime of heavy traffic. Soul-sucking traffic.

  “Damn it!” she shouted, followed by a few other choice words, the verbal equivalent of a voodoo doll in Richard’s likeness. Then she took a deep breath. Calm down. A pinpoint of pain was poking at the back of her skull. No point in leaving work early if she made herself too sick to enjoy it.

  How long before her mother began crowing to her friends—who were numerous—about their reconciliation? It had probably already started. And she had joked with Nishi about it but Maya was going to be majorly pissed about this. Suddenly she was no longer Senator Macintyre’s fiancée? This was going to be World War III, Operation Bridezilla, scorched earth edition.

  She had to tell Luc about this before it hit the grapevine. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to DC gossip, or even read the papers much, but Samantha Smith was plugged in. The last thing Marie wanted was for him to hear it from someone else.

  The cars ahead of her braked to a stop as they approached Reston. She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel to give her eyes a rest from the sun, then reached over into her purse for her phone. She plugged it into the dash and scrolled through her music. Beyoncé. That’s what she wanted. Her new album, dark and sexy. None of those single ladies putting a ring on it. She tapped play, cranked up the volume and began to sing along.

  I’m not his little wife either.

  At route 28, Marie normally steered north to get to her apartment complex in Ashburn. Today, she went south toward route 50. Route 50 would take her to Middleburg—and Luc’s house.

  Could nothing in her life be simple, she pondered as the highway miles fell away behind her. What had she done to piss off the universe?

  Oh stop the pity party.

  Richard couldn’t make her reconcile with him. Nor could her mother. What could they do if she simply dug in her heels and refused? She would wait him out. Eventually he would tire of waiting—or Maya would, more likely—and he would file the papers again. Maya was not a patient woman, nor one accustomed to not getting her way. How long could it take?

  Yes, Operation Heel Digging was commencing.

  She let her car glide onto the exit ramp and made her way through Middleburg to Luc’s road. She should have called first, it occurred to her, as she pulled into his driveway. What if he wasn’t home? What if he had a client there ... or another student? He would have mentioned if he had another student, wouldn’t he?

  Maybe not. They rarely discussed their lives when they were together. Sex and drawing, that’s all they talked about.

  Damn it. The windows in his house were dark. She put the car in park and jumped out, then walked around back to the studio. There she breathed a sigh of relief. The studio was lit, the door even ajar. She stuck her head in and saw Luc sitting at an easel, his back to her. He was painting. His grey tee shirt clung to his shoulder muscles, which flexed with each stroke of his paintbrush. He was wearing those faded, worn jeans she loved. And his feet were bare. She loved that, too.

  She rapped on the door frame. No response.

  “Luc?” she said quietly. She didn’t want to startle him while he was painting.

  Still no reaction. Maybe he’d fallen into a coma from the paint fumes. She quietly stepped into the studio and walked toward him. She was two feet away when he turned, smiling, his face open and happy.

  “Marie.” He held open his arms. “I am so happy to see you.”

  She sank into his waiting kiss. His hands opened her coat, brushed her hips, then swept down along her thighs. This was simple, she thought. It had seemed complicated at first, but it wasn’t. Luc wanted her. She wanted him. It didn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

  And she felt safe with him. Here in his studio, it was just the two of them, in their own little world. No one could touch her here. In here, she didn’t have a power-hungry mother or a philandering husband whose motives were governed by poll numbers. Here, she just had him.

  He pushed her coat off her shoulders and tugged gently at the hem of her suit jacket. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he murmured against her lips.

  She let him kiss her again before answering. “I left work early ...” He was kissing her jaw now, heading for her throat. Her brain was beginning to shut down, but enough consciousness was left to tell her that now wasn’t the right time to explain about Richard. “... and my car had a mind of its own. It just sort of drove itself here.”

  She felt him smile against her neck.

  “Hmm. I programmed your ca
r to do that. So all your roads lead to me.”

  He pulled her so tight against him she could barely breathe.

  “Marie. I can’t get enough of you.” His hands were running over her back, then her arms, frustrated by the layers of fabric beneath them, her jacket, her blouse, her skirt.

  Over his shoulder she saw the painting he’d been working on. It was the one of her sleeping, the covers of his bed pulled up almost to her shoulders. She looked ... peaceful. Not lonely or sad, not Hopper-esque.

  Luc pulled away from her throat, sensing her inattention. When he saw where her gaze had gone, he spun the two of them around to face the painting head on. Marie was now sitting on his lap.

  “I’ve never seen myself sleeping before.”

  “It’s a lovely sight. You sleeping in my bed, right where you belong.”

  A thought was forming in the back of Marie’s mind.

  “And this one will go in the show?”

  An idea.

  “Mm-hmm. Though I was thinking about keeping it instead. Actually, I want to keep all of them but Sam tells me she can’t invite people to look at empty walls.”

  A painting of me asleep in Luc’s bed ... a painting of Richard’s wife asleep in another man’s bed ...

  A strategy.

  “I could always pose for this one again, sometime.” She fired a smile of pure, unadulterated wickedness at Luc. She leaned in and licked the curve of his ear. “If you invite me to spend the night again, that is.”

  “You have a standing invitation, ma chérie. Anytime you want.”

  ... Senator Macintyre’s wife sleeping in the bed of artist Luc Marchand.

  What do you do when you find out your spouse is sleeping with someone else?

  Divorce them.

  She had told Richard she was sleeping with “other men.” That hadn’t fazed him, even with her exaggeration. But if other people knew that she was sleeping with someone else, now that might faze him. If he were being openly cuckolded—and the evidence was in a gallery in Dupont Circle where anyone could walk in off the street and take a look—that might force a change of heart.

  This was perfect. Richard would have to refile the papers when Luc’s show opened. There was no way his campaign manager would want her around after that. An ex-wife couldn’t be half as bad for his campaign as a wife who allowed herself to be painted nude by her lover.

  Richard will be livid.

  She kissed Luc long and deep, then looked at him while she held his face tenderly in her hands. She noticed for the first time the stubble shadowing his jaw and the dark circles beneath his eyes. Her eyes flicked up to his hair, which evidently had not seen a comb that day and sported random streaks of paint.

  His stomach rumbled, making her laugh. “Luc, have you been painting since you got up this morning?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “More or less.”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him.

  “Okay, yes. Pretty much non-stop since eight or nine this morning.”

  She ran her thumbs over his whiskers. “You must be starving. Come. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  She stood and tugged him up, too.

  “Uh, yeah, I don’t know how much I have in the kitchen.”

  “Let’s go look. I’m hungry, too.” Lunch seemed like eons ago now, way back before Richard tried to blow up her world. Hah. Well, she had her own little bomb to detonate on his ass—and the timer was ticking.

  Luc closed up the studio and they walked hand in hand back to the house. In the kitchen, Marie opened and closed Luc’s fridge and cupboards. He had milk, eggs, bread, cheese and wine. She could work with that.

  “Omelettes?” she asked as she tied on a black, paint-spattered apron she found hanging on a hook in the pantry.

  He laughed from the small kitchen table, leaning back in his chair. “That’s really your only option, isn’t it?”

  She waved a spatula at him. “Wait ‘til you see dessert.”

  His face went dark and hungry, and he obviously wasn’t thinking about omelettes. “Can’t we have dessert first? It’s an old French tradition.”

  She gathered up a bowl, whisk, skillet. “Well, if you had bothered to eat earlier, we could have had dessert first. But not now. I don’t want you passing out on me.”

  He pouted at her for a moment, but she was unmoved. “We’re eating first.”

  “I like this take-charge Marie. You leave work early, barge into my studio and proceed to cook for me. I’m going to get this down on paper.” He squeezed by her in the kitchen as she cracked eggs into a bowl. From a drawer he pulled out a small sketchpad and a pencil.

  She looked at him incredulously. “Do you keep drawing supplies in every room of the house?”

  He kissed her cheek as he made his way back to the table. “As a matter of fact, I do. One never knows when inspiration will strike.”

  She watched him from the corner of her eye as she mixed the eggs and poured them into the skillet. He was serious. He was actually drawing her puttering around the kitchen. The look of intense concentration on his face was way sexier than it ought to be, too. She turned back to the omelette. If she kept watching Luc, they would end up having dessert first.

  She flipped the omelette, then slid it onto a plate. She uncorked the pinot gris.

  “Don’t wait for me. Eat,” she ordered.

  He frowned at the drawing.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It would work better if you weren’t wearing a business suit under the apron. The lines are too similar.”

  “What should I be wearing then?” she asked as she set to work on a second omelette.

  “Nothing.”

  She looked over at him and shook her head. “You have a one-track mind. Eat.”

  He dug into the omelette like a man starving, washing every other bite down with a gulp of wine. When she joined him at the table with her own plate, he had made a second sketch. He spun it around for her to see. In this one, she was nude beneath the apron. He had made the apron shorter, too, so that it barely grazed the top of her thighs.

  “See?” He retraced the path of his pencil with a finger. “The lines are just better in this one.”

  “You’re not going to put that one in the show, are you?”

  “Why not?” He smiled wickedly at her. “Worried that it shows too domestic a side of you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Somehow I don’t think ‘domestic’ is what people will take away from that.”

  He cocked his head, pretending to consider the drawing further. “Ah, you’re right. Plus, your ex-husband might identify too much with this one.”

  Marie stared down at her omelette, hoping Luc couldn’t see her discomfort. After dinner. I’ll tell him then.

  “Thank you for dinner, Marie. I probably would have fainted from hunger at some point if you hadn’t come along.”

  She glanced over at his plate, now completely empty. He’d practically inhaled the food. “Do you work like that often?”

  He got up and refilled his wine, poured a little more into her glass. “Actually, I haven’t worked like this in years. Well, I haven’t had a show in years. I haven’t deserved a show.”

  She popped the last bite of omelette into her mouth. “It doesn’t seem healthy, working without eating or resting.” She looked pointedly at his whiskered face.

  Her fingers were itching to touch him. She imagined those rough hairs brushing against her cheek, her breasts, her inner thigh.

  He rubbed his jaw, smiling. “Or shaving. No, it feels good to give myself over to it again. It’s what I love.” His eyes dropped to her now-empty plate. “I believe I was promised dessert.”

  His eyes weren’t smiling anymore. They were dark and fiery at the same time, and Marie felt the familiar tug of desire in her hips, low and heavy.

  “Come.” He stood and held out his hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My bed.”

  “Won’t we get cru
mbs in the sheets, if we have dessert in bed?”

  He pulled her to him, reached around to tug on the apron string. The apron fell to the floor, just before he crushed her to his chest. “Fuck the crumbs. After I devour you, I’ll eat them too.”

  In the bedroom, Luc turned on a floor lamp in the corner of the room, casting a soft glow over the bed. He gently removed her suit jacket and carefully draped it over the back of a chair.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever undressed a woman in a business suit,” he said.

  She looked at him skeptically as she stepped out of her pumps.

  “I think you attribute more experience to me than I actually have.”

  She laughed. “Luc, I can tell how much experience you have and it’s a ton.”

  He nuzzled her neck while he reached around and unzipped her skirt, letting it fall to the floor. “Maybe I just have good experience.”

  She began to unbutton her blouse but his hands stilled hers. “I’ll do it.”

  He kneeled in front of her and began unrolling her stockings. Marie moaned as his hands caressed her legs on the way down. The back of her thighs. The dip behind her knees. The curve of her calves. By the time his fingers danced over the instep of her foot, she was quivering with need.

  He tugged her panties off next, then began work on her blouse. As his fingers popped each button through, Marie found it harder and harder to breathe. His smell swirled around her, wine and paint and ... Luc. If she could bottle his scent and wear it all day ... she smiled to herself. She’d be in a highly agitated state twenty-four hours a day.

  When the last button was undone, he carefully slid the silk down her arms and added it to the jacket on the chair. Her bra was the only thing left and he made short work of that, too.

  He looked over her, appraisingly. Marie wished she knew what he was thinking.

  “You are stunning. That’s what I’m thinking.” He smiled, then added, “Sometimes you’re not that hard to read.” He plucked her blouse from the chair and swung it over her shoulders.

  “Put this back on.”

  “Why?” But she did as he asked.