Amy Frazier - Independence Day

Betsy came forward. “You’re a love! This isn’t much of a first day for you, but the rest of us appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Chessie ducked behind a screen set up for the model, slipped her arms out of her tank top so that it became a tube top, shed her capris and sandals, then began to drape, tuck and knot the sheet. “I’m just glad to be here. It beats making tuna casserole.”

She might not be sitting behind an easel today as planned, but in front of one, she certainly wasn’t invisible.

Satisfied with her impromptu toga, she emerged from behind the screen to perch on the model’s stool in the center of the circle of artists. A peace descended on her as she shifted positions until the guild members chose one in particular.

The past two days hadn’t gone smoothly, but she felt certain that with strength of purpose it was only a matter of time before her family realized her need for space and recognition. After that hurdle had been cleared, returning Nick to romance would be a snap.

SITTING BESIDE Felicity Kincaid in the town’s one taxi, Nick pressed his foot to the floor as if he could increase the vehicle’s speed from the passenger’s seat. “Can’t you go any faster?”

“I could,” the cabbie replied, “but it would probably mean losing my license. What’s the hurry anyway?”

Chessie.

Yesterday his wife had bared her soul publicly on a sandwich board. Today, according to Thomas Crane, she was planning to bare her body as well. Posing for the Art Guild.

Everyone knew that figure drawing classes used nudes. But not his nude, his wife. Call him a chauvinist, but Chessie’s body was for his eyes only.

“It’s a family emergency,” he muttered.

“It wouldn’t have to do with your wife throwing your laundry out the window, would it?”

“No.” Nick bit back an oath. The laundry seemed tame compared to today’s antics.

“Uh-huh.” The normally loquacious cab driver seemed to suppress a grin. “We’ll get you to your destination safe and sound. The Atlantic Hall, you said?”

“Right.” He looked out the window as if he found the passing New England scenery fascinating, hoping Felicity would think conversation an intrusion.

Truth be told, he couldn’t think straight. Chessie, with her unlikely behavior, had yanked out his emotional underpinnings, sending his senses and his thoughts reeling. He could only await her next salvo. He’d always thought of himself as a proactive kind of guy. He hated feeling reactive.

Because Pritchard’s Neck was a small community, it didn’t take long before Felicity pulled up in front of the hall. Reaching in his pocket and withdrawing a twenty, Nick dropped it on the front seat, then vaulted from the taxi without waiting for change. The moment’s urgency overrode any sense of frugality.

He had to get to Chessie before she took her clothes off. Or if she’d stripped already, he had to bundle her up and hustle her home, back to routine and sanity. He was prepared to bodily carry her away if necessary. Pressing through the hall’s outer door, he charged up the stairs, up to the meeting room where his wife might even now be lounging in the altogether.

Chessie had posed, briefly, as a single college student. Back then, he’d thought her daring sexy. Now, the thought made him seethe. What in blazes did the woman think this stunt was going to do to two impressionable teenage daughters?

“Chessie!” His voice echoed on the upper landing as he thrust the door to the meeting room open and caught the gaze of the lovely model in the circle of easels. Chessie. His Chessie.

She reclined against a stool, her arms, shoulders and feet bare, one slender leg emerging from the folds of a white sheet draped about her as if she was a Greek goddess. She’d swept her Titian hair up on top of her head, exposing her long, smooth neck. Surprisingly, she showed more flesh when she bicycled about town in tank top and gym shorts, but somehow the toga was more sultry, more suggestive. His wife was, in fact, unmistakably, breathtakingly beautiful.

And, having burst, like a Viking marauder on drugs, into the room full of fellow Pritchard’s Neck residents, he felt the fool. Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to let go of the unaccountable anger he felt.

Chessie beamed at him, then turned to the stunned little group. “It’s about time to take a break, yes?”

The artists agreed with alacrity as if Nick might begin the pillage at any moment.

Swishing lightly toward him, Chessie seemed a different woman. Neither of this time or place. Certainly not the mother of two teenage girls.

For a minute Nick had thoughts of how her costume might play out in their bedroom. Abruptly, he reined in those thoughts. If he could be turned on by this getup, what about Sandy Weston over there, pretending to put the finishing touches on his sketch, or Patrick Goodall who seemed to pay a great deal of attention to the sharpening of his pencil?

Nick had always consigned jealousy to the knuckle-draggers, but now Chessie’s exposure cut deep to a possessiveness he didn’t know he had.

She drew him out on the landing, then closed the door behind them. “I’m assuming UPS delivered more than the usual school supplies.”

“You assume right.” Trying and failing to find a neutral tone of voice, he lifted the corner of her toga. “This isn’t what I had in mind when you said you were joining a professional group.”

“It’s just for today. The model canceled. Next week I’ll be on the other side of the easel. Fully clothed.”

After today, with his all-too-public reaction to her participation, he didn’t want her on either side of the easel with this group. He wondered if she even had anything on under that outfit.

She touched his cheek with her fingertips. Her eyes flashed mischief. “Were you about to carry me off, Nick?”

“If you were nude, yes.” He felt like one of his students caught doing something rash and adolescent. And totally uncool.

“How politically incorrect,” she sighed. “How impulsive. How almost romantic. Against my better judgment, I’m flattered.”

She thought his actions romantic? She was flattered?

Comprehension dawned.

“So this is how you’d have me spice up our marriage?” he demanded. “Cut out of work early? Spend my last twenty on a cab? Barge like a fool into a group of residents, three of them with kids in my school?” Prickly heat rose up the back of his neck.

“You spent your last twenty on a cab?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard anything else. “That’s something my boyfriend Nick would do.”

“Well, boyfriend Nick didn’t have three mouths to feed.” He gestured toward the closed door. “That seems beside the point now. What are those people thinking?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. They only know you’re upset. We have two teenage daughters. It could be anything.”

“But it was you.”

“Yes.” A dreamy look crept into her eyes. “You came for me—in a cab that wasn’t in the budget, no less—because you were, what, intrigued? Jealous? Hot to get behind one of those easels yourself and take up a new career?”

“I was—am—ticked.”

“That’s better than preoccupied.”

Suddenly weary, he turned away. “Don’t expect me to play the town fool again to inject some fizz in a marriage that you, for some reason, seem to think has gone flat. I’m going home.”

Chessie reached for him. “Just when we’ve begun to get to the heart of the matter?”

“Is that what you call it?” Eluding her touch, he started downstairs. “I thought we’d reached an impasse.”

“You can’t walk away, Nick!” She opened the door to the meeting room and called, “Sorry, folks. Family emergency. See you next week,” then followed her husband down the stairs and out the door into the town square.