Drawing Lessons Read online

  She dropped her weekend bag on the floor. He turned around.

  “Marie! Good morning.” He strode over to her, barefoot, and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head.

  He wore grey, paint-spattered sweatpants that hung off his narrow hips and a loose tee shirt, an outfit he managed to make unbelievably sexy in Marie’s eyes. Or maybe that was just because she’d spent the rest of the week obsessing over him. He could wear a burlap sack and she wouldn’t care at this point.

  “I thought we’d do some still lifes today,” he went on. “Do you feel up to that?”

  Her heart dropped. What happened to the modeling? That’s really what she wanted to do today, not draw.

  Was it possible that he had forgotten? Or reconsidered? Maybe that whole scene in the museum had been a dream, too.

  “Sure,” she replied.

  She looked around his studio. There were two new canvases up since last weekend, with paintings in progress. Paper sketches were tacked up to the walls. Coffee mugs and wine glasses littered his work table. She looked back at Luc, who was rubbing his jaw as he looked at her sketchbook. He hadn’t shaved that morning. He looked distracted and his studio looked as though he’d been busy this week.

  “I’ll make us coffee while you get started,” he said.

  He had definitely forgotten. She sighed inwardly and pulled her sketchbook and pencil from her bag. Oh well. She could live on the memory of that kiss from the museum, dream or no, for awhile.

  But I wanted to model for you.

  She stared at the flowers, trying to isolate their lines and shadows. Flowers were hard, and Marie wasn’t sure she was up to hard this morning. She leaned in and ran her finger down one of the stalks. Luc was right; touching things helped her see them better. But how did he draw things he couldn’t touch? She was half afraid to ask.

  Instead she busied herself drawing. Occasionally Luc would wander over and add some new object to the tableau. A spoon, a glass of water, some scattered coffee beans, spilled sugar. She rubbed the sugar between her fingers. Impossible. How could she touch sugar and understand how to draw it? He was fucking with her now.

  At noon, someone rapped on the door. She turned her head to see Luc carrying a white pizza box into the studio’s kitchenette.

  “Hungry?” He smiled at her.

  She was, she realized.

  “You’re looking at me like I’ve just grown a second head,” he added.

  “I never pictured you and pizza together.”

  “Why not?” He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.

  She shrugged.

  “Marie.” How was it that he could infuse her name with so much impatience and exasperation? “Shrugging is not answering the question. Come, sit down.”

  She pulled out a chair at the small table in the kitchen. “I don’t know. It seems too normal for you.”

  He laughed as he set two plates on the table, then the glasses of wine.

  “Believe it or not, I consider myself to be perfectly normal.”

  They ate in silence for several minutes, then Luc reached over and took her hand. He rubbed her aching knuckles. She winced.

  “You need a break, don’t you?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Are you still willing to model for me?”

  She looked at him and was surprised to see a wary hopefulness on his face. Maybe he hadn’t brought it up earlier because he wasn’t sure she still wanted to.

  She was dying to, of course.

  “I would like to draw you, Marie. But only if you want to.”

  “I do,” she replied.

  He sipped his wine, watching her. Marie felt her body grow warm under his gaze.

  “And you were naked in your dream?” he probed.

  A wave of heat spread over her face and neck but she nodded assent. She had worn only his gaze.

  “It was like an ordinary figure drawing class,” she started to explain. “Only you were the only student.”

  “And are you okay with that? Posing nude for me?”

  “I want to be okay with it.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  She hesitated before answering. In her dream it had been so liberating to openly sit there and let him look at her body. Of course, the dream began with her already naked and sitting on the stool. It conveniently skipped over the part where she had to actually take off her clothes in front of him. And that was the part that gave her pause now. Could she pull her sweater off, her bra, her jeans? Could she really do that in front of him?

  They had kissed. She had felt his erection against her stomach. She had confessed that she wanted him to touch her. But she’d never been naked in front of him. It was an arousing idea, modeling nude for Luc, but she wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

  She hid behind her glass of wine, letting the dark red liquid trickle down her throat. The wine was cold compared to the heat raging in her chest. She could barely stand the intensity of his gaze now—what would it be like while she modeled?

  “I don’t want to do it if you’re not a hundred percent certain, Marie.”

  “Ninety-nine percent?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want you to do something you’re going to regret later.” He stood and whisked away their plates. When he returned, he held out his hand and pulled her up from the chair. “What if I go first? Would that make you more comfortable?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. She watched as he rooted through a sizable collection of chairs and stools in the far corner of his studio, all jammed together like commuters on Metro. After some minutes of consideration, he pulled out an old wingchair upholstered in a fabric so faded and threadbare the original pattern was no longer discernible. He carried it to the center of the studio and set it down.

  When he pulled his tee shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, Marie’s heart nearly stopped. He pushed his sweat pants down over his hips and calves, stepping out of them. He kicked them aside.

  “You’re going to draw me.” He hooked his thumb beneath the waistband of his black boxer briefs. “On or off?”

  Marie’s eyes widened. “On.” Not that she didn’t want to see him nude. In fact, she’d spent way too much time in the past several days imagining just that state of affairs. Her face grew warm at the thought.

  He shot her a disappointed look.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for figure drawing yet.” She gestured toward the flowers and other objects she’d spent the morning staring at. “There’s a big difference between still life and figure drawing.”

  Luc chuckled and took a seat on the chair, leaning back into the upholstery and stretching his legs out in front of him. “Hmm. This is rather comfortable.” He slapped the arms of the chair lightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever used this chair. Get your sketchbook. Go.”

  “This is going to be terrible, I’m warning you.” She pulled a chair over and balanced the sketchpad on her knees.

  “Closer, Marie. You can barely see me from over there.”

  “I can see you fine.” But she scooted the chair a few inches closer.

  He rolled his eyes. “Another foot or so, please.”

  She was way too close to him now. She could barely see straight. She certainly couldn’t think straight, though that probably had something to do with her holding her breath. That he had left his briefs on really made little difference. There was still so much of him on display.

  She’d drawn from live models in college, but they had tended toward the skinny, pale, ill-fed look.

  Luc Marchand didn’t look like that.

  Non.

  Not at all.

  One, two, three, four, five, six. Yep, six, Marie counted. She’d never actually seen that particular body phenomenon live and in the flesh. Only in pictures and movies. Luc Marchand was a little more built than she had expected. In clothing he looked tall and lean, but now she could see that he was, in fact, well muscled.

  “Marie? Are you goin
g to draw?”

  Luc’s words brought her back to the present. She closed her mouth, which had somehow fallen open. Yes, she was gaping open-mouthed at him. That probably accounted for the little half smile on his face.

  She readied her pencil. Where to begin? Definitely not the face. Had she noticed that he wasn’t clean-shaven today? And there were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who had spent all night … an image of Luc lying in bed, his bare shoulders gleaming in the dark, crept into her mind.

  Not that it was any of her business how he spent his nights.

  She forced her attention back to her drawing. She would start with the shoulders. He had pretty clean lines there, with that ledge of muscle extending from the back of his neck to the nice, rounded point where his arms met his shoulders. That was easy enough to draw. The curve of his bicep. Yes, she could handle that. The smattering of dark hair on his forearms. Totally manageable.

  She spent the next thirty minutes carefully, painstakingly, recreating his torso and abdomen on paper. Shading, then erasing, then trying again. It was easier to draw pale, skinny and ill-fed than a veritable map of the male musculature. The sketchpad began to blur beneath her.

  “Breathe, Marie. Art requires oxygen.”

  Had she really been holding her breath again? Yes, she realized as she inhaled and filled her lungs with air, she was. She closed her eyes for a moment, to clear her brain, then glanced over at him. He was smiling a lazy, sexy smile at her. God, all she wanted was to sit here and rest her eyes on him. Screw drawing. She’d never be able to capture his likeness on paper anyway. If she could just memorize the way he looked right now, that would be enough. To have this picture in her head.

  “Carry on, Marie.”

  Her eyes dropped back to the paper. Could she skip over his hips and … that part, and just move on to his legs? He had very nice legs, lean and finely-muscled but not vein-poppingly big like body builders. Marie didn’t like legs like that. She considered her drawing for awhile, trying to calculate how much blank space to leave if she were to skip to his legs.

  But he’d make fun of her if she did. Merciless fun. She was going to have to just plow through the next part. She took a deep breath and looked back up at Luc, only to see—to her horror—the fabric of his boxer briefs pushing upward.

  “Do you, um, need a break?” she asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  “Maybe. Yes. I can’t draw—that.”

  He glanced down at himself, amused. “I have to say this is very arousing, modeling for you. I had no idea. Was your dream like this?”

  A deep red flush engulfed her cheeks and neck. There was no way to hide it but she looked down at her feet anyway.

  Luc sat up, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Why are you embarrassed by that? I don’t mind if you have dreams about me. I just want to know what they are.”

  “I’m not comfortable doing this,” she said, looking at her unfinished drawing with the gap where Luc’s hips should be.

  “I’m trying to make you a little uncomfortable, Marie. Not in a mean way, though. A little disorientation often makes people see what’s around them in a different way. That’s art, isn’t it? Seeing things the way no one else does.”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw him pick up his sweatpants from the floor and pull them back on.

  “Let me see what you’ve done.”

  “It’s not finished.”

  “That’s okay. You have to start somewhere.”

  She reluctantly handed over her drawing, trying not to think about the fact that the unfinished portion was now hovering just inches from her face. She should never have let him kiss her again at the museum. Not that she hadn’t wanted it—or enjoyed it immensely—but now all these feelings had been unleashed in her. There was a chemistry between them, and she’d had little experience with chemistry. Certainly there hadn’t been any between her and Richard.

  It wasn’t that she minded the way it made her feel, the prickly sensation on her skin whenever she thought of Luc, like a thunderstorm was about to roll in. It made the hours spent in her mother’s employ far more bearable than they otherwise would be. Of course, she felt chemistry with Luc Marchand. What woman wouldn’t? Luc could stroll down the street and leave a swath of distracted, chemical devastation in his wake.

  But in his presence she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. His energy was distracting. She wanted to improve her drawing skills, truly she did, but how could she focus on that when every nerve ending in her body was screaming to be kissed?

  Luc was still studying her drawing, silently. It was awful. No question about that. She should leave. That would be the best thing for today. She couldn’t focus on drawing right now. Perhaps she would come back next weekend, if the chemistry had cleared by then and she could sit next to Luc Marchand without him short-circuiting her brain.

  * * * * *

  Luc nearly dropped the sketchpad as Marie brushed past him, hurrying toward the bathroom. Any faster and she’d be flat out running. Her drawing was terrible. Her still lifes from the morning had been much better. When she could touch and feel something, she was able to capture its essence on paper.

  But with this drawing, she’d been working from her head again, too worried about whether she should be doing this, too distracted by her feelings. He needed to get her to see and not think.

  He glanced toward the bathroom door, then quickly retrieved a mat and a blanket from a box beneath the work table. He had just enough time to spread them on the floor, strip off his sweatpants and boxers, and lie down before he heard the bathroom door unlatch with a dull click and swing open.

  “Ahh!”

  Her startled gasp wasn’t followed by footsteps so he knew she was still standing just outside the bathroom. He resisted the urge to sit up and look at her.

  “Are you okay, Marie?”

  “Yes ... I suppose. What are you ... doing?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “You couldn’t wait with your clothes on?”

  “You’ve seen most of this already, Marie.”

  “You want me to draw you again?” she asked.

  “Yes. But you need to see me first.”

  “Well okay, I think I’ve seen you now.”

  “Not with your eyes. With your hands, Marie.”

  “You want me to touch you ... without any clothes on?”

  “Yes.” He heard her sigh. “Come here, Marie. Please.” Her shadow fell over his body. He smiled up at her. “Your drawing ... you were trying so hard not to look at me that you weren’t able to see me. You wanted to rely on your memory of anatomy to fill in the blanks so you wouldn’t have to look at my body. True?”

  She shrugged and he chuckled. “At first, I thought this,” he shrugged his shoulders against the mat, “meant you didn’t know. Now I realize you’re actually saying ‘yes’ when you do that.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Marchand—”

  “Luc. That’s part of the problem right there. You can’t possibly really see me if you’re thinking of me as ‘mister.’“

  He held her gaze as she stared down at him. Doubt and desire were fighting it out on her lovely face. He closed his eyes to give her some privacy, some space to think it through.

  “Don’t leave, Marie,” he said quietly, eyes still shut. “Trust me on this. When you draw me afterward, it will be so much better. I would like the chance to see that better drawing.”

  He opened his eyes in time to catch her gaze flick down to his groin and then back to the general vicinity of his face.

  “Do you model for all of your students?” she asked.

  Ah. She was jealous. He liked the idea of that. “No. I told you. I’ve never modeled for students. When I teach figure drawing, I hire experienced models.”

  “So why not do that now?”

  He glanced around the studio, as if looking for someone. “Because I’m improvising. I was planning to draw you today, but I think we need to do th
is first.”

  Her eyes lit up, just a little, but it was there. He might still be able to pull her back in.

  “Are you embarrassed by seeing me this way?”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on the mat beneath his shoulders.

  “Why?” She opened her mouth to answer but he cut her off. “Take the time to think about it, Marie. I don’t want some glib reason. I want the truth.”

  She closed her eyes for several moments. Her eyelids were shadowed with makeup and he felt an urge to march her back to the bathroom and wash her off. She was so used to standing behind other people, letting other people speak for her, think for her, decide for her. All things that got in the way of art and friendship and ... other things he didn’t want to contemplate at the moment. Things he knew he shouldn’t want from this woman, this estranged wife of a senator.

  Her eyes opened. “Mr.—Luc. I’m confused. You confuse me.” She hesitated, watching him closely, but he was careful not to give away any reaction. She went on. “Sometimes I see in your eyes things I don’t understand. That I can’t interpret. Or maybe that I don’t want to interpret. And there’s no way—no way at all—that I can touch you here, like this, without trying to figure out what’s going on in your eyes. You would have to get me drunk again and then you’d just have a sloppy drunk mauling you.”

  An image of Marie mauling his body arose in his mind. He fought down the urge to smile.

  “Over there is the blindfold we used the first weekend.” He pointed to the work table. “Bring that to me, please.”

  She retrieved it and began tying it around her eyes.

  “Non, Marie.” He stretched his hand toward her. “The blindfold is for me.”

  A look of surprise flickered over her face. He took the velvet cloth and tied it around his own eyes.

  “Now you can’t see what I’m thinking.” He waited to see what she would do. He sensed her continued indecision. “Please trust me on this, Marie. Try it and if my body turns out to be too distasteful for you, we can stop.”

  He heard her tiny amused snort.

  “Laughing at me is a good start.”

  “I don’t mean to laugh—”

  “I want you to laugh at me. This is pretty ridiculous, no? A man—a not unattractive man, can we agree on that?—is lying here naked and blindfolded and all but begging you to touch him. Carpe diem, Marie.”