Art-Crossed Love

by Libby Rice

  To her credit, she barely bristled. “Job?” she asked. “I woke up in an empty house, walked out the front door, and painted something all by my lonesome while you roamed the countryside. That job? My work won’t always be for you.”

  “You need to acclimate,” he lied, knowing he avoided the house and their work, not because of Lissa’s needs, but because her very presence cast a shadow in the shape of the accusations that had killed Kate. His accusations. “And this isn’t for me? A picture of my house, interpreting my life, thrown in my face?” The washed-out image drew him back, and he recoiled at the truth swirling through wet paint.

  He took one step, then stopped, bringing his body into alignment with the edge of her canvas. Without turning, he spoke, low and mean. “You think you have the answers, that you can waltz in here and change my philosophy by eliciting a trumped-up emotional response that I will never give you. You. Know. Nothing.”

  Fire crawled over his skin, painful and destructive and demanding. His mind offered up only a single option for putting it out. Destroy. Perfectly calm, Cole lifted Lissa’s debacle high in the air, feeling his fingertips sink into viscous paint. Then he let go. Initially the canvas caught the wind and flew high, but suddenly a corner wrenched from the strong updraft, and the painting darted downward, landing face down on a pile of rocks about twenty feet out.

  Lissa’s pained gasp barely registered as he marched forward toward the front porch. “Never again.”

  “You’re damn right it won’t happen—”

  A sudden gust hit the moment his foot fell on the first step. Behind him, her easel crashed, and he smiled. Even the wind had done its part, but he’d beat nature to the punch, toppling the lie and destroying the house that wasn’t.

  He spoke to the air in front of him. “Someone made a mistake in teaching you life is easy.” Everything down to the exclusive brand of her fucking jeans spoke of an ease not earned. Lissa would soon discover life could get hard.

  His queen of comebacks fell conspicuously silent, yet he didn’t bother to look back. He couldn’t.

  Because instead of Kate’s perfect creation, a house pulled from his wife’s past but built for her future—her now nonexistent future—Lissa had cast Melina as a shelled-out mutation of a home.

  Lissa had painted a shattered house, one physically morphed into the bloody, beating remnants of a broken heart.

  ******

  A day later, Lissa tried not to resent Cole’s silent treatment even though time had flown with all the unpacking and settling in. After trucking her easel upstairs—perhaps Cole would unwind if she hid the evidence—she’d stowed the disastrous painting of the house and set a blank canvas in its place. If he stopped by her room, she wanted the expanse of white to remind him she’d come to Colorado for a reason, one he seemed content to ignore. Jeans and paint-splattered shirts had been stowed in an antique dresser beneath the window. A sole New Yorkish dress looked lonely in the closet—black and mini and Escada Couture.

  Won’t be needing that.

  Two photos graced her bedside table. Her parents waved from the foreground of the first painting she’d ever sold. Her big brothers brandished the second. Pictures invited curiosity, she knew, but she needed the constant reminder of the importance of this trip. Not all her work could grace the Blanc family halls.

  She traced a finger over one scene and then the other, smiling slightly to herself, stuck in the void between apprehension and appreciation.

  Someone made a mistake in teaching you life is easy. Cole’s words had hit like well-aimed arrows, and not of the Cupid variety. At least she knew which camp he fell into. The naysayers tended toward one of two options—push Lissa away or pull Lissa close. The pushers openly mocked her “illegitimate” success. The pullers beguiled her in an effort to see how much of that “luck”—or connections or money or opportunity—could rub off on them.

  Cole was a clear pusher, and frankly, she liked those better. At least they were honest.

  A hank of hair chose that moment to abandon the clip that couldn’t quite contain her pony tail. Ruler straight despite a healthy dedication to volumizing shampoo, her hair liked to slip from its confines and lay flat against her head in an antagonizing refusal to hold body. She imagined her looks mattered about as much to Cole as couponing did to Donald Trump, but hell, she had nothing to lose and everything to gain. After the disaster in the driveway, she could at least try to make herself presentable.

  Her trek to the spare bathroom two rooms down took her past Cole’s bedroom door across the hall. His rumpled bed sat in silence. Nothing personal hinted at the room’s inhabitant. A dresser and two night stands held a clock and a box of tissues between them. No pictures or knickknacks, not even a stray piece of clothing or a random shoe littered Cole’s studied order, dimmed by heavy shades that blocked the rising sun from cheering the space.

  Earthy scents of pine and sandalwood filled her nostrils. Despite his obvious efforts to disappear within the emptiness, the room bore his mark. The hard edges and sanded planks had absorbed his essence without permission.

  Even her limited view of the room told her much, and temptation threatened. If she saw a little more… Not a chance. Forcing herself to put one foot behind the other, she backed away from his open door as quietly as she’d arrived.

  The copper tub in her bathroom resembled a huge gravy boat. The New Yorker in Lissa marveled at the concept. So often her life demanded three-minute showers, never a leisurely soak in a tub that might have been filled by Mammy herself.

  A wicker basket held sumptuous washcloths and a bottle of gardenia bubble bath. She tended toward tasty scents—from oranges to candy canes. They spurred her appetite, a good thing for a skinny girl, and always seemed approachable. Today she availed herself of the luxuries on tap. She sank deep into the tub, telling herself one didn’t indulge in low-grade anxiety in these circumstances. Old world tubs and Egyptian-cotton towels required a certain amount of stress amnesia.

  She sighed heavily. She and Cole would adapt.

  Heat leached into her muscles, and she slumbered against a neck pillow. Eventually the creeping chill of the water brought her around. Stretching languidly, she climbed from the tub, wet and glistening, her hair streaming rivulets of flower-scented water over her shoulders.

  After toweling dry and tossing the cloth down a chute she assumed terminated in a basement laundry room, she rummaged through the basket in search of body lotion. Already, the dry Colorado air had her skin feeling like the surface of Mars. When the search came up empty, she looked under the sink and in the mirrored vanity.

  Nothing, which was surprising given the well-stocked state of Cole’s home.

  He’d either gotten in touch with his feminine side after his wife’s death or someone came by regularly to make sure the place stayed clean and comfortable. From what she’d seen, an aunt probably showed up the day after Uncle Kent delivered the meals to wash the linens and line the waste-paper baskets with scented trash bags.

  Opening the laundry chute, she peered into blackness. The last towel was long gone. With a quiet twist, she opened the bathroom door and peered into the hallway. All was clear and quiet, so she snuck a toe out onto the carpeted runner, then another. When that proved successful, she flew out the door and lurched into her quietest ball-of-the-foot giraffe run toward the body creams she’d unpacked in her room.

  “This can only be penance for your last painting or bribery for your next one.”

  Cole’s rumbling voice took her so off guard she lurched to a stop. There he stood, behind a panting Sasha in his doorway. Heat flared in her cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He cleared his throat. “Nice ass?”

  Her jaw dropped, arms flying to cover her breasts. She tried to speak, to yell at him for his open regard, but she only sputtered, watching his gaze wander over her body, lingering in all the places she tried ineffectually to hide. Sasha lumbered forward. His wobbly-gaited oblivion broke the
spell, and she whirled toward her room.

  Inside, she took her time. With any luck, Cole would disappear while she slathered herself in lotion and dressed in an alternate pair of jeans since the clothes she’d planned were stranded down the hall. After about five minutes, she opened her door and stepped out, prepared to act like the morning had been perfectly ordinary.

  Cole stood with a shoulder propped against his doorjamb, arms folded across his chest in a way that drew her eyes to tanned, vascular forearms. His loose-hipped stance and ruffled blond hair still screamed laid-back. Not a care in the world. Life’s a prize for the plucking. In sum, an easy-going illusion. Cole’s serious eyes shared nothing but color with the ocean. His obvious erection was anything but a joke.

  She swallowed loudly. “I didn’t know you were”—so incredible when aroused?—“still up here.” We needed anything but this.

  He didn’t budge, but the glimmerings of a grin played about his lips. “No need to apologize.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  He let out a derisive snort.

  “You called it penance or bribery,” she said, recalling the revealing words he’d blurted out, “when yesterday you led me to believe you were immune to such things. What did you say?” She looked around as if an answer might slide of the walls. “Ah, yes, that you don’t have ‘emotional responses.’”

  The smile he’d been building died a quick death. “I still have a dick.”

  Her body flinched in all the wrong places, pulsing involuntarily at what his statement laid bare. She ignored the insinuation. “Fair enough.”

  “Let’s keep this battle above the belt.” Then, Jesus Christ, he licked his lips.

  At first she nodded. Then, realizing what the move admitted, she shook her head hard enough to rattle her shoulders. “I haven’t considered your dick part of the war.”

  He pushed off the door frame and sauntered forward, past her frozen position outside her room and down the curving staircase. His hands didn’t touch, but his eyes sure did. Once he’d disappeared from view, his voice trailed up from the landing below.

  “See that you never do.”

  Chapter 5

  “Forget it.” Lissa stared Sasha down. The dog stood beyond the threshold of Cole’s darkened room. She’d followed him upstairs when he’d seemed intent on luring her away from her post in the kitchen where she’d been lying in wait for Cole, keen on a redo after her cameo as a nudist.

  She didn’t plan to flaunt her bare assets again, but her mistake had sure pulled him from his shell, if only momentarily. The morning’s embarrassing interlude had at least proven one thing—Cole Rathlen was as human as any other red-blooded male with, in his own words, a well-functioning dick.

  Not that she cared. His ravenous look when she’d struggled to cover herself had been an annoyance. Really. The ache that had settled in her center signified mere appreciation for his spontaneous flare of feeling, a glimpse of life behind the forty-foot walls surrounding him. Because art needed fire, and from what she’d seen, Kate’s death had left him spitting ice.

  So, naturally, after choking down a dinner of reheated beef enchiladas, she’d collected all the half-eaten bags of Skittles from the kitchen and dining room and piled them in front of her like bait. After polishing off the first bag, Sasha’s eyes had finally rolled skyward. With a jerk of his cinder-block head and an impatient huff, he’d pranced out of the room, tail in the air. Thirty seconds had ticked by before he’d returned for a repeat performance.

  He might as well have held a sign. Come with me, stupid human.

  She stared at the sparse furniture through Cole’s open door. Rummaging around his room could only end badly. If she got caught, well, entrapment-via-dog probably wouldn’t cut it.

  “Are there more Skittles in there, beastie?” Maybe she could do a quick sweep.

  Sasha bent low over his forelegs and “jumped.” He totally cleared at least a half-an-inch beyond the tips of the Berber. Then he moseyed over and sat next to the unmade bed, leaning against an exposed sheet. When he straightened, she grinned at the hair imprint left in his wake.

  After a few more halfhearted refusals the dog ignored, she decided to take a look. What could Cole do? Go missing and refuse to get their work started? Oh, wait…

  As soon as she turned on the light, Sasha sank to his belly, shoving his massive head under the bed until his shoulders wedged between the frame and the floor. Then came a low whine, more like a dog yodel. Every few seconds, he gathered renewed strength and surged forward, only to be repelled with the realization that the space still couldn’t accommodate a dog the size of an adolescent water buffalo.

  Lissa peered over her shoulder toward the hall, then back at Sasha. A smart woman would abandon the dog and plead ignorance when asked why he’d been found shoved beneath the bed like a woman who’d poured herself into an ill-fitting dress.

  She made it to the top stair before Sasha let out a subdued bark. That muffled woof sealed her fate. Rushing the bed, she lowered to her knees and stroked Sasha’s wiggling rump. She ought to want a cigarette to calm her nerves. Or a drink. After all, she was about to crawl under the furniture of an absentee widower who’d made privacy his life’s quest. But she didn’t smoke. And she only drank this late if, rather than signifying the beginning of a new day, the toast closed an old one.

  Chin down, she wiggled under the box springs to the tune of Sasha’s heavy panting, reaching forward until she swiped what felt like a dusty picture frame. Jackpot. Perhaps she’d found the stash of personal loot Cole kept hidden from view. She wouldn’t pull the picture out. Action that drastic would be too invasive, even for her. Up till now, she had a damn good reason to… what? Lie face down under Cole’s bed, manhandling his private possessions on her third night as a guest in his home?

  “Shit.” She splayed her arms to scramble out.

  “Find what you’re looking for?”

  The bland voice came from above and might as well have grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her back into the light. Disoriented and embarrassed, she surged upward. But she’d forgotten her cramped position. Pain bit into the back of her skull where a screw—or maybe a nail or a protruding edge of the bed frame?—gouged the tender flesh behind her ear.

  Her teeth sank reflexively into her lower lip. She was forever throwing herself at sharp objects. This particular run-in with Cole had to center on her ability, on forming a plan, not on a haphazard scrape. Nor would she give the man the satisfaction of knowing his sudden presence had scared her. With extreme care, she braced her palms against the floor and pushed. Her sweaty hands slipped at first, but she regrouped, sliding her body along until her head cleared the bed above.

  “No,” she groaned, the answer muffling against a rug.

  “What?”

  She craned her neck to look at him. “I did not find what I was looking for.” Not a fucking Skittle in sight. Though it appeared she’d caught his attention without the bite-size rainbows of fruit flavor.

  With a casual movement, she shagged her dark hair, efficiently covering the throbbing cut in her scalp. Taut moments dragged by in silence. Finally, he held out a hand, even though the rigid angles of his jaw said help was the last thing he wanted to offer.

  His fingers were warm and calloused against hers—another sign of life.

  “First,” he said, “you’re naked in my hall. Now you’re writhing beneath my bed. I thought we had an agreement.”

  “We did. You’re supposed to think with the other head. The one above the waist.”

  “I would if—”

  “I’m supposed to paint pictures. Remember that agreement? Besides, Sasha”—who’d fled at the first sign of trouble—“really wanted under the bed.”

  A smooth lift deposited her on her feet. She wasn’t prepared for the sudden lightheadedness that sent her swaying. Clutching his wrist, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  “Problem?”
/>
  “Got up too fast,” she murmured, intent on handling the wound in private. A little hot water, a dash of Neosporin, and she’d be set. “That hereditary low blood pressure gets me every time.”

  Steady hands gripped her shoulders, pushing toward the mattress. When she opened her eyes, Cole was studying her with slit-eyed suspicion. Irritation blanketed his expression, but so did concern. “Sit.”

  Probably a fine idea. Blood trickled along the base of her neck, crawling in a way that provided a constant reminder that she was hurt and leaking. Nausea roiled low in her stomach, far outweighing any attendant pain. When she opened up to ask about her training, saliva seeped uninvited from the roof of her mouth. Instead of demanding a plan for their first test run, she whimpered and swallowed convulsively.

  “Breathe.” He pulled her hair behind her shoulders, gripping the mass at the base of her neck in a makeshift ponytail. She felt the moment he saw the blood in the tightening of his fist and the responsive sting in her scalp.

  She waited for a caustic, cynical response, but his voice held only alarm when he asked, “What did you do?”

  “Moi? It was your bed that attacked me.”

  He didn’t smile. “You live a dangerous life, Lissa Blanc.” Gentle now, he pulled her hair aside and examined the wound. His touch remained soft and calm, but his voice stretched tight over his next words. “You should have told me.”

  “You caught me with my head in the proverbial cookie jar.” She panted. “I didn’t figure much sympathy would flow my way.” Her voice soared higher and faster with each syllable, and now her deep breathing had gone shallow. A mere scratch and she was falling to pieces.

  “Tetanus current?”

  “Yes,” she lied. If she could handle needles, she’d have put her father’s resources to better use and become a doctor. This artist crap was overrated.

  Up close, she focused on the sea blue of Cole’s irises. Her vision hitched, swimming with another man—a blue-eyed boy, actually—yelling in her face while blood slipped down her neck.