Page 7 of Sexy as Sin
She sighed and slipped her sugary bananas into the pan, where they set up a most satisfying sizzle. “I was referring to the fact that I couldn’t even hold up the straps.”
He blinked. “Pardon?”
“Kettle’s boiling,” she pointed out, and he poured the tea. “I’m small-breasted,” she said. “It’s been noted. Recently. In this dress. And if I’m blushing? It’s because Iama redhead, and because you made me spell it out. Also, are you married?”
“Uh... no,” he said. “Not married, and not entangled. How about you?”
“Yes,” she said, and something in him fell. He hoped it wasn’t his heart. “Entangled. Somewhat. Call it a partial tangle.”
“If he was the one who said you were small-breasted—toosmall-breasted,” he said, “he doesn’t count. I can do better.”
“You mean,Ican do better.” She’d turned the bananas and turned off the fire under the bacon. It all smelled amazing.
“I don’t know what you can do,” he said, “but I know what I can. And I promise you, I can do better.”
Something changed in her eyes, but all she said was, “Grab some knives and forks and a couple serviettes and take them out the back door to the table there, will you? I’m so hungry by now, I could eat fast food.”
She needed a minute? He’d give her a minute. He opened the back door and found a minuscule patio, nothing but a tiny table, two chairs, a red umbrella for shade, and a banana tree, but there was a vine growing up from a pot and over the door, putting out a spectacular display of pink and red flowers, and it all worked fine. He set the table, such as it was, and in a minute, she brought out two orange plates and set one down in front of him, and he was looking at something that should have been in a food magazine. A generous wedge of gold and brown crispy-creaminess that was like no French toast he’d ever seen, topped with toasted, sliced almonds, with a generous spritz of whipped cream on one side. Caramelized bananas sprinkled with sliced strawberries, and the poor relation of the party, his semi-charred bacon.
“One second,” she said. “Tea.” She came back with it, sat down and picked up her fork, and at last, he took a bite.
“Wow,” he said, when the creamy deliciousness had all but melted on his tongue. “That’s good. You went surfing this morning and still managed this?”
“Not hard at all,” she said. “I cooked from six AM yesterday, and I didn’t finish until—well, until alongtime later. This didn’t take any effort. It’s just mixing up a couple things and bunging a dish into the fridge so Azra and I would have something filling to eat this morning. I won’t have a chance again until evening, because I’m doing an event. Reason for all the cooking. It’s for a bunch of wankers out to spoil the countryside, but then, you can’t always choose your clients.” She smiled at him. “Prejudices on full display, just like my body. How do you like me now?”
He smiled, or he kept smiling. “Full display works for me.”
She sighed and said, “You are so good for my self-esteem,” and he laughed out loud.
“I should be asking some more about that entanglement of yours,” he said, “but instead, I’m just going to say that I like your hair. A lot.”
She was too direct to look at him from under her lashes. He liked that, too. “Not everybody shares that opinion, either,” she said. “Not easy being a ginger.”
“A ginger?” He was having trouble focusing. It seemed he was looking down her dress again, and the amazing food wasn’t helping. Everything about this was sensory overload. The smell of the food, and some more sweetness in the air that he thought might be her. Not perfume. Something more delicious. The blue sky and the breeze and the pink and red flowers, the colored crockery, and the sweet and savory flavors of the food. And, of course, her.
“A redhead,” she said. “What, you don’t say that?”
“No. We don’t. As a bad thing? No. Nothing but...” He tried to get it together. It wasn’t easy. “Nothing but good, as far as I’m concerned. You’re like one of those Maxfield Parrish pictures.”
She blinked. “I am? What’s that?”
“An illustrator. We’re going all the way back to the 1920s here, so fortunately, I don’t have to say it’s a generation gap. Maybe an American thing, though. Paintings. Murals. Romantic. Very popular. A sky of lapis lazuli, the way it looks after sunset, the first stars barely coming out, and a woman. A beautiful one. That would be you.”
She was eating her breakfast, so clearly enjoying it all the way, and she was paying attention, too. White shoulders, intelligent, mobile face, and copper corkscrews of hair, wild and free. “You realize,” she said, “that you can never go wrong telling a woman she reminds you of a beautiful painting.”
“Better than knocking her to the ground on a slab of bacon?” he asked.
“Much better. And you’re stalling. Tell me the rest.”
He sighed. “So... there she is, standing on the rocks, by the shore. At least you imagine she’s by the shore. A breeze, but she isn’t cold. She’s wearing some kind of clingy dress, Grecian-looking, her face turned to the sky. She may be reaching for the moon.” He looked at her, straight on, no smile. “He loved to paint women like you.”
“What’s a woman like me?” She’d tried to make it light, but it didn’t quite come off.
“Women who look all the way alive from their head to their toes, and not afraid to reach for what they want, even if it’s the moon. Women with short hair and long hair, with curvy bodies and slim ones, and all of them beautiful. I think—” He broke off. What was he doing, talking about a long-dead painter? He was wearing an obscene slogan T-shirt and too-tight shorts in an Australian beach town, with a surfer who had to be more than a dozen years his junior, who lived eight thousand miles from him and somehow, despite the courage, seemed much too vulnerable for a fling.
“What do you think?” she asked. “I really want to know.”
“I think,” he said, as her eyes, the clear green of dark emeralds, looked into his, “that I remember them because they were beautiful, and they were fantasy, but they weren’t sexual, or not just sexual. He didn’t seem to see them through that lens. They were about freedom, and magic, and beauty, and living all the way. They appealed to my adolescent self, you could say. The idea that reaching for the moon and stars was a wonderful thing, and you should go for it. And hit a shark in the nose to get there, if you had to. Most people never do get there. Most people never come close.”
