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She had no business reflecting her attraction to her art teacher back on herself. Something was wrong with her-probably the beginning of a midlife crisis. Turning forty pressed down on her. When her ex-husband neared forty, he'd loaded his convertible with his Les Paul guitar, a new wardrobe, and Morgan Cost, the waitress/karaoke deejay at the Sugar Shack in Raceland, and headed to California to pursue his dream of becoming a recording artist.
Yeah, midlife crisis.
"So, let's get started," Leif said, clapping his hands together and jolting Abigail from her reverie. After they'd been drawing for a while, Leif came by her table where she'd flat-out screwed up her attempt at shading an apple. She really sucked at drawing, but if Leif needed his closet organized, she was his gal.
"That's a nice line," he said, leaning over her, flooding her senses with the heady scent of mint mixed with pure male. Dear God, he smelled good. Not like incense at all, but rather clean with a hint of sultry. Like sitting by a fire atop a mountain, crisp air dancing-
What was she doing? Waxing poetic over Leif's shampoo?
But that didn't stop her from swaying toward him, before she caught herself. "I'm not good at this," she said.
"Relax," he said, his voice stroking over her like a hand over velvet. "You've got the basic concept. All you need are-"using his own pencil, he made a few swoops, rounding out the shading "- a few curveballs in your life. You like to live on the straight and narrow, don't you, Abigail. Or is it Abi?"
His question oiled the creaky, unused portion of her heart. No one called her Abi anymore. Except her mother, now and again. She'd once been like those girls at the middle table- young, silly, full of dreams. But as time went by and she struggled to take care of Birdie while her husband drove into the sunset with a mediocre karaoke singer and the funds from the savings account he'd emptied, she'd transformed into Abigail a woman who didn't moon over sappy movies or embrace being called by a nickname.
''Abi?"
"Oh, sorry. Um, call me Abigail please."
His hot breath fanned her neck. "Whatever you want."
Crap on a cracker, why did everything the man say sound like an invitation to have sweaty marathon sex? She rubbed away the goose bumps rippling up her arm. "That's what I like to hear."
His soft laugh only increased her awareness of him. Something in her longed to lean back and place her head in the crook of his neck. Wait, had she just purredThat's what I like to hear?Jeez. What had she been-
"Leif?" The red-lipstick-wearing middle-aged haystack waved her hand. "I need a little help over here."
The woman asked for his help the same way a woman might ask aman to slip off his boxers and mount her. But maybe Abigail's imagination had punched the time clock. She glanced around, realization dawning on her. The whole class was filled with women. Not a hairy chest in sight.
Right.
She felt as if she'd been sucked into the Leif Lively fan club. Haystack would likely run for secretary. Birdie might go for treasurer. The kid was good with money and firmly entrenched in the belief that Leif was the sun, moon, and stars all wrapped up with a bow.
But even though Leif looked mighty fine in his worn blue jeans and waffle T-shirt that left little to the imagination, Abigail had to remind herself that hewasthe David Lee Roth of Magnolia Bend. "Just a Gigolo” and “The Ice Cream Man" played in her head, reminding her that his laid-back charm and sexy blue eyes weren’t for her. Indeed, she had no business wanting to take a lick from Leif's ice-cream cone.
Yep, she was a mother, a business owner, and a crappy art student. A woman who should leave ice cream well enough alone.
So she renewed her efforts to draw an apple, just as a new Van Halen song popped up - “Hot for Teacher."
Leif helpedPeggy Breauxcorrect the curve of the pear she'd drawn on her page while avoiding the way she intentionally brushed her breast against his biceps.
"You've got the general idea here," he said, breathing through his mouth because her perfume stung his nostrils.
"Oh, I'm not good at it. But I want to be," she said, her words dripping with double entendre.
"That's why you're here," he said neutrally, lifting his head to survey the class. Most of his students were concentrating on their work. Birdie had her tongue caught between her teeth as she carefully controlled the lines she made with her charcoal pencil. Her mother sat with her head bent, mouth twisting this way and that as she focused on her pretty horrible drawing of an apple. The college girls were texting. Not cool. He shot them a look. The older lady who had been knitting earlier had already rendered quite a nice drawing of a pineapple. She'd returned to her knitting and her needles clacked a steady rhythm that didn't seem to bother anyone around her.
He returned his gaze to Abigail.
He didn't understand his fascination with her. She seemed layered to such a degree that no man could unwrap her. Steely one minute, achingly vulnerable the next, Abigail was the Mona Lisa, complicated and mysterious. Her beauty a masterpiece of shadow and illumination, a study in contrast. He found him self wanting to know her better, to break through the shell she'd built around herself. If only Abigail could let go.
He imagined her clothes pooling on the floor, her lithe body moving in the moonlight, eyes dark and dilated. Moments before she'd swayed toward him and he'd wondered if she felt something, too.
Maybe...
"Is this better?" Peggy asked.
"Huh?"
