“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.”