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The day had been going reasonably well until she’d started touching him and repeating the word “sex” about sixty-five times. Mick had managed to overlook the shirtless absurdity of his own role and concentrate on the enjoyment of watching Sophy in her element. She was flushed and pretty in the sunny white studio, smudged up to the elbows in charcoal, stone dust rising in gentle puffs from the floor to stain her bare legs. He’d been a bit concerned about her safety working in such a dusty environment, but she’d cracked the windows as soon as they’d arrived and reassured him that she wore a protective mask when she started the actual sculpting. There had been a faint bristle to the words. Obviously no one got between the woman and her work, an ethic he could appreciate even if he didn’t entirely approve. The sights and sounds of her asthma attack were engrained on his psyche.
He’d been surprised by how much and how immediately he’d enjoyed her company. The strong physical attraction had initiated at the hospital, but he had thought that her intense shyness would make the hours-long sketch session heavy going. Instead, she had visibly relaxed around him, comfortable in her domain with her tools of the trade, and continued to flourish. The opened-up Sophy was his personal nightmare: bright, kind, bloody funny, and so beautiful he found it hard to keep his focus on her directions.
By the time she’d breathed in his face and rubbed up against his bare chest, he was attracted, aroused, filled with dread, and subsequently acted like a complete ass. He’d been millimetres from kissing her when some semblance of sanity had returned at the eleventh hour. The realisation that he’d lost track of his surroundings, the time, place, everything but his damn hormones, including his intellectual awareness of Sophy, had shocked him into retreat. He’d had no idea where she was at mentally, how willing a participant she was in the moment, whether he was sharing or forcing something. It went against the grain of both his training and his personal code of conduct.
Pull back. Refocus.
And a cold bloody shower wouldn’t go astray.
Apparently he never learned his lesson. It was a sobering thought.
The ease of the day was clearly over. Sophy hadn’t been able to make eye contact with him for a good ten minutes. She was holding the sketch under his nose for his approval now, keeping her eyes fixed on the parchment like she’d never seen it before in her life.
Mick forced his own grim focus to the preparatory work. It was excellent. It was clearly his body and yet it wasn’t a portrait of him. There was a cipher quality to the figure. He could pick out the suggestion of individual features, the firm delineation of bones and muscle, but there was a suitably godlike obscurity in the total effect.
Clearing her throat, Sophy pointed at the page and explained how she would sculpt a raised tattoo of flowering vines over Hades’s torso to signify the presence of Persephone. Her fingernails were cut short and workmanlike, but were painted in pink and white stripes. The smartphone leaning dangerously from the pocket of her loose dress was a similarly aggressive shade of candyfloss, which seemed a crime against an otherwise perfectly decent model. She was the most overtly feminine person he had met since his kindergarten days, when small girls usually came bedecked with bows, ruffles and sparkly purses.
If he’d previously thought about it, he would have said his taste in women leaned more toward the tomboy type. He couldn’t imagine Sophy sprawled on the couch with a beer, shouting her displeasure at a poor ref’s call. She certainly wouldn’t be able to play sports with her asthma. In fact, outdoor pursuits in general seemed like a tremendously bad idea. He could feel his blood pressure rising at the very thought of taking her camping, away from the survival response time for medical assistance.
There was no reason why he should be this attracted.
Shit.
It wasn’t an issue. He had no desire to get involved with anyone at this point. And look at them, for Christ’s sake. It was as if someone had mixed up the casting calls for a flowery chick flick and Terminator 5. He felt three times larger and at least twice as ugly as he actually was just standing near her. The chances of her reciprocating anything other than wary reluctance seemed to hover around zero.
“I’ll just lock up my stuff and then let you get back to work,” Sophy was saying as she stacked together her papers and pencils.
Shaking off his worsening mood, Mick went over and closed the windows, double-checking the lock fastenings out of habit.
“The security here isn’t optimal,” he commented. “Any halfway-competent thief could break these locks in less than ten seconds.”
Sophy looked a bit amused and slightly more relaxed, which was a welcome relief after several long minutes of watching her hair all but crackle from the tension racketing up her spine.
“We all have a secure office space to leave tools and valuables,” she said. “I don’t think anybody would leave laptops or jewellery or anything behind at night. It’s mostly only WIPs that are left in the studios.”
“Whips?” Mick repeated, taken aback.
“Works-in-progress,” Sophy explained over her shoulder as she led the way down the hall to the cluster of tiny student offices.
They were little more than cubicles and, in Sophy’s case, Mick discovered, could do a pretty neat impression of a landfill.
“Sorry, it’s a bit messy,” said Sophy absently, lunging to catch a cascade of rolled drawings before they fell on the floor and disappeared into the Bermuda triangle of discarded papers, unused wall planners and paint-stained drop sheets.
He was not completely inept with women. He knew when agreement was not required.
“This door wasn’t locked,” he pointed out.
“Oh. No. I must have forgotten.”
Mick sighed.
Stepping back to allow her some much-needed floor space, his elbow jostled an object on the shelf by the door. His hand snapped out as it started to fall and he was still examining it with mild interest when Sophy turned back around.
“That’s pretty,” she said, immediately fixing on the small vase. “Where did that come from?”
She looked at him expectantly, as if it was a conjuring trick and he was about to produce a second vase of flowers from his pocket or start pulling coins from her ears.
Mick flicked a finger at the loosely tied label.
