Covered In Paint: Book Five of the Art Of Love Series (7 page)

As she watched Drake talking about the nude woman’s curves and lines, all her initial impressions of his shallowness came pouring back, including his statement about wanting to paint her. She remembered her mother’s argument that naked had not been implied in his artistic request. Well, boy was her mother wrong for once
.
Normally catching Jessica Daniels in an error of judgment gave her great satisfaction. At the moment, the reality she saw in front of her own eyes was just too stark.

At the time Drake had confessed to her about not dating, she had actually believed his story. Now she found it highly questionable, even though it was hard to imagine the concerned father figure he was being such a convincing liar when it came to women.

That didn’t make any sense.

But why hadn’t Drake caved like a normal man with needs and dated one of the naked women he saw all the time? Certainly not all of them were students…not that the two students she met in the hall had much going on in the looks department, but…
shit
.

Drake had told her he’d never brought a woman he dated home with him while Brandon was there. Was he
that
damn picky about how his women looked? Just what kind of standards of beauty did the man have?

Then it occurred to her—maybe Drake had the opposite problem. Maybe the man was bored with female perfection. Maybe only his dead wife had ever been worthy of his true appreciation. Maybe his dead wife’s illness had warped his ability to appreciate the beauty of any other woman’s form.

How screwed up mentally would it make him if what she feared was true? Did Drake need weird, extravagant things to get turned on?

Maybe the art teacher in Louisville worked because she was someone who had learned to play to his kinky side which wanted something other than perfection.

Now she REALLY wanted to know what his booty-call woman looked like.

Brooke stared again at the twenty-year-old model. Drake’s hand hovered just above her nipple as he talked. All the woman had to do was raise her body a fraction, and it would brush his fingers. Did that sometimes happen naturally?

Well lumpy breasts or not, she for sure did not need this kind of worry…or competition.

“I can’t do this. No. I can’t. I need normal and straight and…I don’t know…but something else. Not this,” Brooke whispered quietly, shaking her head as she eased herself out the classroom door again.

She was glad now she hadn’t made eye contact with him across the large cavernous art classroom. No—she needed time to think of what she was going to say to him to break things off.

With a sad sigh of resignation, Brooke headed out of the art building. All thoughts of seducing Drake had fled completely the moment the younger woman had obeyed his command to tilt her perfect breast up for him to gaze down on it.

The walk back to the philosophy building was silent and long as she thought about how close she had come to actually seducing a man she was never going to understand sexually.

She consoled herself about the knot in her stomach. Confronting the uncomfortable truth today had likely saved her from worse pain if her feelings for him had gotten any stronger. And okay—now she had a few more epiphanies to process.

For one, she had to come to terms with the fact that when it came to dealing with artists, she was not the wild, free-spirited daughter of Jessica Daniels. Not that it mattered—she wouldn’t let it. She could handle being sexually conservative if suffering Drake’s artistic life was the price of its opposite.

Secondly, her natural guard with him now suddenly made all kinds of sense. No wonder Michael and Shane hadn’t appealed to her. Were they like him too? Oh God—
was Will
? Not that her brazen mother would care if Will looked at naked women every chance he got. Jessica Daniels wouldn’t care one bit. Instead, her mom would strip in front of everyone and let Drake’s students draw her while he ran his hand over her womanly curves and lines.

Snorting at the most humiliating image imaginable, Brooke walked faster. She didn’t consider herself a prude, but she had never understood art’s fascination with nudity and all manner of sexual nuance. Until today, she thought she had accepted those liberal views in her mother. Maybe she had, but it was sure a hell of a lot different to confront such openness in a man you wanted to sleep with.

Her first instinct had been right as usual, and she should have trusted it. Getting naked with Drake was just not going to be able to happen. The last thing she needed was to wonder what was really going on behind Drake’s intense, soul-stealing gaze traveling over her own curves.

If such a worry made her a prude—fine.

She would own the label, but she refused to allow her naked aging body to be continually compared with much younger ones.

Funny, she had sought Drake out today because she had begun thinking of him as her lover before he had even become one. Instead of finding a lover today, she had found out some very painful truths about herself.

Maybe she
was
just plain old conservative Brooke Daniels—staid philosopher and wistful romantic. The bottom line was there was nothing wrong with her. It was perfectly fine that her dreams were of babies, a home, and a guy who thought her breasts were the only ones he ever needed to see.

There was absolutely no logical reason to change her plans or her views for someone like Drake Barrymore, who she was never going to understand. She didn’t need his approval, his praise, or him.

And she had enough to worry about where her breasts were concerned. She didn’t need to be concerned about the ones Drake was ogling.

Chapter 6

Cold water in hand, Michael was heading back out the patio door to his latest project when the doorbell rang. Swearing mildly at the interruption, he trudged to the hallway to see who it was. He peered through the peephole, saw a cascade of red curly hair, and grinned. Opening the door wide, his smile faded when it was met with sad eyes and a frown. “Hi,” he said cautiously.

Brooke sighed and waved. “Got time to talk for a few minutes? I have to get back to class in an hour, but I needed…hell. I needed to talk to someone…like a brother…I guess. I don’t know, since I never had one before. Anyway, congratulations. I picked you instead of Shane.”

Surprised, but curious too, he waved Brooke inside. “Sure. Come on in. Want something to drink?”

“Got a real soda? I could use the caffeine.”

Michael nodded and headed to the refrigerator. When he’d fetched her drink and a glass of ice, he turned to find Brooke sitting at the table and staring at the scratches on the surface. She was tracing them like they were Braille.

“What’s got you so down today?”

Brooke raised her gaze to Michael’s, then looked away to pour her soda over the ice. She gave her jittery insides and the bubbles in her glass time to settle before she spoke. It had to be said quickly because there was nothing that could ease the discomfort of the question.

“When you were in art school, did you draw or paint a lot of nude models?”

Michael picked up his water and opened it as he pondered the question. He took a drink as he looked at Brooke’s defeated gaze, wondering what the hell had happened to send her to ask him inane questions about his artistic education.

“Sure. It’s standard practice for learning the lines and forms of the human body. Why do you ask?”

Brooke tightened her jaw, not ready to reveal her reasons. “So did you ever sleep with any of the models? Wait—that’s not my real question. I don’t care about actualities. I care about feelings and motivations. Did you ever
want
to sleep with any of the models after staring at them for hours?”

“Being a guy, I’m not sure how to answer such a question without condemning myself,” Michael replied, wary of the steel in her gaze. Brooke looked exactly like Jessica when she was pissed, but he knew better than to say that to her at the moment. He’d been around his stepsister enough now to know that looking so much like her mother was a sore point with Brooke.

“Are you sure you want to know what I really think? Maybe you should just tell me what this is all about.”

“Answer honestly, Michael. It’s not a test or something I intend to use against you in a court of law. I just want to know where the artist begins and ends. Where in the process of artistic creation does
the actual man
get involved? If you tell a woman to turn until her pointy hard nipple is aimed at your chin, do you see the pointy nipple or not? I just need to know the damn truth.”

What the hell?
Michael snorted as he glared at her
.
It disappointed him to think of his stepsister as someone so judgmental. It was like trying to defend art to his mother.

“It’s not like an artistic mindset is generic, Brooke. I’m on the far extreme of people with an artistic soul. Somehow I don’t think my facts are going to support whatever strange argument you have running in your head, Dr. Daniels. Luckily for you, Shane’s frequent interrogations have taught me not to overreact to questions worthy of the Spanish inquisition. But just what the fuck did you do today? Go to one of Drake’s classes?”

“Yes. Actually, I did. And I’m not expecting you to speak for his mindset. I’m just asking a person I mostly trust to give me his honest opinion about how such a situation can affect a male artist. I’m trying to understand if the experience is artistic or physical or both. Damn it, I shouldn’t care, but I do,” Brooke declared, twisting her sweating glass as she talked.

Michael stared at her for a few heartbeats while he contemplated what kind of answer to give her. He did not for one moment envy Drake being in Brooke’s hot seat of judgment. In this mood, she almost reminded him of his mother. And that was a scary thought for all of them. One staid conservative was enough for the Larson family and even his mother was finally coming around.

“Okay. So let’s say we’re talking about just me. Carrie knows I’m a guy who gets hard just thinking about a beautiful woman. But no—I never lusted for a model in any of my art classes—at least not openly and during their posing. Why? Because when I go into the zone of seeing them with my artist’s mind, I see them through different eyes. My genitals shut the hell up when confronted with my creativity.”

“Bull and shit too,” Brooke swore. She followed it with a long sip of soda and rubbed the sweat from the glass across her forehead.

“No—I’m completely serious. Shane and I have talked about this. Okay, joked about it is probably a better way of putting it. We think it’s like what happens to male gynecologists. Think about what they do all day long. Sure, there are those who get jaded by all that beauty as well as those who constantly starve for the sight of it. Real artists see beauty as art. Maybe it’s a talent or maybe it’s something you teach yourself. It’s innate so I never thought about it before. It is just something that sort of happens, and I think of it as normal.”

Brooke nodded, even though it didn’t really make her feel better. Michael’s explanation was more or less what she had expected to hear from him. If she had asked her mother or Will, no doubt they would have given her a similar speech. Michael might not think artists were generic, but she certainly saw the similarities.

“Okay. Thanks. I guess I’ll head back to campus now.”

Brooke rose and took her still mostly full glass to the sink. Taking a final sip, she quickly poured the rest down the drain. Afterward, she rinsed the glass and loaded it into the dishwasher because Michael was a fanatic about keeping kitchen chores done.

“What happened today? You’re leaving more upset than when you came. Tell me that at least,” Michael ordered.

Brooke shrugged. “Nothing happened that wasn’t inevitable. I went to one of Drake’s classes, thinking to catch him after it and talk. I guess I wasn’t prepared for the reality of what he does as an artist. Naïve of me since he painted his wife in the nude so many times,” she said as she turned.

“Okay. But what happened? Did you get jealous of the model when you saw her posing?”

Michael’s gaze meeting hers was sincere and compassionate. It made Brooke as mad at him as she was at Drake.

“No. I know what you’re thinking, and I was not jealous. I was. . .I was. . .well disgusted…I suppose. It was worse than feeling jealous. No thirty-year-old woman—hell no one over twenty-five—wants to compete with a bunch of naked twenty-year-olds for any man’s ideal of female perfection. Maybe the woman he ordered to point her breast at his face was just ‘art’ to him, but she was very damn real to my eyes. All I saw was her, fully nude, and maybe even aroused by him. I still see her fucking breast in my head. Drake might as well have been having sex with her because that’s how I felt while I watched him looking at her and pointing out her curves and lines. And I don’t give a shit how uptight it makes me sound. It was how I
felt
.”

“I hate to state the obvious here, but you’re talking to the wrong person about your concerns. You should talk to Drake about your reaction. Give him a chance to explain what
he feels
.”

Michael sighed with genuine regret over Brooke’s head shake, and not just because her reaction was so much like the one his mother would have had. It was obvious Brooke’s female insecurities ran deep. What else could cause a woman who looked like her to worry about competition?

“Brooke—you’re a beautiful woman—more so than most women. You’re too self-confident not to be aware of your beauty. Why are you so insecure about Drake being attracted to other women? The man was teaching a class. He wasn’t making out with the model. The woman’s body was just an example of lines and curves. That’s all she was—I promise.”

“You’re right. I’m not insecure, Michael. I’ve never been insecure. But I know what I saw. Her nipple was hard. I could see it from a million miles away in the back of that stupid cavernous room. The woman was either cold or aroused. Those are the only two explanations. I’ve seen the way Drake’s students look at him. Hell—two of them stood in the hall and told me they had propositioned him. Apparently he told them he had some booty-call woman in Louisville. Why hasn’t he mentioned her to me during all this time we’ve been flirting and trying to date?”