Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,75
plenty of air creep up her legs and beyond. As soon as she got to the schoolhouse, she’d put on some underwear.
Gathering her dirty clothes, she glanced at herself in the mirror. With no makeup, finger-combed hair, and the bright red cocktail dress, she looked like a hungover party girl creeping home at dawn from a long night snorting coke with an indie film director.
She slipped into the scuffed silver ballet flats she kept by the back door and got in her car. Much too quickly, she arrived at the schoolhouse.
Inside, she could smell something cooking.
“In here,” he called from the kitchen.
She followed the sound of his voice. He stood at the kitchen counter in jeans and a navy FIFA World Cup T-shirt, the detritus of salad-making in front of him, along with a wine bottle and two full glasses. He gave her an admiring once-over. “Very nice.”
“I’m changing.”
“Later.” He held out one of the wine goblets. “This is a very good cabernet.”
She slugged down the entire glass and held it back out for a refill.
“I anticipated that,” he said.
“What?”
“Your pressing need to abuse alcohol.” He refilled her glass. “I like the way you dressed up for me.”
“My clothes were dirty, and I’m changing as soon as I eat.” Between the wine and the sumptuous smells coming from the oven, she was suddenly hungry. Hungry enough to almost forget she wasn’t wearing underwear.
“Lasagna for dinner.”
“Frozen?”
He looked offended. “You underestimate my culinary skills.”
“Definitely frozen.”
His mouth twitched. “Grab some plates.”
* * *
She looked like the wanton fourth wife of a dissolute Greek shipping magnate. The red dress and bare feet. That extravagant chaos of inky hair against her olive skin. A woman too confident to bother with makeup. And those breasts . . . He’d seen a lot of breasts, but these were exceptional. He’d long suspected they weren’t entirely symmetrical, which made them even more perfect.
She cleaned up the mess he’d made of the salad and transferred the remainder into bowls, the skirt of her dress swishing around her bare legs. He took the lasagna from the oven. “I lit the stove. Let’s eat in front of the fire.”
She shrugged and carried the salads into the living area. He tossed a wool throw on the floor in front of the potbelly stove and brought out the rest of the food. The table might be more comfortable, but he wouldn’t have had such a captivating view. First, she sat cross-legged, the skirt of her dress tucked between her thighs, her calves and bare feet exposed. Later, she shifted her legs off to one side so the swirl of her skirt crept to midthigh. She was a ballet of decadent crimson and earthy cream.
And worry. Easy to see how upset she was. He’d also been thinking about Wren more today than he wanted to. He refilled Tess’s wineglass, but left his alone, neither of them saying much. Finally, he gave up attempting to eat and did what he’d been contemplating all day. He picked up his sketch pad.
She stiffened, remembering her promise to let him draw her nude. He took his time picking out a 3B graphite pencil as the internal war between his compulsion to draw her and his contempt for what he would produce raged all over again. This wasn’t art. These hackneyed drawings were a distraction keeping him from doing what he should be doing, except he didn’t know what that was. How could he with all this mess?
The fire glowed through the stove’s window. She’d been staring at it, but now she looked at him. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you want to draw me.”
And he had no intention of explaining it. “Inspiration strikes in strange ways.” He looked up from his sketch pad. “Today it’s you. Tomorrow it’ll be some big ass toadstool I spot in the woods.”
She laughed, the first one he’d heard from her in a while. “A flattering comparison. It’s a good thing I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me.”
“Not the best attitude toward someone you’re trying to convince to marry you.”
He could have kicked himself for bringing that up, because all the laughter faded from her eyes. She glanced down at her skirt. “Is this the part where I have to strip?”
That pissed him off, which it shouldn’t have, because he was the one who’d baited her. “You don’t have to do a damn thing you don’t want to.”