Page 2 of Shopping for an Heir
“Hey.” The rumble of a man’s baritone made all the sopranos and altos come to a halt. Gerald looked up.
Declan McCormick was finally here.
“I am late because I don’t have a chauffeur anymore,” he said pointedly, making a face. That was as close to an apology as the class would get out of the man. “Do you know how time-consuming parking in one of those garages can be? They make you walk to a pay station and walk back to your car with the ticket.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know how people live like this. What a waste of time.”
The room broke out in spontaneous applause.
Agnes got to her feet and turned around, facing her classmates, arms in the air like Rocky after defeating Apollo Creed. “See? Told you he’d be here.”
Declan’s eyes darted to the old lady, then rolled so high they might as well be cherry pickers. “Oh, God. Are you sure we’re not in Salem? Because I see a witch.”
“I see you’ve met Agnes,” Gerald said, smothering a grin. He reached out to give Declan’s hand a shake, the two pumping arms madly, women in the room sighing loudly.
“We’re intimately acquainted,” Agnes crowed proudly, then hiccuped. The crowd erupted into titters.
Declan pulled him in for a half hug. “Watch the fingers,” he whispered. “She’s more nimble than you think.”
“Is that why enrollment’s triple the norm? Word got out you’re the model?”
Dec shakes his head. “Marie.”
“Your mother-in-law is crazy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I know a lot about your family that you don’t know.” Because Declan no longer worked for Anterdec, their relationship had changed. He wasn’t Gerald’s boss anymore. Two months ago, he married Shannon and bought his own chain of coffee shops. Gerald still worked for Declan’s brother, CEO Andrew, and their father, James, who founded Anterdec more than thirty years ago.
“If you’ve got good dirt on my brother, I need to know.”
“Non-disclosure agreement.” He almost called him sir, but caught himself. “Sorry, Declan.”
Oblivious to the twenty-seven sets of eyes on him, Declan took stock of Gerald. He knew how the guy worked. This was banter, word play, a man’s-man kind of joking around.
“Fight you for it.”
See?
“What’re the terms?”
“Pool. Two out of three games. You win, you get me as a nude model for every class. I win, you give me one juicy detail about my brother. Something actionable.”
Having a set model for every class would make the sessions flow better, and allow Gerald to get into advanced sculpting techniques. On the other hand, he liked having varying models. Light, shadow, contour, and all the finer points of sculpture could be assessed and taught with variation.
“I’ll pay extra if he’s the class model for all eight weeks!” crowed Agnes.
Murmurs of furious assent filled the room.
“You better be good at billiards, Mr. Clean!” Corrine chimed in.
“Mr. Clean?” Declan’s eyebrow went up.
“Keep that face. I want it like that for the entire hour pose.”
One side of Declan’s mouth twitched, but he kept the perfect arch.
“Ladies! Ladies! Let’s get down to business.”
“I thought you were!” Agnes gave him a creepy smile. “You’d better be good at stripes and solids, mister. My husband was a pool shark. Too bad he’s dead, or he’d teach you a few things.”
Declan walked through a small door right behind the instructor’s platform.
“Where’s he going?” Corrine asked sweetly. All the heads in the class turned to track him. It was like watching sunflowers follow the sun.
“To get ready,” Gerald said, setting down his clipboard and looking out at the sea of faces. What a boon.
And as a matter of fact, he was a damn fine pool player.
Shark, even. That’s how he made some extra money in high school.
Play stupid and let people underestimate you.
Then you have them at an advantage.
Declan emerged wearing a plain white bathrobe. The room filled with whispers.
“Welcome!” Gerald clapped his hands once, bellowing out the word. The commanding voice got their attention, heads swiveling toward him. They wore smocks and poked at the clay in front of them, uncertain but eager. Half the women looked at Declan like they were here for an appetizer rather than a lesson, but that was his model’s problem.
Gerald was here to teach.
“I’m Gerald Wright, your instructor. Before you at each student’s place, you’ll find the necessary supplies for all eight classes, including a folder. Please take the notecard inside, fold it in half, and write your name on one half, facing it toward the front of class. Normally, we introduce ourselves, but the class is so big that we’d lose an entire session, so let’s use name tags and go from there.”
For the next two minutes, students shuffled notecards and pens, writing and folding, until all twenty-seven had little inverted Vs on their tables.
He walked in front of Declan, who now sat on his posing stool, still berobed.
Declan was frowning.
“What’s wrong?” Gerald asked.
Following the billionaire’s gaze, he quickly got the lay of the land.
Twelve women had written their phone numbers on their cards, instead of their names.
“Fascinating, ladies,” Gerald said dryly. “So many of you have the first name 617. Must have been popular sometime in the early 1960s.”
The laughter that filled the room was genuine.
One minute later, actual names were on the cards, and Gerald got down to business.
“Unlike most classes, we don’t spend our first day learning theory. We dive right in.”
Someone in the back whistled.
“This isn’t a Pats game,” Gerald said.
“Hope not! Don’t need to see any deflated balls,” Agnes cracked.
Declan’s face was stone.
“Or a Red Sox game,” Gerald said, trying to change the subject.
“You got a Green Monster under that robe?” Agnes asked Declan, grinning madly.
“What does that even mean?” Declan hissed. He turned to Gerald. “And stop with the sports comments. I don’t want to know what she comes up with for hockey.”
Agnes chortled.
Gerald had to get his class under control.
“Ladies!”
Someone in the back had just entered the room. Two guys cleared their throats meaningfully.
“And gentlemen,” he added with a nod. The two guys took their seats and put on aprons.
“Welcome to Nude Sculpting 101. This is a class for beginners. That said,” he continued, his voice growing firmer, “this is a class where respect for the model is Rule #1.”
The tittering simmered down.
Gerald mustered his old commanding voice, the one he had eased out of himself for the past ten years. From the gleam in a few eyes, he’d need it more than he did when he was in the Navy.
“You will not make jokes about the model’s body. If this were a female model, you would never dare. Why should it be different because it’s a man?”
Agnes started to open her mouth. He spun on her, finger pointed, and before she could speak, barked, “That was a rhetorical question.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“We are here to be artists.”
Someone sighed. It was a happy sound.
“We are here to learn to connect what the eyes see with what the hands do.”
More sighs and a few uncomfortable looks.
“You will learn about shadow and curve, form and realism, and how to find the deeper eye within you that guides the body toward what it knows it can recreate from memory, from stored touch—”
A sound of appreciation between two black women who had been chattering in whispers almost made Gerald smile. They gave him their rapt attention.
“You are artists,” he repeated. “Not office workers or retirees or stay-at-home parents or college students. In this class, ninety minutes a week, you are creators. You are visioneers. You are sensual and grounded in the core essence of what it means to be human. Your hands and arms will take what you know, what you see, and give it life through the clay.”
Now he had them eating out of his hand. He paced in the space between Declan and the first row, eyes on the students as he walked back and forth, slowly, but with deliberation.
“Let’s see what you find within yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what art is—self-exploration through expression. Connection by touching others through the visual, the tactile. Welcome to the world of art. And our arts center thanks you—your tuition money helps fund arts programs for kids and seniors, so the enthusiastic attendance is a welcome sight.”
He stopped and looked at all the faces.
“Let’s begin.”
As if on cue, Declan dropped the robe.
The class gasped.
Gerald grinned.
Chapter 2
“I can do this,” Suzanne Dayton muttered under her breath, standing outside the decrepit arts center, pacing back and forth, trying desperately to find her old military voice. More than ten years out of the Navy after a two-year stint, and that world was like a different lifetime. Three years of law school and seven years as a practicing attorney—now a full partner at one of Boston’s best firms—and here she was, trembling with anxiety at the thought of walking into a nude sculpting class.
