Page 5 of Husband Material
I swallowed back my grin at the purring quality of her "r"s, and got to my feet, gesturing with my hand. "There's a palm tree about a five-minute walk down that way. I'm Gage, by the way, and I live in that house over there." I pointed out my place for her, so she would feel—
Feel what? Safer?Assured I wasn't a serial killer?I had no fucking idea what I was even doing with this girl. Offering myself as a sketch model for a stranger—because she waved at me on the beach? Sounded fucking dumb when I spelled it out in my head. But that's exactly what I'd done. Happily, too.
Another brilliant smile lit up her face. "Gage, it is lovely to meet you. I am Giselle. Your plan is perfect."
Perfect all right. And I fucking love your name.
Five minutes later, my ass was planted in the sand with my surfboard across my knees and the mysterious Giselle studying me in silence.
She ripped a piece of paper out of her sketchpad and placed it on top. Feeling oddly self-conscious, I scratched at the side of my neck and wondered if I was going to regret this. "Am I allowed to talk?"
She fired back with a quick and firm, "No."
The disappointment must have showed on my face, because she laughed. "Of course, it is permitted." She then added a playful pat to my hand.
My dick twitched in my shorts and my hand tingled from her fingers, as I sat there and said…nothing. My brain needed to catch up—fucking quickly. This kind of shit did not happen to me. Pretty girls rendering me speechless with a simple touch to my hand and a few smiles? Not part ofmyuniverse. Could she be an alien female perhaps?
Biting her lip and brushing a stray curl out of her face, she said, "In actual fact, it is probably quite a lot better if you do talk."
"Great."
It occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what to say to her. Everything seemed hopelessly stupid and trite. So, I settled on the most hopelessly stupid and trite question of all. "You're not from here, are you?"
Another laugh.
She'd started on the actual sketching, and since it involved her coffee-colored eyes bowed to her work instead of inspecting every inch of me, my shoulders relaxed a little.
"What gave me away?"
I bit back "everything" and instead settled on, "Your dress."
In a roundabout way, it was true. The style was way more bohemian and less buttoned-down than Charleston's usual beach-chic locals or its beach-casual tourists.
She ran a hand over the fishnet material absently. "This dress I actually made myself." She smiled, drawing her arm down her body as if painting the picture of what she was saying. "Originally, when I saw this crazy too-large jumpsuit in the thrift shop, it looked so horrendous that I classed it as a lost cause. But something about the crochet fabric beckoned to me, so I bought it on a whim and decided to see what I could do with it."
My eyes spanned the dress, but even more so what was underneath the dress, trying to imagine how the gorgeous result in front of me could've ever looked horrendous.
"The material is very soft. Here, touch."
She offered the hem of her dress. It felt kind of stiff and rough to me rather than soft, but I didn't want to sound rude. I hoped she was so entranced in her drawing, she couldn't see my reaction at exactly how un-soft her blue crochet dress felt.
I caught her eyes sneaking my way before I clued in she was teasing meagain."Nice one," I said with a shake of my head.
Pausing, she clapped her hands together as more laughter poured out. "Ah, sorry. I really ought to stop. It's just that everyone here is so polite, I can't help but to tease."
Since I couldn't decide whether to be annoyed or intrigued, I settled on an easy laugh instead. "That's Charleston for you. Full of people who are polite to a fault."
She focused on her notebook again, her pencil scrabbling away. "And you?"
Her question caught me off guard, because I didn't want to talk about myself at all, but I couldn't deny her even the most basic of requests.
"And me, what?" I asked, even though I knew what she wanted to know.
Her eyes lifted momentarily from the sketch. "Are you like that too?"
The hardened patch of sand where I was sitting started to dig into my ass.
"It just helps," she explained. "For the portrait. I find knowing details about the sitter makes it easier to draw them. A more accurate portrayal, I guess."
