by Francis Ray
Obviously he cared about Kara. She’d need someone who did. Placing the painting in the back of his truck, he secured the tarp he always carried.
Going to Kara, he handed her the check and a card. “My cell phone and address if you paint any others.”
Her hand clutched the check, but she didn’t look at it.
“Take care, Kara.”
“Good-bye,” she said so softly he could barely hear her.
Not by a long shot, Tristan thought. Getting into the truck, he slowly backed out of the driveway. Straightening, he started down the street, his gaze repeatedly going to his rearview mirror, hoping to see Kara signal for him to stop or come back.
She never did.
* * *
Kara watched Tristan take the corner at a snail’s pace. At least he was careful with her paintings. She probably should be thankful. She wasn’t. Add another man to her growing list of men who had fooled her, used her.
She’d been gullible enough to think he was concerned about her, about her paintings. She was wrong.
“You all right, Kara?”
“I will be.” She felt the tentative brush of Fred’s calloused hand on her bare arm.
“It’s hard parting with something you love and worked so hard to create, but you got paid,” he said. “Proves your mother was wrong, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home now.”
“Sure. The truck’s unlocked. You just climb on in,” he told her. “I’ll just lock up and get my keys.”
Kara climbed inside the truck, her hands clamped in her lap. She’d been so stupid. And wouldn’t her mother just love to point it out.
* * *
Tristan repeatedly checked his cell phone on the drive to his house. Call, Kara. The litany kept repeating itself over and over in his head. Tell him what a SOB he was anything except let herself be walked on and taken advantage of.
His hands clamped on the steering wheel. He’d seen overbearing, thankless parents like hers and thanked God that though his mother might be pushy and nosy, it was because she loved him. Although, admittedly, it drove him crazy at times.
Parking in his driveway, he unloaded the paintings. He made himself not look at them. Kara had so much talent and didn’t have a clue. He couldn’t wait to see the realization sink in to replace the fear and self-doubt.
Bringing the last picture into the house, he turned it toward him. It was a splash of bright colors that almost looked as if the colors had been carelessly tossed on the canvas, but a closer inspection revealed a yellow vase and multiple stems of flowers reaching almost to the edge of the canvas. Her paintings drew you, just as the woman who painted them did.
However, unless she believed in herself, she’d always be stepped on.
* * *
Less than twenty minutes later Kara climbed out of Fred’s truck in front of her house, thanked him, and then slowly started up the walk. She’d made it halfway when the door opened. Her mother stood there, waiting. Kara stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans and glanced down the street. She didn’t want to talk to her mother. She was still too angry with her, but Sabrina’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
“Kara.”
There was impatience in her mother’s voice. She saw nothing wrong in what she’d done. Kara stepped onto the porch and went inside.
“Well, did he buy them? And don’t tell me Fred got rid of them because he was too evasive when I called him that night to ask if he’d done as I asked,” her mother said, her hand clamped around her cane.
Hands clenched, Kara faced her mother. “Why? All you had to do was tell me you needed the space and I would have moved them.”
Her mother’s lips pursed. “You waste your time painting when things need to be done around the house. You promised to polish the silverware weeks ago.”
“You also wanted the hardwood floors polished; the sheers in the bedrooms washed, pressed, and rehung; the windows washed,” Kara said, not caring for once that her voice had risen. “I work sometimes ten hours a day, when would I have had the time?”
“Stop that foolish painting and you’d have the time,” her mother snapped.
Angrier than she’d ever remembered, Kara pulled the check from her front pocket. “Everyone doesn’t think they’re worthless.” Her mother reached for the check, but Kara shoved it back into her pocket. “The paintings were mine and so is the money.”
“If I hadn’t given him a price you would have gotten taken,” her mother said. “It’s only right you share.”
“Right? You talk to me about right when you sent the paintings you know I loved and worked hours to paint to the dump yard?”
“It was for your own good. You got to stop wasting your time on something that will never matter,” her mother said, her voice rising. “I saw the way that man looked at you. You’re wasting your time there too. He probably doesn’t have a pot to pee in or a window to pour it out. Burt is the man for you.”
Her mother would never understand, and there was no sense discussing it. “I’m going to my room.”
“You really don’t plan to share the money with me?”
“Share?” Kara whirled back to face her mother. “I pay the utility bills, buy the groceries, let you use my charge account. What do you share except your—” Kara clamped her mouth shut before she said hate.
Anger flashed in her mother’s eyes. “If your father were alive, you wouldn’t talk to me that way. How do you think I feel that I can only get your father’s pitiful Social Security check? He promised me he’d always take care of me. So, I go shopping to help me forget my life is practically over. Who wouldn’t? You’re mean-spirited, and I don’t have to listen.”
Kara felt the sinking, churning feeling in the pit of her stomach just as she always did when she and her mother had an argument. There was no way to win, and now she didn’t even have the paintings to hope.
* * *
Cade stared at Sabrina’s house but made no move to get out of his car. He wasn’t sure why he’d come. He knew she was manipulating him. Mrs. Ward was the only patient they had in common. He should be at his house eating whatever he’d ordered for that day. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember what he’d selected. That irritated him as well. Was he in that big of a rut?
Opening the door, he climbed out of the car and closed the door to the Lamborghini, an extravagant status symbol that stayed in the garage more than on the road. The half-a-million-dollar sports car was another sign of his success that the people he wanted to impress would never see. He preferred driving his Jeep, but the foreign car mechanic said the Lamborghini needed to be driven more than once a month.
Once on the porch, Cade rang the doorbell. Waited, rang again. When there was no answer after the fourth ring, he went around the side of the house and opened the side gate to the backyard. He smelled the smoke seconds before he saw the gray-black cloud billowing from a portable grill. A few feet away Sabrina stood by with a bag of charcoal in one hand and a can of lighter fluid in the other.
He thought of the burns she’d suffered and rushed across the yard to her. He didn’t realize his heart was beating crazily in his chest until he reached her and started to speak. “Are-are you all right?”
“Yeah.” She tossed a glance at him then glared at the grill. “All the stupid thing is doing is smoking. I called Dad, but he forbade me from putting on more lighter fluid.”
Cade’s heart thumped. He didn’t even want to imagine the consequences of such rash actions. His hands actually shook. His hands never shook. “Have you ever grilled before?”
“Once or twice,” she answered.
Cade saw the grill was new. He didn’t know what to say. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to feed him. She wanted information, but he knew instinctually that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to be with him. He’d long ago developed an infallible BS meter. He’d had to. Using people was a way of life for some, bu
t not for Sabrina.
“I passed one of those old-fashioned drive-ins where the carhops wear roller skates on the way here. Why don’t we go get burgers?”
She wrinkled her nose and took a step closer to the smoking grill. “I promised you a steak.”
He already knew she was stubborn. It was interesting to learn she could be stubborn on his behalf. “No doubt you’ll badger me into having dinner with you again. We can have a steak then.”
Her smile was quick. He smiled back before he could stop himself. She looked fresh and beautiful in a pretty floral sundress, her slim arms bare. “Another woman might take offense at such a gracious invitation, but since we’re friends I’ll let it go this time.”
He resisted the urge to stroke one finger down her cheek. Her skin was probably as smooth and as soft as it looked. He slipped both hands into the pockets of his slacks. “I’ll meet you out front.”
She caught his arm before he moved away. “You’ll do no such thing. I have to change out of this smoky dress. You can wait inside.”
In typical Sabrina fashion she didn’t wait for him to comply, just went inside assuming he would follow. He did, closing the sliding glass door she’d left open. Like Sabrina, the room was bright and open with generous uses of yellow, the wood on the furniture white.
“Do you want anything to drink?”
“No thanks. Go change.”
She didn’t move. “The TV remote is in the large white glass bowl on the coffee table.” She grinned. “Because I grew up with a father and grandfather who like sports, and later a brother who is just as wild about them, I have all the sports channels.”
“I’m not much into sports,” he told her.
She frowned, and he gave her the pat explanation. “I was always too busy with other things.”
Lifting a brow, she folded her arms over her breasts. “I just bet you were.”
Like others, she’d thought he meant women. There had been few dates during high school. Cade’s father was a hard man who kept Cade busy with chores on the small farm in East Texas before and after school and on weekends. Cade was never considered a part of the family. What George Mathis called love, others would call free labor.
Cade was up by five every day and was seldom in bed before midnight; he never had a free moment to just relax. In college he was too busy studying to impress the man who, no matter what Cade accomplished, never had a kind word to say.
“You’re wasting time,” he finally told her.
“Going.” Unfolding her arms, she started down the hall.
Too keyed up to sit, he wandered around the beautifully decorated room. There were family photos on the white brick fireplace, on the glass end tables. The family was smiling, happy. It was easy to see that they stood together because they cared, not because they were forced to. Cade didn’t have one picture of the people he stayed with the first eighteen years of his life. And he didn’t want one.
He heard the water running and glanced down the hallway. He imagined the water running over Sabrina’s naked skin before he could stop the image. Cursing his lack of restraint where she was concerned, he grabbed the TV remote. Instead of sports, he let it remain on the news channel, anything to drown out the sound of the water.
She was off-limits to him. He didn’t date women he worked with or ones who would object when he moved on—and he always did, always would.
“I hope I wasn’t too long.”
Cade glanced around and simply stared at Sabrina. She was breathtakingly beautiful in a straight white sundress that stopped just above her incredible knees and a hot pink knit short jacket with rosettes. Desire blindsided him, and he realized what bothered him about Sabrina. He was beginning to think of her as a woman he wanted in his bed.
Frowning, she came to him, placing her small hand on his arm to stare up at him. “What’s the matter? Is it one of your patients?”
She always thought of others and he couldn’t stop thinking of her. “No.” He picked up the remote, causing her hand to slide off his arm. He wanted too badly for her to keep touching him, for him to touch her.
“Let’s go,” he said, unable to keep the gruffness from his voice, hoping he still had time to stop whatever it was that made his body yearn for hers.
Seven
Sitting in the passenger seat of Cade’s sports car at the Sonic drive-in, Sabrina silently wondered what had happened between the time she’d left to take a shower and the time she’d returned. Cade had gone from almost teasing to the uptight surgeon. She wanted the other Cade back.
“Is there something wrong with your hamburger?” Cade asked.
Sabrina glanced down at the bacon cheeseburger. She’d taken one bite since he’d handed it to her. That was at least ten minutes ago.
“I can order you something else.”
She glanced at him. She could evade the issue or meet it head on. “What changed between the time I went to change and when I returned?”
Broad shoulders beneath the blue-and-white striped shirt stiffened. She could almost see the wheels turning as he tried to think of an answer without outright lying. A man who didn’t lie. She’d met pitiful few in her lifetime.
“Never mind. I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.” She wrapped the burger back up and put it in the bag between them. You couldn’t make someone care. Her birth mother had taught her that hard lesson. “I’m finished, and you must be anxious to get home.”
He stared at her a moment, then started the motor and backed out. He slowed down at a waste receptacle and tossed the bag in. He didn’t say one word during the drive back to her house.
Parking in the driveway, he opened his door to get out. By the time he stood, Sabrina was passing the front end of the car. The only reason he caught her on the porch was that she had to search for her key. After she opened the door, she turned with a polite smile.
“Thank you again,” she said. She’d gambled and lost.
“Does this mean you’re going to be out of sorts tomorrow?” he asked.
She’d expected him to make a fast retreat. Amazed, she stared up at him. He looked wary, a bit unsure, two words that she would have never have associated with the great Cade Mathis. He also wasn’t the joking type. He was trying. Perhaps he was giving all he could. He’d come a long way since he’d visited her house, trying to get her to back off. He might be able to go further.
“I have cheesecake for dessert. Do you want to take some home with you?”
“No, thanks, but I’d like to check the grill to make sure it’s out,” he told her.
“I can manage, but thanks.” Going inside, she tossed her small purse on the sofa on the way outside. Opening the top, she stared down at the ash white coals. They were finally ready for the meat.
“It would be a shame to waste this great fire. My first, I might add. Neither one of us ate very much. How does steak and salad sound?”
“I’ll grill.”
She grinned and lowered the top. “Then they might escape being charred. Come on.”
Once again he followed her. The kitchen was as neat and as colorful as the den. Here she’d added touches of red to the yellows she seemed to prefer. Opening the refrigerator, she took out a large platter with two steaks covered with plastic wrap and set it on the kitchen island. “Mama gave me her recipe for a marinade.”
Cade glanced at the large T-bones before looking at her. “Why did you invite me and go to all the trouble if you’ve never done this before?”
She removed two glasses from the white cabinet. “Tea or lemonade?”
“Lemonade.”
Filling both glasses with ice from the automatic dispenser, she opened the refrigerator for the lemonade, filled their glasses, then handed one to him. “Because I knew you’d be tired and not feel like going out. Most men like grilled steak, and we could talk.”
Without drinking, Cade placed his glass on the table. “And you could find out why I changed my mind about Mr. Ward being in the roo
m.”
Keeping her eyes on him, she sipped her drink. “The thought had entered my mind, but there was another reason.”
“Like what?”
She put her glass down and opened the refrigerator again. “I’ll start on the salad.”
“Sabrina,” he said.
She removed a bag of salad greens, tomatoes, and a cucumber, and then handed him a long-handled meat fork. “It’ll wait. The charcoal won’t.”
Taking the fork, Cade picked up the steaks and went outside.
* * *
“You can grill almost as well as my dad, and that’s saying a lot,” she said, her face soft, a small smile playing on her lips as they sat in the kitchen by the bay window with a view of the pool and blooming rosebushes.
She mentioned her family a lot. “Is your family in Dallas?”
Sighing, she sat back in her seat. “Houston. I miss them like crazy.”
“Then why are you here?” he asked, curious in spite of himself. He never asked about anyone’s family for fear they’d want to know about his.
She wrinkled her nose. “If you must know, my supervisor and I kept having disagreements on what was best for the patients. She’d worked there for twenty-two years. We’d butted heads almost from the day I arrived. She thought my family got me the job.”
“Why would she think that?”
“My grandfather is a former chief-of-staff and retired ENT. My father is an internist and past member of the hospital board,” she admitted.
So, he had been right about her having money. “You strike me as the kind of woman who doesn’t need nepotism,” he said truthfully. “I’m surprised you didn’t stay.”
“Every day at work was a hassle. I got to the point I hated going in. I didn’t want to be miserable every day or for it to affect helping people, so I left.” She picked up her glass. “So I know how you feel about a calm work environment.”
“I wouldn’t have known it.”
“I can be a bit pushy at times,” she admitted with a laugh. “My mother says that attitude is what kept me alive when I was in the hospital. She was going down the hall and heard me crying. She came into the room and tried to pick me up without hurting me.”
