He strode toward her. Beneath his khaki shorts his legs were brown and strong. He wore an old blue denim work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms dusted with dark hair. “Do you know how long it took me to get that chair right where I wanted it?”

She backed away from him. “Maybe you have too much leisure time.”

“Do you think that’s funny?”

“Oh, no.” She kept backing. “Not funny. Definitely not.”

“Does it amuse you to spoil a whole day’s work?”

“Work?”

His eyebrows shot together. “What are you doing?”

“Doing?”

“Stand still, damn it, and stop cowering!”

“I’m not cowering!”

“For God’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you!” Grumbling under his breath, he stalked back to where he’d been sitting and picked up something off the ground. She took advantage of his distraction to edge closer to the path.

“I told you not to move!”

He was holding some kind of notebook, and he no longer seemed sinister, just incredibly impolite. She regarded him with all the imperiousness of Hollywood royalty. “Someone’s forgotten his manners.”

“Waste of energy. I come here for privacy. Is that too much to ask?”

“Not at all. I’m leaving right now.”

“Over there!” He pointed an angry finger toward the creek.

“Pardon me?”

“Sit over there.”

She was no longer frightened, just annoyed. “I don’t think so.”

“You ruined an afternoon’s work. Sitting for me is the least you can do to make up for it.”

He was holding a sketch pad, she realized, not a notebook. He was an artist. “Why don’t I just leave instead?”

“I told you to sit!”

“Has anyone ever mentioned that you’re rude?”

“I work hard at it. Sit on that boulder and face the sun.”

“Thanks, but I don’t do sun. Bad for the complexion.”

“Just once I’d like to meet a beautiful woman who isn’t vain.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” she said dryly, “but I passed the beautiful woman mark a good ten years and forty pounds ago.”

“Don’t be infantile.” He whipped a pencil from his shirt pocket and began to sketch, not bothering to argue with her any longer, or even to sit down on the small camp stool she spotted a few feet away. “Tilt your chin. God, you really are beautiful.”

He uttered the compliment so dispassionately that it didn’t seem flattering. She resisted the urge to tell him he should have seen her in her prime. “You’re right about my vanity,” she said, just to needle him. “Which is why I’m not going to stand here in the sun any longer.”

The pencil continued to fly over his sketch pad. “I don’t like models talking when I’m working.”

“I’m not your model.”