Striptease

“That’s odd.” She leaned back against the bookcase, her hands flat behind her on a hip-high shelf. “You told me you never worked hard at much of anything.”

“So I did.” Jacob left the video on her desk and made his way to stand beside her, leaning one shoulder against the bookcase and tucking his hands into khaki pockets. “Didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”

And she would make sure he continued in that uninformed state for the next however many weeks he was in and out of the office. “Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I rarely forget much of anything people tell me.”

For a long, drawn-out moment he studied her intently. His expression, brilliantly cutting and sharp, possessed a life of its own, as if he was considering whether or not a response was required. Finally, he reached out, and she thought for a moment he was reaching for her. A ridiculous notion, because he obviously wasn’t, and because that one thought spawned others. And she found herself wondering what she would do if he did.

If he touched her.

If he moved closer, into her space, breathed her air and brushed the curve of her jaw with his lips.

But he didn’t. He picked up the frosted glass figurine behind her instead. He turned it over and around, balanced it on his palm, used his thumb to test the smooth curving surface of the woman’s glass bottom, her breasts, her face lifted to the sky.

Melanie’s fingers itched to take it from him, to return the sculpture to the shelf and move his hands to her body, but she didn’t do the first and certainly wasn’t about to do the second, no matter how quickly her heart tripped or how hot and itchy her skin felt beneath her summer-weight sweater.

She nodded toward the figure. “Lauren brought that back from Ireland. I keep forgetting to take it home.”

“Nice,” he said, before returning it to the shelf. “Why take it home? Why not enjoy it from here?”

“I do,” she admitted, surprising herself and moving her gaze from Jacob’s face to the figurine. “It’s just that I have a collection of this artist’s pieces at home. Keeping the lot of them together seems logical.”

“Do you like his work? Or do you like the work that he does?”

She frowned, shook her head as she looked back at him. “I’m not sure I understand the difference. Or is the redundancy meant to trip me up?”

Jacob took a step closer. “Do you like his eye, his style, maybe the way he interprets emotion in the figures? Or do you just have a thing for naked bodies?”

The way he asked the question, the timbre of his voice, the flash of teasing fire in his eyes made it easy to imagine that his query was more leading and more personal than he’d intended it to be. Then again, he was a guy. What was she thinking? Leading and personal was the name of the game.

Common sense told her to blow him off, but too much time together loomed in their future, and she was loath to give him any inkling of advantage. “Yes, actually, to both. I like his style, the way he portrays the human form. And, as far as having a thing for naked bodies, I can’t think of anything as compelling as a beautiful nude.”

He didn’t even blink. Didn’t even smirk. Did nothing but ask, “Are you talking art here?”

“Doesn’t the best art imitate life?”

He took a minute to consider the scope of her reply, a minute during which he picked up and fondled the figurine. Yes, fondled, because there was no other word to describe the silky glide of his fingers over the lush glass curves.

Melanie told herself to look away; the words fell on her own deaf ears. And she admitted to the almost painful need to know if he would touch her with half as much awe.

“Is your collection gender specific?”

Melanie’s gaze snapped from his beautifully made hands to his face, which was equally compelling in a purely masculine way. “You mean do I only collect females?” When he gave a single nod, she lifted her chin and answered with a simple, “No.”

“Interesting,” he said, and once again shelved the sculpture.

Now that was curious. “Why is my equal opportunity collection interesting?”

It took Jacob a moment to drag his attention to her. Once he did, however, his focus was complete, and the look in his eyes unnerving. Unsettling. And stirring beyond belief.

“I can’t see many women I know collecting male nudes. Most don’t think a man’s body is much to write home about,” he finally said, and while she couldn’t help but wonder what woman had given him that impression, she wondered more what he’d look like out of his clothes.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“About men’s bodies?” He looked thunderstruck…and that tickled her.

“About bodies in general. You have to appreciate what your camera lens captures, or what you see on a video display.” She ran her fingers through the hair at her nape and nervously fluffed. “I can’t believe that you don’t pay attention to bone structure…muscle tone…angles and contours and curves.”

He shoved his hands back into his pockets, an expression of what seemed to be genuine confusion on his face, as if he had never before evaluated what went into his art. “I don’t pull a shot apart like that. For me it’s more about what the overall concept captures.”

“Hmm.” That surprised her. “I would think you’d take all of those individual things into consideration to get the result you want.”

“Nah.” He grimaced playfully. “Too much work.”

How quickly she forgot. “That’s right. And you don’t work hard at much of anything.”

His nod was a perfect and teasing touché. “And you, Miss Steel-Trap Mind, work much too hard at everything. Am I right?”

First her partners, and now this man who didn’t know a thing about her? “Depends on your point of view. I like to think I have ambition. Commitment. Self-discipline.”

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound as attractive as it was annoying. “Self-discipline,” he repeated, as if savoring a secret joke.

“You find that funny?”

“Yeah. Hilarious.”

Right. Hilarious. She was so glad she hadn’t dipped a toe into the sexual waters and said anything she’d look back on and regret.

“Loosen up, Melanie. If you analyze every detail, take everything so seriously, you’ll end up with an ulcer.”

“Or get where I want to go,” she said. His gaze sharpened. She forced an indifferent shrug. “You said yourself we focus on different things, Faulkner. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. I prefer to steer rather than drift through life. What’s it to you?”

His brow furrowed. “Hell, if you’re so busy fighting the current—” he took a step closer “—how do you expect to enjoy the ride?”

Melanie swallowed hard, resisting the tug of a current, all right. The man’s magnetism was potent, his attention heady, his impression provocative. When he reached to cup a hand around the sculpture where it sat behind her on the bookshelf, her heart lurched.

His gaze cut back and forth between the nude and her face. “So, I’m guessing to you this piece isn’t about the total concept. It’s more about analyzing the details. The woman’s posture. The way she has her hands spread and her fingers flexed to hold herself back.”

Back from what? When he turned to look at her, his eyes seemed to answer the unspoken question, and Melanie’s heart kicked hard in her chest. It shouldn’t have. He was only telling her what he thought she might see. Nothing more. Nothing leading.

Nothing sexual.

“And to you?” she managed to ask.

“To me this is all about interpretation. What the woman wants. What she’s looking for. Waiting for.”

Melanie had to be imagining his suggestion that it was her and not the figurine who was the one looking, waiting. She hadn’t revealed any of those truths in the little bit of time they’d spent together.

And she wouldn’t. Because they weren’t truths at all. “Okay, so, you take in the overall picture. I work my way up through the elements. In the end we both see the same thing, don’t you think?”