by Gayle Roper
He closed his eye. “You’re sure you don’t have a history of being chased by bad guys? Maybe that innocent, dedicated teacher bit is a cover for nefarious behind-the-scenes stuff.”
I all but sputtered. “Come on, Gray. I don’t even know any bad guys unless you count Skip Schumann, and he’s only thirteen, and he’s not really a bad guy. He’s just too full of himself and doesn’t like me.”
“Huh.”
I glared at him. He looked so at ease! “What about you? Don’t contractors have to deal with the Mafia and all? I bet you know lots of bad guys. Did one come looking for you because you didn’t pay your protection this month and decide for some perverse reason to take out Dorothy instead?”
This time Gray opened both eyes, and they flashed with annoyance. “You’ve been watching too much TV and reading too many novels. Contractors are just as honest as any group of people, and I, being a Christian, am among the most honest of all. I value my good character too much to compromise it with questionable associations.”
I’d offended him. Well, he’d offended me. I rubbed my forehead. The afternoon was not going well. Maybe if I went to bed right now and made believe the day was over, things would get better. My eyes fell on the newspaper. No, they wouldn’t. He was still out there.
Gray sighed and held up a hand. “Hey, I’m sorry. For some strange reason, I’m a bit touchy today. This mess is interfering with my schedule like you wouldn’t believe.”
“It’s not doing mine any good either,” I shot back. Here we were being fingered for a murderer, and he was worried about a few missed meetings?
He took a deep breath and sat up. “Let’s start over.”
I stared at him grumpily for a minute, then nodded. I was supposed to teach intermediate school kids, not act like one. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He sat up. “Since we’re agreed we’re both missing too much work and we both hang out with nice people, Skip Schumann aside, apparently we only have to worry about this one man.”
We? “You don’t have to worry about him at all.” My voice was tart. “I’m the one he saw.”
I leaned back into the love seat. I’d brought it from home and reupholstered it in steel blue to go with Meg’s striped sofa. Tipsy, sleeping on the other half of the love seat, looked at me with resentment. “It’s called sharing,” I told him as I pushed his stretched-out hind legs back onto his side. “And stay on your own space.”
He showed me his fangs.
“We’re in that picture together.” Gray flicked a hand at the News. “We’re in the mess together.”
I looked at him. “I think your comment’s supposed to comfort me, right?”
He shrugged. “I sort of hoped it would.”
“Well, it sort of does, and I thank you, but I’m still the only one he shot at. What if he’s got friends who’ll help him get me? Bad guys have friends, don’t they? Well, don’t they?”
When Gray didn’t bother to answer, I said, “The Mob. That’s what they’ve got. I know all about Tony Soprano and Don Corleone.”
He actually had the nerve to smile. “Don’t overreact or anything.”
I glared at him. “Fine. Make fun. Go back to your meetings. I’m going to keep sewing while I think about this whole mess and try to figure out a way to keep from being killed.”
“Let me know when you have any good ideas,” he said and pulled his PDA from the clip on his belt.
I studied him, watching his total absorption in whatever was recorded there. He was definitely a good-looking man, sort of a young Sean Connery without the Scots accent and with wavy hair. Somehow his mere presence made me feel less vulnerable.
But how in the world could he concentrate on something as mundane as work in the middle of this crisis? I felt as wired as if I’d drunk a whole case of super-caffeinated cola.
“Have you got anything cold I can drink?” he asked, startling me.
“I thought you were concentrating.” His eyes were still on his PDA.
“Always something to do, something to check up on, but a man still gets thirsty.”
“Soda, iced tea and lemonade.”
“Lemonade would be good.”
I got to my feet, and Tipsy immediately stretched his legs out over the cushion I had vacated.
“I saw that,” I hissed at him.
He curled his furry lip.
I started for the kitchen. Gray hadn’t yet looked up. He muttered something under his breath. Iwas surprised when he slipped the PDA into its holder and pulled himself off the sofa. He followed me to the kitchen, the newspaper under his arm.
He sat in the same chair he’d used last night, a fifties red vinyl seat and back with legs and frame of chrome. The red Formica table with chrome legs matched the chairs. The set was one of Lucy’s “treasures,” picked up from an estate sale at an old farmhouse.
Frankly I thought most of Lucy’s treasures were tacky Elvis-on-black-velvet sorts of stuff, but I liked the bright, cheery feel of the red kitchen set. The week after she brought the table and chairs home, I’d made red-and-white checked curtains for the window over the sink and the glass-paned back door.
Gray studied a watercolor on the wall beside the red table as I pulled the pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. The painting was a typical Chester County scene, a covered bridge and stream with a dramatic cloud-strewn sky bathed in the setting sun.
“Yours?” he asked.
I glanced up from pouring and nodded. I’d painted it during my representational Peter Skullthorpe/Richard Bollinger phase, though my abilities were far less than those of the men I emulated.
“Nice. Looks good up there.”
“Thanks.” The sad thing was that nice was the best that could be said not only of this painting but all my paintings. I had technique and a good color sense, but I didn’t have that indefinable something that made a true artist rise above the many who painted. This picture hung over the table because it looked good in the room, not because it was good.
I spent a lot of time talking to the Lord about my art, and on cynical days I knew it was all my parents’ fault.
“Look, Daddy,” I used to say when I was little. I’d hold out another of my pictures for him to see when he came home from work. The kitchen table where I was working was my studio, littered as it was with markers, a shoebox full of broken and stubby crayons and dreams. “I’m going to be an artist when I grow up.”
“Don’t try to be an artist, Anna,” my father always told me as he surveyed my pictures. “They never make any money. Maybe teach art, but don’t make art your career.”
“Now, Tom, let her alone,” my gentle mother countered. “She’s only five.” Or eight. Or twelve. “And she’s good.”
“Yeah, but good isn’t enough, Maggie. Not with art.”
While still a kid, I vowed to myself that I’d show him I was good enough. I would become the world’s greatest artist, and I’d get rich from my masterpieces. I never swerved from that goal. I took art lessons all through junior high and high school, and I majored in art at college. Dad complained about the costs of something he thought a waste, but he couldn’t refuse his little girl, and I knew it. Besides, I minored in education to make him happy.
Mom died when I was sixteen, a terrible blow to all of us as we watched her waste away with ovarian cancer. Just before she died, before the pain was overwhelming and the morphine made her too unaware to think clearly, she spoke to each of us kids privately. I don’t know what she told my brothers. Being male, they never shared. But I never forgot what she told me.
“Anna, God has given you great talent. You are an artist. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t, Mom.”
“Promise?” She held my hand, hers so thin I marveled I couldn’t see through it. “Don’t let anyone talk you out of it.”
I knew she meant Dad, though she’d never say so. “I promise.”
“Say it for me, Anna, love. ‘I am an artist.’”
I wa
s crying so hard, I could barely speak. “I am an artist.”
“Never forget that, sweetheart. It is as much a part of you as your heart for God. Serve Him with your art, and you will find joy.”
I looked at the scene hanging on the kitchen wall above Gray and knew that I was still trying to keep my promise and prove to Dad that I was the artist Mom had thought me. The only things missing were the talent and the joy.
God, I can do it, I often prayed in frustration. I know I can, especially if You just help me. Make me an artist who touches people’s hearts, who turns them to You. Lord, make me really, really good!
The rest of the prayer, buried deep in my heart, was, So I can find joy. I didn’t have the courage to say this out loud because it sounded selfish and demanding. Of course, I knew God knew this wish because, after all, He knows everything. I think not saying it made me feel less shallow, less needy. But, oh, how I wanted the joy my mother had talked about.
Through the years I continued to turn out “nice” paintings that all my non-artist friends thought wonderful. My artist friends were usually kind enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.
Too bad I became more morose every time I picked up a brush.
My eyes fell on the newspaper at Gray’s elbow. Now the issue seemed to be not whether I was good enough to paint well, but whether I’d even live long enough to paint another mediocre picture.
“So what do I do now?” I put a tall, ice-filled glass of lemonade in front of Gray and sat across from him with my own glass. He drained his in one long gulp.
I rose and put the pitcher at his elbow. “Help yourself.”
He did.
“So what do I do now?” I repeated.
“You mean about trying to not get killed?” He downed the second glass almost as quickly as the first.
I nodded, studying the photo in the paper again. “The only good thing about this mess is that my father doesn’t know.”
“Protective, is he?”
I rolled my eyes. “You might say that. My brothers are just as bad.”
“Maybe I should give them a call, enlist their help,” Gray said. “They could be your bodyguards.”
I shot him a horrified look. “Don’t you dare!”
“Where do they live?”
“Ohio. And we’re going to leave them there. All of them.”
“How’d you end up in Amhearst?”
“I went to college nearby and stayed in the area after graduation. I love my family, but…” I shrugged. He smiled at me.
“Don’t worry. I know that family, no matter how loving, can sometimes be overwhelming. You should see my sisters try and fix me up with women.” He shuddered. “It’s like the attack of the good fairies. ‘You need to settle down, Gray, and we know just the woman. You’ll love her. She’s wonderful.’ Or beautiful. Or gorgeous. Or my favorite, intelligent.”
“What’s wrong with intelligent?” I couldn’t believe this gorgeous man was dumb enough to like dumb women.
“Nothing. I like intelligent women. I find them very appealing, and they certainly make for interesting conversation. But if that’s the only adjective used, it’s a sign to stay away.”
I laughed. “You’re as bad as my brothers.”
He shrugged, completely unrepentant. “I don’t have time for a woman anyway. My work takes all day every day. I finally moved to Amhearst from Philadelphia three weeks ago, and I’m still taking my clothes out of cardboard boxes every morning. No time to unpack.”
“Do you have furniture?”
He seemed insulted by the question I had thought appropriate. After all, I’d seen my brothers’ apartments before they got married.
“Of course I’ve got furniture.”
I raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I’ve got a table and four chairs, a great recliner, a plasma TV, a Bowflex, a first-rate sound system and a bed.”
I didn’t bother saying that a wall-mounted TV, a sound system and an exercise machine weren’t furniture. I knew that was a male/female definition thing. “Does the bed have a headboard, a footboard and a box spring?”
He became very interested in refilling his glass. “It will. Eventually. When I have time. Like I said, I’m very busy.”
“So what are you doing drinking lemonade in the middle of the afternoon?”
“Good question.” He looked at me for a long moment, then seemed to choose his words with care. “I don’t want to scare you, but I don’t think you should be alone right now, even here at home.”
I went all warm and melty inside. He was concerned about me.
“I certainly don’t want you alone on the site. The last thing I need is another murder.”
Ah, a bucket of realistic cold water. It was Freedom’s Chase that he was really concerned about, not me. “Yeah. Bad for sales.”
He frowned. “That didn’t sound quite right, what I said. You know I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Don’t worry.” I gave him what I hoped was a frosty smile, though I don’t do frosty well. “I understand just what you meant.”
He looked at me, clearly exasperated, but he chose not to pursue the issue. “How about your friends?” He nodded toward Lucy’s and Meaghan’s rooms. “Where are they?”
“Meaghan’s at school locking horns with the new principal, and Lucy’s getting food for the final weekend down the shore before school starts. They’re leaving for Seaside tomorrow.”
“Are you going with them?”
I nodded. “But I probably won’t leave until Friday when I’m finished at the model.”
“Home alone for a night?” He didn’t look happy.
“Maybe I’ll sew quickly and be ready to go with them tomorrow.”
“Much better. Where do you stay?”
“Lucy’s brother James has a house right on the beach at Forty-Second Street.”
Gray looked surprised. “Does Lucy come from money or something? A house on the beach is worth millions.”
Trust him to think in terms of real-estate values. “James made millions with a dot-com company of some kind. He sold out just before the bubble burst, and now he’s a novelist who can write exactly what he wants because it doesn’t matter whether he makes money or not.”
“Is he any good?”
“Actually he is.”
“Huh.” But clearly Gray’s mind was somewhere else. “So Lucy, Meaghan and James can keep an eye on you down there.”
Meg and James, maybe. But Lucy? I tried to picture her as bodyguard, flack vest, protective helmet and all. Somehow she ended up looking a lot like the biblical David, laden down with King Saul’s armor just before he decided to confront Goliath with only his slingshot.
I heard the front door open and Lucy yell, “Ricky, I’m home.”
“In the kitchen,” I called back.
“Ricky?” Gray asked.
“It’s her little bow to I Love Lucy. That’s what happens when your mother names you after a TV person. It’s almost as bad as being named after a color.”
Gray grinned. “Ha-ha. Well, she’s got the red Lucy hair.” He poured himself some more lemonade.
“Maybe I should run to the pound and get a very vicious pit bull.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
Actually it was a very good idea. I wondered what Meg would think of a dog in the house. A big one with teeth, but one who was smart enough not to eat one of us for dinner if I was late feeding him.
At that moment Tipsy entered the kitchen and ambled to his water dish. He slurped indelicately.
“Tipsy won’t like a dog,” Gray said.
I eyed the huge black beast who eyed me back with great golden eyes that never seemed to blink. “Tipsy doesn’t like anything.”
“He likes me,” Lucy said as she came into the room with a bag of groceries. She set them on the counter and gathered the cat in her arms, cradling him like a baby. “Don’t you, sweetheart?”
“Of course he likes you,” I
said. “You feed him.”
“Are you sure he’s got a backbone?” Gray eyed the animal doubtfully. “He’s as limp as spaghetti.”
Lucy adjusted him in her arms. “He may not have any bones, but he’s got plenty of fat.”
As if he understood and knew the comment was derogatory, Tipsy turned and stared at Lucy who stared innocently back.
“You’ll never win a stare-down,” I said. “Tips doesn’t blink.”
Lucy kissed the black monster on his nose and, bending, dumped him on the floor. She turned to the groceries and began stuffing them in the refrigerator.
Gray tore a corner off his napkin and wrote a phone number.
“We’ve got real paper you could use,” I told him.
He shrugged and pushed the napkin corner toward me. “This works fine. I’d give you a business card, but they’re all in the truck, and I don’t have time to go get one. I’ve got to get back to the site. Here’s my cell number. I want you to call me immediately if there’s any problem. Immediately!”
“Before or after 911?” I said, trying to defuse the anxiety building in me over his intense concern.
He reached over and placed his hand on mine where it lay on the table. “Anna, I’m serious.”
“About what? The danger? The dog? Calling you?”
“Yes.”
Goody. I smiled weakly. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got Lucy.” Who had gone to get another bag of food from her car.
“And lock all the doors when I leave.”
I nodded, but I was all too aware that locked doors wouldn’t keep a determined killer at bay. They never did on TV. It was enough to make you wonder why you had locks to begin with.
Gray stood and pulled me to my feet. Only then did I realize that somehow I had turned my hand over and that I now clasped his. Or he clasped mine. He seemed as surprised as I was, staring at our meshed palms.
At that auspicious moment, Lucy came back into the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she saw our hands. With what could be seen as insulting speed, Gray released me.
I trailed him as he walked to the front door, wishing for the comfort of his grip again. “What about you, Gray? Who’s going to keep you safe?”
