His Brand of Beautiful Read Free Page A

use the brand proceeds to sponsor a work experience program for Aboriginal kids. Let’s say kids from Alice Springs could come down to our vineyard and spend a month with us in a workplace program learning new skills. Something like that. What do you think?”
    A champagne cork exploded in the adjoining room. Lacy gulped the last of her drink.
    “I think: thank you God for saving my poor brain. That’s my cue.”
    Lacy ripped through sheets of butcher’s paper covering French doors and hurled them open. The girls poured around her shoulders into the lounge, squealed at the squadron of artist’s easels squatting like teepees on the carpet, squealed again when they spotted the man in their midst.
    “Well hello Handsome…” Marlene said, stopping in the centre of the room like she’d walked into a bus.
    Christina almost tramped Marlene’s heels. She peered around the bigger woman’s beefy elbow.
    “Ladies.” Tate stepped from her white leather couch, a champagne bottle in one sinewy hand.
    The beautiful blue silk shirt was unbuttoned and it billowed as he walked, flaring around a desert dune six‐pack and the long lines of a sculpted chest. His tie hung loose over his shoulders. Liquid frothed as he poured champagne for each guest.
    There was an easel near the French doors where torn butchers’ paper curled to the floor and Tate gestured Christina to it with an open hand. As she turned, his thumb kissed her spine.
    “And here I was worrying you might not be up to the gig. You should give up your day job. Man, you can act !”
    “Don’t you know the number one secret of any public performance? You just imagine your audience is naked.”
    She had no witty retort.
    Christina reached for a tube of paint to give her hands something to do so they wouldn’t bury themselves in the smatter of crisp hair across his chest. The cap came away in her fingers and a toothpaste‐curl of blood‐red paint oozed from the tube like a scrawling red worm. The tube clattered from her fingers to the tray and the cap bounced and skidded to the floor.
    “What’s wrong?” His eyes probed.
    “Nothing,” she said, just a little too fast, fighting the bloody memories now trying to claw their way out of her head. The paint looked like—
    No. I’m not going there.
    She tapped her watch and pulled on her brightest smile. “I hate to be boring but we’d better get this party started.”

    “I don’t think you could ever be boring,” he said, and his eyes locked on hers as he shrugged out of his shirt and turned away, spearing his shirt and tie at her couch.
    Christina was certain hers wasn’t the only jaw to drop.
    “You!” He beckoned Lacy, straddling the nearest bar stool. “Come meet your canvas.”
    It took Christina a few seconds to match his words with his actions but Lacy had it figured in a heartbeat. She slipped between his legs. He placed a paintbrush in her hand, guided it into a thick whirl of paint then levered the loaded brush towards his abdomen. The movement held the latent power of a building‐site crane.
    A custard‐yellow ribbon inched across Tate’s stomach. Lacy finished with a flourish, reached for a clean brush and a new colour, and with those actions, every woman in the room started attacking her easel like a budding Picasso.
    In minutes, Lacy had painted a riot of colour on Tate’s chest. He almost sacrificed his suit pants—would have—if Marlene hadn’t rushed forward to tuck a towel behind his waist.
    Twenty minutes later he called a halt. “Okay ladies, down tools. Let’s see what you’ve done.”
    Christina clutched her paintbrush in her hand, stared at her easel and wished the brush was a magic wand she could wave to make it all go away.
    “You’re strangling your brush. Hold it loose. It will lengthen your stroke.” Tate stepped around her easel. “I give up. What the heck is that?”
    “It’s supposed to be my perspective of Lacy’s back between your legs. Go on, you can say it.