The Seduction of Suzanne (13 page)

“Well, no, but then there are all sorts of things I don’t know about you,” she said, her tone a little defensive. “There are times when I ask you direct questions about stuff, like what you do when you work, and about your family and so on, and you avoid answering and then change the subject. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. If you don’t want to let me in that’s your business. But if I then decide that there are things I would rather keep to myself then I’m quite entitled,” and she put her hands on her hips and looked challengingly up at him.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I suppose it must seem as if I have been keeping secrets at times. I am delighted,” and he put his hands on her shoulder and looked squarely into her eyes, “that you’ve decided to share your beautiful work with me. I’ve just been taken completely by surprise, that’s all. Nobody told me you painted.”

“Oh, barely anyone knows,” she said breezily, mollified.

“Do you sell them on the mainland?”

“I don’t sell them at all.”

“Why not?” he asked, obviously astonished.

“Because…Well I…It’s just a hobby. I didn’t think anyone would want to buy them,” she said with a shrug.

There was a silence. When she finally looked up he was staring at her oddly.

“Suzanne,” he said, “these are some of the most incredible modern landscapes I have ever seen, and I’ve been around. I don’t think you’d have any difficulty selling every one of them, if that’s what you wanted. In fact, if I were you, I’d look at exhibiting them overseas.”

She stared at him.

“You really think so?” she said with wonder.

“I do,” he replied firmly. “I cannot believe that you can paint like this, without ever having had formal training.”

“I did want to go to art school when I was younger, but it just didn’t seem sensible, so I decided to teach instead.”

“Do you really enjoy painting? More than teaching, I mean?”

“Oh yes. I paint most of the year round, in my free time. It’s only in summer during the school holidays that I try to take a break. I don’t think it’s healthy to be inside all the time. So I get out and fill myself with sunshine and beauty, and it keeps me going for the rest of the year. Even then I can’t quite keep myself away. I’ve been working on this one in the evenings, while there’s still light.”

“If you had the chance, would you leave teaching and study art?”

“It’s not sensible…and I don’t have the money. . .” she faltered.

“If you took these paintings to the US – to California, just as a for instance – you could sell them there and probably make more than enough to support yourself in your studies.”

She quailed at the idea of taking such a risk.

“I don’t know…I’m not sure if I really want…I just--”

“Give it some thought, Suzanne. It would be a crime to waste a talent like yours.”

He met her gaze earnestly, and she saw that he was utterly serious.

She hesitated, frowning at him doubtfully, then turned and led the way back over the bare floorboards to the kitchen, picking through what he’d just said, cherishing the compliments but doubting the expertise of the source.

She asked Justin to fetch the chilly bin she had left on the verandah as they came in. He went and carried it back in easily, though it must have weight thirty kilos at least. She was briefly distracted by his flexed muscles, then turned away before he could catch her mooning over him.

The chilli bin contained a couple of white-fleshed snapper on a bed of half-melted ice cubes. They had caught the fish a couple of hours earlier. She started jasmine rice cooking, then filleted the fish.

She set the fillets in the fridge while she went outside to pick fresh leaves and tomatoes from her vegetable garden for a salad.

Justin drifted after her, and came to stand beside her, putting the leaves she passed him in a plastic bowl he had thoughtfully snagged in the kitchen, popping tiny cherry tomatoes into his mouth when he thought she wasn’t looking. She pointedly caught him in the act and he blinked at her all wide-eyed and guilty-trying-to-look-innocent then grinned like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar.

“They’re all warm from the sunshine. I like feeling them pop in my mouth and all the seeds spray out.”

So she passed him another one, placing it between his teeth when he opened his mouth for her obligingly, his eyes growing darker with a sensuous light as she stroked his lip closed over the small red fruit. She watched his jaw move, imagining the seeds bursting out and coating his tongue

His eyes were on her, and as her eyelids drooped low over her eyes he stepped forward, put a hand on her waist and urged her towards him. Without protest she came, stepping between his spread feet and pressing against his body.

He claimed her mouth with a hungry directness. She felt the scrape of his teeth across her lower lip. It made her shudder and cling to him. His hand slid up her back to clasp the nape of her neck. She could taste a sweet acidity in his mouth: the traces of the tomato. It was amazing to her that such a minor intimacy – the hint of the food she had just fed him – could turn her on so much.

With a murmur of approval he deepened the kiss
still further, pressing her into him. His fingers cupped her neck and bottom.

She slid a hand underneath his shirt to dig her fingernails into the heated skin of his back. She rubbed her body against his, the slide of their clothes over the hard ridges of his muscles overwhelmingly erotic. He groaned and plunged his tongue into her mouth. Hedonistically she welcomed it, drew it in and sucked on it, making him shudder powerfully. Heat radiated through her body, tightening her nipples and turning her knees to water. She whimpered quietly in the distress of her own pleasure.

It seemed that he heard the small sound, for he gentled the kiss, pulling back slightly, and then more, lifting his fingers to run them up her spine. As his mouth left hers she laid her head to rest on his shoulder, slightly dizzy. Her nose was against the skin of his neck and she sifted through the scents that had come to mean Justin in her mind. His arms went around her and he held her gently in a hug. She felt so safe like that, with all that masculine power wrapped around her, undemand-ing and present.

He was still breathing a little fast. She moved her hand to the narrow groove between his pectorals, feeling it rise and fall. Oh, she could stand here all day like this, and never let him go.

But the thought was enough to make her move away.

With reluctance he disengaged until only his
hands touched her elbows, giving her support as she swayed a little. Her eyes opened, and fixed dazedly on him, the eyelids feeling weighted and heavy. His mouth was slightly swollen, and without thought she put her fingertips up to touch it. He shuddered. She smiled shyly.

“Witch,” he accused her in a hoarse whisper.

Her eyes opened very wide.

“Yes. Witch,” he said in response to that inquiry. “With your long black hair, and eyes so deep a brown that a man could drown in them. That flawless white skin and beautiful body. How could you be anything else?”

“Ha! Yeah right. What I wouldn’t give for a little power over you.” Then she bit her lip, embarrassed by her own comment, and turned away. “That should be enough for the salad. You can put it all together while I fry the fish.”

She shed her shoes at the door so she didn’t track dirt inside, and he copied her, his jandals easy to cast off, his feet much more elegant bare than in the cheap rubber thongs.

“The rest of the salad veges are in the fridge. You can chop them and make the vinaigrette. The recipe is taped to the inside of that cupboard door, and the ingredients are just inside. If you scan down the paper you’ll see there’s one there for a Thai-style dressing. That’s what I had in mind.”

She washed her hands, heated a frying pan on the gas ring, sprinkled the fish fillets with finely chopped lemongrass from the garden, and set
them to fry lightly in a little coconut oil.

“Shall I lay the table?” he asked, finished with the salad and dressing.

“Please. Placemats in that drawer, cutlery in this one, plates in the cupboard over there, and wine glasses above them,” she said, pointing. “Unless you’d prefer a beer. If so there are a few bottles in the fridge.”

“A white wine would be great.”

Inviting him into her house, her exclusive domain, had been such a barrier in her head. Now here he was, and he slotted into place like a missing puzzle piece. Where was the awkwardness for which she had braced herself? He worked quietly beside her and it felt good to have him there, barefoot and preoccupied in her kitchen.

As the pounding of her heart subsided slowly from that kiss, and her awareness of him settled back to its usual active simmer,
Suzanne dwelt on what he had said about an exhibition.

Exhibit her work?

Exhibit her work.

Crikey, what a thought.

Her pieces, the work of her own hands, hanging in a gallery like any professional artist. Her work with a pricetag attached. Going home with buyers to hang on the walls of their homes and be looked at every day, living a whole new life beyond the sphere of their creator. The idea of letting any go felt weird. She wouldn’t be able to get them back. But there were so many stacked in her studio unhung; a few would not be missed too sorely.

Would it be better to send her favourites – and never see them again – or the ones she liked the least and could trade without regret. The latter were her earliest efforts, and she couldn’t look at them without wanting to do them over. But would those be the right ones to send out representing her talent?

Probably some middle ground would be best and. . .

Was the decision made then? Did it so quickly become ‘which ones’? It seemed so. She was amazed to find yet another barrier she had lived with had a door in it that she could open so easily; step through and be an artist making money from her painting. She frowned. What made the difference? Was it something he’d said? She sifted through his comments, looking for the words, the phrase that had made the mental transition so simple.

There wasn’t anything specific. It was more the casual ease of it. A failure to perceive any problems: ‘You work is good. I have a contact. Sell your work through them. Done’.

Maybe that was part of his charm. If there were obstacles in the world, he didn’t perceive them.

With a conscious effort she pulled her attention back to the fish, which was nearly finished.

Moving quickly she chopped a lemon into segments, and then served the meal onto the plates Justin had laid out on the bench. She carried
them to the table, before fetching the wine.

“This looks delicious,” he said, taking a seat and unfolding his napkin.

She smiled in response, and for several minutes they each devoted themselves to their food. It was good, the fish delicately flavoured and the salad fresh and crisp, thought Suzanne with satisfaction. When they had finished, Justin leaned back in his chair and grinned across the table at her.

“It was even better than it looked. Thank you.”

“You’re most welcome.”

He turned his head so that he could see her landscape on the wall, the buttery light of the lowering sun tilted across it, turning it all to shades of gold and umber. Then he looked back at her, the warm wash of yellow gilding his skin and hair, sculpting his full lips temptingly.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

A blush rose under her skin at his intent regard. She was too shy to tell him how beautiful he was to her, too. There was a moment of silence.

“I begin teaching again this Monday,” she said, apropos of nothing.

“So soon?”

“Yes, well, the beginning of February, the end of the school holidays.”

“Of course.” His gaze dropped to his nearly empty wine glass. He stared contemplatively at it for a few seconds, and then lifted it to his mouth and tossed back the remainder. The base of the glass clicked as he set it back on the table.

“I want to ask you something,” he said.

“Yes?”

“If you had a chance to simply pack your bags and walk out of here tomorrow, would you do it? You could travel. I know you want to. See the world that you’ve only ever read about. Smell it, taste it, touch it . . . paint it. If you could, would you do it?”

“Of course,” she said lightly. “Who wouldn’t? If it were possible.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

Suzanne
was taken aback.

“I couldn’t just leave. I have a responsibility to my pupils.”

“If a replacement teacher could be found.”

“They couldn’t find one, not on such short notice.” Yet as she said it, she thought of Marie, who had been teaching for seven years at the school at Okiwi before she became pregnant, and who wanted to teach there again. She was a perfectly suitable replacement.

“I could never go all by myself,” she continued. “To leave my home, my friends, everything I know? I just couldn’t.”

He pursed his lips slightly, his eyes narrowed, but he said no more, picking up his wine glass to refill it and changing the subject.