I smiled slightly, shrugged one shoulder slowly, and looked away in a meager effort to appear…what? Embarrassed? Shy? I didn’t know exactly what it conveyed – I just knew it worked on pretty much every chick I’d come across.
“It’s all right,” I said softly. “It really has been a while. I mean, at least we’re out in public again, and I can stand to be here and talk to you, right? There was a time neither of us could really talk to anyone.”
“Well, I’m very proud of you, then,” she replied.
“Thanks.” I smiled again, dropped my gaze for a moment, and then quickly made eye contact with her again. She had soft hazel eyes, which were nice enough to look at, but not as interesting as her tits. She had really, really nice tits.
They weren’t really big or anything – nice tits don’t have to be.
Jonathan walked back from the shooting area with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. If he had been anyone else, the management probably would have thrown a fit, but no one said anything to him. Maybe if he had been alone, someone might have made a comment, but we both walked in with Arden, and everyone here knew exactly who he was.
Like I said, Evan scared people. Not me…well, not really. I would never let it show if he did, but the guy sometimes looked like he was just going to start shooting people. I didn’t think he’d ever make a move on me or anything – he was completely loyal to my dad – but sometimes he got this far away look in his eyes, and you could just tell something wasn’t right about him.
The dude just wasn’t stable.
Jonathan could be physically intimidating – he was a big guy – but just not in the same way. He always seemed to be having fun with people even when he got a little pissy.
“Are you still in the Marines?”
“No,” I replied. “Honorably discharged.”
“What do you do now?”
A flash of the dude from the previous night gave me my answer.
“I paint.”
“Houses?”
“No.” I snickered.
“An artist?” She said with a raised brow. “That's a bit of a switch.”
“I know,” I replied, “but my doctors said it was a good idea to do something creative.”
“I guess that makes sense,” she said. She still sounded skeptical and watched me very closely. “So you paint what? Landscapes? Fruit?”
“People.”
“People?”
“People.”
I watched her expression while she contemplated.
“I do body painting,” I lied through my teeth and hoped she wouldn’t ask me to prove it. I’d talked to the actual body painter enough to be able to sound like I knew what I was talking about, but I hadn’t used a brush and paints since sixth-grade art class.
“As in, all over body painting?” she asked.
“Yep.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at me intently.
“What would you paint on me?” she asked.
I looked her up and down for a moment, though I already had my answer. She was built just like one of the women in that guy's book.
“A butterfly,” I said after a pause.