“I will,” I said, the room feeling suddenly a bit too warm. “I mean . . . I do want to know more about you.”
On screen, Buffy’s mom was lecturing her about staying out all night again, but I wasn’t paying attention to the show anymore.
* * *
I didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch beside him.
One minute Spike and the other monsters from Sunnydale were getting up to their usual antics. I’d been laughing; Frederick had been staring intently at the screen, as if he were watching an important university lecture and didn’t want to miss a word.
The next minute I was blinking up at the side of Frederick’s face from where my head rested on his shoulder.
Instinct told me to move away. Frederick would be horrified when he realized what had happened. But as consciousness slowly returned, I realized he had to be fully aware of the situation. He might be a vampire, but as far as I knew he had nerve endings in his shoulder. Surely he could feel it when a heavy object like my head was resting there.
I looked down. The careful inches he’d left between our bodies when he joined me on the couch had evaporated as I slept. Our thighs were pressed together now, knee to hip.
My hand rested lightly on his upper thigh, just above his knee. His leg was muscular and solid, his body unnaturally cool beneath my palm.
My mind raced through all options available to me. Jumping away from him and apologizing was appealing. But so was staying right where I was, admiring the sharp angle of his jaw, and the way his shirt smelled enticingly like laundry soap and cool, male skin. It felt good, being close to him like this. Exciting, yet comfortable. Our bodies fit together so perfectly.
Just as I’d decided to stay right where I was, Frederick spoke, his voice a low rumble against the top of my head I could feel more than hear.
“Your art is remarkable, Cassie.”
That was unexpected enough to make me forget about this awkward situation. I shifted away from him—and noticed the soft, resigned sigh that escaped his lips when I did.
Maybe he’d enjoyed my falling asleep on him as much as I had.
The idea thrilled me. But unpacking that would have to wait. I had too many questions about what he’d just said.
“My art?”
“Yes.” He pointed to the glass-topped coffee table beside the couch. My notebook was spread open to a page of doodles I’d made early in the planning stages for Manor House on a Lake. “Your art.”
A flare of something—part embarrassment over someone seeing my incomplete sketches, part genuine irritation at his intrusion—shot through me.
“That’s not for you to look at!” I leaned forward and flipped the notebook closed. I knew he didn’t understand my art. His earlier abject confusion over my Saugatuck piece rang in my ears. Was he making fun of me now when he said my art was remarkable?
“I apologize for invading your privacy,” he said sheepishly. He sounded genuinely sorry, but that didn’t excuse his snooping. The cuddly feelings from a few moments ago were gone. “I should not have looked through your notebook.”
“Then why did you?”
He said nothing for so long I assumed he wasn’t going to answer my question. When he finally did, his voice was quiet and a little strained. “I have grown . . . curious about you and the inner workings of your mind. I thought looking through the sketchbook you spend so much time with would provide insight with relatively minimal disruption.” He paused. “I should have asked your permission first, and I apologize for not having done so.”
Confusion mixed with my irritation. “You’ve been curious about how I think?”
“Yes.”
The single word hung in the air between us. I paused, feeling as if the ground were shifting beneath my feet. “You’ve been curious about how I think because you . . . want to learn as much as you can about the modern world and . . . learning more about how I think will help on that score.” I paused, evaluating his reaction. “Right?”
He didn’t answer me right away. His dark eyes grew pensive, his face adopting an odd expression I couldn’t read.
“Of course.” He nodded brusquely. “That is the only reason why I’ve been curious about what’s on your mind.”
But his eyes were so soft, his voice a gentle caress, belying his claim. My heartbeat kicked up and . . .
Frederick’s eyes flicked down to my chest again, the same way they had the last time my heartbeat started racing when I was with him.
Maybe he could hear my heart beating.
My cheeks grew warm again at the thought of it.
“I apologize again,” he said. “But please believe me, Cassie. Your drawings are excellent.”
“They’re just rough sketches.”
“Do not downplay your talents,” he said, scowling as though the idea of me selling myself short was offensive to him.
He leaned forward to grab the notebook, then paused, looking back at me over his shoulder before his fingers closed around it. “May I?”
I nodded, unable to think of a reason to tell him no when this time, he was asking permission.
He opened the notebook to the page I’d been working on when he joined me on the couch, moving a little closer to me in the process.
Our thighs were touching again. My insides were quivering at his nearness, at the solid musculature of his thigh beneath his clothes. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on him that it had on me, though. His eyes were fixed firmly on the art on the page.
“This is fascinating,” he breathed, gesturing to my designs. This early version of Manor House was nothing but the barest outlines of a house and the general impression of a lake. Arrows pointed from the middle of the lake out to the edge of the page to represent motion and modernity; the idea of combining tinsel and cellophane had not yet occurred to me when I’d drawn it.
“You don’t have to say that.” Years of kind words from Sam and other well-meaning friends who didn’t get what I did made it so that false compliments hurt almost as badly as negative—but honest—feedback. “I know you don’t understand what I do.”
“That . . . might be true,” he admitted. He touched the top of Manor House’s roof with his right index finger. “But that does not mean I do not find it fascinating.”
I watched as he traced over every single line on the page, from top to bottom, not skipping over any part of it, with deliberate care. The house. The lake. The barely intimated trees blooming as rough graphite swirls on either side of the page. The memories of his large hand covering mine as we explored Instagram together—the way my hands had looked pressed up against his chest in the Nordstrom dressing room—rose unbidden, sending a delicious shiver down my spine.