The Reluctant Nude

by Meg Maguire

  “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 with a devilish smirk.

  “Fine, I’ll take a look.”

  “When I was a child,” he said, still sketching, “I lived in a place a bit like this. In France, near the ocean. A tiny village in Brittany. Everything rundown, everyone poor. Small houses and clear air. The sea. So quiet.” He sounded far away, thinking of these things.

  “It sounds very…idyllic.”

  “Like everything in childhood, looking back.”

  “I guess.”

  He glanced up. “You do not pine for your childhood?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t that amazing, to be honest.”

  “I am sad to hear that.” His earnest stare held Fallon hostage. “I did not get a very long childhood, myself. Perhaps we only pine for what is taken from us.” His eyes finally released hers and he went back to his work, arm muscles twitching and flexing, distracting her.

  “I, um… How long do I need to stay here today? I need to make a couple phone calls. For work,” Fallon lied, desperate for some notion of when she’d be free of this man and his unsettling ways.

  “Very well…give me two more hours. I will make lunch and do a quick bust, and then you may go.”

  “Oh, good.”

  That lopsided smile again. “You do not like me.” He sounded pleased by the idea.

  “I don’t know you, yet.”

  “But you suspect that you do not like me.”

  Fallon sat up straight. “I find you extremely disquieting.”

  “That is good. That’s a new adjective. I have not been called that before.”

  “And self-important.”

  “That one, I have heard.” His hand sketched away. “Though I assure you I am of little importance.”

  Fallon bit her lip, flustered.

  “I do not think I like you, either,” Max said, suddenly standing. “I think you will get on my nerves very greatly.” He dropped his tool belt with a clatter.

  Fallon swiveled her butt on the chair, addressing his long back as he strode to the fridge. “Oh, really? Weren’t you just eager to celebrate my birthday?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s okay. I very much like having my nerves gotten upon. The people I don’t like are so much more interesting than the ones who please me.”

  Fallon put her finger on why this man bothered her so much. This was a game to him. And to her it was very, very serious.

  “You talk about people like they’re objects, or specimens.”

  “To me,” he said, rummaging in the fridge and setting containers on the counter, “they are.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Don’t worry. I am not a sociopath.” He shut the fridge and turned to her. “But you have to understand that for my work, I dissect people. Visually. Spiritually, maybe.” He slid a knife from a block and wiggled the blade in her direction. “It is my job to open you up and see how all of your little gears work, then I put you back together in a piece of stone. And if I can’t stand you, then it will be that much more fun, you see?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, I suppose you will just have to take my word for it, then.”

  Fallon rolled her eyes and held her tongue. A few minutes later Max handed her a bowl of thick-sliced mozzarella cheese and olive oil, cherry tomatoes and crushed basil from his garden.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, still tender from his insensitive conversational style. She wanted to chalk it up to a cultural rift, but she’d met plenty of French people in her life and none of them were half as brusque as this one.

  Max gathered utensils, shutting the drawer with a well-placed swing of his hip. He gave her a fork and a napkin and went back for a bottle of wine and a glass. He sat and poured her a healthy measure of cabernet. She accepted it with wide eyes, and he clanked the bottle against the glass and took a swig.

  “À la votre.”

  “Cheers,” she said dubiously and took a tiny sip.

  “So, tell me more about your fiancé.” Max’s smile could only be described as wicked. He licked the red off his lips.

  “Well,” Fallon began, feeling nauseous. Why had she bothered lying about that? If she’d known how galling Max Emery would turn out to be, she wouldn’t have wasted her time worrying what he might think of her. “He’s a property developer. And an art enthusiast, obviously.”

  “You live together?”

  “No. Not yet, I mean.”

  He nodded, openly skeptical.

  “You clearly don’t care for him, and you’ve never even met him.”

  “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, Fallo
n 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 bag. “That both of you—you and that cat.” He nodded to it. “You arrived here in very much the same fashion. On my doorstep, barely invited, demanding and ungrateful.” He laughed. “And yet I still feed you both.”

  Fallon was torn between seething anger and amusement—his playful tone made it impossible to interpret how mean he was trying to be.

  Max met her eyes. “And if I stroked either of you the wrong way, I doubt very much that you’d hesitate to sink your claws into me.” He began wedging a ball of clay against the tabletop. “Funny, no?”

  “Hilarious,” she said, cold. “I can’t imagine why you keep letting us in.”

  “It’s only that I find one of you so very pleasant. And the other,” he added, staring blatantly at her, “will just have to grow on me.”

  Fallon held down the three button on her cell phone and listened to the tone as it speed-dialed. She glanced around the inn’s far-too-quaint bedroom, praying Rachel was home from work by now.

  “Well, hello, weary traveler!”

  Fallon didn’t think she’d ever been so relieved to hear her best friend’s voice. “Hey, Rache. Greetings from Cape Breton.”

  She heard stretching behind Rachel’s words, the sounds of her getting comfortable. Probably on their ratty, overstuffed sofa. Homesickness hit Fallon like a truck.

  “So, how does it feel?” Rachel asked. “Being a famous artist’s muse?”

  Fallon let rip a sigh of utmost exasperation. “Oh my God, what am I doing here?”

  “Wish I knew, Fal. Preserving your childhood, if I understood you correctly. More importantly though, what’s he like? This M.L. Emery character? Norman Rockwell or Andy Warhol?”

  “Neither. He’s…odd. Really odd.”

  “Artist,” Rachel said, as if this were an affliction with a predictable set of symptoms. “Naturally. But details, please? What sort of oddball’s gawking at your nakedness?”

  Fallon flinched. “He’s not, yet. I need you to Google him for me. There’s no internet at my bed and breakfast.”

  “Ooh, what about him?”

  Fallon heard a chair scrape on the other end of the line and the chime of a computer waking up. “Just the basics, I guess. I was massively unprepared today.”

  “I thought you looked him up before you left.”

  “I looked up his work, so I’d know what sort of thing I was getting myself into. Then all I saw was naked people and I kind of ran away from the computer.”

  “You’re such a prude.” The sounds of typing, then a pause. “Wow, he’s only thirty-three?”

  “Yeah. That was the biggest surprise.”

  “Right…”

  Fallon itched with impatience. “So?”

  “Sorry, just reading. ‘M.L. Emery, thirty-three, born in the village of Manent, France. Discovered at…’ Whoa!”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. ‘Discovered at age twelve and brought by a benefactor to England to study classical sculpture.’ Wow, a phenom.”

  “What else?” Fallon toyed with the fringe bordering a throw pillow.

  “Let’s see…moved into his own London studio at age fifteen, New York at nineteen, blah blah gallery names, blah blah eccentric, press-shy, recluse, blah blah blah. Bunch of name-dropping, mostly.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Let me try another site,” Rachel said.

  “Wife? Kids?”

  “I’m working on it—holy shit!”

  “What?”

  “Dude. He is seriously sexy.”

  Fallon rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on.”

  “‘The artist in his studio,’” Rachel said, apparently reading a caption. “I mean, damn. Is that why you want to know if he’s married?”

  “No. Definitely not. I just…I don’t get him. I was curious.” She groaned, flustered. “I was expecting some old guy, you know, and he’s like… I don’t know.”

  She heard more clicking on Rachel’s end.

  “Is he tall?” Rachel demanded, always her first question about any friend’s new love interest.

  “Dunno, a bit. Six feet?”

  “Tall enough,” Rachel said. “Does he have an accent still?”

  “He’s got a couple.”

  “Hot, Fallon. Does he need anyone else to get naked for him? You know, for art?”

  “Ha ha, easy for you to say. He’s like, way too intense.”

  “And how is that not hot?”

  “You know me,” Fallon said. “I don’t do intense.”

  “Who do you do, then?” Rachel asked in a bored voice, followed by more clicking. “Jesus, Fal, can I come for a visit?”

  “Take a cold shower, please. Give your boyfriend a jump.”

  “Oh, whoa!”

  “What?”

  “Listen to this.” Rachel cleared her throat officiously. “Bear in mind this website looks a bit gossipy. ‘It is widely speculated that Emery faked a self-destructive addiction to heroin at the height of his commercial career in order to withdraw from the high-profile art scene. After leaving Manhattan, he gained further notoriety by abandoning his trademark sensual nudes in favor of an extensive foray sculpting subjects with serious physical deformities. The switch was called a gimmick by critics in the art world, though Emery never promoted the studies, sold the pieces, or granted interviews on the subject. He currently resides in Nova Scotia and has not spoken to any member of the press in over seven years.’ Whoa.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’m not seeing anything about wives or children, Fal. Lucky, lucky you. How long are you stuck taking your clothes off for this controversial Frenchman?”

  Fallon groaned again, tempted to smother herself with the pillow. “Three months.”

  “Yikes. That’s okay for work?”

  “It’ll have to be. Feel like watering my plants?”

  Rachel laughed. “Three months? I’ll be renting your room and office out to transients by the end of the week.”

  “Cute.”

  “Only to supplement your lack of income. We’ve still got a mortgage to pay. Well, it’s good to hear you landed safe, anyhow. Even if you sound a bit miserable.”

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t whine. This is worth it.” Fallon adopted it then as the mantra she’d need to keep her sanity intact for the next twelve weeks.


  “Give it a chance, before you knock it,” Rachel said. “It might liberate you.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Seriously. Intense or not, this experience could be really interesting. Give him a shot. You never give anyone a chance to stick around long enough to grow on you. Except me, and that’s only because you couldn’t get rid of me.”

  “That’s an exaggeration,” Fallon said defensively.

  “If you say so. This could be good, you being trapped with some freaky artist. It might get you out of your element, shake up those safe little routines you’re addicted to.”

  “You think it’s a good thing that I have to get naked in order to keep my biggest rival from bulldozing Gloria’s house?”

  “No, sweetie, I’m just looking for a silver lining. It’s hard not to, with a situation this weird.” Rachel sounded strained. “Damn it, I wish you could just sue him.”

  “Even if he got put away for being a complete creep, that still wouldn’t save the property. Some other greedy old man could buy it and turn it into a strip mall. As disgusting as this deal is, it’s the only chance I have to ensure that the house can’t get knocked down.”

  “You have his word on that?” Rachel asked.

  “In writing. He gets the statue, I get the deed.”

  “What sort of a rich douchebag can even afford to play such creepy games?”

  “The same one who’s ruined half the wetlands I’ve fought to preserve, among other things.”

  Rachel made an exasperated noise. “Is he actually hot for you, or is this like him being sick?”

  “Who knows. Vindictive or perverted, does it even make a difference?”

  “Well, it’s effed up. What have you ever done to him?”

  “Ruined a few multi-million-dollar real estate deals.”

  “True. Which you should be home doing now.”

  “No shit,” Fallon said and instantly regretted it. “Sorry. I don’t mean to snap at you. It was just such a weird-ass day.”

  “Be as snappy as you want. It sounds like you’re stuck between a perv and an eccentric place. But try and remember that Emery’s not Forrester. Try and at least enjoy getting nakers for him, just to spite the man you’re actually supposed to be creeped out by.”