Page 18 of The Charmer

“Good. As for the posing part, you know it’s a life portrait?” She couldn’t resist pushing his buttons.

“So you’ve told me.” He didn’t smile or smirk but a faint pink stained his tanned cheeks.

“Just to put your mind at ease, you won’t have to get completely naked. What you’ve been doing so far is great, with your leg covering uh…” Great, now it was her turn to blush. “Anyway, I just have to do the bottom half, then get some detailed sketches of your hands, feet, and face, and transfer the lot onto canvas. Once I’ve finished, I’ll hear your pitch.”

And see the back of you, literally. “You okay with all that?”

“Fine. Can we get started tonight?”

He hadn’t lost his antsy look. If anything, it had intensified. Boy, he must really want her to hear his proposal.

“See you back here at seven.”

“Good. See you then.”

With a mock half salute, he all but ran out of the studio, through the gallery, and towards the front door.

“Cooper, I forgot something.”

He paused with his hand on the door knob. “What’s that?”

“Bring a small fig leaf. It might come in handy for camouflage.”

She tried to keep a straight face and couldn’t, her laughter following him out the door as his exasperated expression told her exactly what he thought of her sense of humour.

Chapter Thirteen

“Can I take a look?”

Cooper wiggled his fingers and toes in an effort to restore circulation to his extremities, grateful this modelling gig would be over soon.

Not that he didn’t enjoy spending one on one time with Ariel, who surprised him at every turn, but he needed to seal the deal before next Friday. He had a feeling the investors wouldn’t be too impressed if he stalled again.

As for his dad, he’d been close to up and leaving, contract or not, several times this week. They didn’t just not see eye to eye any more, they seemed to be on a different path altogether. Eric had stringent ideas regarding his company’s future and he treated Cooper like a subordinate whose ideas were crap. He’d had enough.

“Stop moving. I need to capture the arch of your right foot tonight and I’m done.” She glared at him over the easel, dabbing her brush in the paints on a worn palette next to her before returning her attention to the canvas.

Even with a smudge of paint on her cheek, her curls escaping their customary bandanna—zebra stripes tonight—and falling across her forehead, and dark circles under her eyes courtesy of how hard she must be pushing to finish this portrait in record time, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

From the bottom of her pink raffia ballet shoes to her anglaise bolero worn over a chartreuse ribbed singlet, she looked adorable, a bright spark in his otherwise dull day.

As for those shorts she wore…for the last three nights, tonight included, he’d been subjected to long, gorgeous legs poking out from truly ugly shorts. Vintage tartan checks, awful blue flowers against mustard backgrounds, and purple polka dots against turquoise. Thankfully, her eclectic taste in clothes hadn’t blinded him to the beauty of her luscious legs and he’d done his fair share of looking while she’d been studying him.

“When you say you’re done, is that done as in finished completely?”

“You wish,” she said, absentmindedly twisting a curl around a finger while dabbing at the canvas.

Actually, he didn’t. The logic, business side of his brain was yelling ‘hell yeah’ but his lonely side, the emotional side he’d deliberately shut down courtesy of his father’s increasing indifference, wished they could stay ensconced in her cosy studio forever.

“How much longer?”

Exhaling loudly, she stabbed her brush into a glass jar of water, rolled her neck a few times, stood, and arched her back in a stretch. “Anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re great at avoiding answering questions?”

After another cat-like stretch that had him averting his eyes in record time when she looked at him, she said, “If you must know, I’m almost done. I just need to get a few details of your face completed and that’s it.”

“Tonight?”

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