“I’m fine,” she responded, too quickly. “Fine.”
“Drew, you’re in the frame, dude,” Danny complained.
Drew backed up and watched as his friend took shot after shot, moving Eva’s hands and arms slightly from time to time in order to shift the focus provided by the vividly colored tie.
Days later, Danny emailed Drew a copy of the finished photo, cropped to focus on Brandon’s throat and chest, with Eva’s arms encircling his neck. Her bound hands and wrists looked almost childlike in their vulnerability. No faces were visible. The scarf formed a vivid note of pinkish red against her fair skin and the pale blue of Brandon’s shirt. But what Drew remembered about the moment itself was not captured in the photo. He could recall only Eva’s face, turned slightly into the cowhide upholstery above Brandon’s shoulder, and the much subtler pink that had flushed her carved marble cheek.
Chapter Two
It had taken him over a month to think up his ploy and implement it, and that had only come after about eight weeks of what probably bordered on stalking.
When he’d started, it had been unseasonably hot even for August, and Eva had cooled the room in sleeveless white. Now it was cold enough outside that when she answered the doorbell for their date, she was already shrugging her way into a cream-colored overcoat. Cashmere, Drew thought as he automatically reached out to help her find the sleeve. Her hair caught in the collar when she settled the coat on her shoulders, and he had to resist the temptation to work the silky strands free when she turned to lock her door.
It was all chilly cordiality at first. But then she threw him a dark look when he took his seat after handing her gallantly into his car.
“Hieronymus Bosch. I can’t believe I didn’t think of Hieronymus fucking Bosch. It was so obvious.”
Drew thought she must be really pissed off if she was dropping the F-bomb. He’d never heard her curse before. On the whole, he didn’t mind it one bit. “Well, you know. Everybody has their areas of expertise. Nobody can know everything.”
The glare she shot him was venomous but heavily laced with amusement. “It wasn’t even a question about art, it was a question about punk music. I never claimed to know a thing about punk music.”
“I don’t really know much about either one,” Drew admitted with a shrug. “But I had this roommate in college who loved that band, and he had a poster of the painting on the wall over his bed. The Extraction of the Stone of Madness. The guy was kind of an asshole, actually.”
“He left you with an appreciation for art, at least. Or maybe just punk?”
Drew smiled. “Not exactly. I mean the band was okay, but the painting creeped me out. I mainly remembered it because there was a guy in it with a funnel on his head, kinda looked like the Tin Woodman.”
“You don’t know anything about art.” It was a statement, not a question. She didn’t sound that surprised. Drew was glad to hear she didn’t sound particularly upset about it, either.
“I know some. I know about photography. And hey, I knew enough to get you to go out with me, right?”
Eva’s silvery laugh was unexpected. It curled around Drew, a slender ribbon of temptation, almost making him miss his turn. “A sucker bet. Your one piece of art trivia, and you caught me. Now I’ll know to be on my guard.”
The topic of their mutual friends didn’t arise until later, when the meal was almost over.
“I thought the Boy Scout thing was a joke,” Eva said with surprise when Drew revealed how far back he and Danny went.
“Nope. And yes, before you ask, I did get a merit badge for knots.”
“I didn’t need to ask.” She lifted her glass to him and took a sip before continuing. “You do beautiful work.”
Drew shrugged. “Aw, shucks, ma’am. Glad you think my knots are purdy.”
“You don’t seem like a lot of the…the people Danny and Sheila know.”
“Well, they hang out with a lot of artists. I’m not really in that business.”
She frowned. “True, but I wasn’t really talking about the art crowd.”
Leaning forward, Drew murmured dramatically, “You mean the evil, bad, kinky sex crowd?” His corny wink made her smile, even as she blushed at his words.
“Of course there’s quite a bit of crossover,” she acknowledged.
“With their friends, at least, yeah. That’s also partly due to the subject matter of their art. It does tend to draw a certain demographic. The evil, bad, kinky sex crowd demographic.”
“Are you in that demographic?”
Drew was startled by that. By the direct question, by the suddenly dispassionate gaze she leveled at him with those very pale blue-gray eyes.