by Nora Roberts
Since she’d missed her chance to leave unnoticed, she did the only thing she could think of. She walked in, crossed over to his stereo and turned the music down.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t hear me knock.” She didn’t look at the painting. She was almost afraid to. So she looked at him. “I’ve interrupted your work.”
“No.” He shoved away the stray strands of hair that fell over his forehead. “I think it’s finished.”
He hoped to Christ it was, because he didn’t have any more to give it. It had, finally, blessedly, emptied him.
He shifted to his workbench to clean his brushes. “What do you think?” he asked with a nod of his head toward the canvas.
It was a storm at sea. Brutal, savage, and somehow alive. The colors were dark and fearful—blues, greens, blacks, vicious yellows that combined like painful bruises.
She could hear the wind screaming, feel the terror of the man who fought a desperate battle to keep his boat from being swallowed by towering walls of waves.
The water lashed, lightning speared out of the turbulent sky. She saw faces—just ghostly hints of them—in the feral clouds that spewed a sharp and angry rain. More, she realized as she was drawn to it, more faces in the sea.
They seemed hungry to her.
The single boat, the single man, were alone in the primal war.
And in the distance, there was land, and light. There, that small piece of the sky was clear and steady blue. There was home.
He was fighting his way home.
“It’s powerful,” she managed. “And it’s painful. You don’t show his face, so I wonder, would I see despair or determination, excitement or fear? And that’s the point, isn’t it? You don’t show his face so we look and we see what we’d feel if we were the one fighting our demons alone.”
“Don’t you wonder if he’ll win?”
“I know he will because he has to get home. They’re waiting for him.” She looked over at him. He was still caught up in the painting, and rubbing his right hand with his left.
“Are you all right?”
“What?” He glanced at her, then down at his hands. “Oh. Yeah. They cramp sometimes when I’ve been at it too long.”
“How long have you been working on this?”
“I don’t know. What day is it?”
“That long. Then I imagine you want to get home and get some rest.” She picked up the vase of flowers she’d set beside his stereo. “I put this together before I closed tonight.” She held it out. “A peace offering.”
It was a mix of blooms and shapes in a squat blue vase. “Thanks. It’s nice.”
“I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that you haven’t been up here the last few days stewing over our disagreement.”
He gave the flowers a quick sniff. Something in the bouquet smelled a little like vanilla. “Is that what we had?”
“Well, we weren’t in agreement. I was wrong. I very rarely am.”
“Is that so?”
“Very rarely,” she acknowledged. “So it’s always a shock when I am, and when I am, I like to admit it, apologize and move on as quickly as possible.”
“Okay. Why don’t you tell me which portion of the disagreement you were wrong about?”
“About you and Aubrey. Not only wrong about the aspect of your relationship, but wrong to make an issue out of something that’s your personal business.”
“Huh. So you were wrong twice.”
“No. That equals one mistake with two parts. I was wrong once. And I am sorry.”
He set the flowers down, then rolled his shoulders to try to ease some of the stiffness. “How do you know you were wrong?”
Well, she thought, if she’d expected him to let it go with an apology, she should have known better. “She stopped by the shop the other day and explained things to me very clearly. Then we had some wine and Chinese at my place.”
“Back up. I explained things to you, and you kick me out—”
“I never—”
“Metaphorically. Aub explains things to you, and everything’s peachy?”
“Peachy?” She chuckled, shrugged. “Yes.”
“You just took her word for it, then ate spring rolls?”
“That’s right.” It pleased her to think of it. The entire evening with Aubrey pleased her. “Since she wasn’t trying to get me into bed, she didn’t have any incentive, that I could see, to lie about it. And if she had been interested in you in a romantic or sexual way, she’d have no motive for clearing the path where I was concerned. Which means I was wrong, and I apologize.”
“I don’t know why,” he said after a moment. “I can’t put my finger on it, but that pisses me off again. I want a beer. Do you want a beer?”
“Does that mean you accept my apology?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he called back from the kitchen. “Go back to that ‘clearing the path’ part. I think that might turn the tide.”
She accepted the bottle he handed her when he came back in. “I don’t know you, not very well,” she said.
“Sugar, I’m an open book.”
“No, you’re not. And neither am I. But it seems I’d like to get to know you better.”
“How about pizza?”
“Excuse me?”
“How about we order some pizza because I’m starving. And I’d like to spend some time with you. You hungry?”
“Well, I—”
“Good. Where the hell’s that phone?” He shoved at things on his workbench, rattled items on his shelves, then finally dug the phone out from under a pillow on the bed. “Speed dial,” he told her after he pushed some buttons. “I keep all vital numbers—Hi, it’s Seth Quinn. Yeah, I’m good. How about you? You bet. I want a large, loaded.”
“No,” Dru said and had him frowning over at her.
“Hold it a minute,” he said into the phone. “No, what?”
“No toppings.”
“No toppings?” He gaped at her. “None? What are you, sick?”
“No toppings,” she repeated, primly now. “If I want a salad, I have a salad. If I want meat, I have meat. If I want pizza, I have pizza.”
“Man.” He huffed out a breath, rubbed his chin in a way she’d seen Ethan do. “Okay, make that half totally boring and half loaded. Yeah, you got it. At my place over the flower shop. Thanks.”
He disconnected, then tossed the phone back on the bed. “Won’t take long. Look, I need to clean up.” He dug into a packing box and came out with what might have been fresh jeans. “I’m going to grab a shower. Just, you know, hang. I’ll be right back.”
“Can I look at some of your other paintings?”
“Sure.” He waved a hand as he carried his beer into the little bathroom. “Go ahead.”
And just like that, she realized, they were back on even ground. Or as even as it ever had been. Just hang, he’d said, as if they were friends.
Wasn’t it a wonder that she felt they were. Friends. Whatever else happened, or didn’t happen between them, they were friends.
Still, she waited until the door was shut and she heard the shower running before she moved over to the painting propped on the easel by the front windows.
The breath caught in her throat. She supposed it was a typical reaction for someone seeing themselves as a painting. That moment of surprise and wonder, the simple fascination with self, as seen through another’s eyes.
She wouldn’t see herself this way, she realized. Not as romantic and relaxed and sexy all at once. Made bold by the colors, made dreamy by the light, and sexy by the pose with her leg bare and the bright skirt carelessly draped.
Made, somehow, powerful even at rest.
He’d finished it. Surely it was finished, because it was perfect. Perfectly beautiful.
He’d made her beautiful, she thought. Desirable, she supposed, and still aloof because it was so clear she was alone—that she wished to be alone.
She’d told him she didn’t kn
ow him well. Now more than ever she understood how true that was. And how could anyone really know him? How could anyone understand a man who had so much inside him, who was capable of creating something so lovely and dreamy in one painting, and something so passionate and fierce in another?
Yet with every step she took with him, she wanted to know more.
She wandered to the stacks of canvases, sat on the floor, set her beer aside and began to learn.
Sun-washed scenes of Florence with red-tiled roofs, golden buildings, crooked, cobbled streets. Another exploding with color and movement—Venice, she realized—all a blur with the crowds.
An empty road winding through luminous green fields. A nude, her eyes dark and slumberous, her hair in untamed splendor around her face and shoulders, and the glory of Rome through the window at her back.
A field of sunflowers baking in the heat that was almost palpable—and the laughing face of a young girl running through them trailing a red balloon behind her.
She saw joy and romance, sorrow and whimsy, desire and despair.
He saw, she corrected. He saw everything.
When he came back in, she was sitting on the floor, a painting in her lap. The beer sat untouched beside her.
He crossed over, picked up the bottle. “How about wine instead?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She couldn’t take her attention away from the painting.
It was another watercolor, one he’d done from memory on a rainy day in Italy. He’d been homesick and restless.
So he’d painted the marsh he’d explored as a boy with its tangle of gum and oak trees, with its wigeongrass and cattails, with its luminous light trapped in dawn.
“That spot’s not far from the house,” he told her. “You can follow that path back to it.” He supposed that’s what he’d been doing in his head when he’d painted it. Following the path back.
“Will you sell it to me?”
“You keep coming up here, I’m not going to need an agent.” He crouched down beside her. “Why this one?”
“I want to walk there, through that mist. Watch it rise over the water while the sun comes up. It makes me feel . . .”
She trailed off as she tipped her face up to look at him.
He hadn’t put on a shirt, and there were still a few stray beads of water gleaming on his chest. His jeans rode low, and he hadn’t fastened the top button.
She imagined sliding her finger there, just over that line of denim. Just under it.
“Feel what?” he prompted.
Needy, she thought. Itchy. Brainless.
“Um.” With some effort, she shifted to admire the painting again. “A little lonely, I suppose. But not in a sad way. Because it’s beautiful there, and the path means you’re only alone if you want to be.”
He leaned in, closer to the painting. She smelled the shower on him—soap and water—and her stomach muscles tightened even as those in her thighs went loose. “Where would you put it?”
If this was desire, Dru realized, if this was lust, she’d never felt its like before.
“Ah, in my office at home. So when I’m tired of working on the books, I can look at it. And take a quiet walk.”
She eased away from him, propped the painting up again. “So, can I buy it?”
“Probably.” He straightened as she did, and their bodies brushed. From the glint in his eye she decided he was perfectly aware of her reaction to him. “Did you see your portrait?”
“Yes.” It gave her an excuse to put a little distance between them when she walked to it. “It’s lovely.”
“But you don’t want to buy it?”
“It’s not for me. What will you call it?”
“Beauty Sleeps,” he said, then frowned as the dream he’d forgotten came back to him. “Zucchini football,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Just a weird flash. Pizza,” he said at the brisk knock on the door.
He snatched his wallet off the workbench and, still shirtless and barefoot, went to the door. “Hey, Mike, how’s it going?”
“Hanging loose.”
The skinny, pimply-faced teenager handed Seth the pizza box. Then his gaze shifted, and he caught sight of Dru. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed, the way surprise, interest and envy sped over his young, bumpy face, warned Dru there would be fresh fruit on the grapevine, and it would have her and Seth clustered together.
“Um, hi. Um. Grandma sent you a bunch of napkins and stuff.” He shoved the paper bag into Seth’s hands as well.
“Great. Tell her thanks. Here you go, Mike. Keep the change.”
“Yeah. Well. Um. See you.”
“Looks like Mike’s got a little crush on you,” Seth commented as he booted the door closed.
“I’d say Mike’s double-timing it back to Village Pizza so he can spread the word that the artist and the florist are having hot pizza and hot sex.”
“I hope he’s right. If we’re going to make the first part come true, we’d better dig into this.” He dropped the box on the bed. “You need a plate?”
Her heart had given a little lurch, but she nodded. “Yes, I need a plate.”
“Now, now, don’t get twitchy. I’ll get you a glass of very nice Chianti instead of the beer.”
“I can drink the beer.”
“You could,” he commented as he headed into the kitchen again. “But you’d rather have the wine. I’ll drink the beer. And, sugar, if you don’t like people talking about you, you shouldn’t live in a tight-knit little community.”
“I don’t mind people talking about me so much.” Not the way they did here, she thought, that was different, so much less bitchy than the way they gossiped in Washington. “I just don’t care for them talking about me doing something before I have a chance to do it.”
“Would that be the pizza or the sex?” he asked as he came back with paper plates.
“I haven’t decided.” She pushed through the clothes in his packing box until she found a denim work shirt. “Put this on.”
“Yes ’m. Can you handle sitting on the bed to eat if I promise not to jump you?”
She sat and, using one of the white plastic forks Mike’s grandmother had put into the bag, worked a slice free. She plopped it on her plate, then using the same method, lifted a piece of his half.
“You know, we’ve been dating for a while now—”
“We are not dating. This is not a date. This is a pizza.”
“Right. Anyway.” He sat down, cross-legged, his shirt carelessly unbuttoned.
It was worse, she realized than no shirt at all.
“We haven’t asked some of the essential questions to make sure this relationship has a chance.”
“Such as?”
“Vacation weekend. The mountains or the shore?”
“Mountains. We live at the shore.”
“Agreed.” He bit into the pizza. “Favorite guitar player. Eric Clapton or Chet Atkins?”
“Chet who?”
He actually went pale. “Oh God.” With a wince, he rubbed his heart. “Let’s skip that one. It’s too painful. Scariest movie ever—classic category, Psycho or Jaws?”
“Neither. The Exorcist.”
“Good one. Who would you trust, with your life, against the forces of evil? Superman or Batman?”
“Buffy—the vampire slayer.”
“Get out.” He swigged beer. “Superman. It has to be Superman.”
“One whiff of kryptonite and he’s down for the count. Besides”—she polished off her slice and went for another—“Buffy has a much more interesting wardrobe.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Let’s move on. Shower or bath?”
“It would depend on—”
“No, no, no.” He snagged more pizza. “No depends. Pick.”
“Bath.” She licked sauce off her finger. “Long, hot and full of bubbles.”
“Just as I suspected. Dog or cat.”
“Cat.”
&nbs
p; He set the slice down. “That is just so wrong.”
“I work all day. Cats are self-reliant, and they don’t chew your shoes.”
He shook his head in deep regret. “This might be the end of things between us. Can this relationship be saved? Quick. French fries or caviar?”
“Really, that’s ridiculous. French fries, of course.”
“Do you mean it?” As if hope had sprung giddily into his heart, he grabbed her hand in a tight grip. “You’re not just saying that to string me along so you can have your way with me?”
“Caviar is fine on occasion, but it’s hardly an essential element of life.”
“Thank God.” He gave her hand a loud kiss, then went back to eating. “Other than a woeful ignorance of music and poor judgment over pets, you did really well. I’ll sleep with you.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m so touched. Tell me about the woman in the painting—the brunette sitting in front of the window in Rome.”
“Bella? Want some more wine?”
She lifted that eyebrow in the way that stirred his blood. “Are you stalling?”
“Yeah, but do you want some more wine anyway?”
“All right.”
He got up to get the bottle, topped off Dru’s glass before sitting down again. “You want to know if I slept with her?”
“Amazing. I’m transparent as glass to you.” She took another bite of pizza. “You could tell me it’s none of my business.”
“I could. Or I could lie to you. She’s a tour guide. I’d see her now and then when I was out and around. We got to know each other. I liked her. I painted her, and I slept with her. We enjoyed each other. It never got any deeper or more complicated than that. I don’t sleep with every woman who models for me. And I don’t paint every woman I sleep with.”
“I wondered. And I wondered if you’d lie to me. That’s a habit of mine, assuming someone will give the handy lie instead of the more complicated truth. You’re not the kind of man I’m used to.”
“Drusilla—” He broke off with a muttered oath when his cell phone rang.
“Go ahead. I’ll put this away for you.”
She eased from the bed, gathered the pizza box, the plates, while he flipped on the phone. “Yeah? No, I’m okay. I was distracted. Anna, I’m fine. I finished the painting I was working on. As I matter of fact I’m not starving myself to death. I just had pizza with Dru. Uh-huh. Sure. I’ll be home tomorrow. Absolutely. I love you, too.”
