Tempest in Eden

"You're too modest, darling. I heard you're going to pose for Robert Glad starting next week. He does absolutely divine things in wood—if he doesn't get carried away with his chisel."

The remark was intentionally snide and laden with sexual innuendo, but Shay chose to disregard both. She couldn't lie and say it had been nice to see Armand. Instead she excused them by saying, "It's late. Good night, Armand."

Without giving the man a chance to speak, she grabbed Ian's arm and pulled him away. He didn't seem inclined to linger either. For several blocks they walked in tense silence. Shay knew Ian was curious, but she wasn't going to explain unless he asked. As they waited for a traffic light to change, he turned to her. "Have you ever—"

"No!" she said, shaking her head adamantly. "I've never posed for him."

They crossed the street before Ian pursued the topic. "What does he do?"

"He's a photographer," she said crisply. "A sorry excuse for one, if you ask me. My agent sent me to him on a go-see. I stayed in his studio—and I use the term loosely; pleasure palace would be far more appropriate—for exactly two minutes. I've never gone back. Nor will I. I've heard all kinds of tales since then about what goes on in that room lined with leopard skin. Drugs, orgies." She shuddered. "He gives me the creeps, and he's never forgiven me for laughing when he suggested that I take off all my clothes and lie down on his vibrating waterbed."

She stopped in her tracks as Ian issued a blistering curse through his teeth. He grasped her arm and spun her around. "If he hurt you—"

"No," she said firmly. The feral light in Ian's eyes alarmed her. To the passionate nature she sensed in Ian she added a volatile temper. But then she'd seen evidences of it before, just not to this degree. If she'd given the least hint that Armand had done something unpleasant to her, she felt certain Ian would have gladly gone back and leveled the man. "Armand is too much of a coward to hurt anyone," she added. "Did you hear what he said about Robert Glad? That's just the kind of petty remark I'd expect him to make about someone with real talent."

"Who's Robert Glad?"

"He's a sculptor who works mainly in wood." They were touching upon a sensitive subject, and she wished she could think of an unobtrusive way to change it.

"That … that Armand person said you were posing for Glad. Next week."

"Yes."

After another lengthy, awkward silence, Ian picked up the conversation. "Will you… I mean, is it…"

She came to a sudden halt in the middle of the sidewalk and faced him. "Nude? Is that the word you find so difficult to say?"

"No. I mean, yes, that's the word, but no, I don't find it difficult to say!"

"Sure you don't," she ground out. "You were going through that magazine tonight before I got there looking for pi

ctures of me, like a temperance marcher sniffing out demon liquor."

"Shay—"

"Is Armand the kind of artist you picture me working for? That base, decadent worm?" She pulled herself up to her full height and tossed her head back proudly. "For your information, I'm as particular about the artists I'll work with as they are in choosing me. And to satisfy your curiosity, so you won't be too embarrassed to ask again, yes, my breasts will be bare next week, though the rest of me will be covered. Robert Glad, a famous sculptor, has been commissioned by a historical society in Hawaii to do a piece for a museum. He's using a Polynesian girl's face but my torso. Now, does all that meet with your moralistic approval?"

"You're not being fair, Shay," Ian said with a calmness that further infuriated her.

"Nor are you." Her body was taut with anger. Every muscle was straining with it. "You formed an opinion about me when you caught me looking at you naked. All right, that was a dreadful sin. Gouge out my eyes. Start the fires at the stake."

He, too, was getting angry. Several passersby stared at them, but they were hardly aware of anything except their anger and their problem, which at the moment seemed insurmountable. The hopelessness of it contributed to Shay's fury.

"You have a beautiful body, Reverend Douglas. I have a deep, artistic appreciation for beautiful bodies, so I looked at you. And yes, I liked what I saw. And no, I wasn't looking strictly aesthetically. And damn it, I wish I didn't still want you."

She spun away from him, only to collide with the side of a newsstand. She scanned the lurid display with tear-filled eyes, and her stomach turned in revulsion. The selection of magazines varied only in their degree of tastelessness. All the reading matter was pornographic. Choking on her hurt and anger, she turned back to Ian. "Why don't you buy some of these and pore over them carefully to see if I'm in them? That's what you liken me to, isn't it?" Her hand swept the rack, knocking a number of the magazines to the sidewalk.

The proprietor came off his stool and shouted at her, "Hey, lady, what the hell do you think you're doin'?"

She stumbled blindly down the sidewalk, then turned to see Ian shove a five-dollar bill at the man, who was cursing them both viciously with each chomp on his stale, unlit cigar. She glimpsed Ian rushing after her and heard him calling her name as she entered the parking garage and gave her license number to the attendant.

Just as the man disappeared to get the car, Ian caught up with her. He yanked her around, catching a wrist in each of his fists. He pressed his body into hers to still her attempt to escape.

"You know better, Shay, you know better," he said.

The words came out in breathless gasps. He pressed closer to her, buried his face in her hair, and repeated the words again and again until she grew calm and her body sank against him in submission.

His arms went around her, and they clung to each other in the gloomy, echoing cavern of the garage, mindless of the danger they were foolishly courting.