Games People Play (3 page)

She appeared to think about it and then stared out the window, the light limning her profile.

Max glanced at Colm and gave his grapefruit bowl an impatient nudge. “Sydney? Is this yes or no?”

Jesus,
Colm thought. Sydney was tired of the toys Daddy brought her. Maybe if Daddy would ask her what she liked once in a while . . .

“I see this as a challenge, Max,” she finally spoke. “I’ll take your suggestion and get started on the next show immediately. Let me go upstairs and change into my work clothes.” She stood again, elegant and cool in her white sleeveless blouse and unwrinkled khaki shorts, offered Colm a polite smile, and headed for the door leading to the foyer. When she reached it, she paused. “I didn’t ask if you were ready to begin so quickly, Mr. Hennessy.”

“I’m ready,” Colm said, feeling Max’s gaze on him.

“Wonderful,” Max said. “I’ll show you to the studio while Sydney gets ready.”

* * *

I
’m not going to ask how you plan to do this,” the man in the wheelchair said, his tone cold and clipped. “Just do it and do it quickly.”

Colm folded his hands behind his back and walked alongside Beaudoin as they crossed a rocky section of yard leading toward a stone cottage. The terrain was uneven and when Max hit a rock he couldn’t maneuver over, he cursed and pushed in vain at his wheels.

Automatically, Colm reached to help the chair forward, but Max’s head snapped around and he shot Colm a venomous glare. “Don’t touch the chair. Ever.”

Hands held aloft, Colm stepped back and picked up his pace, a cold knot forming in his gut. This was a hell of a game. Why would Beaudoin want to trap Sydney in infidelity, anyway? Had she already had affairs? She didn’t seem like the kind. She didn’t seem like any kind except closed off, pissed off, and probably lonely. Colm knew what it was to love someone in a wheelchair, to ache over the vibrant being that person once had been, and the agony of guilt that followed. It was possible things had cooled between Sydney and Beaudoin, but if Colm read her right, it had little if anything to do with the wheelchair. Max was a real bastard.

He reached the cottage door and waited for Beaudoin to catch up with him. Max was panting as he rolled around Colm to unlock the studio door. A twinge of sympathy seized Colm for an instant, but he banished it. This man wasn’t pitiful. He was underhanded and manipulative, cut from the same cloth as so many of the people Colm had met in the sex trade. Colm was no better. He recognized his own self in Beaudoin, and it sickened him.

The pungent smell of turpentine filled the air as they entered the building. A ramp led down into a single, sprawling room floored in golden oak planks, its walls white-washed and hung with myriad canvases.

None were erotic. They were portraits: old men and women with craggy features, smooth-faced children and cherubic babies. Lithesome figures of women.
Rubenesque
, Colm thought, studying one painting of a chubby woman whose mouse brown hair had slipped from its bun and snaked down her milky back.

His fingers fisted and unclenched. He wanted to touch; the textures and features were so tactile. There was a luminosity to each work here that her erotic art didn’t yield. Colm pictured Sydney’s brush lovingly stroking the ivory-smooth flesh of the Rubenesque painting, the passion in her face as she worked, the fierce concentration that would be there, such a disparity to the coolness she wore like a costume—and fought the urge to adjust himself in his jeans. The image was more erotic than anything he’d seen in the gallery last night.

He stepped off the side of the ramp and wandered to the center of the studio, where he examined the easel covered with a paint-spattered sheet, the rickety-looking side table beside a seventies barstool where she sat to work; the outdated boom box which boasted a CD and cassette player. That, too, was splashed with paint. Beyond her station, toward the middle of the room, sat a naked wooden stage. The model’s platform. He wondered how many hours he would spend equally naked atop it before he reached for Sydney and she came to him. Maybe they would have sex right there on the bare wood. It would dig into their skin, but he wouldn’t feel the splinters. He would bury himself as deep in her as he could and feel nothing but the pleasure. No guilt. He would play the game Beaudoin’s way, and Sydney would lose.

“. . . And I don’t need to tell you drugs are strictly forbidden,” Beaudoin was saying from the top of the ramp. Colm had nearly forgotten the man was there.

“I don’t do drugs,” Colm said. “An Avalon rule.”

“This isn’t Avalon. Azure isn’t your pimp here. I am. Keep in mind who’s paying you and we’ll get along just fine, Hennessy.”

Colm was squelching the urge to tell him to screw himself when the man added in a more subdued tone, “I’m aware you’re curious about this situation.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“No.” Max’s mouth twisted into a smile. “I’m going to tell you anyway. If Sydney passes this test, I plan to ask her to marry me.”

Holy shit.

“Sydney is everything to me. I molded her into what she is today—beautiful, talented, polished. I took her for granted once, but now I see the value of what I nearly threw away. I’m certain of what I want, and I want her. But not unless she’s as trustworthy and loyal as she appears.”

Colm wandered back to the easel and fingered the edge of the sheet. “Has she done anything to make you think you can’t trust her?”

“I don’t like the way she looks at other men. Deep into their faces, like she could swallow them. I’ve never seen such intensity. She did it with you last night. Surely you noticed it.”

All of a sudden it became clear. Weren’t cheaters always the first to suspect infidelity in others? “She hardly looked at me,” he said, and meant it. “She seemed skittish and uncomfortable last night.”

“Well, you could have fooled me. Like most women, she’s no doubt vulnerable to . . .” He looked Colm up and down. “Something like you. I don’t want her to be like most women. She has to prove that she isn’t.”

“Wouldn’t a prenup be easier?” Colm murmured, running a finger beneath the sheet to peek at what was beneath. Looking at the man was twisting his stomach.

Max ignored the question. He wheeled backward to open the door. “Do what you’re supposedly so goddamned good at and if she folds, come straight to me.”

Colm nodded. “I do have one question. You’ve paid me to do this whether I succeed or not. How does that work for you?”

“I’ll pay you double if you succeed.”

“You mean intercourse, not just foreplay.”

“If you want to walk out of here with your hands full of cash. Do it right and I’ll pay you and you’ll go. No long good-byes. No emotional bullshit. She might be hurt, but I can hurt her much worse than you ever could, Hennessy. Do your job and get the hell out. You have two weeks.”

This really wasn’t about money—or trust. It was about keeping Sydney up high and pretty on her shelf. For an instant Colm was tempted to go easy on Sydney. Even if he didn’t, even if she didn’t pass the test, she’d probably be better off without Max. Then he thought of the money. Double what he’d been told, and all to take a woman to bed like he did at Avalon nearly every night. All to wrap himself around a rare beauty like Sydney and then be done.

He thought of Amelia. Of the bills, and his dream to quit Avalon.

Two weeks. He would do the job and then get the hell out.

Chapter Four

S
ydney paced the long expanse of the studio while Colm changed in the small bathroom. She’d given him a robe for the sake of modesty, and for her own sanity. She didn’t need him naked to begin the portrait, but by God, if this is what Max wanted, this is what Max would get.

Challenge, indeed. Why had he done this to her? He knew how she felt being alone in a studio with a man. She always, always worked with two or more models, and he
knew
that. He knew her past, knew what she’d gone through with her mother’s boyfriend and the fathomless, insidious damage, so why had he disrespected her this way? Her stomach somersaulted for the fiftieth time since Colm Hennessy walked into the dining room. Maybe Max didn’t know her after all. She thought herself utterly transparent, but maybe they had lost each other. She’d always looked to him for guidance to steer her in the right direction, much as she considered herself his partner and protector when he was vulnerable. She’d trusted him blindly too often.

And perhaps he’d trusted her just as mindlessly. She wasn’t the same young fool from four years ago, or the sympathetic, still-enamored woman who came back to him after he fell. Not anymore. She didn’t want an agent or a father figure. She wanted love; she wanted to be allowed to love, but Max was playing games she didn’t understand, loving her in fits and starts, and she hated it.

Sometimes she hated him.

When Colm emerged from the bathroom, she jerked awake, averted her eyes, and returned to her easel, where she fiddled with her brushes in the pregnant silence. He sat on the edge of the modeling platform and waited. After a painful length of time, in which she felt she’d adequately built a barrier between them, she looked up. “Let’s get started.”

He stepped up on the stage, but when he started to disrobe, she shook her head. “Just as you are for now. I expect you need time to adjust to the situation.”

“Not really.” Who knew such light green eyes could give off heat?

“Well, I do. In fact . . .” She strode to a small, retro-looking cabinet and rifled through it. “There’s a bottle of something in here . . . here it is.” She withdrew a bottle of red wine. “I know it’s early, Mr. Hennessy, but do you like Shiraz?”

“I do.”

She pulled out two plastic tumblers and poured a splash in each, then returned to him and handed him his cup. “Cheers,” she said, lifting her tumbler in an age-old gesture.

He held up his cup. “Here’s to me getting naked and you being comfortable with that.”

Sydney gave a huff of laughter. “Have you forgotten eroticism is my subject of choice? My choice, Mr. Hennessy. I like erotic art.”

Colm glanced around at the chaste portraits and lifted an eyebrow at her.

She took another gulp of wine and drained the cup. A little hair of the dog, but its bitter fruitiness only tilted her stomach. “Here’s to us making the most of an awkward situation.”

“And you calling me something other than ‘Mr. Hennessy.’”

“I can’t say that will ever happen. Are you finished with your wine?”

He handed her his cup, which she discarded in a nearby trash can. Then she returned to her easel, picked up a piece of charcoal, and clipped a practice sheet of newsprint to the board while he returned to the center of the platform.

“Where do you want me?” His voice echoed in the vaulted-ceilinged room. She liked the sound of it: low but not baritone. A little husky.

“Right where you are.” Shifting her attention from his green eyes to his body did little to alleviate her discomfort. “Just stand still and let me get in some warm-up sketches.”

He stood dutifully still, hands at his sides, shoulders stretching the robe so that it gaped at the chest, which rose and fell with each breath. He kept his lashes mostly downcast except for stealing one glance at her, which went through her like a tiny electric jolt.

Her charcoal faltered on the page, then resumed. After a moment, the wine curled warmth through her limbs. The lines were coming more fluidly now as she finished a study of his uncomplicated stance. His bare legs were strong, muscled. As she’d suspected the night before, he was well-proportioned. A perfect model for her work—both erotic and otherwise.

She set down the charcoal, tore out a new piece of newsprint, and looked at him, her heart hammering, mouth gone dry. When his eyes met hers, she said flatly, “You can disrobe now, Mr. Hennessy.”

He shifted his weight and shrugged out of the robe, tossed it aside, and resumed his stance.

Oh, Jeez.

She tried not to look at anything but his shoulders. They were a good place to start. Then his chest, a study in celestial musculature. Over his heart was a tattoo, a cursive word she couldn’t discern except that it started with
A
. Her gaze dropped lower. He had a six-pack, naturally. Wonderfully defined flanks.

Even his penis was just right.

“Do you have a pair of boxer shorts?” she asked, redirecting her attention to her disaster of a drawing.

“Back at the cabin.”

“Bring them next time. I don’t always know what I’m going to do at first. I change my mind frequently and abruptly. Just now, I think I’ve decided to work on certain parts of your body instead of the whole thing.”

That didn’t come out quite the way she’d planned. His surprised hesitation filled the room before she hurried, “I mean, turn your back to me.” That might keep the blood in her head instead of running amok to other places.

Bad idea. His backside belonged to Michelangelo’s David, sculpted and pale like alabaster where the sun hadn’t touched him. He obviously worked out, although she had a feeling that kind of physique was also a case of excellent genes. And the way he stood, at ease, head slightly lowered, made her think he was giving her the chance to look at all of him, to savor what they both knew was stunning.

Heat slid through her veins, a heat she hadn’t felt since before Max’s accident. And God, it was a welcome sensation. She shifted on her barstool and rubbed her free hand on her denim-covered thigh. She could hardly sit still, suddenly.

“Wrap the robe around your waist,” she ordered a little too sharply. “I want the material, the . . . the extra element of . . . you know what I mean.”

He grabbed it off the floor and did as he was told, then secured the belt low on his hips so as not to interrupt the drape of material. He was experienced. Maybe even a magazine model, the idealized variety she couldn’t stand.

“Have you modeled before?” she asked lightly, studying the play of light on the tanned skin of his back. “Fashion magazines, that sort of thing.”

“When I was in college I gave it a shot. I hated it.”

“Even the money? The gorgeous women?”

At the cynicism in her tone, he glanced over his shoulder at her, and she winced. She was being a bitch and didn’t know why. Max was the one she was angry with, not Colm. It wasn’t his fault he was so damned hot.

For a long time he didn’t speak, letting her bathe in her own shame. She half expected him to pick up his things and excuse himself. She would deserve it.

Then to her surprise, he said, “Can I ask you some questions now?”

“Okay.” She’d sketched his back and buttocks, even though she’d started out trying to do a portrait study of his head and shoulders. She’d drawn them all wrong, too. Starting at the top again, she pressed hard to banish the previous lines.

“Tell me where you’re from,” he said.

“Nebraska.” She feathered the charcoal along the sides of the image’s spine to capture his musculature. “You?”

“Virginia.”

“From around here?”

“Southwest Virginia.”

“You have no accent.”

“It was hammered out of me.” Before she could press for more information, he said, “You do incredible portraits. Are you formally trained?”

“Homegrown, I’m afraid. My aunt taught me. She was a successful artist in the sixties—Lila Warren. Have you heard of her?”

“No, but then I don’t hang out in artists’ circles.”

“What about the art modeling?”

“It’s been awhile, and it was mostly for students.” He moved, a natural shift brought on by relaxation. Fluid, graceful. Her charcoal faltered, and she forced herself to objectify the slight shine of perspiration on his skin. Just sweat. A human body’s natural response to heat. Despite the drafty studio, the lights aimed at the platform radiated warmth. Her own brow was damp, too. Maybe the heat was why her lines ran all over the place. This was already a mess and they’d only just started.

Drawing number two in the garbage.

“Why do you do this?” he asked suddenly.

She hesitated in the midst of pinning up a fresh sheet of paper. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you choose erotic art over portraiture, when you obviously have an affinity for people’s faces?”

“Sex sells.” She stroked the charcoal down the length of his image’s spine. “You can’t argue with that.”

He said nothing.

“There’s no shame in it if you can rise above it and do what you have to do,” she added.

His head turned slightly, a smile curving his mouth. “Really? Not even a little?”

Sydney swallowed. The practice drawing was turning into a disaster. After another futile attempt, she sighed, set the charcoal in the tray, and turned off the work light. “That’s all for today.”

Colm glanced at the clock. “We were only at it a few minutes.”

“I’m just trying to get a feel for your body.” A new blush warmed her face. “You know what I mean.”

He flashed her a grin. “What are your plans for the rest of today?”

“I need to talk to Max,” she said quickly. “Then I’m going into the city.”

“To photograph models?” At her nod, he added, “You really are uncomfortable being alone with me.”

“You’re a stranger, Mr. Hennessy.”

“I won’t be for long if you’ll give me a chance. Let’s be friends.”

She sighed and glanced at the last drawing. It looked like something a ten-year-old could produce. “Look, I know you’re trying, and I’ll do my best to . . . to meet you halfway. Today I don’t need to photograph models. I just need more people for the idea I have for this project. I’m going into the city to pick the right models to work with you.”

“What’s your idea?”

“A ménage à trois.”

“Right.” He stepped off the platform, stripped the robe from his hips as though being naked was the most natural thing in the world for him. Sydney closed her eyes and wished for that same lack of inhibition, but it would never happen. When she opened her eyes, he’d disappeared into the dressing room.

“Two women and me?” he asked from behind the curtain. At her silence, she heard him laugh. “It was worth a shot.”

“Are you too shy to pose with another man, Mr. Hennessy?”

“Not too shy. I just like women.”

“I can easily find someone else to do this if you—”

He stepped back into the room with jeans on, barefoot and shirt unbuttoned. “No. I can handle whatever floats your boat. Boss,” he added, although the humor in his words didn’t reach his green eyes.

“Don’t call me Boss.”

“Don’t call me Mr. Hennessy.”

“I’ll let you see yourself out.” She started for the door.

“Sydney.”

She paused on the ramp, her heart pounding. The way he spoke her name made her feel like they shared a secret.

“I might know someone you can use,” he said. “A male model, anyway. He’s a friend of mine. Maybe I could save you some of the search.”

She rested her hand on the latch and was silent for a long time. Then without looking at him, she said, “Is he as fit and good-looking as—is he fit and good-looking?”

“From a guy’s point of view, yeah, I’d have to say so. He usually has women all over him.”

“Lovely. Then talk to him and let me know what he says. I’d like an answer as soon as possible.”

“. . . Colm.”

“Colm,” she conceded. But she left the studio without looking back at him again.