WG2E All-For-Indies Anthologies: Spring Hop Edition

by Scott, D. D.

  Justin’s situation had been nearly as bad. An alcoholic father who beat any person he could get his hands on. A mother too weak to defend her children or herself. He’s been lucky to get a scholarship and a chance to escape. She hadn’t wanted to mess that up by trying to maintain a long-distance relationship and the hopes of moving after a couple of years of decent community college grades and a transfer. The thought had seemed daunting and impossible at the time.

  But now, years later, after being married to a man Lainey was fairly sure she had not loved, or loved like she should, she wondered if she had underestimated the strength of her bond with that vulnerable young man with the hard exterior and gentle inner core.

  Fontana turned her in the direction of the wine tent sitting like a beacon in the middle of Main Street. The line to purchase wrapped around it like a bow. “How about we try merlot this time?”

  Lainey blinked, exiting the fog. A shout from a boisterous group across the street drew her eye, and she stepped forward. The sounds of laughter and music faded into the distance, the colors of the night sliding into a wash of black and white. “What?” She pointed, her mind going blank as she read the sign above the door.

  True Art.

  • • •

  Justin True raised his glass and glanced at his agent over the rim. He’d forgotten the trouble having visitors from New York brought. They could not seem to get over women with accents, and invariably, Justin ended up making excuses or apologizing for some indiscretion he had gotten absolutely no benefit from making. He’d even gone so far as sending flowers once, forging the signature of a moderately famous poet who had probably never sent a woman flowers in his life. That was the last time he’d asked a writer to visit his South Carolina gallery. Painters had exited the list the year before. Sculptors the year before that.

  His agent was looking to make the cut this year.

  The door to the gallery opened, bringing with it the sound of the jazz trio performing just outside, and Justin stepped back, his heart stuttering in his chest. He brought the glass to his lips and polished off his drink in between two harsh breaths.

  Justin didn’t believe in miracles, coincidence or fate. Family, work, travel, and sex topped his list most days. He’d once believed in fate and had his heart ripped out for his trouble.

  By the woman who had just walked in the door.

  Justin recorded Lainey Prescott’s progress through the gallery while conversation swirled around him. She looked different, a little older, not much, but a little. If he were to sketch her, he’d add very fine strokes around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. The cutest goddamn blond shag he’d ever seen brushed her chin as she turned her head this way and that, her tour taking her past his cousin Campbell’s photography exhibit and to the paintings that were mostly his. His gaze fell to her left hand, damn him, where he noted the absence of a wedding ring with a jolt he hated to admit felt like relief.

  She and Fontana Quinn halted before a painting he had completed three months after he left Pine Bluff. One of the oldest paintings in the gallery…a personal favorite he could not part with. Would she recognize the scene? Or note the title on the brass plate? He watched her tilt her head in deep contemplation, and it brought to mind the first time he’d seen her: draped over the hood of Alvin Shaw’s corvette, a pair of grime-spattered jeans covering her trim body, that exquisite wealth of hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the oil-streaked ends flicking her breast. He’d stopped by her uncle’s garage to have an irritating burp in his motor checked out, and instead, he’d cooled his engine and given away part of his heart. When she’d turned that first day and gazed at him with those sultry gray eyes, he’d been completely and utterly lost.

  His love life had never been the same. It had taken years and one too many women to make him forget Lainey Prescott.

  Shaking away the blistering memory, he nodded to his agent with no idea what the question had been. Perhaps she wouldn’t even recognize him. The earring was gone, the chain connecting his wallet to his belt loop, the shaggy haircut. He’d grown a good three inches his freshman year in college, and his last pair of Chuck Taylors had hit the garbage in 2002. No more black eyes from whatever fist he stepped in front of that week, no more crooked front teeth. A successful career as an architect, part-time art dealer and occasional painter had allowed for an excellent Manhattan dentist, tailored clothing that fit his body, a personal trainer and erudite women who met his expectations.

  And unlike those troubling high school years, all the damned canvas he wished to slap paint upon.

  He watched Lainey trail her finger along a sculpture of Dionysus, his arms raised to the heavens, and Justin felt a twist of heat shoot from his chest to his groin and back. The surge of lust brought the desperation and love, the highs and lows of the most unbelievable summer of his life, before him as clearly as the works in his gallery. Misery and absolute fucking pleasure. He realized that looking into Lainey Prescott’s eyes would buy him a direct ticket to the past.

  He didn’t want the past; he was quite happy with the present, thank you very much.

  “Those two, True. The best looking in this town so far. Intro me.”

  Justin turned to his agent, Brent, with a sigh, realizing the two he meant. “Down boy.”

  “How about it? Do you know them?”

  He lifted Brent’s glass from his hand and finished off his drink. Scotch. Damn, might be the night to leave his car in town and walk home. Good thing he lived close. “I used to.”

  Justin felt the arm circle his waist and glanced down in time to see the jet-black nails settle into the folds of his crisp cotton shirt. He would have kissed Samantha for her flawless timing if that wouldn’t have given her the wrong idea about them being back on.

  “Definitely the petite one, darling,” Samantha said with a laugh and lifted her hand away when Justin failed to cover it with his own. “The tall, rough one looks like she’d eat you up and spit you out.”

  Brent glanced back with a smile. “And that’s a bad thing why?”

  Justin gave Brent a shove. “Go. Sell artwork. Make money. The festival will cycle more people through here than we’ll get all year. Meeting women was not the reason for the trip.”

  “Money? Here?” Samantha gazed around the room with an expression of distaste. She reached to finger the glittering stone around her neck. “When my editor asked me to complete a piece on Justin True’s Southern gallery, I thought he was kidding. ‘Art in the cornfields’ is what he wants to call it. Dear heaven, this town needs an art gallery about as much as it needs a nuclear spill.”

  Justin turned away as the familiar heat circled. He could make all the fun he wanted of his art-in-the-cornfields folly. But he’d be damned if an outsider would ridicule his hometown or the people who chose to live there. Or his moderately successful gallery. Two of his brothers still called Pine Bluff home…and sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t chuck the New York scene and come back where he belonged. Where he had roots. And, yes, a complicated past.

  He brushed aside Samantha’s apology and turned for the bar he’d had his brother set up—

  And there she was.

  Two

  Lainey halted before Justin and stared, unable to help herself. She hadn’t been this close to him in years. Close enough to see the hazel flecks swimming in his light brown eyes. Almost amber, perhaps even golden in color. Close enough to catch the scent of his cologne, something expensive, light and nearly perfect. The fantastically cute boy had turned into a devastatingly handsome man. Crazy to think it had been so long when a day apart had once seemed excruciating.

  She felt a bit breathless as she gazed at him. He’d gotten taller. Broader of shoulder. His dark hair short and neat, his clothing impeccable, his face lined with just a hint of stubble, he looked nothing short of successful. Sexy. Wonderful. Why had she chosen to leave the man standing in front of her when he had been all she truly wanted?

  Flustered when he stared
right back but didn’t speak, she gestured in the direction Fontana had walked. “Is that Mercer at the bar?” Justin’s brother had been a year behind them in school, and once upon a time, they’d been close friends.

  Justin held Lainey’s gaze for several seconds, then glanced over her head. “He owns a popular restaurant in town, but the biggest part of his business comes from catering. Weddings, mostly, anniversary parties, that sort of thing. I line him up for all the events here.”

  “That’s great,” she said and lifted her glass to her lips. Her brain buzzed with interesting things she could say, years of information she wanted to share, but nothing formed coherently enough to let loose.

  “It’s empty.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  He shook his head with a bemused smile and took her glass. She watched him weave his way through the crowd, tipping his head in reply to comments and one back slap. Pausing at a painting Lainey felt sure was his, he shook his head, then traced a bold crimson stroke for the group surrounding it. At the bar, he flipped aside his jacket, shoved his hand deep in the pocket of his slacks and bounced up on his toes, a restless habit she remembered from the old days. Except the pockets back then had been made of worn denim, often with holes at the knee, sometimes the seat. He still had a very nice butt, a nice body, pretty much a nice everything.

  As she checked him out, he glanced back, perhaps to see if she still waited. She flushed to realize her regard had remained so steady she’d not blinked since he stepped away.

  She wanted to know everything he’d done in the lonely, forlorn years that sat between them. But she feared asking. Perhaps his years had not been lonely.

  She examined him from head to toe.

  The man did not look like one who would be lonely.

  On his return, his gaze traveled the length of her and back, twice, then held as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Like they had chatted even once in the last thirteen years. She marveled at his poise when she felt like blithering idiot.

  “Red, correct?” he asked when he stopped before her. “Mercer said the cabernet is a good one.”

  “Yes, lovely.” She glanced around the gallery, at the contemporary track lighting, the walls covered with paintings and photographs. People moved in a calm flow, as if propelled on a gentle river current. It was a well designed space, soothing and vibrant. It translated perfectly to the urbane man standing next to her. A man she no longer knew. “This is a very chic spot for Pine Bluff. Actually, I’m surprised at some of the changes. Imagine, a wine store on Main Street.”

  He took a drink. “Yes, I guess it’s been a while. In town for the festival?”

  “Until Monday. Some business with my father’s house. I’ve been renting…and had thought to sell.” Before the divorce two years ago, Pine Bluff had not been in her plans. Now, with her career in a downward spiral, she wasn’t sure what her future entailed.

  She saw his lips pull into a frown, amplified behind his glass. “I was sorry to hear about your father. It’s been what, two years?”

  “Yes, just over. It’s a part of life, but not a good one. He was stubborn until the end. And content, I think, which is not the worst thing in the world.” The lights dimmed, and shadows spilled across Justin’s face, over his nose and plump bottom lip. His beauty shone more luminously than the artwork in the confined space. “Mood lighting?”

  He smiled then, a gradual slide that transformed his face, bringing with it the lone dimple she had not recalled until that moment. It was also the first time since she’d walked into the gallery that he truly resembled the young man she’d loved. “Brent, the guy chatting up Fontana at the bar, thinks ambiance sells art. He picks the lighting, I pick the music.” He tilted his head, nodded to the speaker mounted discretely on the wall above their heads. “Billie Holiday. That’s my contribution.”

  “And you, Just, what do you think sells?” The nickname slipped out, one she used in private back then, mostly while they were tangled around each other in the back seat of his Camaro. Billie Holiday had messed her up for a minute. She remembered the sound of that woman’s voice, reverberating in her little bedroom, until she thought she would die from the pleasure of it. They had not announced their short, tempestuous relationship to many. Consequently, all the things that went with it seemed secret, somehow. Locked in a velvet box in her heart.

  His smile collapsed, and she felt a winter chill swirl between them. “I think emotion sells, Lainey. Base emotion: anger, love, lust, disgust, greed. Most people fear emotion, fear expressing or feeling, hence the struggling artist bit. Art, like life, is a hard sell.”

  She was starting to get the idea that Justin had not forgiven her, would never forgive her, as she’d suspected when she pushed him away. And his gallery looked nothing like one associated with a struggling artist, either. “Believe it or not, I’m a psychologist, so emotions, all the ones you listed plus a few more, are my world. My professional world, anyway.”

  He lifted a brow, a tight laugh sputtering out. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  She felt a kick of temper fire in her chest. That, too, was something he had always been able to rouse in her. “I’m not sure what’s funny.”

  He took a drink. “I’m sure you don’t.”

  Someone moving through the crowd bumped her, and she stumbled into Justin. His arm came up and brought her against his chest as the man who had jostled her apologized and moved past. Lainey’s breath caught in her throat as the heat from Justin’s skin burned through the layers of cloth between them. She lifted her head and arrived to find his gaze centered on her. She inhaled and caught the scent of him, cologne and something crisp on his breath, citrus, perhaps from the lime in his drink. The urge hit her, and she was half the distance there when she realized her body was acting on need, not thought. Her lips tingled, and she would have given a million dollars to press them to naked skin just then.

  His neck, his chest, the inside of his wrist. Sucked and taken hold.

  Following instinct in the most minor way possible, she grasped his wrist and slid her fingers inside the cuff of his shirt. His pulse thumped a merry rhythm beneath her fingertips. Pleasure, deep and true, raced along her skin, heating her blood. With a whispered word with no meaning, he slid his hand to the small of her back and pressed hard. His exhale hit her cheek, another crisp, sweet scent. One more inch, she thought, another, two. And she could fuse her lips to his and never let go.

  Never again.

  A shatter had them jerking apart. She looked down to find Justin’s wine glass lying in pieces at their feet. With a curse, he stooped and began placing shards in his cupped palm. She went down beside him, unsure what insanity was taking hold. It has been years since passion had filtered through her mind, through her body.

  How had she managed to leave him when it had always been this way between them? Always.

  “Justin?”

  He glanced at her once, briefly, and she shrank back from the ire in his gaze.

  She faltered, but, really, she had failed him all those years ago. A foolish girl of eighteen could not have clearly understood what she was letting slip through her fingers. At the very least, she wanted to know about his life, reconnect with him, and perhaps give him the chance, with reason, to forgive her. “There’s a wine tasting tomorrow night. Fontana and I are going. I thought—”

  He looked up then, his expression cool, the anger banked. “You thought what exactly?”

  She felt her own wrath settle in again. Did he have to make it so difficult when he could see she was trying? “You can invite the tall brunette if you want. I just thought we could catch up. Talk. Do the things old friends do when they meet again.”

  “This isn’t a high school reunion, Lainey,” he said and placed the last shard of glass in his hand. “This is real life. And the brunette is none of your damn business. Nothing to do with me is any of your business.”

  “I’m trying here, Just. I thought maybe—”

  “
Lainey Prescott, is that you?”

  Lainey rose, her mind stuck between the past and the present. She blinked at the woman standing before her, then the face registered. “Melissa? Is that you?” Melissa Albright had been her chemistry partner in high school and one of the few people she kept in contact with during college.

  “Lainey, you look fabulous. The same size as you were! I’m guessing you and Joey haven’t started a family yet.” Melissa laughed and touched her protruding belly. “The weight is hard to keep off once the children start coming.”

  Justin stood and spun Lainey around by the shoulder. His eyes had darkened, and a muscle in his jaw kicked. “Joey, as in Joey Tremont?” With a quick glance thrown over her shoulder, he whispered, “You went back to him? After leaving me?”

  “I’m divorced, Justin. For over two years. I—”

  “Enough.” He thrust her away from him with an expression of repulsion. All angry, affronted male, desperately attractive and completely inaccessible. “Excuse me, ladies, I have a tall brunette to attend to.”

  And he departed as abruptly as she once had.

  Three

  Lainey jogged past the courthouse, the red brick gleaming in the sun. A pickup was parked in the circular drive, and a young man unloaded wooden crates, each hitting the pavement with a crack. She had forgotten the Saturday morning produce market, her father’s favorite weekend activity. The trip to town always included lunch at the Bluff Dinette, maybe an ice cream sundae at Holworth’s. Later, when the drinking and gambling started, her role switched from daughter to caretaker.

  Lainey realized memories had halted her progress when the young man turned to watch her with an appreciative gaze and a wink. She smiled, unable to hide it and waved back, resuming her jog. Only in the last year had she begun to feel attractive, secure in her own skin. A transformation taken alone, without a man to guide her, as it should be, she thought. Though the produce guy was much too young for her, she could at least embrace the compliment.