Page 11 of Developing Hearts (Pine Point Fixer-Uppers #5)

Chapter eleven

Mason

Almost every inch of Mason screamed to find a way out of the situation he’d voluntarily agreed to.

The thought of simply allowing David to stare at him, try to capture him and see every little flaw he had made Mason want to rip his skin off.

Honestly, ripping his skin off would probably be a great out.

But it was almost every inch. His eyes were very happy to keep this going.

The longer David stared at him, the longer he got to stare right back at David.

He was in a much less flamboyant outfit than the first day, but he still looked incredible.

Usually, Mason would bemoan a guy in baggy jeans.

They left everything to the imagination, and when he was looking for eye candy, that was not what he was after.

But on David, they played up the runway model angle that he had going for him.

The choice was so deliberate, paired with the color-splashed long-sleeve shirt.

His eyes were fine with it, and six other inches down south were pretty happy to have David in his hotel room, but he wasn’t going to focus on that. That would just be the nasty, rotten cherry on top of a crappy sundae if, while David was staring at him so intently, he got a hard-on.

“You don’t need to, like, pose.” David sat cross-legged on the bed and opened his sketch book. “I know it’s weird but pretend I’m not here? Just do what it is you need to do and I’ll draw when inspiration strikes.”

“And what if what I normally do is practice naked flamenco?”

“Then that would be a hell of a subject matter for a drawing.”

A tiny bit of the pressure eased from Mason, although he kicked himself for bringing up nudity. It wasn’t helping either of them. It was the sort of joke he might have made around the rest of the Pine Point crew, but he didn’t have stupid crushes on any of them.

Mason did have things to do, so he swallowed once, then pulled his laptop out of the bag and plugged it in.

“Just don’t blame me if you die of boredom.

I’m the least interesting member of the crew.

” He logged back in and opened the spreadsheet, and simply did his best to not focus on David sitting on his bed.

His best was not very good, but he tried anyway.

After a few minutes of typing stuff into his spreadsheet and checking the information against the note he’d jotted into his phone, he heard faint scratching off to the side. Mason didn’t want to make it obvious, so he pretended that he needed a pen from out of his bag so he could turn and check.

David was oblivious already, chewing on his bottom lip, sketchbook propped up against one knee and pencil sweeping over the surface of the page.

Mason knew he couldn’t see what David was drawing from this angle, so he didn’t even try, but his stomach gave a tiny flutter all the same.

Now that he apparently wasn’t being stared at, there was something exciting about someone wanting to draw him.

More than that, though, Mason liked the image of David there, doing art in the same room as Mason.

Mason didn’t have an artistic bone in his body, so he was always fascinated by the process.

A process he couldn’t watch. David wasn’t paying direct attention in that exact moment, but he would be eventually, and Mason didn’t want to be caught watching.

So he pretended to scribble something down on the hotel-provided notepad, then went back to his management and his spreadsheet.

He’d actually cranked through quite a few tasks, since there really wasn’t much for him to handle on the job site.

Jake and the contractors had things under control.

He marked off the design collage, and he marked off a dozen phone calls that Eliza had assigned him—with big thanks to him for being willing to take stuff off her plate while she was dealing with the finale and gearing up for more projects soon to come.

Once he got all that marked, Mason opened his journal, then froze as the program spun up.

He only calmed after the file opened and he saw the white text where he’d left off, unreadable on the screen…

and then changed the text he was typing to white as well.

No need to raise suspicions, and if he misspelled something, he was the only one supposed to be reading this.

As long as he was fine with the typos, what did it matter?

Also, he would go back in and fix them once he was alone.

It took way longer than normal for Mason to get comfortable typing, even though David was still silent, aside from the rustle of paper and the scratch of his pencil.

Eventually, he managed to start documenting his day, including how absolutely confused he was by the mess of emotions running through him.

He was uncomfortable. He was uncertain. He was ashamed. He was happy.

And he was unfortunately too turned-on for the situation. A guy was in the same room as him and he was trying not to bust the seam of his jeans. It was ridiculous, but Mason had long ago decided that in the journal, at least, even things he thought were ridiculous got written down.

When he finished that up, proud of himself for not bursting into flames from the embarrassment, David was still sketching…

but he looked up when Mason stood, and he set the sketch book down.

“Can you tell me if this is wrong? I keep looking at the first one I did and…I like it, but something feels off to me.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree.” Mason strode over nonetheless. “But I can try.”

David flipped a couple pages back and showed Mason…

a page of himself. One was a rudimentary sketch of a guy, presumably himself, sitting in a chair.

Not much detail to be had, so it realistically could have been anyone, though Mason smiled at the fact that, even when no other details made it in, his hair did, sweeping back from the nondescript forehead of the figure.

That was not the only version of Mason on the page, though, and the others were much more clearly him.

One was all jagged, overlapping lines, as if David had tried to draw him with a cluster of polygons.

One was a tiny Mason sitting in front of a big computer, with stark shadows being cast from the glow of the screen.

Another was him from seemingly some other time of day entirely, standing with one arm braced up high against a wall or some other flat thing.

Yet even with all of those, Mason was pretty sure he knew which one David wanted him to look at.

The opposite page from the collection of other sketches was a profile of himself.

The highlights of his hair were bright, almost looking like a source of light for the drawing rather than a reflection.

His eyebrows were drawn in fine detail, and there was a brightness to his eyes, even in a simple, grayscale pencil drawing.

His lips looked full, his cheeks slightly tinged gray in a way that really looked like he was flushed…

and given that, at least part of the time, Mason had been trying not to be self-conscious, it was entirely possible that was accurate.

The drawing carried down, showing a slight bulge as it transitioned to his chest and shoulders, then faded into a streaky cloud of silvery graphite.

Mason swallowed hard. “That’s…I don’t see a problem, other than questionable choice of a model. That’s incredible work.”

“Well thanks, but I promise you, the artist is the problem here, not the model.” David held his sketch book up to the bedside lamp, then shook his head.

“I don’t know. It’s still not landing for me.

” He sucked on his teeth, then clapped the book closed and set it down.

“I’ll figure it out. Just have to keep drawing you until I get it. But I promised you dinner.”

Mason forced his shoulders down so his tension hopefully wouldn’t show through. The last thing he wanted to do around David was eat. “I’m okay. Craft services and all that.”

“Craft services at the hotel? When no one was really filming, and as far as I know, you didn’t really go to the condo at all?”

“It’s fine.”