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“Too bad you’re not here in L.A. I’m sitting on the beach, where the ocean breezes are cool and the blondes are hot.”
Marco rolled his eyes. “I’m only here in Chicago because you begged me to take your modeling job.”
“Correction—I begged you to go audition. Did you actually get offered the gig?”
“Yeah.” Despite showing up unshaven, half-frozen and scruffy-looking as possible.
“And you’re gonna do it? For me?” Francisco sniffled melodramatically. “I’m really touched.”
Marco grimaced. If he skipped out, Rey would black-ball Francisco with his agency. On the other hand, Marco couldn’t stay in Chicago very long. Francisco had moved around a lot over the past few years but wasn’t impossible to track. And if they found Francisco’s place, they’d find Marco.
“Seriously, this is great for my career. My agent told me Rey Martinson is one of Chicago’s up-and-coming artists. The Museum of Contemporary Art is considering a small-scale exhibit of his work next year. Any model would be thrilled to work for him.”
“First of all, Rey Martinson is not a ‘him’.” Rey could never be mistaken for a man, not with her silky golden hair and plump breasts.
“Really? Just shows how much I pay attention to my modeling agent. If I land this soap-opera role, I’m firing her.”
“You should fire her.” Marco ran a hand through his tangled curls. “Hermanito, do you know what life modeling is?”
“I know what life modeling is. Don’t you?” Francisco was uncharacteristically cagey.
“I do now, Francisco!” Just remembering standing nude in front of Rey sent a rush of blood to his penis.
“You mean this modeling gig is nude modeling?” His brother let out a shout of laughter loud enough to be heard in Chicago without using the phone. “Were you rough, tough and in the buff?”
“It’s not funny, Francisco!”
While Francisco choked with laughter, Marco contemplated choking his brother.
Francisco finally caught his breath. “I swear, hermano, my agent never told me I’d have to go full monty. I wouldn’t have sent you to take my place if I’d known it was nude modeling.”
“Thanks, Francisco. I didn’t think you’d set me up for this on purpose.” He knew Francisco wouldn’t have left him there hanging. Literally.
“Yeah, I would have taken the gig myself. The last nude modeling job I took, they paid me an extra fifty percent!”
Marco groaned. “I don’t want to know the details.”
“How much is this artist paying us, Marco?”
“Us? Last time I checked, it was my bare body on display.”
“Whatever.” Marco pictured his brother’s dismissal of the situation. “How much, Marco?” Francisco persisted.
He gave up trying to make his brother understand and named the amount Rey had offered.
“Hmm. Not bad, minus fifteen percent for my agent. You can keep whatever you make,” Francisco offered, obviously impressed at his own largesse.
“Muchas gracias.” Marco’s voice was heavy with sarcasm, which his brother chose to ignore.
“De nada. And Rey Martinson is a woman?” Francisco asked, still intent on ferreting out all the salacious details.
“Definitely.”
“What does she look like? Is she hot?”
Marco shifted, glad that his brother couldn’t see what must have been a goofy expression on his face. “She’s tall, blond and blue-eyed.” He didn’t want to elaborate further. Francisco had a dirty enough mind without hearing how sexy Rey was.
“Tall, blond and blue-eyed? Damn, some guys get all the luck. Last time I modeled nude for a wrinkly little woman who chased me around her studio.”
“So that’s how you made your extra fifty percent.” Marco knew the modeling world was crazy, but his brother always found the real lunatics.
“That old broad only got to look, no touching allowed. I’ve got my pride, you know.”
Marco had his pride, too, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep any pride around Rey. Standing naked in front of her, he’d almost begged her to wrap her long artist’s fingers around his hard shaft.
His brother broke into his lascivious thoughts. “Much as I’d love to come to pose naked for your hot blond artist, I have to stay in L.A. for a while. I made the first cut and got called back for a second audition.”
“That’s great! Stay there as long as you want.” The longer the better. “If you run low on cash, I’ll send you some.”
“Wow, you must really want this artist all to yourself. I haven’t heard you so worked up over a woman since you went all the way with your junior prom date.”
“No, it’s not like that, Francisco.” He wanted Francisco safe, and modeling was a small price to pay.
His brother laughed. “Sure it’s like that. Anyway, I’ll be out here for a while. The executive producer is in Mexico for an experimental face-lift procedure. The FDA banned it after a bunch of people wound up unable to blink.”
Marco grimaced. “She must be some kind of hag.”
“Actually the executive producer is a man.”
Marco rolled his eyes. The man probably had a droopy dick to match his droopy eyelids. And Marco’s own undroopy dick was causing him problems. “I know it may confuse your oversexed little mind, but Rey doesn’t date her models.” He was surprised to hear the plaintive note in his voice.
“She doesn’t like men,” Francisco commiserated. “Too bad. It happens a lot in the artsy-fartsy set. I knew this gay painter once who painted nothing but female nudes. Of course, he did have issues with his mamá….”
“Francisco.” Marco ground his jaw, molars scraping off a layer of tooth enamel.
“On the other hand, lesbians usually don’t go for naked men, artistically or otherwise. They tend to paint weird pink flowers or oysters, if you get my drift.”
“Francisco.” Mercifully his younger brother’s attempt at Freudian analysis and art criticism meandered to a halt. Marco took a deep breath and began again. “Francisco, Rey likes men. She paints men. I think she even dates men. But she won’t date me because I’m her model.”
His brother’s hoot of laughter nearly broke his eardrum. “She probably doesn’t date her male models because most of them date men.”
“Oh.” Marco’s conservative cubano upbringing made a rare appearance and he shuddered.
“Look at it this way, Marco,” his brother offered in a conciliatory tone. “Show up, take off your clothes and maybe your impressive body will convince her to change her mind about dating her models.”
Marco considered his brother’s advice. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
“I do have good ideas now and then.” Francisco’s tone became concerned. “Are you doing okay, Marco? Have you been spotted by any men with large necks intent on avenging their slutty girlfriend’s honor?”
Marco stopped thinking about posing nude and got serious. “No, Chicago’s the perfect city for me to hang out. It’s big enough to get lost in, and I can cover my face with a scarf when I leave the apartment. Hell, I need to use a scarf anyway. Besides,” he prevaricated, “I only slept with that mob chick once, and nobody with any sense would leave Miami this time of year.”
“All right.” His brother sounded relieved. “Wish me luck, and you’ll see me next on Hope for Tomorrow.”
“Good luck, hermanito. Adiós.”
“Adiós, hermano.” Francisco clicked off his phone.
Marco hung up and stared at the off-white apartment walls. He had refused to hide in the feds’ safe house after one of his informants disappeared. No doubt the man had provided a meal for the bull sharks off the Florida coast.
Marco’d suspected for a while that Rodríguez had a mole, a snitch in the Miami division. Since he didn’t know who to trust at DEA, he would trust the only man he could count on: himself.
Being turned into shark chow held no appeal, but neither did sitting around a government-owned shack on the edge of a swamp, watching satellite soccer and skin flicks waiting for someone to put a bullet in the back of his head. If Rodríguez wanted him dead, by God, that son of a bitch would have to work for it.
But damned if he was going to sacrifice Francisco. Marco would keep his younger brother out of town if he had to pay him. Considering Francisco’s spotty income from modeling and bartending, it would be an offer he couldn’t refuse.
He stared at the snow falling past the window. Chicago was cold, but it was better than being cold and dead in sunny Miami.
4
REY HUNG UP A NEW midnight-blue bathrobe in her changing cubicle and tossed the old bathrobe on her pile of painting rags. Marco had almost burst out of the threadbare black fabric. Of course, his chest and abs were much more muscular and well-defined than her last model. She stroked the pliant blue terry cloth. It would be soft and supple against his smooth skin. Lucky robe. It would touch him. She wouldn’t.
Why, oh, why couldn’t she find a nice, normal man who thought Monet was the French word for cash and Jackson Pollock was just an inexpensive whitefish from Mississippi? Starting with Stefan the Slug, her first lover, and culminating with Jack the Jag-off, Rey had gone for the dark, dangerous type. Of course, ten years later Stefan was mostly gray and about as dangerous as a set of children’s finger paints. And as for Jack, the only dangerous part of him was his flapping mouth.
Rey shook her head. Instead of mooning over a model with an overdeveloped ego and an underdeveloped brain, she needed to get her art supplies ready. Walking to her large angled sketching table, she opened a new box of charcoal sticks. She was testing them on a paper scrap when her phone rang.
She answered the phone. “Rey Martinson.”
“Hello, Rey. It’s Evelyn.”
“Good news, Evelyn. I found the perfect model and he starts today.”
“I have some good news, too. I just faxed the contract for the male nude sculpture to the Stuarts’ attorney. He called and said everything is in order.”
Rey whooshed a silent sigh of relief. Her biggest commission was in her grasp. “You know how much this means to me, Evelyn.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Rey.” Evelyn’s voice lost some of its coziness. “The last two paintings you showed me aren’t up to your usual high standards.”
Rey’s stomach flipped. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she managed to say. Was Evelyn letting her go as a client? How could she work on this big commission with this hanging over her head?
“Your technique was great, but the emotion wasn’t there. The paintings seemed a bit, well, dull.”
That stung more than she expected. Years in the art world hadn’t made her so thick-skinned after all. “Dull?” Rey heard a snap and looked down to find her charcoal stick cracked in two. She wiped her smeared fingers on an ochre-stained rag.
“I loved the color, but I couldn’t feel your emotional connection with the subject.”
Rey rolled her eyes. Her dislike of Craig must have spilled over into his portrait.
Evelyn continued, “I’m sending those two paintings back. Only your absolute best work goes on display.”
“I agree.” Maybe her friends at the gay bar needed some new artwork. If Craig had a fit, so much the better.
“The sculpture for the Stuarts’ Roman bath is crucial to your career, Rey. How many modern artists get commissioned for a life-size marble statue? This might put you on the map. If we use this as a springboard to move away from the male nudes, you could be the next Glenna Goodacre.”
Rey’s stomach flipped. As always, Evelyn knew exactly which buttons to push. Glenna Goodacre was Rey’s idol. The American artist had sculpted the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on display at the Mall in Washington, D.C. “What do you suggest, Evelyn? I don’t want to goof this up.”
“In a word, dear, passion.”
“Passion?” Rey grimaced. “Passion for my artwork?”
Evelyn cleared her throat delicately. “Sometimes when an artist is concentrating on her career, certain things fall by the wayside. Like family, friends and other more, uh, personal relationships.”
Like sex, Rey mentally translated.
Evelyn continued, “It might be a good idea to take a short break and recharge your batteries.”
Rey didn’t think Evelyn meant the batteries for the gadget in her nightstand. “I see.”
“I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings, Rey.” Evelyn paused. “But if you don’t produce a phenomenal piece of artwork for the Stuarts, I will have difficulties finding such prestigious and lucrative commissions for you.”
Rey knew what that meant: screw this up and kiss your career goodbye. “Thanks for letting me know, Evelyn. You can count on me to do a great job.”
“Thanks, dear. I’ll let you get back to work.” Evelyn hung up.
Rey stared out the window. Heavy gray snow clouds churned, further dampening her mood. The door buzzer sounded and she started. The adrenaline rush of starting a new project always made her jumpy. She refused to think that her nerves might be from seeing Marco again.
She crossed to the foyer, her comfortable shoes squeaking slightly on the cement floor. She stopped and consciously slowed her breathing, tugging open the heavy sliding door. Nanook of the North stood on her doorstep.
“Marco, is that you?” He was finally dressed for the cold weather, a heavy scarf covering his face. He even wore dark glasses despite the overcast day.
“In the flesh. Or soon to be in the flesh, right?”
Rey caught herself smiling at his joke before she put on her professional demeanor. He stomped the snow off his tan boots and walked inside. She closed the door and he pulled off his scarf and glasses, pushing back the hood on a chocolate-brown ski parka.
“I took your advice and dressed for the cold. I finally have some feeling in my fingers and toes.” He tugged off his heavy gloves and unzipped his jacket.
“I’ll take your coat.” The Velcro on the hood stuck to his sweater, and without thinking she moved behind him to pull it loose.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Eager to get to work?”
“You’re a man of many layers,” she quipped, fingering the ecru turtleneck collar under his heavy sweater.
“What do you mean?” His voice was casual but his trapezius and deltoid muscles tightened over his shoulder blades. She realized she was still touching him and gripped his thick down coat with both hands.
“Layers of clothing. They keep you warmer.” What did he think she meant? Something more personal?
“Right.” His shoulders relaxed and he turned to face her. “I am a man of many layers of clothing just waiting to be peeled away.” He was so close she saw the tiny black flecks of beard along the smooth skin of his cheeks.
Rey dug her fingers into the coat to keep from running them along the clean line of his jaw. Instead of distracting her, the leftover warmth of his body radiated from the slippery nylon lining.
