Striptease. Alison Kent
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he did, however, his focus was complete, and the look in his eyes unnerving. Unsettling. And stirring beyond belief.
“I can’t see many women I know collecting male nudes. Most don’t think a man’s body is much to write home about,” he finally said, and while she couldn’t help but wonder what woman had given him that impression, she wondered more what he’d look like out of his clothes.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“About men’s bodies?” He looked thunderstruck…and that tickled her.
“About bodies in general. You have to appreciate what your camera lens captures, or what you see on a video display.” She ran her fingers through the hair at her nape and nervously fluffed. “I can’t believe that you don’t pay attention to bone structure…muscle tone…angles and contours and curves.”
He shoved his hands back into his pockets, an expression of what seemed to be genuine confusion on his face, as if he had never before evaluated what went into his art. “I don’t pull a shot apart like that. For me it’s more about what the overall concept captures.”
“Hmm.” That surprised her. “I would think you’d take all of those individual things into consideration to get the result you want.”
“Nah.” He grimaced playfully. “Too much work.”
How quickly she forgot. “That’s right. And you don’t work hard at much of anything.”
His nod was a perfect and teasing touché. “And you, Miss Steel-Trap Mind, work much too hard at everything. Am I right?”
First her partners, and now this man who didn’t know a thing about her? “Depends on your point of view. I like to think I have ambition. Commitment. Self-discipline.”
He laughed, a deep rumbling sound as attractive as it was annoying. “Self-discipline,” he repeated, as if savoring a secret joke.
“You find that funny?”
“Yeah. Hilarious.”
Right. Hilarious. She was so glad she hadn’t dipped a toe into the sexual waters and said anything she’d look back on and regret.
“Loosen up, Melanie. If you analyze every detail, take everything so seriously, you’ll end up with an ulcer.”
“Or get where I want to go,” she said. His gaze sharpened. She forced an indifferent shrug. “You said yourself we focus on different things, Faulkner. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I prefer to steer rather than drift through life. What’s it to you?”
His brow furrowed. “Hell, if you’re so busy fighting the current—” he took a step closer “—how do you expect to enjoy the ride?”
Melanie swallowed hard, resisting the tug of a current, all right. The man’s magnetism was potent, his attention heady, his impression provocative. When he reached to cup a hand around the sculpture where it sat behind her on the bookshelf, her heart lurched.
His gaze cut back and forth between the nude and her face. “So, I’m guessing to you this piece isn’t about the total concept. It’s more about analyzing the details. The woman’s posture. The way she has her hands spread and her fingers flexed to hold herself back.”
Back from what? When he turned to look at her, his eyes seemed to answer the unspoken question, and Melanie’s heart kicked hard in her chest. It shouldn’t have. He was only telling her what he thought she might see. Nothing more. Nothing leading.
Nothing sexual.
“And to you?” she managed to ask.
“To me this is all about interpretation. What the woman wants. What she’s looking for. Waiting for.”
Melanie had to be imagining his suggestion that it was her and not the figurine who was the one looking, waiting. She hadn’t revealed any of those truths in the little bit of time they’d spent together.
And she wouldn’t. Because they weren’t truths at all. “Okay, so, you take in the overall picture. I work my way up through the elements. In the end we both see the same thing, don’t you think?”
“I’m not so sure.” He blinked, his lashes making a slow lazy sweep up and down. “We didn’t see the same thing looking at the view screen the day of the wedding.”
Well, he had her there, didn’t he? Except she’d never told him what exactly it was she’d been seeing. And he certainly hadn’t bothered to share any details about what he’d been looking at when her image had appeared on his screen. Neither had he mentioned anything about where his focus had been while facing that bank of monitors in the van.
She’d wondered about that. The wedding was two months past, and she still wondered if the position of the cameras had anything to do with what they’d been looking at that day. Or if that afternoon had been all about the tension, the same one thrumming between them now like a deep techno beat.
She wanted more than anything to ask him to dance, to hold her close, to slip his hands underneath her sweater and strip her bare. She wanted his hands and his mouth on her body. She wanted to touch him, to smell him, to taste him in intimate ways. And she could barely breathe.
She smoothed the hem of her sweater and took a step closer to him. A step that was so much longer than the distance she actually covered. Screw it. She wanted this. Why was she holding herself back? “Listen, Jacob—”
“Yo, Mel,” Chloe called from the hallway outside the office. “You’re still coming to the barbecue on Saturday, right? I really need your help. And Sydney wants to know—” Chloe stopped short just inside the doorway. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were busy.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Divine intervention when needed most. See? They weren’t even yet working together, and she’d already gone mad.
Melanie shook her head. “I’m not busy at all. Jacob, this is Chloe Zuniga. She heads up the gUIDANCE gIRL mentoring program. Chloe, this is the Avatare Productions cameraman who’ll be working on the documentary. Jacob—”
“Faulkner,” Chloe finished. “You’re Rennie’s brother.”
Jacob turned his smile on Chloe. “You know Renata?”
A blond brow lifted. “I know Rennie. Her friends knew better than to call her Renata.”
“Is that right?” Jacob said, and laughed.
That damn laugh again. The echo lingered in the deepest part of Melanie’s belly. She pushed off the wall, away from Jacob, and moved to the front of her desk, hoping that, with distance, the echo would fade. But then he laughed a second time, and she was sunk, wanting him out of her office more than she’d ever wanted him to stay.
Mad as a hatter and Hannibal Lecter to boot.
And then, almost as if Melanie had totally left the room, Jacob turned and gave Chloe his full attention. “Trust me. Renata’s friends still know better. And she doesn’t hesitate to correct them. Even in public. I keep waiting for her to snap and bite off an ear.”
“Is she still in town?” Chloe asked.
He nodded, gestured over his shoulder with a tilt of his head. “Out on the west side, actually. She’s a counselor at one of the Memorial area high schools.”
“I had no idea. All she talked about in school was moving to Arizona or New Mexico to teach.” Chloe frowned, pursing pouty pink lips. “I don’t think I talked to her but once or twice after I was in Austin. I knew she’d planned to take off a year before going to school.”
Jacob nodded. “She did, then went to Baylor and made up for it. Went year-round for five years and earned her Master’s before moving back here.”
“So she never left the state?”
“Nope. Decided she could kick ass and