“Not yet.”
Damn.
“So any luck with your writer’s block?” Madison asked, hoping to distract herself from the very definition of distraction seated across from her.
“It will come,” he said, picking at the corner off her spare beignet and popping a piece into his mouth. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was intentionally avoiding her eyes. “Today I just want to focus on you.”
“I’m okay with that.”
After brunch he took her hand and they headed across the street. Artists and fortune-tellers were set up along the sidewalk outside Jackson Park, which Adam said was named after Andrew Jackson. The park featured a statue of Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, at its center.
They stopped short when a tall and lanky man, who reminded Madison of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln, stepped into their path. He touched Madison’s shoulder and examined her face.
“What the hell?” Adam said, shoving the guy’s hand away from her.
“I have to draw you,” the guy said.
“You don’t have to draw shit,” Adam grumbled.
While Madison was fascinated by the motley bunch of street vendors, Adam seemed annoyed by them. But then this wasn’t his first time in New Orleans, so every nuance wasn’t necessarily a grand adventure for him. Madison examined the artist’s caricatures and giggled at his interpretation of Morgan Freeman’s freckles and Nicole Kidman’s forehead.
“I want him to draw me,” Madison said and promptly sat on the stool next to the artist’s easel.
“He’s a caricaturist,” Adam said, as if the vocation was synonymous with roadkill.
“I know.”
The artist took a seat and began to sketch.
“If you want someone to draw you, I’ll do it,” Adam said.
And she’d love to see what he came up with. “Get to work then,” she said. “We’ll see who does a better job.”
Adam turned to the street artist. “How much for a blank sheet of paper and a charcoal pencil?”
“Uh . . . twenty bucks?”
Adam’s glare indicated he knew he was being robbed, but he paid the man, collected his supplies, including a clipboard, and sat on the sidewalk near a wall. He didn’t even look at Madison as he worked, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Nor was she interested in Mr. Lincoln’s small talk. The caricaturist refused to give Madison a peek at his finished work while they waited for Adam to complete his drawing. Madison fanned herself with her hands. Even in the shade, she was growing uncomfortably warm. Adam must be dying in his jeans if she was this hot in a skirt. She was admiring Adam in those jeans when he looked up at her unexpectedly. He added a small touch to his drawing and held it at arm’s length to examine it. After a few more scratches with his pencil, he climbed to his feet.
“I couldn’t remember which side your beauty mark was on.” Adam kissed the small mole under her left eye. “I can’t believe I forgot.”
He’d just drawn her from memory and felt bad about forgetting such a small detail? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see what he’d drawn. She decided no matter how bad it was, she’d fawn over it.
“You first,” Adam said to Mr. Lincoln.
The artist turned his easel around. The man’s talent was obvious, though the large gap between Madison’s front teeth, her overly long neck, the alien-sized eyes and the bushy mess of hair more expansive than the state of Texas made her a bit self-conscious.
“Doesn’t even look like her,” Adam said.
“It isn’t supposed to,” Madison reminded him. “Well, not exactly.”
“Let’s see yours,” Mr. Lincoln said.
Adam turned the clipboard around, and Madison’s mouth dropped open in shock. Shock from the unquestionable skill it had taken to create such a perfect likeness of her. Further shock from the fact that she was entirely naked. Her face went hot as she took in the sight of her fingers buried in the expertly drawn folds between her legs, her breasts pushed together into cleavage with nipples hard and straining. Her facial expression could only be described as her O-face.
“Adam!” she managed to squeak before grabbing the clipboard and hiding the drawing from passersby by holding it against her chest.
“You win,” Mr. Lincoln said. “How much do you want for it?”
Madison’s face went even hotter.
“It’s not for sale,” Adam said.
Madison wandered away from the passing pedestrians and took another peek at Adam’s work. He was so talented, tears filled her eyes. Sure, she looked like a porn star and yes, she had to wonder if this was how he saw her every time he looked at her—if so, no wonder he was always horny—but every detail of her body had been captured to perfection. From memory. Not only was she astonished that he knew her body that well, but she was hopelessly flattered.
“Are you ashamed of me for drawing it?” Adam asked, his voice uncharacteristically gruff. He peered over her shoulder at the page.
“Ashamed?” she said. “Of course I’m not ashamed of you. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I just don’t want strangers to see me like that.”
“So it would bother you if other people saw you naked and coming, even though it’s the most beautiful sight in the world?”
“Of course it would bother me.”
“Well, hell. We should probably head back to the hotel for some more teasing then,” he said and took her hand.
“What?”
“Or maybe it’s best to do it here.” He meandered down the street, holding her hand to keep her in step with him.
“Do what here?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Do you want me to carry that for you?”
He extended a hand toward the clipboard she held. Her eyes widened when she realized anyone could have gotten an eyeful while she was trying to figure out why more teasing was in order. Pausing under a moss-draped tree, she released the page from the clipboard and flipped it over so that the blank backside was facing outward. That was better. Now she could prevent it from being wrinkled and from being seen.
“Fortunes told, palms read,” a deeply tanned and wrinkled woman called from a nearby table that was covered with a gold-fringed purple satin tablecloth, a crystal ball sitting in its center.
“Is that something you’re interested in?” Adam asked, nodding toward the fortune-teller.
Madison didn’t believe in fortune-telling and the occult, but it might be fun to play along. “I’ll get my fortune told if you get your palm read.”
“No thanks,” he said.
She grabbed him by the T-shirt and tugged him toward the table. “He’d like his palm read,” Madison said.
Adam shook his head in annoyance but extended his hand toward the mystic.
“Very interesting,” the woman said, pouring over Adam’s palm. “You have multiple talents, I see.”
Which was probably given away by the calluses on his fingertips earned from playing guitar and the smudges of charcoal on the side of his hand, Madison decided.
“The road behind you was much rockier than the one ahead.”
“I should hope so. Anything else?”
“Your love line is unwavering.”
“Which means?”
“You will love one special person above all others for all your years.”
He rubbed his unoccupied hand over his hip pocket and then glanced up at Madison. “Fine with me.”
He gladly paid the woman’s fee and tugged Madison toward the table. She didn’t understand why her tummy was fluttering with nerves when she sat across from the woman and her crystal ball.
After some seemingly unnecessary stroking of the clear orb on her table, the woman said, “You’ve been betrayed by someone close to you.”
Madison lifted an eyebrow at her. No one close to her had betrayed her.
“Watch for a snake in the grass.”
“Like an actual snake or a figurative snake?” Adam asked, seeming to th
ink this hack was legit.
“Both,” the woman said, gazing into her ball.
“Both?” Madison laughed.
The woman lifted her eyes from her window to the future and pinned her with a hard stare. “Warnings are no laughing matter, love,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Adam said, rubbing his jaw reflectively.
Oh, please.