If I Were You(Inside Out 01)

Chapter Eleven

Description: butterfly

Chris wants to sketch me again? No. Not sketch. He wants to paint me, and I think he means in his studio. I am stunned speechless. My throat is dry and my mouth will not form words. This silent reaction to stress I’m developing is new to me, but then, I’m always an extremist. Mute silence or ramblings at the speed of lightning, there really seems to be no in-between. Still without words, I blink at Chris who is watching me intently, and I cannot read anything but expectation in his expression. He is waiting for a reply. Say something, I silently order myself. Say anything. No. Not anything. Something witty and charming.
Thankfully, I am saved from my mental scramble for the perfect reply when Chris’s beer appears in front of him. A soft flow of air escapes my lips, as Chris launches into a conversation in Spanish with the man who now stands by our table. I grapple for what to say when we return to our topic of Chris painting me, but I am pulled into the conversation before I resolve my thoughts.
“Sara, meet Diego,” Chris says, “the other half of ‘Diego Maria’.”
I try to focus on the conversation with Diego, who is about Chris’s age, and has a sleek goatee and warm brown eyes but I am ultra-aware of Chris’s long fingers as he squeezes his lime into the beer. It’s crazy to be so drawn to someone’s hands, but of course, I remind myself, his hands are gifted in ways most could never be. I’m light-headed with his impact on me, not to mention a very real need to eat, so as the two men talk, I am content to mostly listen while I nibble on several yummy, warm salted chips with some salsa. Diego, it seems, is planning a trip to Paris, and is seeking advice about where to stay and what to do that Chris is graciously offering.  I am taken aback by the way Chris, a famous, millionaire artist, acts as if he isn’t those things at all.
Our waiter, the real one, not Diego, appears with our food, and Diego excuses himself to allow us to be served. “Sorry about that,” Chris says. “He’s been off every time I’ve been by since I got back from Paris three weeks ago.” He motions to my plate. “How’s it look?”
I inhale the spicy aroma and my stomach cheers with joy. “It looks and smells absolutely divine.”
He picks up his lime and motions to one on the side of my plate. “They aren’t the same if you don’t use this.” He squeezes the juice onto his food.
“I’ve never put lime on my tacos, but I’m game to try.” I quickly follow his example, relieved we’ve turned our attention to food, not me posing for him.
“Before you dig in, I should warn you that hot means hot. Really hot. So if you aren’t sure you can take it, then-“
I’m too hungry for caution. I pick up my taco and open my mouth, with my stomach cheering me on and welcoming substance.
“Wait-” he says, but it’s too late for me to stop, even if I consider it an option, which I don’t.
Fire shoots through my mouth, and bites a path down my throat. I gasp and almost choke. Oh my god, I said bring the fire, but I didn’t mean literally. I drop the taco and curl the fingers of one hand around the cloth napkin in my lap while my other hand goes to my throat.
Chris shoves his beer at me, and I don’t even hesitate. I grab it and gulp several, long, cold swallows and still I can barely breathe. When the heat finally eases, I am breathing hard. “I should never have said bring the fire.” I take another drink of his beer, the bitterness of the liquid somehow easing the burn. Sanity returns and I stare at the half empty bottle and then at Chris. I drank his beer, right after I made a fool of myself, and all but choked. I shove the beer toward him. “Sorry. I forgot myself.” Why do I keep embarrassing myself with this man?
He grins and slugs back a drink of the beer. My lips part and my fingers curl on both sides of the table as I watch the muscles of his throat bob. I am acutely aware of the intimacy of sharing his drink, of my mouth having been where his is now. He sets the nearly empty bottle down, his eyes locking with mine, the steam in his stare telling me I’m not alone in my thoughts.
“You really do have quite the knack for witnessing me embarrass myself,” I manage in a voice raspy from the heat of the food, or maybe, simply because this man exists on planet earth.
“I told you, I’d prefer it to be called a knack for rescuing you.”
Rescuing me. Though this is the second time he’s said those words, they radiate through my body, deep into my soul, and something long suppressed within me stirs, then raises its ugly head. I don’t need to be rescued. Do I? In that deep down spot the words have touched, an old part of myself screams yes, yes, yes. You need to be rescued. You want to be rescued. You want to be taken care of. I straighten and twist my fingers together in my lap. Silently, I battle my inner self. No. No. No. I do not want to be rescued. I do not need to be rescued. Not anymore. Not for a long time now. Not ever again.
Chris lifts a hand towards the kitchen. “Diego,” he calls out. “Can we get Sara an order minus the fire sauce?” They exchange comments in Spanish before Chris refocuses his attention on me. He studies me intently, and I can tell he’s trying to read whatever emotion is stamped on my face. Good luck, I think, because I can’t even read what I’m feeling myself.
“How’s your mouth feeling?”
I wet my burning lips and his gaze follows, his expression darkening, and every nerve ending I own tingles in reply. “Fine,” I comment, “but no thanks to you. You should have warned me how hot it was.”
“I distinctly remember warning you.”
“You should have tried harder. You knew I was starving.”
“You say that past tense. Are you saying you’re not anymore?”
“My tongue is raw and may never be the same, but actually, yes, I’m still starving.”
“Me too,” he says softly. “Ravenous, in fact.”
My throat goes dry. Really dry. More dry than the other ten or so times he’s caused such a reaction in me. There is a charge in the air, crackling all around us, to the point I almost think sparks must be evident. I can feel this man in every part of my body and he has not even touched me. I don’t remember ever feeling this aware of a man in my life. I don’t want this to be my imagination but I’m not sure I am confident enough in myself to be with this man. I thought I was past all my self-doubt, but I’m not sure I am.
Desperate for a reprieve from whatever this thing between us is that threatens to consume me, I reach for a distraction. “You should eat before your food gets cold.”
“Se?ora.” Diego appears by my side and takes my plate. “Are you okay? Our fire is real fire.” He casts Chris a disapproving look. “I thought Se?or would have warned you.”
Chris holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. I did warn her.”
“After I took a bite,” I counter, enjoying my opportunity to join in with Diego and give him a hard time. In some small way, it takes just a bit of the edge from my embarrassment.
“Before you took the bite,” he corrects.
Diego says something in Spanish that sounds like frustration directed at Chris, and then looks at me. “He should have told you before you took a bite. I am sorry, Se?ora.”
“Don’t worry about me or keep apologizing,” I plead. “Really. I’m more than fine, or I will be, when you two men stop watching me like I’m about to go up in flames.”
A waiter appears and sets a new plate in front of me before taking my old plate from Diego and disappearing with it.
“I had them include two sauces on the side for you to try,” Diego explains. “The green is mild. The red is medium. Neither will burn your mouth.”
I give him an appreciative nod. “Gracias, Diego. I should have tested the sauce before I took a big bite but the food just looked and smelled so good I couldn’t resist digging in.”
His face colors with the compliment, but it doesn’t stop him from mercilessly worrying over me a full extra minute before he rushes off. I am now left under the amused scrutiny of this brilliant, too sexy, artist who hasn’t eaten a bite because of me.
“Please eat,” I urge him softly. “Your food is even colder now than before.”
“Try your food first and make sure it’s okay.”
“Oh no,” I scoff. “I’m not going to try it while you watch me do something else ridiculously clumsy.”
Mischief dances across his features. “I like watching you. You spark my creative side.”
My stomach flip flops at the reference to the sketch. “You can’t watch me and eat.”
“I could argue that, but in the interest of getting you to eat, let’s dig in together.” The final word rasps with an underlying meaning, or maybe, I simply want it to.
“Fine,” I agree. “Together.”
His lips quirk and so do mine. Without breaking eye contact, we both reach for a taco, and only look away when we each take a bite. This time spicy, delicious flavors explode in my mouth, and I moan with pleasure. Either this is great food or I am too hungry to know better.
Chris swallows his mouthful of fire without so much as a blink and stares at me with a look that I can only call ‘hungry’. “I take it that’s a sound of satisfaction?”
I find my own fire again but this time it’s in the form of blood flooding various inappropriate parts of my body considering our public location. “What can I say?” I manage. “The end of starvation is quite delicious.” I use the spoon by my plate to taste the green sauce. “And so is that. I like it.”
He holds out his beer to offer me another swallow, and I am all but certain he is purposely reminding me of our intimate act of sharing. I stare at the beer, remembering his mouth, where my mouth had been, before I force my gaze to his. “No. Thank you.”
He considers me a moment, his expression unreadable, and then slowly lifts the bottle to his mouth and takes a deep swallow. Again, I watch the powerful muscles in his throat bob, feeling my muscles, the ones low in my belly, tighten. What is this man doing to me?
He lowers the beer and I quickly, guiltily, reach for my taco and dig in. Chris does the same and I begin thinking about all the questions I yearn to ask him. When does he paint? Where does he paint? What’s his inspiration? His favorite brush? Questions I know he has heard a million times and probably doesn’t want to answer so I hold back.
“This is the perfect corner for watching people,” he comments.
I follow his lead, searching beyond the glass to the activity on the street, thinking about how black and white I’ve let life become, when I want to live it in color. We fall into a surprisingly comfortable silence, both of us watching the people scurry by on the street. A man and woman arm and arm. A woman struggling to get a little boy to put his coat on. Another woman who pulls her coat close to her and seems to be crying.
Chris turns a thoughtful inspection on me. “Everyone has a story. What’s yours, Sara McMillan?”
The question takes me off guard, and I fight the answer that comes insistently to my mind. I have no story, not one I wish to claim. “I’m just a simple girl living out a summer dream of being around the art that I love.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know about you.”
“I have not one single artistic bone in my body, so I have to live vicariously through you.”
“Let me paint you and you can.”
I scrape my teeth fretfully over my bottom lip. “I don’t know.”
“What’s not to know?”
“It’s intimidating to be painted by someone like you, Chris. Surely, you have to know that.”
“I’m just a man with a paintbrush, Sara. Nothing more.”
“You are not just a man with a paintbrush.” And my gaze lowers, caressing a three-inch scar along his jawline I haven’t noticed until now, and I wonder how it came to be. I wonder who the man beneath the art really is. My eyes find his, search the green depths of the stare that has already seduced me ten times over. “What’s your story, Chris?”
“My story is on the canvas, where I’d like you to be.”
Why is he so insistent? “Can I…think about it?”
“As long as I can continue to try and talk you into it while you do.”
I take the opportunity to ask a question I’ve been burning to know the answer to. “How long are you in town?”
“Until it doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“So you don’t have set times of the year you’re here and set times you’re in Paris?”
“I go wherever I feel right at the time with one exception. Every October I’m in Paris to participate in the annual celebrity charity event at the Louvre Museum.”
“Where the Mona Lisa is on display.” There is a wistful quality to my voice I don’t even try to hide. I would die to see the Mona Lisa.
“Yes. Have you ever seen it?”
“I’ve never been out of the States, let alone a famous Paris museum. Actually, aside from my childhood home in Nevada, this is it for me.”
“That’s unacceptable. Life is too short and the world is too large and too full of the art you love, not to see everything you can.”
“Well, the nice thing about the art I love is its ability to allow the viewer to experience a piece of the world, or a story that can never be theirs, through someone else’s eyes. I’ve certainly seen Paris through yours.” I briefly think of the mural behind Mark’s desk, but shove aside the thought. I don’t want to change the tone of the light conversation.
“Sounds like you’re convincing yourself you don’t need to travel when you want to travel.”
Ouch. I almost flinch. Talk about hitting a nerve. First, about teaching instead of working in the art world, and now this. “Some of us are not rich and famous, and able to soar around the world at will.”
“Ouch,” he says, repeating the word I’d only dared in my mind. “That hurt.”
“Good, because pointing out that you can see the world and I cannot, was insensitive, Mr. Rich and Famous Artist.”
He wiggles a brow. “Who looks cool in leather.”
“And that helps your case right now, how?”
“I can offer to show you around Paris.”
I blink. Did he just suggest I go to Paris to see him? No. No. I’m reading too much into it. “Paris is a big order. I’ve decided to start my travel goals with New York City in the number one spot.”
“For any specific reason?”
“Opportunity. Mark seems to think I’m Riptide material. That’s why he’s forcing me to learn wine, opera, and classical music.”
His expression doesn’t change but the charge in the air does, snapping tight with tension. “Mark told you that he’s going to get you a job at Riptide?”
“Well, I guess he more alluded to it.”
“Alluded how?”
“The general gist was that he sees bigger things for me than a summer on the gallery floor, but to achieve those things I need to be ready to interact with the type of clientele Riptide events attract.” I frown to realize his finger is tapping on the table. “What? What is it?” My cell rings with horrible timing and without taking my eyes off of Chris, I dig it from my purse. I glance down and cringe at the sight of Mark’s number before I look at Chris again. “It’s…” My voice trails off. I don’t think Mark’s name will go over well right now. “I have to take it.” I punch the ‘answer’ button and immediately hear Mark’s voice.
“Have you quit your job without notice, Ms. McMillan?”
I cut my eyes to my plate, trying to hide my stress over the agitation crackling in my boss’s question from showing to Chris, and willing my heart to stop racing. “I’m grabbing a late lunch. It was after two and I hadn’t eaten all day.”
“It’s after three.”
I bite my lips. Crap. How did I let time get away from me? “I’m headed back now.”
“Now would be good, Ms. McMillan. Amanda needs to review details with you for Friday night’s event. Call me when you get to the gallery.”
“Yes. Of course, I-“ The line goes dead. I glance up at Chris.
“That was Mark,” he supplies.
I give an awkward nod. “I’m late back to work.”
He grabs his wallet from his pocket and tosses a hundred dollar bill on the table for what I estimate to be a forty dollar ticket. He’s sliding on his jacket, clearly ready to go, and I quickly reach for my purse to pay my half of the tab.
“Don’t even think about it,” he says and his easy-going manner is nowhere in sight. My hand freezes on my wallet and I open my mouth to argue but decide against it. He is edgy and…mad? Surely not. Why on earth would he be mad?
“Thank you.” I slip my purse over my shoulder.
He pushes to his feet and motions to the door. I stand up and fit my briefcase strap over my shoulder with my purse. “You don’t have to walk me back.”
His eyes glint with a hardness that matches the set of his jaw. “I’m walking you back, Sara.”
His tone is steely and almost as sharp as Mark’s had been. Uncomfortably, I head to the exit, unsteady on my heels as he holds the door and I step outside. What’s wrong with him? Why has he gone from fire to ice?
We begin our walk, faster this time, and the cold wind has nothing on the chill between us. Conversation is non-existent, and I have no clue how to break the silence, or if I should even try. I dare a peek at his profile several times, fighting the wind blowing hair over my eyes, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. Why won’t he look at me? Several times, I open my mouth to speak but words simply won’t leave my lips.
We are almost to the gallery, and a knot has formed in my stomach at the prospect of an awkward goodbye, when he suddenly grabs me and pulls me into a small enclave of a deserted office rental. Before I can fully grasp what is happening, I am against the wall, hidden from the street and he is in front of me, enclosing me in the tiny space. I blink up into his burning stare and I think I might combust. His scent, his warmth, his hard body, is all around me, but he is not touching me. I want him to touch me.
He presses his hand to the concrete wall above my head when I want it on my body. “You don’t belong here, Sara.”
The words are unexpected, a hard punch in the chest. “What? I don’t understand.”
“This job is wrong for you.”
I shake my head. I don’t belong? Coming from Chris, an established artist, I feel inferior, rejected. “You asked me why I wasn’t following my heart. Why I wasn’t pursuing what I love. I am. That’s what I’m doing.”
“I didn’t think you’d do it in this place.”
This place. I don’t know what he’s telling me. Does he mean this gallery? This city? Has he judged me not worthy of his inner circle?
“Look, Sara.” He hesitates, and lifts his head to the sky, seeming to struggle for words before fixing me with a turbulent look. “I’m trying to protect you here. This world you’ve strayed into is filled with dark, messed up, arrogant a*sholes who will play with your mind and use you until there is nothing else left for you to recognize in yourself.”
“Are you one of those dark, messed up, arrogant a*sholes?”
He stares down at me, and I barely recognize the hard lines of his face, the glint in his eyes, as belonging to the man I’ve just had lunch with. His gaze sweeps my lips, lingers, and the swell of response and longing in me is instant, overwhelming. He reaches up and strokes his thumb over my bottom lip. Every nerve ending in my body responds and it’s all I can do not to touch him, to grab his hand, but something holds me back. I am lost in this man, in his stare, in some spellbinding, dark whirlwind of…what? Lust, desire, torment? Seconds tick eternally and so does the silence. I want to hold him, to stop whatever I sense is coming but I cannot.
“I’m worse.” He pushes off the wall, and is gone. He is gone. I am alone against the wall, aching with a fire that has nothing to do with the meal we shared. My lashes flutter, my fingers touch my lip where he touched me. He has warned me away from Mark, from the gallery, from him, and he has failed. I cannot turn away. I am here and I am going nowhere.