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“What are you doing?” he calls.
“Proving I’m right.” I return with two sketchbooks and a box of colored pencils. I plop down next to him and hand him one of the sketchbooks. “Pick anything in this room you think is beautiful or interesting and draw it.”
He half laughs. “This is silly. I get it, you’re a good art teacher.”
I hold up a finger to get his attention. “I’ll bet you that if you do what I say, you’ll like drawing more and be better at it by the time the power comes back on.”
His eyes sharpen. Gage never can resist a win. “What do you get if I lose?”
I think. “A year’s supply of that fancy French cheese.”
“And if I win?” he prompts. There’s something deliciously wicked in his voice.
“What do you want?” I ask.
His dark gaze looks me up and down. Like I’m a delectable menu, and he’s deciding what to order.
“A favor,” he says at last. “To be determined and given at the time of my choosing.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You want me to give one of the most feared men on Wall Street an unlimited I.O.U.? In exchange for some cheese?”
“No, in exchange for making a fool of myself trying to draw,” he says indignantly. “Also, for the record, that cheese isveryexpensive.”
“Fine,” I allow. Although now I’m more determined than ever to win.
“Good,” he says, a competitive spark flashing in his eye. He opens the sketchbook and grabs a colored pencil. “Do your worst.”
Unfortunately for him, I do my best instead.
15
VIOLET
“Okay, so let’s start with what you did well,” I say an hour later. I may have been a little over-confident in my teaching abilities. Gage is as bad at drawing as I am at being his assistant.
Part of the problem is that when I told him to pick one thing in the room to draw, he picked me. Figure drawing is normally pretty advanced.
Of course,Gage would be overly ambitious in everything he tries.
Gage snorts. “Nothing. I did nothing well.” He sounds bitter.
“That’s not true.” I point to the way he drew my mouth. “It’s out of proportion with everything else, but you got pretty close to capturing the actual shape of my mouth. The same with my eyes. You didn’t get caught up in what generic mouths and eyes should look like. You actually drew what you saw.”
He leans in, his lips brushing against mine as his hand toys with the buttons on my shirt. “Bet I could do even better with your breasts.”
“Gage.” I laugh into his mouth as I swat his hands away. “Is this your way of welching on our bet?”
“Consider it a draw,” he says. “You get your cheese, and I get my favor.”
“I don’t think that’s how draws work,” I say. But he’s guiding me back down onto the carpet, and I’m rapidly losing interest in arguing with him. Not when there are so many better things we could be doing.
His face is mere inches from mine, my heart beating fast.
When suddenly the power comes back on.
The overhead lights come on, washing us in too-bright white light. Outside, lights in other buildings come back on. And to top it all off, my phone chooses that moment to start buzzing with an incoming call.
It feels like the outside world is rushing in.
