His own mood lightened too.
“My work here,” he murmured to himself, “is done.”
“What?” She tilted her head toward him, but didn’t take her eyes off the otters.
“You feel better now.” He let himself brush a hand over the tickly ends of her seemingly weightless hair.
A smile curved her mouth. “Gotta admit it’s some prize. Thanks.”
Then, frowning, she turned her head toward him. “Hey, what were the others? Prizes I mean?”
He ran his tongue over his front teeth, wondering how much to reveal. Oh, what the hell, he thought. Turning up the thumb of his left hand, he read what he’d written. “‘The latest editions of the L.A. and San Francisco newspapers.’”
She winced, then glanced over at the otters. “Never mind. I still came out ahead.”
He held up his forefinger, with the prize she’d ended with. “Then the beach.” His third finger came out and he hesitated.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“‘A night in my bed.’”
“What?!”
He loved the outrage on her face. “Hey, I look real cute rolled over on my back too.”
“Oh, please,” she said, shaking her head. “Go on.”
It was tough to break this one to her. “‘Beef jerky.’ I know where I can get my hands on some home-smoked, home-dried slabs of honest-to-goodness beef jerky.”
Her pupils dilated. “Beef. Beef jerky. You don’t mean salty, chewy, bad-for-you beef jerky?”
“Yep.” His lips twitched and he tried to remember the last time he’d felt this good. “You can get it in town at Pop’s Tobacco Shop—though you have to tell Pop I sent you.”
She nodded, then her lashes squeezed shut, as if bracing for more bad news. “All right. Go ahead, hit me with the last one.”
“Ah. Well. That’s when I ran out of ideas.” He hesitated. “It’s a repeat. ‘A night in my bed,’ again.”
Her eyes popped open. “You stacked the deck!”
“With the best prize of all,” he defended himself, straight-faced. “I’d think you’d be grateful.”
Her jaw fell, but then she collected herself and whacked him on the shoulder with the flat of her hand. He’d been swatted by his sisters often enough to know she wasn’t really mad.
And a sister seemed a fine way to consider her.
With one last censuring shake of her head at him, Angel returned to watching the otters and he returned to watching her. That’s how he caught her smirking—a sort of suppressed-giggle smile.
“What are you thinking about?”
It was a full-on smirk now. “Nothing.”
“Come on.” He jabbed her ribs in a friendly, brotherly way.
Angel gave him one of her devil-woman looks from beneath the lashes at the corners of her eyes. “Oh, only that the joke’s on you. If you’d kept your jerky source to yourself, I just might have spent that night in your bed to get the information.”
Chapter 8
Judd had just settled into his chair at Beth’s kitchen table when her sister Lainey walked through the back door, a cardboard box in her arms. Automatically rising, he took it from her and kissed her cheek in greeting.
“Good morning, Judd.” Lainey patted his face in return. She was a tad shorter and a tad softer-looking than Beth. The family joke had always been that Beth got the elegance and Lainey got the artist. She turned to her twin, who was already reaching for a third coffee mug from the cupboard. “Morning to you too, Beth.”
The corners of Beth’s mouth lifted briefly. “Hey, Lainey. What’s in the box?”
“Samples of the latest Whitney products from the licensing company.” She took the proffered coffee and pulled out the chair beside Judd’s. “I kept some of each and thought you might like the rest.”
Beth turned her back and refilled her own coffee cup. “Sure. Thanks.”
Judd couldn’t help but notice the new, tense set to her shoulders. He’d been hyper-aware of her every breath, move, mood since that fateful morning when he’d reinstated their coffee routine the week before. He’d visited every morning since, seeking acceptance for these feelings he had for her, seeking the answer to what he should do about them.
First and foremost, he knew he didn’t want to cause her any more hurt.
Lainey took a sip of her coffee. “I spent an hour with Angel Buchanan this morning. That’s the fourth time we’ve talked,” she said, then turned to Judd. “She said she interviewed you, as well. She still can’t get over that you choose not to speak.”
He shrugged his shoulders. They’d done well enough with paper and pen.
“Well, I’m not going to talk to her!” Beth abruptly exclaimed, whirling to face her sister. Then, looking away, she lowered her voice. “Questions, all those questions about Stephen.”
Judd hadn’t wanted to talk about the artist either. Stephen had always rubbed him wrong, no matter how hard he’d tried to pretend otherwise.
Lainey reached over to pat her sister’s arm. “You don’t have to talk to Angel. It’s up to you.” A little smile warmed her face. “But I like her, and Cooper does too. I think she likes him back.”
Beth’s mouth dropped. “Really?”
Judd rolled his eyes. You only had to see the two together to know that there was a whole lotta liking going on.
“She told me he showed her the beach access,” Lainey said, nodding. “You know what that means.”
As if stunned, Beth fumbled for a chair, pulled it from the table, sat. Lainey followed suit and they both took bolstering swallows of their coffee.
When the silence continued, Judd broke down. He grabbed up paper and pen. BEACH ACCESS? He knew of it himself, of course, but the significance of Cooper showing it to Angel escaped him.
Beth read the note, then looked over. “We used to tease him when we were teenagers about Cooper’s Secret Love Cove. We were sure he was bringing his girlfriends there to, uh, uh…”
I GET IT, Judd wrote, stifling a grin.
“Well,” she continued, “we told him we better agree on some sort of sign that would let us know if he was on the beach with a girl.” She smiled, and it was the first real, really amused smile she’d worn since Stephen had died. “We had several suggestions, remember, Lainey?”
“Oh yeah,” Lainey agreed. “Everything from cryptic chalk messages on the rocks at the entrance to the tunnel, to boxer shorts left like a signal flag on one of the pine trees.”
Beth took up the story now, falling into a rhythm with her sister. “But Cooper didn’t appreciate our teasing or our suggestions. As a matter of fact, he said it was his special, secret place, all right, but he wasn’t going to share it with any woman outside the family.”
It was Lainey who put in the last word. “Except, someday, the woman he was planning to marry!”
Apparently stunned all over again, the twins turned their heads to stare at each other. “Could it be?” they said together.
Judd had no idea, and, sympathetic to Cooper, wasn’t going to speculate. But he didn’t regret the speculation and the amusement on the sisters’ faces. It reminded of earlier times, happy times, and it gave him hope that they could all recapture the warm, relaxed sense of friendship and family that had existed before Stephen died.
Though Lainey and Beth’s worlds had revolved around the artist, the man himself had given the majority of his energy and attention to his art. He’d spent much of his time locked in his tower with his paints, leaving the rest of them to enjoy their corner of paradise without him.
The women sipped their coffee again, sighed, then Lainey looked expectantly at Beth. “Aren’t you going to open the box? I’d like your opinion.”
The cardboard container was in front of Judd, so when Beth turned her gaze on him, he was forced to stand and open it for her, scoffing at his sudden sense that there was trouble inside. He wasn’t Pandora after all.
And the first item he pulled out was innocuous enough. It w
as a package of eight pencils, each painted a different pastel color and decorated with tiny book covers of fairy tales. He passed them to Beth.
“What do you think?” Lainey pressed.
Her sister shrugged. “I guess they’re all right.” She handed the package back to Judd. “Why don’t you keep these? You go through pens and pencils all the time.”
Judd stuck them in the back pocket of his jeans without another glance. Oh yeah, he had a use for them. He was always in need of kindling for the woodstove in his cottage.
The next item that came out of the box was one of those fancy soaps that his ex-wife used to pile up in the guest bathroom. About as big as his palm, and white, it was molded into a strange shape that appeared kind of…feathery.
He handed it to Beth. Her puzzled expression cleared almost immediately. “Oh! It’s a W, see?” She flipped it over, then held it up for Judd’s inspection. “Stephen’s W, the one he used when signing the paintings.”
Now cradling it in her palm, she stroked the surface with her fingertips. Then she lifted it to her face and sniffed. “It doesn’t smell like him, though.”
Unable to help himself, Judd leaned across the table and snatched the soap from her. Beth flashed him a startled look, but he ignored it as he shoved the soap into the box. Then, with a quick, fury-induced snap of his hand, he let it fall to the bottom.
Broken in two.
The next product would have rendered him speechless, if he wasn’t already. Trying his damn best to keep a poker face, he handed the shrink-wrapped roll of toilet paper across the table.
Beth blinked. The paper’s background was white, then printed with Whitney drawings, all of them ocean images like shells, dolphins, and California gray whales. With a wince, she looked over at her sister. “Don’t you think this might be in poor taste?”
Gee, ya think? Judd never bit back laughter, but this time he swallowed what he knew would be a snicker.
Lainey sighed. “That’s what I thought too. I hoped I was overreacting.”
“I thought you had control of the products,” Beth said.
“Yes, but Stephen had already agreed to this lot.” Lainey sighed again. “And Cooper’s telling me that with the last paintings gone and all our money invested in the licensing, I should agree to whatever is suggested. I imagine it can’t get much worse, can it?”
Beth handed the TP back to Judd with a shudder. “I don’t know. I couldn’t have imagined that.”
The twins’ shoulders sagged. Judd barely kept his from doing the same. Finances were sticky at the moment, for both women. Beth had acted as Stephen’s agent for the paintings, but with no more Whitneys, she had no more income. The income she had collected over the years—a very tidy amount, he knew—she’d thrown in with her sister and brother-in-law when they’d invested in the licensing deal.
He’d bitten his tongue at the time, wanting to scream out, Diversify! And now, damn it, he realized it was one of the few times that speaking would have been better than silence.
“You’ll like the last one, though,” Lainey assured her sister. “It’s just the kind of thing that those who love Stephen’s work will find irresistible.”
Judd obediently rummaged in the box and pulled out a tissue-wrapped parcel. He passed it to Beth and watched her slowly unwrap it. Then her breath caught.
“You’re right,” she whispered, pulling the item free of the paper. “It’s wonderful.”
It was a suncatcher, no bigger than Beth’s slender palm. In glowing shades of stained glass, it was a graceful, fairyish figure in flight.
“There’s a collection of them,” Lainey said. “One for each month—that one’s January. They’re all the same blond sprite, but in a different pose and wearing different garments.”
In a petallike dress of blues—from sapphire to almost turquoise—this one was poised on tiptoe. With her arms raised over her head and her hands together, fingers pointed, the figure appeared to have been captured midsoar.
Sometimes even Judd had to concede Whitney had talent.
Beth pushed out her chair and rose to her feet, then half-turned to hold the delicate piece toward the light coming through the window over the sink. “It reminds me of something,” she said slowly, her voice almost as thin as the glass. “I don’t quite know what.”
“It reminds me of why I married Stephen.” Lainey closed her eyes. “That’s how he made me feel, from the first time we kissed. As if I could fly.”
“Yes,” her twin murmured. “Just like that.”
At the dreamy tone, Judd’s heart dropped like an anchor. He watched as Beth, obviously mesmerized by the sparkling fairy, drew closer to the window.
Lainey released a small, sentimental laugh, her eyes still closed as if she were replaying memories in her mind. “We would meet at the cove, you know. I never told anyone, not even you, but when you and I were still in high school it became Stephen’s and my special, private place.”
Beth froze, her spine rigid, her expression set.
“He used to tease me, saying he was afraid he’d go to the beach someday and you’d be there instead of me. He was afraid he might mistake us for each other and kiss you, giving our romance away.” She laughed softly, as if her husband kissing her sister were the silliest of ideas.
“But of course that was just a joke. He always knew which one of us was which, even when we used to dress alike. As an artist, he would never make that kind of mistake.”
At that, Beth jerked, the glass fairy in her hand falling, then shattering against the porcelain sink.
Judd leaped to prevent her from picking up the glass with her bare hands, but she was just staring at the mess.
It looked like a rainbow of tiny teardrops.
“I broke it,” Beth said hoarsely.
Unmoving, he watched her, though he wanted to comfort her. He wanted to say that the damage had already been done.
He also wanted to shove his fist through the wall. His world kept getting worse. Whether he burned those pencils, or busted that soap, or wiped his ass with Stephen’s toilet paper, what Judd couldn’t do was break Beth’s ties to the artist.
He forced himself to breathe slowly in and out of his nose, struggling to achieve the peace he’d come to the Sur to find. All his reading and all his hours of meditation had helped him learn to see and accept the true nature of things, hadn’t they? But damn him, at the moment deep breathing and deep study weren’t worth shit.
Accepting his feelings for Beth—that had seemed doable. But he’d never be able to accept what he had to face now.
Not when he knew there was no place, absolutely none, for him to go with what he felt for her.
Not when it was obvious that Beth was in love with her brother-in-law.
There was even a punch line to the cosmic joke. The situation meant that Judd didn’t have to worry anymore about hurting her—he couldn’t break Beth’s heart.
Stephen had already done that.
In the vicinity of the tiny hamlet of Big Sur, at a local watering hole known as The Well, Angel stood in the narrow hallway leading to the restrooms, tethered to the pay phone by a silver snake cord. Waiting for her intern’s voice-mail greeting to complete, she tapped her toe and peered around a doorway to the tiny, table-ringed dance floor and scarred bar beyond.
She’d placed an order for the Well Special, a half-pound hamburger with the works, and she wanted to be there the instant the juicy patty and crispy side of fries were served. The decent meal was her reward for ten days of sticking to the story and sticking to her objectivity too. Yes, indeed, tonight she was celebrating the triumph of her reporter’s skills.
At the tone, Angel leaned her shoulder against the scratchy, resawn wood-paneled wall. “It’s Angel. At the editorial meeting in the morning, please report to Jane that I’ll wrap up my interviews in the next couple of days.” She’d spent several hours speaking with Lainey Whitney, less time with Cooper and Judd, and then she’d gone farther afield to ta
lk with the locals who’d been Stephen Whitney’s longtime neighbors.
“I’d still like to have a conversation with the widow’s twin sister,” Angel said into the phone. “And Katie, Stephen Whitney’s daughter. But tell Jane everything is going fine. Just fine.”
Fine covered it, she thought, hanging up the receiver. It was fine that following her first interview with the widow, Angel had managed to recoup her journalistic detachment. It was fine that she’d breezed through the last ten days, working up a comprehensive profile of the painter, all the while successfully separating herself from the fact that the painter was her father. And it was just fine that Angel hadn’t uncovered a single thing in the last twenty-three years that spoiled the family-first, Windex-clean image of the “Artist of the Heart.”
It seemed that the only person he’d ever failed was her.
She shook her head, refusing to let the thought take root. She was a journalist, Stephen Whitney was the subject of a story. Nothing more. Hadn’t she proved that over the last ten days, not to mention during the last hour? It took a wealth of professional detachment to calmly sit through a graphic blow-by-blow from the first person to arrive on scene at the accident that had killed the painter.
Okay, her insides might have wobbled a time or two, but she’d overcome the weakness by mentally repeating a short, soothing mantra. It only went to show that she had a cool reporter’s mind—not to mention an iron stomach, she added—hurrying toward the bar as she saw the matronly bartender slide a thick white plate at her place. Her side of fries!
Sliding onto her stool, Angel breathed deep. The delicious, decadent smell of greasy potatoes sent a shiver of ecstasy down her spine. She pinched one french fry between her thumb and forefinger, moaning a little when she found it gritty with salt and almost too hot to handle.
Perfect, she thought, wiggling against the vinyl cushion in anticipation. Closing her eyes, she lifted it to her mouth.
“Did I tell you about the carnage in ’52?”
Angel opened one eye. The man she’d come to The Well to interview, Dale Michaelson, had wandered away after her questions and the two mugs of beer she’d bought him had run dry. But now he was back, stroking his palm down his grizzled, foot-long beard.
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