He ground the side of his face into her neck, wipingsweat into her skin and hair, which still smelled like drugstore shampoo and clean woman, with not even the faintest hint of exertion.
He should have let go then. She wasn’t letting go of the racket, and they were making a scene. If he’d let go first, he wouldn’t have had to think about it later. Holding on meant he had to admit that he wanted her, that an animal portion of his brain had noted that this position would do, and that Caroline pressed against the entire length of his body was a very good position indeed. In fact, she was the perfect height for this position, might as well have been designed for him to lean over and wrap around and press his hips into. It felt like sex, like living, like every sharp-edged and vital impulse he’d smothered for years.
You’re a disgrace, said a more rational part of his mind. But that part was not in control anymore, and perhaps had not been for the entire length of time he’d known her. So he held on tighter until they stumbled and fell on the court, Caroline sprawled out over his chest, both of them panting.
His chest was on fire as he rolled to his back, exhausted, aroused, and bewildered. Every emotion and sensation was centered on the woman laughing on top of him. He couldn’t make himself let go. He couldn’t see how he ever would.
“I win,” she whispered, expression exultant.
Chapter Eleven
Caroline had been to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts before. Twice. It was located near the university, so she’d gone the weekend she arrived, before all her stuff was even unpacked and put away. In her previous life, she’d been to a couple of museums in Houston on class trips, butwith two hundred other eighth graderswas not anyone’s idea of the best way to experience the arts.
On her move-in weekend in August, the museum had been crowded with freshmen and their proud parents. Caroline went alone and felt discouraged from entering the most popular halls. She’d wandered around in the contemporary art wing without much of an idea of what she was looking at.
She’d come back the second time with a plan, a map, and an audio tour, managing to make it all the way through the Dutch masters and halfway through the Japanese wing. She was sure she would have eventually completed the entire enormous neoclassical building in time, had she not given her weekends over to Adrian for scheduling, but she had not known about the monthly young professionals series. He sure knew everything about all the good stuff in life, she thought as they followed the crowd of twentysomethings up the stairs to the entrance of themain gallery, the November breeze frosting her cheeks and ruffling her hair.
This was what she might expect her life to look like once she graduated, she told herself. She’d be one of these people in business clothes tuning in to their social lives after a day spent in tall buildings downtown or along the tech corridor. The mental image steadied her; she was still a little wobbly in her heels but determined to master the things before the snow made any shoes but boots impractical. This was a good way to spend the evening. This was what she’d wanted out of her life in Boston. This was progress.Good job, Caroline. Nice footwork.
Satisfaction was not an unfamiliar emotion to Caroline; she’d won a lot of tennis matches, after all. But it had been painfully illusive for the past few months. This group of people queueing for longneck bottles of beer and plastic cups of wine finally fit her expectations for life in Boston. They had alert, intelligent faces and tailored jackets, and they moved through the halls of the museum with purpose and confidence. This was the scene of adult activities she anticipated. Dating. Philanthropy.Networking.
Caroline showed her ID to the teller and retrieved their tickets and black-Sharpie name tags as Adrian carried their coats off to the bag check. It was strange, the way he’d stomped off at the end of their tennis match, barely wishing her good night. She’d feared that she had pissed him off, not just injured his pride and possibly his shins. There was a stiff set to his shoulders even though he was guiding her into the American wing for the reception as solicitously as she could hope, looking sleek and handsome in his charcoal button-down and dark green trousers.
The second time she thanked him for suggesting theevent, he told her she should become a member and join a committee if she wanted to come every month.
“Are you a member?” she asked.
“No, this is Young Professionals for the Arts, and I am zero for three, at this point.”
When she disputed that, he gulped his red wine and gave a grim chuckle.
“These people are lawyers and accountants and finance types,” he explained. “You won’t find any actual artists at an event where you have to pay for entryanddrinks.”
“Except you.”
“Except me,” he begrudgingly admitted.
They followed the mass of gray wool and silk into the main hall, where the museum had set up two more drink stations among a scattering of high-top tables. The entire group shuffled slowly past the paintings comprising the exhibit: a dozen large beige canvases. Caroline and Adrian stopped at the biographical label, where a black-and-white photograph of a serious-looking man in his thirties loomed over a short description of the project and a lengthier recitation of the various awards and honors the artist had received. Adrian impassively crossed his arms over his chest as Caroline read out loud that Jarret Mill had “deconstructed form, color, and image” in his Phoenix series. Adrian tossed back the rest of his wine and went to get another glass.
Caroline picked a beige canvas at random and approached to study it further. There had to be more to the exhibit than met the eye. The individual label readphoenix #3. It helpfully informed her that Jarret had painted it beige using acrylics. She leaned in to look at the brushstrokes. They appeared to have been made by a paintbrush. She leaned back to consider the color. It was stillbeige. At last, she recalled a book from her elementary school classroom that had contained hidden pictures that popped out of seemingly random collections of dots and colors when she crossed her eyes. So she crossed her eyes. That only created additional beige rectangles.
She still had her eyes crossed when the man standing next to her murmured, “So, what do you think of it?”
She was so surprised that someone else had spoken to her that she nearly stumbled in place. The man who had addressed her was very tall, with short blond hair brushed straight up and an attempt at a goatee. The name tag on his navy half-zip sweater readbrandon.
“I, um, I’m not sure I get it,” Caroline confessed once she had recovered her equilibrium.
Brandon frowned, taking a step closer to her as though to align his sight line with hers. Possibly it didn’t look like a beige rectangle from a foot to the right? She hadn’t tried that yet.
“What do you mean?”
Caroline made a helpless gesture at the painting. “I mean, I don’t know what the artist is trying to say with it.”
“Does it really matter what the artist is trying to say?” Brandon asked, eyebrows rising over his narrow features. “What does it evoke in you?”
Caroline squinted at him suspiciously, wondering whether he was just trying to hit on her. Being hit on was not necessarily objectionable, though she wasn’t sure she wanted it to happen while she was there with Adrian. But if that was Brandon’s goal, he’d do better to just announce it straight off, because subtlety usually went over her head.
Where was Adrian, anyway? Another quarter turn of her head and she located him at the next painting over, a few feet away.
