Artistic License by Elle Pierson Read Free Book Online Page A

was the social media equivalent of walking naked down the street waving your dirty laundry and Sophy had an aversion to awkward silences on the phone.
     
    No. There was no personal or sexual interest in his face. She had several times caught him looking at her in the vaguely affectionate way that men viewed their younger sisters.
     
    Something about that was not quite as satisfying as it should be.
     
    “What do you mean, is there a reason I’m not seeing anybody?” Sophy asked, and winced. She had pitched for sharp and achieved witchy. One could infer that the question was unnecessary since her snottiness made it perfectly evident why she was single. Rapid affront followed. “How do you know I’m not seeing anyone?”
     
    Mick took another swing at her self-esteem by looking taken aback.
     
    “Are you?” he asked bluntly.
     
    No, she wasn’t, by choice and because it made her happier. It was intensely irritating to suddenly feel defensive about her very full, very meaningful life.
     
    “I don’t really do relationships,” she said eventually, managing to pull off an impressive blend of inanity and pretension.
     
    It was probably a damning indictment on her character that she wanted to ask him about his parents just so they could both retreat into a safe, sulky silence.
     
    “You don’t really do relationships,” Mick repeated.
     
    Tap. Tap. Tap.
     
    Sophy had started up a nervous tic with her pencil against the parchment board. She forced herself to put it down and immediately started playing with her reading glasses instead.
     
    “Look, I’m all for sex and romance in theory.”
     
    Oh my God.
     
    Mick rubbed his jaw.
     
    “Right,” he said after a pause. “I tend to prefer the former in practice, myself.”
     
    Was he laughing?
     
    “I’m not saying I don’t enjoy sex.”
     
    Oh my GOD, Sophy. Remember when you were too shy to speak to him? Maybe you should revisit that.
     
    “I just prefer intimacy, you know, in moderation,” she went on, a bit desperately. “For a short time. Then I’d rather do something else.”
     
    Like what? Knit?
     
    “That’s very sensible of you.”
     
    He was openly grinning now, the bastard. The discovery that he was as big a prat as the rest of his gender broke the embarrassed constraint. She threw a crumpled ball of paper in his direction, falling short by about six feet. 
     
    “I start going stir-crazy if I don’t get enough time by myself,” she explained, smiling reluctantly. “I just – I like my space, my own time. I like not having to answer to somebody every day. I start to feel claustrophobic in a relationship. Men expect you to go out, text them, talk, have sex, and it’s all the time. Don’t you find it exhausting?”
     
    “Well, it depends on the type of sex,” Mick said, straight-faced. “And here I thought you were such a nice girl.”
     
    This time, she weighted the ball of paper with an eraser and it found its target.
     
    “I’m ending this horrendous conversation right now,” she announced, laughing. “You don’t see me asking why you aren’t seeing anyone.”
     
    Her light-hearted observation effectively ended his amusement as well as the topic. Smile dropping away, he made a strange movement, a sort of half-shrug, half-flinch, and turned from her.
     
    Sophy’s own laughter vanished. She stared at his averted profile, the rigid set of his wide shoulders, with concern. She found the whole thing a bit puzzling. Mick clearly had doubts, in her opinion totally unfounded doubts, about his attractiveness. But such self-abasement seemed out of character. Unlike men who relied on a thin façade of cocky swagger to cover a lack of integrity, there didn’t seem to be anything superficial about Mick. Nor would she have put him down as the type of man to place overwhelming importance on appearances.
     
    Somebody had done a hell of a number on him.
     
    She doubted he would really understand her need for solitude,