Sweet Talking Man. Liz Talley

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes twinkled. “Ah...the flyers about the noise ordinance or the zoning issue?”

      “Both.” Abigail shrugged. “Didn’t do much good, but a girl has to try. I owe it to my guests. They come to the B and B for tranquillity.”

      “And your banana bread.”

      “That, too.”

      Leif glanced up as another woman entered the room. “Well, I’m happy to have you both in class...whether you had a choice or not.”

      He moved to speak to two college girls who had tumbled into the room in shorts...in January, for cripes’ sake. They were wearing UGG boots, slouchy tunic shirts and ponytails that swung in tune with their lazy strides. They took a seat at the middle table, the smell of honeysuckle wafting off them.

      Leif took his place in front of the classroom and held up his hands. “Welcome, friends, to Introduction to Drawing. I’m Leif Lively, your instructor, and I know something brought each of you here for a good reason.”

      Oh, please.

      Yet the man sounded so sincere, so welcoming.

      “I know some of you are here because you need the credit—” he gestured to the coeds behind Abigail “—and some of you are here because you want to progress in your study of art.” This time he looked at Birdie.

      “And some of you don’t know why you signed up for a nighttime class that will teach you the basics, and hopefully the joy of drawing.” At this, he looked at Abigail.

      She felt the heat in his glance, a small flare of attraction. Her first inclination was to revel in the idea he found her attractive, but she quickly quelled the thought. She’d misread the emotion in those blue eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman Leif pursued. She’d seen Marcie in her tight, gaudy gown and flashy red Mustang. The bodice had dipped to the woman’s navel, showcasing enough boobage to smother a small child. Marcie was young, pretty and nubile—three things Abigail was not.

      She had no business reflecting her bizarre attraction to her art teacher back on herself. Something was wrong with her—probably the beginning of a midlife crisis. Turning forty pressed down on her. When her ex-husband neared forty, he’d loaded his convertible with his Les Paul guitar, a new wardrobe and Morgan Cost, the waitress/karaoke deejay at the Sugar Shack in Raceland, and headed to California to pursue his dream of becoming a recording artist.

      Yeah, midlife crisis.

      “So, let’s get started,” Leif said, clapping his hands together and jolting Abigail from her reverie.

      After they’d been drawing for a while, Leif came by her table where she’d flat-out screwed up her attempt at shading an apple. She really sucked at drawing—but if Leif needed his closet organized, she was his gal.

      “That’s a nice line,” he said, leaning over her, flooding her senses with the heady scent of mint mixed with pure male. Dear God, he smelled good. Not like incense at all, but rather clean with a hint of sultry. Like sitting by a fire atop a mountain, crisp air dancing—

      What was she doing? Waxing poetic over Leif’s shampoo?

      But that didn’t stop her from swaying toward him, before she caught herself. “I’m not good at this,” she said.

      “Relax,” he said, his voice stroking over her like a hand over velvet. “You’ve got the basic concept. All you need are—” using his own pencil, he made a few swoops, rounding out the shading “—a few curveballs in your life. You like to live on the straight and narrow, don’t you, Abigail. Or is it Abi?”

      His question oiled the creaky, unused portion of her heart. No one called her Abi anymore. Except her mother, now and again. She’d once been like those girls at the middle table—young, silly, full of dreams. But as time went by and she struggled to take care of Birdie while her husband drove into the sunset with a mediocre karaoke singer and the funds from the savings account he’d emptied, she’d transformed into Abigail—a woman who didn’t moon over sappy movies or embrace being called by a nickname.

      “Abi?”

      “Oh, sorry. Um, call me Abigail, please.”

      His hot breath fanned her neck. “Whatever you want.”

      Cripes, why did everything the man said sound like an invitation to have sweaty marathon sex? She rubbed away the goose bumps rippling up her arm. “That’s what I like to hear.”

      His soft laugh only increased her awareness of him. Something in her longed to lean back and place her head in the crook of his neck. Wait, had she just purred That’s what I like to hear? Jesus. What had she been—

      “Leif?”

      The red-lipstick-wearing middle-aged haystack waved her hand. “I need a little help over here.”

      The woman asked for his help the same way a woman might ask a man to slip off his boxers and mount her.

      But maybe Abigail’s imagination hadn’t punched the time clock. She glanced around, realization dawning on her. The whole class was filled with women. Not a hairy chest in sight.

      Right.

      She felt as if she’d been sucked into the Leif Lively fan club. Haystack would likely run for secretary. Birdie might go for treasurer. The kid was good with money, and firmly entrenched in the belief that Leif was the sun, moon and stars—all wrapped up with a bow.

      But even though Leif looked mighty fine in his worn blue jeans and waffle T-shirt that left little to the imagination, Abigail had to remind herself that he was the David Lee Roth of Magnolia Bend. “Just a Gigolo.” “The Ice Cream Man.” A “love ’em and leave ’em” sort, with his laid-back charm and sexy blue eyes. She had no business wanting to take a lick from Leif’s ice-cream cone.

      She needed to remember who she was—a mother, a business owner, a crappy art student. A woman who should leave ice cream well enough alone.

      She renewed her efforts to draw an apple, as a new Van Halen song became an earworm—“Hot for Teacher.”

      * * *

      LEIF CAREFULLY HELPED Peggy Breaux correct the curve of the pear she’d drawn on her page while avoiding the way she intentionally brushed her breast against his biceps.

      “You’ve got the general idea here,” he said, breathing through his mouth because her perfume stung his nostrils.

      “Oh, I’m not good at it. But I want to be,” she said, her words dripping with double entendre.

      “That’s why you’re here,” he said neutrally, lifting his head to survey the class. Most of his students were concentrating on their work. Birdie had her tongue caught between her teeth as she carefully controlled the lines she made with her charcoal pencil. Her mother sat with her head bent, mouth twisting this way and that as she focused on her pretty horrible drawing of an apple. The college girls were texting. Not cool. He shot them a look. The older lady who had been knitting earlier had already rendered quite a nice drawing of a pineapple. She’d returned to her knitting and her needles clacked a steady rhythm that didn’t seem to bother anyone around her.

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