True Colors

by Judith Arnold

  Chapter Eleven

   

  The next morning, Emma was still freaking out.

  She hadn’t slept well. More accurately, she hadn’t slept at all. Infused with a nasty mixture of adrenaline, bewilderment, and sweat-inducing arousal, she’d lain in bed, trying to figure out what the hell had happened between her and Max outside the Faulk Street Tavern.

  Inside the Faulk Street Tavern, too. The whole thing had started when that damned song had started playing.

  That blessed song.

  She was in love. No, she wasn’t.

  She was in lust. No, it was more than that.

  She was in trouble. That much was certain.

  Good God. Who would have guessed that Max Tarloff could kiss like Casanova on steroids? She couldn’t recall ever being so turned on by a few kisses. She couldn’t recall ever being so turned on at all.

  And he was her flipping landlord. And she was supposed to paint him. Definitely, she was in trouble.

  She hadn’t told Monica about the encounter outside the pub. When Emma had rejoined her friend at their booth, Monica had immediately started pumping her for information about her conversation with Nick Fiore. Emma had welcomed the distraction, happily discussing the possibility of scoring some studio space at the community center. “If you can work at the center, you’ll probably attract a lot more students,” Monica had pointed out. “You can post class schedules on the bulletin boards there, and in the center’s newsletters. This could work out fabulously, Emma! Not only would you have space to teach, but you’d generate a lot more income. People would go to the center, swim a few laps, and then spend an hour painting—and paying you.”

  “If,” Emma had emphasized. “First I have to see if there’s a room at the center I can use.” Even if there was, Emma’s housing problem would not be solved. But if the community center worked out, she could live in someone’s basement or above someone’s garage and not have to worry about breaking zoning laws by conducting her art classes in a non-commercial venue.

  For all his fussing about those stupid zoning laws, Max seemed to have no objection to her beginning work on his portrait in his not-zoned-for-commercial-use house. Of course, all she would be doing today would be photographing him and interviewing him a bit, so she could get a sense of what his dreams were for the background imagery.

  The thought of interviewing him made her queasy. The thought of being alone in the house with him made her giddy. She was tempted to beg Monica to take the day off and stay home, but then she would have to explain why. What would she say? “Max and I need a chaperone so we won’t jump each other’s bones the minute he gets here.”

  She couldn’t talk about her steamy interlude outside the Faulk Street Tavern with Max, not even with her best friend. Not until she’d made sense of it—which seemed pretty freaking impossible.

  Tired of lying in bed, battling insomnia while her brain tied itself in macramé knots, she’d arisen at five and gotten to work framing Ava Lowery’s painting. The frame she’d purchased after she and Monica left the pub yesterday evening complemented the painting beautifully. Ava’s parents would be pleased. Ava—the little princess—would be ecstatic.

  Emma waited until after Monica had left for the Ocean Bluff Inn and she had the house to herself before showering, attempting futilely to tame her hair with a round brush and her blow-drier, and fretting far longer than necessary about what to wear. Her baggy, paint-speckled jeans and overalls made her look like an artist, but they weren’t exactly flattering. Her few skirts were flattering, but they would set too formal a tone for her morning session with Max. She tried on three different tops before settling on a cotton sweater in a bright turquoise shade and a pair of khaki slacks that had seen better days—but then, all of her clothing had seen better days. Once she and Claudio had broken up and she’d had to fend for herself, her budget hadn’t allowed for splurges at New York City’s boutiques and department stores. Even the consignment shops in her Dumbo neighborhood had been too pricy for her.

  She fussed some more with hair before giving up and letting it curl any which way it wanted. She checked her watch four times. She tested her digital camera to make sure it didn’t need new batteries. She choked down a cup of coffee, then brushed her teeth. Not that she and Max were going to kiss again. She just didn’t want to have coffee breath.

  At a few minutes past nine, the doorbell rang. She gave herself a mental slap on the cheek and a stern reminder that she was a painter and this was a professional engagement, that if Max decided to go forward with the project, she would charge him for her time and talent, that—for God’s sake—he was her landlord. That his willingness to consider having her paint his dream portrait and his offer to help her find studio space had meant nothing more than that he’d fallen under a weird spell cast by a Cyndi Lauper song in an antiquated jukebox with peacocks on it.

  The song’s weird spell was why they’d kissed, she reminded herself. Yesterday’s spasm of lust wouldn’t have occurred if “True Colors” hadn’t suddenly escaped the jukebox and filled the air when he’d stepped inside the bar.

  You are an artist, she lectured herself as she descended the stairs. Glimpsing Max on the front porch through the narrow sidelight framing the door, she added, you are a tenant.

  One more deep breath, and she opened the door. “Hi,” she said brightly.

  His smile was hesitant. Did he want to back out? Did he want to run for cover? She wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  But she hoped he wouldn’t, because he was so… damn, so gorgeous. The sky was overcast, but enough morning light seeped through the filmy white clouds to illuminate the striking geometry of his face. Such piercing eyes, such a strong, sharp chin. All that thick, dark hair, as disheveled as her own. Had he blow-dried his hair, too? Had it fought all attempts to tame it, the way hers had?

  “Come in,” she said, doing an admirable job of behaving as if nothing R-rated had occurred between them yesterday.

  He followed her down the entry hall, his footsteps slow but steady. If he wasn’t racing up the stairs to the loft in an eager rush to pose for her, he wasn’t bolting in retreat, either. He’d dressed in jeans and a ribbed gray sweater that teetered on the narrow line between geeky and stylish but that made her unfortunately aware of his lean, beautifully proportioned physique.

  At the top of the stairs, he gazed around. She’d tidied up the loft, although with her art supplies stacked on open shelves and the rumpled drop cloths blanketing the floor, the open space was never going to look neat—not until Max kicked her out and reclaimed the house for himself.

  She’d set a stool out for him to sit on, far enough from the work table and easels so she could circle it easily and close enough to the wall of glass for the milky morning light to illuminate his face. His gaze circled the loft, then settled on the stool. “Am I supposed to sit there?” he asked. He sounded kind of apprehensive.

  “The seat of honor,” she said, flourishing her hand as if it was a royal throne and he was a king.

  “I’m supposed to sit on this stool while you paint me?” He lowered himself onto it and frowned. “It’s not very comfortable.”

  “I’m not going to paint you while you sit there,” she explained, crossing to the table for her camera. “That would be a waste of your time. What I’ll do is take a bunch of photos of you and paint from them.”

  He eyed her camera warily. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said.

  He almost made the words sound sexual. Or else maybe she was just imagining an innuendo where none existed. Yet she appreciated his willingness to let her see his discomfort. Maybe she should stop trying to act as if this was just a typical job for her.

  “Okay,” she said, then forced a smile. “Here’s how it works. I take a bunch of photos of you, and I ask you a bunch of questions about your dreams.”

  “My dreams?”

  “Not your bedtime dreams.” She felt a blush warm her cheeks when she
uttered the word “bedtime.”

  He didn’t seem terribly rattled by her reference to bedtime, though, so she soldiered on. “I paint what I call Dream Portraits. That’s a portrait of you surrounded by the things you dream about. Like Ava Lowery’s portrait.” She pulled Ava’s painting away from the wall, where she’d propped it after framing it, and displayed it for him. “She dreams of being a princess, so I painted her surrounded by princess things.”

  “I don’t dream of being a princess,” Max said.

  Emma laughed. “That’s a relief.”

  He lapsed into thought for a moment. “I’m not sure…I mean, to talk about my dreams? I don’t know. That’s personal.”

  The way we kissed was personal, too, she almost pointed out. Opting for discretion, she said, “Painting you is personal,” as she returned Ava’s painting to its resting place against the wall.

  “Yes, but…my dreams?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll just talk.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, apparently at a loss.

  “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to.”

  “You want to, though. You told me you wanted to paint me.”

  “I do,” she admitted.

  “Emma.” He stared at her, his eyes so intense, so focused, his gaze felt like a physical touch. “About last night—”

  “No,” she said quickly. “No, no, no. Today is about painting. Not about…that.”

  “Everything is about that,” he said, sounding unnervingly wise.

  “All right. Look. I can paint your portrait. You can pay me for the painting. Or not,” she hastily added when she saw his brow dip in a frown. “Because I owe you for holding art classes in your house. Right?” She was ad-libbing, trying to read his mind, trying to figure out how to make the situation feel less awkward and less… Damn it. Sexual. Maybe she wanted to paint Max’s portrait only because painting him was safer than screwing him would be. Both were intimate acts, though. Both involved the dropping of defensive layers, the casting aside of self-protective shields.

  He smiled wryly. “How much were you planning to charge me?”

  “That depends on how detailed the painting is,” she said. “Why don’t I take some photos, and we’ll discuss your dreams, and then I’ll be able to assess what the painting will entail.” Entail. His word. Now he had her saying it.

  She turned her camera on, listened to its motor hum to life, and scrutinized him in the pale morning light. His features would be thrown into stronger relief if she adjusted his head slightly, but she was afraid to touch him. “Could you just turn a little to the right?” she asked.

  He shifted on the stool. His expression was pained.

  “This isn’t going to hurt,” she assured him.

  “I feel self-conscious.”

  “No kidding.” That coaxed a smile out of him, and she smiled, too.

  “I really don’t like being in the spotlight.”

  “Once I have this painting done, you can hide in the shadows. People can admire your portrait and ignore you.”

  He chuckled.

  She started snapping pictures. Usually she was full of patter and jokes, eager to put her subjects at ease. But Max wasn’t just any subject, and although she’d managed to tickle a laugh out of him, she felt as self-conscious as he apparently did. Trying to come up with clever chatter would tire her out, so she decided to skip the light stuff and go straight to the heavy. “Tell me about your dreams.”

  “I dream of not being in the spotlight,” he said.

  She smiled tolerantly and continued photographing him. “Besides that dream.”

  He shrugged, then cringed , as if afraid he’d ruined something by moving.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “You can move if you want. I’m going to take a ton of photos, so if some of them come out blurry, no big deal.”

  “I can move, but I can’t move out of the spotlight,” he muttered, although his eyes were bright with amusement. “I don’t know. I don’t dream about big things. Most of my dreams have already come true,” he said, his smile gone.

  He looked so somber, she snorted. “You sure seem thrilled about that.”

  He shot her a look. The motion caused the morning light to shift across his face. She could gently nudge his head back to where she wanted it, but she still felt nervous about touching him, even in a professional way. Instead, she decided to snap a few photos of him with shadows angling across his features. “Sometimes,” he said, “when your dreams come true, things don’t turn out quite the way you expected when you first dreamed them.”

  “Do you want me to paint some disappointments into your portrait? I guess I can do that. The Dream Portraits I do are usually upbeat and inspiring. And fun. Like Ava’s princess portrait. Back in Brooklyn, when I was developing the concept, I painted a ballet dancer I knew, surrounded by all the roles she dreamed about dancing. But I suppose I could do a depressing painting, if that’s what you want.”

  “Of course it’s not what I want,” he retorted. “All right, then. Upbeat and inspiring dreams. Let me think.” His expression changed again, growing pensive as he ruminated. He gazed out the window for a long, silent minute, then said, “I’ve always dreamed of having a home with an ocean view.”

  “Then this must be your dream house,” she said, trying to capture with her camera the reflective cast of his eyes, the tilt of his head.

  To her surprise, he laughed again. After a bit more thought, he said, “The two apartments where I lived in Brooklyn were both a few blocks from the beach. But all I could see from our windows was the street and the air shaft between our building and the next one. Where I live in San Francisco—Pacific Heights—I can see the bay. Not the ocean, though.”

  “But you can see the ocean from this house. Why do you want to sell it?”

  “Because I don’t live or work in Massachusetts?” he suggested, turning the statement into a question as if he expected her to grade him right or wrong.

  “Tell me about your work,” she said. “Do you have a dream job?”

  “Yes.”

  That caught her by surprise. She wasn’t exactly sure what he did for a living. If the ridiculously below-market rent he was charging her and Monica indicated anything, he wasn’t the sharpest businessman she’d ever encountered.

  “I run a foundation,” he told her.

  “Cool!” That sounded grand, both altruistic and powerful. “What kind of foundation?”

  “We focus mostly on education for impoverished children and immigrants. My parents had good educations in Russia, even though when they moved here they wound up with jobs that didn’t put their education to use. But they knew it was important for me to learn English and study hard. With a lot of immigrant children, their parents are so overwhelmed that the children don’t get the kind of encouragement I got. They need extra support. Their parents need language skills. California is full of immigrants from Latin and South America and Asia, and my foundation funnels grants into programs for them. But we work with programs all over the country. Some programs in Africa, too.”

  “Wow. That is so cool. No—it’s noble.”

  “Feel free to worship me.”

  “I’ll paint your portrait, like the Renaissance painters used to paint their royal patrons.” She moved behind him and snapped some photos of his back. He had strong, solid shoulders. Shoulders she wanted to wrap her arms around, the way she had last night. She gave her head a brisk jerk, as if she could shake off the thought like a dog shaking water off its fur after a swim in a pond.

  The fact was, she had bigger problems than merely the distraction of Max’s appearance, which was as appealing from the back as from the front. How on earth could she depict his dreams of educating immigrants in a painting? What was the visual peg on which she could hang this portrait? If she was going to create a Dream Portrait of him, she needed more to go on than educating immigrant children.

  “Have you been to Afri
ca?”

  “I’ve visited Malawi,” he told her. “We contribute to a program there, run by Unicef. But I was there for only a couple of days, just to make sure the funds were being used properly. We didn’t want our money to wind up in some corrupt politician’s pocket.”

  She sighed. As noble as his work sounded, Africa seemed like a non-starter for her painting. “Do you have any hobbies?” she asked hopefully.

  He thought for a minute. “I shoot hoops with friends a couple of nights a week. I go hiking—not too often, but I enjoy it.”

  Wonderful, she thought sarcastically. She could paint a knapsack.

  “I play chess.”

  “Of course. You’re from Russia,” she teased.

  “Not all Russians play chess,” he argued. “I just like the mental challenge. I’m no champion, but I enjoy it. Sometimes I play against my computer. I usually win.”

  “Do you read? Play a musical instrument?”

  He winced. “I studied violin for six years and hated every minute of it.”

  “Six years? You must have been pretty good.”

  “I wasn’t good at all. And I hated it.”

  Maybe she could paint a violin with an ax smashing through it. Great. A broken violin and a knapsack. She could call this one a Nightmare Portrait instead of a Dream Portrait. A chess board had possibilities, though.

  “Do you have any pets?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She thought of him, living all by himself in his apartment with its San Francisco Bay view. Then she thought of him not living by himself. “Do you have a wife?” she asked.

  He flinched, then spun around on the stool to face her. “Do you think I would have kissed you if I did?”

  “Some men would,” she said, trying not to shrink from the intensity of his stare.

  “I’m not one of them.”

  “Well. Good.” She smiled, trying to lighten the moment.

  He didn’t return her smile. Instead, he reached out and snagged her wrist, nearly making her drop her camera. He pulled her toward him, then rose from the stool. “If I had a wife,” he murmured, “I wouldn’t be making love to you.”

  She opened her mouth to point out that he wasn’t making love to her. And then she understood what his fierce, hungry gaze was telling her. Standing so close to him, feeling his fingers circling her wrist, warm and firm but not forcing, she knew that hunger. She felt it just as fiercely.

  In his eyes, she saw his true colors. He was a stern, solemn property owner, someone who did good works and obeyed zoning laws. But he was also a man burning with desire. A man who would make love to her.

  She knew it. She wanted it.

  With his free hand, he pried the camera from her grip and set it on the stool. Then he slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to himself, much closer. So close her breasts pressed into his chest when she inhaled. She needed that breath, though, because once he took her mouth with his, breathing was impossible.

  They kissed. And kissed. They kissed like last night—no, not like last night. This kiss was deeper, wilder, needier. This kiss wedded not just their lips and tongues but their souls. Her hands fisted on his shoulders, those broad, strong shoulders she’d been admiring just minutes ago as she’d snapped photos of his back, and he cupped one hand over the curve of her bottom, drawing her against him, letting her feel his arousal. His other hand made its way to her head, where he tangled his fingers into her hair, the stubborn waves and curls that had refused to relax beneath her blow drier earlier that morning. That her hair was a mess didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

  After an endless minute, he tore his mouth from hers, but only to graze her cheeks, her brow, the soft, vulnerable skin of her throat. She felt her legs sway beneath her, and he tightened his grip on her butt, guiding her against the bulge beneath his fly. He unraveled his other hand from her hair only to tug at her shirt, skimming it up so he could slide his hand across the skin of her back. Her skin was warm, but his hand was hot. Everywhere he touched, she felt a burning deep inside.

  She brought her hands forward and down, resisting the urge to forge a direct path to his fly and instead shoving his sweater upward. He leaned back far enough for her to pull it over his head, along with the gray T-shirt he had on underneath. He released her to free his arms from the sleeves and tossed the garments aside. His gaze strayed past her and he muttered, “The window.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, staring at his chest. It was perfect—not too bulked up, not too lean. Streamlined muscle, a scant growth of hair along his sternum, a flat, hard stomach punctuated by a narrow navel framed in another smattering of dark hair. She wanted to paint him shirtless. She wanted to paint him naked. The hell with painting—she just wanted him naked.

  “It’s all glass, Emma,” he said, his voice cracking slightly as she stroked her hand lightly across his pecs.

  “We’re too high for anyone to see us,” she assured him, thinking, I’m high on you. I’m high on this. The loft was on the second floor, and the nearest neighbor lived several acres away, with enough trees between the two properties to obscure that house. If she couldn’t see it, she assumed that no one in that house could see her and Max. And even if they could, she didn’t care. The thought of stopping what they were doing for the time it took to walk to her bedroom was unbearable.

  Max apparently needed little persuasion. He yanked her shirt off and groaned as he gazed at her chest, her breasts straining against the stretchy cups of her bra. She’d never been one for lacy, flimsy underthings, and her bra was strictly utilitarian. Maybe that was why Max wasted little time in flicking open the clasp and slipping it down her arms and away. A rumble of sound, want and pleasure and anguish, rose from his throat. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “I was thinking the same thing about you,” she whispered, lowering her mouth to kiss one flat, tan nipple.

  He gasped, twined both hands into her hair and pulled her head away, only to lock his lips to hers once more. Their tongues dueled, their breaths merged. Their hands moved simultaneously down to their slacks, Emma fumbling with the fly of his jeans, Max deftly locating the fly of her khakis. He got hers undone first, and she felt the fabric shimmy down her legs. He slipped his hands under the elastic of her panties and shoved them away, then wedged one hand between her thighs, pressing, sliding deep, spreading her dampness with his fingertips.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t get his damned jeans off him. She was shaking, much too close to coming.

  She heard a faint laugh from him as he nudged her scrabbling fingers away with his free hand and popped the button of his waistband. The zipper made a hissing noise and then he sprang free of the denim, large and hard and… God, yes. Beautiful.

  Reflexively, she arched one leg around his. He laughed again. “Not standing up,” he whispered. “We’ll kill ourselves.”

  If they did, she die happy. But she pulled back from him long enough to survey the loft. The table had too many art supplies on it. The stool wasn’t stable. The canvas drop cloth was thick and stiff and spattered with paint.

  He grabbed her hand and started toward the stairs. All right, so they’d abandon the loft, her favorite place in the whole house, a room open to the magnificence of the surrounding landscape, the ocean view. They’d walk down the stairs and around to her bedroom. They’d be reasonable and civilized, and…

  No. The stairs were covered in soft carpeting. That would do.

  At the top stair, she pushed him down. With a startled gasp, he sat, and before he could question her she straddled him, settling onto his lap, her thighs sandwiching his hips and his erection rising between their bodies. She bowed to kiss his mouth.

  Another sexy sound growled up from his throat, his chest. If he’d had any thoughts of speaking, let alone wandering through the house to her bed, he abandoned them. Instead, he kissed her back, flexed beneath her, gathered her breasts in his hands and kneaded them, stroking her
nipples with his thumbs. He broke the kiss and lifted her higher so he could replace his hands with his lips, nuzzling, licking, gorging himself on her breasts. She reached down between them, lifted her hips, guided him into her.

  They moaned in harmony. They rocked in synchronicity. He arched against her as she pumped against him. Her body tensed, trembled, teetered on the edge of bliss…and then exploded in a cascade of deep, aching pulses. She collapsed against him and he held her, panting, sighing, gradually growing still beneath her.

  For the first time since moving into this house last autumn, Emma decided that she liked the carpeting, after all.