Just a Bit Dirty (Straight Guys 10)

Yawning, Miles stretched out on the couch and pulled out his phone. He might as well reply to his siblings’ texts while he waited.

He didn’t even notice falling asleep.

Chapter 7

Ian Caldwell hadn’t been this irritated in a long time.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and then his neck, working out the kinks, as he strode toward the room that served as a studio whenever the itch to draw became impossible to ignore.

He was a busy man. It always seemed like he never had enough hours in the day. Art was a useless, unproductive waste of his time. But sometimes the itch to draw became too distracting and started hindering his productivity, so he had to indulge it. The sooner he indulged his latest fixation, the sooner he could get back to work.

Ian entered the studio and came to an abrupt halt.

Miles was sleeping on the couch.

Ian walked closer, loosening and then removing his tie. He took his suit jacket off too and dropped them on the chair carelessly, his eyes on the young man—a boy, really—snoring softly on the leather couch.

Miles was lying on his belly, his face turned toward Ian. His phone was on the floor beside Miles’s hand.

Ian unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and rolled his sleeves up. He knew he should have changed, but he felt too impatient for that. He grabbed a sketchbook and a pencil, dropped himself in the armchair opposite Miles, and quickly began to sketch, glancing at the boy from time to time.

A few minutes later, he tore the page out and crumpled it into a ball.

The second sketch was even worse than the first and quickly followed it into the trashcan.

Ian started a third, but the problem remained: while technically the resemblance to Miles was unmistakable, the sketch failed to capture the elusive quality about him that had made Ian want to draw him in the first place.

Sighing through his gritted teeth, Ian threw the sketch into the trashcan, too.

He glared at the sleeping young man, his irritation mounting. His gaze roamed over Miles’s peaceful face, taking in every detail. Sometimes he couldn’t believe he had thought Miles looked like Regina. The resemblance to Regina was still there, of course, but Ian had stopped noticing it a while ago. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he looked at Miles and saw his ex-wife. It seemed the more time he spent around the boy, the less like Regina he looked. Objectively, Regina was more beautiful, but her face lacked the character Miles’s face had an abundance of. The closest comparison Ian could think of was the difference between a piece of art by a great artist and a poor copy made by an amateur that failed to capture the essence of the original artwork.

If Miles looked exactly like Regina, he wouldn’t want to draw him. Ian had never been interested in drawing his wife. He’d drawn her a few times, of course, when she’d talked him into it, but he had never fixated on drawing her like he was fixated on drawing this British boy. That had been the one good thing about her.

Miles muttered something sleepily and turned onto his other side, leaving Ian staring at his lush, richly colored hair. His fingers were itching to paint and try to get the hair color right, which was strange for him. He rarely painted, usually satisfied with black and white sketches.

Everything about his fixation on this boy was fucking strange, period.

“Miles,” he bit off.

Miles started and nearly fell to the floor in his haste to sit up. Green eyes blinked up at Ian sleepily before looking around, as if only now realizing where he was.

“Oh. I fell asleep,” he said before his eyes returned to Ian, more alert now.

He had such a strange face, Ian thought, staring at it in supreme irritation but unable to look away. That face was a study of contradictions: Miles’s thick, brown eyebrows contrasted with his lovely green eyes, gorgeous hair, and almost delicate features. His faint, light-brown stubble was a striking contrast to his soft, pink lips. That face could look bird-like and weird one moment, and incredibly lovely when one just looked at it a little longer.

Ian looked back at his sketchbook and started sketching again. Maybe he should try… Yes, like this…

“Hello to you too,” Miles said, yawning. “My day was fine, thanks for asking.”

Ian didn’t know why he let the boy be so cheeky with him. Any other employee of his wouldn’t even dream of acting like that around him. Miles felt entirely too comfortable around him, which was… perplexing. Ian had never given Miles a reason to think that it would be acceptable to behave this way.

He glanced back at his model and found Miles watching his hands with a strange expression.