She knelt on the bed beside him. “Are you ticklish?”
“Just a normal amount.”
“Good. This might feel a little cold. And wet.”
Despite the warning, he flinched at the first stroke of the brush. “You’re paintingme?”
“Like I said. Now relax. I have big plans for your backside.”
An hour later, Jean cracked open a beer. “Drink,” she said, holding it to his lips.
“I can use my arms,” he protested, starting to lift himself at the waist.
She pressed him down with a finger to the shoulder blade. “It needs to dry.” A tilt of the can cut off whatever else he might have said. Jean used the sheet to wipe off a few droplets that spilled from the corner of his mouth. “What do you think?”
“It’s a pale ale. Light, refreshing, not fruity exactly but there’s something different. An herb, maybe?”
“I was talking about your modeling career, but okay. Somebody knows his booze.” She must have stumbled onto his secondary passion, right after things that slither. A stray thought wormed its way to the front of Jean’s brain: Wouldsheever land on Charlie’s list of obsessions?
“It was hard to avoid, growing up.” He sounded so gloomy about it that Jean braced for a story worthy of a country song. “My family loves their beer.” There was a pause, during which he seemed to realize how that must sound. “I mean—in a normal way. There was beer around. For the adults. Not that they were drunk all the time or neglecting me.”
“I won’t report them,” she promised, giving him another sip. “It’s a flower, by the way. Hibiscus. The big red flowers with the thing”—she wiggled her finger—“in the middle.”
“The pistil?”
She shrugged. “Sure.” Setting down the can, Jean crawled across the bed to kneel next to his hips.
“How does it look?”
“Not to toot my own horn, but if Hieronymus Bosch wasn’t such a downer, he could have painted this.” She’d started with the snake, adding in a tree that stretched upward to follow the line of his spine and then slowly filling in the garden around it. Two naked human figures were waiting for faces. Jean hadn’t decided whether the Adam in her Eden should be wearing his glasses.
“Can I see it?”
“Not yet.” She picked up one of the tubes of paint, squeezing a blob of carmine onto his skin before shaping it into an apple with her brush. “Are you sick of me poking you?”
“I could stay like this forever.”
Total sincerity, no hint of cheesy self-consciousness, like he was trying to wow her with a line. It knocked her for a loop hearing him say things like that. She wanted to ask the universe,where did you find this one?But she already knew the answer: right here, in this cottage, hidden away from the world. Hopefully this wasn’t one of those tragic timeslip situations where he was stuck in a parallel dimension fifty years in the past.
“Maybe they should add body painting to the spa menu.” She fanned the bristles over his shoulder blade, adding a peacock to the scene. Lush foliage climbed the walls, like something fromWhere the Wild Things Are, only sexier, because no one was wearing a wolf suit (or anything else). “Do you think people would pay for this?”
“From a stranger?”
“That’s generally how it works.”
“And—you’d both be naked?”
“Just the customer, usually. Like when you get a massage.”
He was conspicuously silent.
“You’ve never had a massage? You should book one while you’re here. Make the feds pay.” She felt his back rise as he sighed.
“I’m not actually a government witness,” he admitted. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”
“You have other qualities. Like your big, thick… back.” She poked him. “No laughing.”
“It’s hard.”
