“Oh? How?”
“You just seem like a total workaholic.”
“I can have fun, too.”
“Yeah? What does fun look like to you?”
“You really want to know?”
“I asked the question, didn’t I?”
“And if you don’t like the answer?”
“Try me.”
“I do many things for fun,agape mou.I swim, I run, I watch sport with my brothers, or friends. I hike, when I have time. But what I like to do, most of all, when I want to blow off steam, is have sex.”
Her lips parted and heat flushed her cheeks. “I see.”
“Perhaps you do.”
She didn’t, and just the mention of that particular hobby had sent her pulse racing dangerously fast.
“There’s no more enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.”
I’ll take your word for it.She bit back the rejoinder, unwilling to admit to this man just how inexperienced she was.
“I’m a fan of art galleries, myself.”
His smirk was teasing, but she ignored it, and sipped her coffee, looking towards the window. The coastline was far away, but even more beautiful from this distance, where the thin strip of white formed by the sand bled into cliffs of green and silver, and little townships dotted along the length. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people within the stretch of land she could see from one side of the window to the other, and none of them knew she was bobbing on this boat having a small emotional breakdown.
“There weren’t any galleries in the town I grew up in. Too small,” she said with a lift of her shoulders. “But there were books. I would check out the tomes on artwork from the library and hide them under my bed, waiting until everyone else was asleep,”or drunk,she mentally added, “then I’d pull them out and pore over the images. I wanted, desperately, to see the real things.” She sipped her coffee. “In Melbourne, whenever there was free access to a gallery, I’d go, but I couldn’t—,” she stopped short. How could she tell him that not only had she been homeless, she’d looked it, and galleries didn’t routinely encourage vagrants to walk through their corridors. She blinked quickly. “It wasn’t until I moved to London though that I reallysawthe artwork I’d been craving. I couldn’t believe—I still can’t believe—that you can walk into a hall, for free, turn right and come face to face with some of the most magnificent impressionist paintings ever created.” She sighed softly. “That’s how I spend my free time.”
Heat flooded her face at how much she’d just spoken, and at the way he was looking at her, with a frown, as though trying to slot this new information into the image he had of her as an unfeeling home-wrecker.
“It sounds a little duller than mine.”
She laughed. “Not to me.”
“Really?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I take it you’re not an art fan?”
“Oh, I appreciate art,” he corrected gravely. “But I really, really appreciate good sex.”
Her pulse kicked up a gear. Did he have any idea how he was making her feel? She suspected so. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
The question evidently floored him. “A girlfriend?” He repeated the term as though testing it out, like he’d never heard of such a concept.
“You know. A female you spend time with, blow off steam with, have sex with,” she expanded, finishing her coffee and replacing the cup with a bit of a clatter on the saucer.
“No.”
She considered that. “Commitment not your style?”
“I prefer variety.”
Her expression—disapproval—hid a strange ache tightening inside her chest. “Of course you do. Why am I not surprised?”