Though, as it turned out, hanging on wasn’t an option. Not for long.
He erupted in a blinding flash of wildfire that consumed his mind and his thoughts and left nothing but the strangest feeling that nothing in his world had ever been so right.
Caleb made a second pot of coffee to replace the one that had gone cold, while Ava slipped on her shirt and picked up where she’d left with her sketch book on the chesterfield. “Can I see?” he asked, when he got back.
“Sure.” She turned the book towards him and there he was, or at least his back, shaded in charcoal, from his neck bunching of muscle at his shoulder to the shaded curve of his spine and the loose wrap of denim at his hips. “Wow.”
“I know. It’s good. I think I’ve worked out my next few works for my exhibition.”
“You have?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
“This is what I needed.” She waved her arm around the canvases lining the wall. “These are good, but I knew I needed something more, something to take it to the next level, and this”—she held up the sketchbook—“this will give the collection more depth and give me more chance of picking up commission work. Plus, I bet they’ll sell like hotcakes too.”
He snorted. “You mean beefcakes.”
“I’m serious. You have a beautiful body, Caleb. It’s a work of art. Why shouldn’t it be immortalized on paper and admired?”
“Look Ava,” he said, lifting up her feet so he could park himself alongside her on the sofa before pulling them over his lap “Is that such a good idea? I thought you wanted to keep this thing private. If you go slapping up a whole heap of pictures of me on a wall wearing not a hell of a lot, somebody’s going to twig.”
“Nobody will know it’s you. I’ll just do torsos, no heads. You’ll be identified only as ‘Male Nude’ numbers one, two, three and four. Okay?”
“You want to do four of these? Seriously?”
“One’s not enough. I’m seeing these on an end wall. And they won’t be all the same. There’s just something about the way your body moves. I’ll know what I want to draw when I see it.”
“But no heads?”
She crossed her heart with a finger. “I swear.”
“And no anything elses, for that matter.”
She smiled. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter Four
Caleb was whistling when he clocked on for his shift the next day. He spent forty-five minutes in the gym sweating his way through crunches and planks and push-ups before he hit the weights room and set to enough repetitions to lift his own bodyweight ten times over. He was still whistling when he hit the showers. God, he felt better than when he’d walked out of the station thirty-six hours ago, but spending time with Ava could do that. She didn’t ask for anything. She didn’t take anything he didn’t want to give. And what she gave him was pure gold.
She’d sketched him again too – made him stop when he was getting dressed to leave and pulling his shirt over his shoulders – and he’d had to stay there immobile for five minutes while his skin tingled and her pencil worked overtime on the page.
Him, a life model. Who knew? He snorted with the sheer improbability of it.
Richo was tying up his boots as Caleb uniformed up. “Somebody’s sure in a good mood today.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s a beautiful day.”
His mate glanced out the window unconvinced. “Nope, that doesn’t cut it. If a man didn’t know better, he’d say someone was getting laid.”
Caleb slapped his crew mate on the back. Richo was known about the station as a lady’s man. At least, that was what he liked to tell anyone who cared to listen. There wasn’t a woman in the station that hadn’t been propositioned. Probably in the entire force.
“What’s the problem, Richo? You not getting any?”
Richo puffed up his chest. “Hey, I get plenty.”
And Caleb just laughed as the incident bell sounded and said, “Congratulations.”
“What have we got?” Tina, another crew mate asked a scant minute later, as the crew piled into the truck. He could read the faces of his crew and knew they were already on full alert, primed for action and whatever the day could throw at them.
“Something a bit different,” he told them as the truck pulled out of the station, not bothering with the siren. “We’ve got a woman who’s apparently got a bunch of birds nesting in her chimney.”
“What the fuck?” said Richo, looking sideways at the others.
“Could be worse,” Tina said with a laugh. “Could be bats in the belfry.”
Richo snorted. “Sure she hasn’t got bats in the belfry?”
Caleb listened to the banter between his crew mates. This was a new one on him too, but that was okay. They were always being called upon to rescue animals and wildlife in odd circumstances and they were always happy to help if they weren’t already busy attending a major incident. Just the other week they’d had to use the Bronto Skylift to reach an injured koala with a joey that had been hit by a car crossing a road. The joey had been found crying on the side of the road and fauna rescue notified, but by the time they’d arrived, the bleeding mother had managed to clamber her way up to the top reaches of a nearby gum tree.
Caleb had accompanied the wildlife experts in the cage of the Bronto to reach the frightened animal and force it down the tree to the ground where it was scooped into a cage
