Clay by Jennifer Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

tones.
    Lainey shook her head. “Not right now.”
    “All right then. Maybe we’ll wait until the morning, after all.”
    Janna skirted the bed, staying well out of reach of any sudden lunge in her direction. Moving behind her worktable, she leafed through drawings, laid out watercolor pans and brushes, picked up a soft lead pencil and put it back down again as she tried to gather her concentration. She mixed watercolors and doodled on cold-pressed paper, hoping something would appear from the shapes she brushed across it. Nothing did,except swaths of blue that were, she realized, the exact color of Clay Benedict’s eyes.
    Abandoning that effort, she tried to depict a series of small, jewel-green tree frogs like one she’d seen that morning, but their eyes kept turning blue and far too knowing. She rinsed the green and blue from her palette and replaced it with lavender, but the resulting sketch of a water hyacinth appeared overblown and sinister, as if it might be hiding something poisonous behind its curving, sensuous leaves.
    She had far less immunity to distraction than she would have thought. So little, in fact, that she had to leave the room to make lemonade for them all in order to regain focus. Not that it did much good.
    She told herself that her snatched glances toward the reclining man were to keep tabs on what he was doing and to make sure Lainey was all right. They had nothing to do with the well-shaped planes of his face, the chiseled line of his lips, the smoldering power of his gaze or the way his hair waved over his ears. Certainly there was no correlation between them and the way her attention wandered from the strong line of his throat as he swallowed his sweet-tart lemon drink to the firm muscles of his long legs outlined by his jeans. And none of these things had any bearing whatever on the fact that she accidentally rinsed her paintbrush in her lemonade glass instead of her water jar.
    After a time, Janna was able to persuade Lainey to climb down from the bed and come paint with her. Her daughter dragged her feet as she ambled over,but was soon engrossed in form and color. With the tip of her tongue protruding from one corner of her mouth in concentration, she managed a credible portrait of Beulah complete with sharp teeth in a grinning snout and bulging stomach. When she presented it to Clay for his approval, he seemed suitably impressed. That sent the girl back to the drawing table to try even harder. While Lainey held the attention of the man on the bed, Janna was actually able to get a little work done.
    “I wish I had my camera.”
    She glanced up at that comment, realizing in the same moment that it had been almost a half hour since anyone had spoken. “What on earth for?”
    “The two of you make a great picture together. Lainey is like a miniature of you, you know.”
    Janna gave him a suspicious stare. “We’re almost nothing alike.”
    “Same hair, same face shape, same frown of concentration.” He waited, as if daring her to disagree.
    “I don’t stick my tongue out when I draw,” she said, her voice cool.
    “Mama!”
    “No, you bite your bottom lip. Did you know that?”
    She did, but only because it sometimes became chapped in the winter. Instead of answering, she said, “What you’re really telling me, I suppose, is that you’re bored.”
    His smile was brief. “I’ve had more scintillating days.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Can you?” He stretched, making himself more comfortable in the bed. “Now just what do you see me doing. And where?”
    That was something he’d never know. “If you’re serious about the camera, you can have it. Arty brought it inside before he took the airboat away.”
    “Considerate of him.”
    “I think he was afraid the bag with your equipment might be stolen.”
    “Theft on top of kidnapping? What is the neighborhood coming to?” The irony faded from his voice as he added, “Where did he take Jenny?”
    “I’ve no idea. Somewhere