Free The Color of Light by Helen Maryles Shankman

eyebrows drawing together. “I’m supposed to be notified when there’s a new hire.”
    “Well, this woman’s an adjunct. Temporary. She’s here for the semester. If we’re happy, she gets to come on board full time, with your blessings, of course. If not
, vaya con Dios,
we look for somebody else. We’re in a bind. The semester’s well along, and we’re still short an instructor. It’s hard to find people who teach the kind of stuff we do.”
    Rafe shook his head, bewildered. “Why don’t we just hire one of our graduates?”
    Levon put up his hands. “Not my policy. Whit thinks it’s too incestuous.”
    He nodded, stifling his impatience. “All right. Where did she train? What’s her experience?”
    Involuntarily, Levon rubbed the back of his neck. “Um…she has an MFA in painting from Yale.”
    “Well, then. We know she can
talk
about painting.”
    “She has lots of experience. She taught at NYU and exhibited all through the Eighties. You’ve probably heard of her. April Huffman.”
    Rafe was incredulous. “The same April Huffman who does blow jobs in car paint? She’s going to be teaching at my Academy?”
    “Whit wanted a name.”
    “They’re not even very good blow jobs. She can barely draw. We’re betraying the students. Tell me, Levon. Are we that desperate?”
    There was real anguish in his eyes. Levon rested his hand on his shoulder. “Hey. I know this school is your baby. You know, the monitor will set up the model, and she’ll walk around giving them suggestions. Which they can take or leave. It’s Painting 101, very basic stuff. It’s not like she’s teaching Anatomy. The chairman of painting at NYU gave her a big thumbs up. And she seems really excited about teaching here.”
    Rafe was furious. Turner had, as promised, brought an artist on board who could hardly draw. The men and women filling his townhouse today had come to the Academy to learn how to paint like Rubens and Rembrandt. Most of them were already better than April Huffman. He could think of nothing she could add to their skills. He felt as if he were putting one over on the students. On
his
students.
    Levon changed the subject. Rafe had a crazy look in his eyes. “Say, how are the student committee meetings going?”
    “Graciela had some good suggestions. The two young men, well…”
    He let his restless gaze sift through the hundred or so people drinking wine, talking art and hitting on each other throughout his Great Room, thinking of Gracie’s amber skin glowing through the translucent material of her blouse. A month ago he would have had her without giving it a second’s thought. But after she guided his hand to her thigh to feel the fabric of her stretch pants
—
and they were indeed tactile, just as promised—he hadn’t so much as touched her. It was the girl. She wandered through his thoughts like a crooked river, filling him with fear and wonder.
    At this moment Graciela was refilling wineglasses at the bar at a furious rate. Clayton, the loquacious Southerner with the Roman profile, was holding forth to a cadre of painters and sculpting students staked out on a couch he’d had shipped from a shuttered Parisian café. The girl circled around them collecting empty glasses, her long titian curls glimmering in the warm yellow light cast by dozens of candles placed around the room.
    “Beautiful, isn’t she.”
    Rafe agreed. “Yes. She is.”
    “Gracie is more exotic, but I’ve always had a soft spot for redheads. I’m a happily married man, and I still want to die in that hair. She making you just a wee bit sorry you passed that bylaw about dating students?”
    He smiled politely, said nothing.
    “Her name is Tessa Moss. She works for Lucian Swain.” Levon lowered his voice before he went on. “He says she saved his life.”
    Rafe turned to him, intrigued. “That’s the girl?”
    “Last year he had some kind of breakdown. He lost everything when the market crashed. When yuppies stopped