She watched Thomas strap everything down into the rubber raft. If it had been Roger, he would have been complaining that Madison wasn’t doing her share. But of course that thought was absurd. Roger would never think of taking a female into the woods with him. No, Roger was a “man’s man.” He did the interesting things in his life with other men. With Roger—
“And what have you done about your beauty?” Thomas asked, breaking into Madison’s reverie.
“My what?” she asked, taken off guard.
Thomas didn’t smile. “Your beauty. What have you done with it?”
She blinked at him. “Fed it a lot of moisturizer?” she said, having no idea how to reply to his question. “Dry skin.”
He motioned for her to get into the raft; then as he pushed it into the water, he said, “Beauty like yours is like having a talent, like being able to play the piano or to paint. So what have you done with this talent?”
Holding on to the safety straps of the raft as he jumped inside, Madison could only look at him. She’d never thought of her looks as a “talent.”
Picking up the oars, Thomas began to manipulate the raft about in the water. The sun filtered through the trees and it was very quiet. She’d never been in a raft before and she liked it.
Once he had the boat straight, he looked at her. “Well?”
“My hometown sent me to New York to become a model,” she blurted out.
“And what happened? Other than Roger, that is?”
At that Madison again blinked at him, for his words showed great perception. Since she’d married Roger, she’d been living away from her hometown, but whenever she met anyone from Erskine, she told them that she’d had to give up modeling to nurse the man she loved.
“What makes you think that I didn’t abandon a potentially fabulous career to nurse the man I love back to health?”
As Thomas muscled the raft around some rocks sticking up out of the water, he said, “Your enthusiasm for what you did tells me that you love nursing. But I’ve not heard or seen you show any enthusiasm for Roger. Based on those two things, it’s my guess that you love nursing more than you loved modeling.”
She couldn’t help but laugh; then she leaned back against the back of the raft and let her hand dangle over the side. “You’re exactly right. I know that many little girls dream of the glamorous life of modeling, but I hated it. I don’t mean that I disliked it. I mean that I really and truly hated it. And, besides, they made me feel ugly.”
At that Thomas stopped rowing and looked at her. And his expression made Madison feel very good. His face said that her being less than beautiful was impossible.
“Modeling is a science,” she said. “Well, sort of, anyway. It was enough of a science that I wanted nothing to do with it.”
He was still staring at her in that way that told her that he didn’t believe a word she was saying. “Isn’t nursing a science?” he asked.
“All right,” she said with a sigh. “My ego was crushed. Really. It was trampled into the ground and smashed beneath the feet of those . . . those prissy little men in their—” She broke off because she was becoming angry.
After a moment of staring at the water, she turned back at him. He had a way of looking at a person that forced you to tell the truth. “I can’t get you to buy my story that I’m a martyr to the cause of love?”
“No. Roger’s a jerk and you don’t love him. Truthfully, I doubt if you ever did. But when you talk about rehabilitating him, your face glows. You went to him because you wanted to. But then we all do what we want to, don’t we? So why didn’t you want to model?”
“You’re tough,” she said, then looked away for a moment, then back at him. “Okay, so the truth was, I liked being the most beautiful girl in my hometown. I liked people stopping their cars to talk to me; then I’d pretend that I didn’t know why they’d stopped.”
She looked at him to see how he’d take this confession. Madison wasn’t used to talking about her beauty. She’d worked hard to perfect her modest smile when someone told her she was beautiful. She liked to act as though she’d never heard that before.
“In New York girls like me are everywhere. I was nothing special.”
“I don’t believe that,” Thomas said flatly. “I live in New York and I don’t see women like you every day.”
“Maybe not, but they’re there. They get up early and go to bed late. And in between they’re pushed around and told to stand and to sit and to look and to . . . Well, to do whatever anyone can think up for them to do.” She grimaced. “And they are criticized. That’s what my ego couldn’t take.”
For a moment, Thomas rowed and didn’t say anything. “How could they criticize you?”
“I have one eye that is slightly smaller than the other. See?” she said, leaning toward him. “And I’m a bit heavy in the seat.”
“Ha!” Thomas said. “You are perfect.”
“But you are not a photographer.”