Judy Gill

by Golden Swan [LS-377] (epub)

  "I'd like to, but I can't as long as I still get the ' feeling it's true."

  "All right, Cal. I like you. Better?"

  "Much," he said, but he frowned. Maybe she had only said it to placate him.

  "Why were you so gloomy at the wedding?" she asked. Twelve years ago she had been too timid to ask, but she had wondered. Phyllis had assumed he was having woman problems, but B.J. had thought that unlikely; How could a man as handsome as he not have any woman he wanted?

  "I'd just got my bachelor's degree in fine arts, and had been accepted to study under Piet Van Hoek, the portrait painter." He looked off into the distance, remembering.

  Into his silence, B.J. said encouragingly, "I've seen some of his work. I taught a class on modern artists a couple of years ago. He doesn't—didn't—take on many private students, I think I remember reading." She was impressed and didn't try to hide it. "You must have been very, very good, even then." She hesitated, wondering if this could be considered prying. "I didn't know you did portraits."

  "I don't," he said curtly, and she saw a flash of pain in his eyes before he looked down again at the finger continuing its little circles on his knee. After a moment he looked up again, eyes tormented. "I thought I could, you know. I really did. But Piet taught me different. I thought I was good, too. But I wasn't."

  "Oh, Cal, that can't be true." Impulsively, she reached out a hand to him, clasping her fingers around his. "I mean, look how successful you are."

  "But I'm not what I want to be, dammit!" His voice was harsh and his fingers tightened painfully on hers. "Where's the success in that?

  "Sorry," he said after a moment, loosening his grip on her. She pulled her hand back onto her lap. "I didn't mean to hurt you." He drove his long fingers through his dark hair, brushing it back off his forehead. "Back then," he went on, "when I was a young graduate, I had a highly inflated opinion of my own worth, especially when Van Hoek accepted me as one of his students. I wanted to be a portrait painter like him. And that's all I wanted. You're right. He didn't take many of us."

  "And this made you gloomy?"

  His smile was sardonic as he shook his head. "Oh, no. When I learned that I'd been accepted, I was out of my mind with glee. I was good, damned good, and I knew it. I was also insufferably cocky, and went to him with the attitude that he was lucky to have me."

  He grimaced. "That old Dutchman did some mighty quick attitude adjustment on me, let me tell you. He cut me into such fine shreds that I could have been boiled up and served as linguine. In twenty-five minutes, he proved to me that I knew nothing, was nothing, and was probably incapable of ever becoming anything other than a hack who painted pretty pictures of bowls of fruit that would be copied en masse and sold at Woolco on dollar-forty-nine day. And he sent me away. Until I could grow up and become a man, as he put it. Hell, I thought I'd been a man for years.

  "I was still smarting from that when Curt got married. In fact, my interview with old Piet came just hours before we were due to fly out here for the wedding. It wasn't easy to learn such a lesson, and it put me in a lousy frame of mind for what was supposed to be a festive occasion. It took me several weeks to assimilate it fully, and to become humble enough to go back to him and beg for a second chance, because I knew that without his tutelage, I would be exactly what he said, a nothing, going nowhere. I worked with him for seven years, until he died. And I learned how to paint. But never like him," he added with quiet despair. "Never portraits."

  "Maybe that's good," she said quietly after a few minutes, when he failed to go on. "It would have been a shame if you were just another Piet Van Hoek."

  "Why do you say that? He was certainly worth emulating."

  "Because you are so far from being a nothing, going nowhere, that it would have been a great loss if you hadn't become what you are. You must miss your friend terribly."

  "Yes." He looked at her with surprise. "How did you know he was my friend?"

  "Because when you mention his name, your eyes go soft."

  Cal looked startled. "Do they?" He laughed shortly. "I loved him, you know. And I never told him. I wonder if he knew?" His eyes filled with such misery, she reached out to him again. He accepted the clasp of her hand as he went on, smoothing his thumb over her knuckles. "Piet was very special to me, B.J., but like all of his students, I pretended to scorn him for his old-fashioned ways, his insistence that we learn the basics before we learned anything else. We thought we knew the basics. After all, most of us had been taking art lessons all our lives, and had university degrees. But he was such a good man, as well as a genius, and you're right, I do miss him terribly."

  Suddenly he looked away from her, snatching his hand back. He pounded a fist on his thigh. "Oh, hell!" he said, sniffling loudly. "What's the matter with me? What have you done, B.J. Gray? Cast a spell over me or something?"

  "I'm not the type to cast spells," she said dismissively, getting to her feet. She shaded her eyes as she watched the girls, now on their way back from the floating garden, more to give Cal time to recover than because she was concerned for the children. They were paddling easily now, fluidly, cooperating with each other, but still she watched them.

  She knew Cal was uncomfortable about revealing weakness in front of her, and she wanted to give him time to regather his forces. When he spoke her name softly, she turned around and he was just. . . there, looking at her with something in his eyes that sent her heart rate soaring.

  Her mouth went dry. She wanted to move away, but something held her there. His eyes. They had that kind of power over her. They were gazing into hers, dark, watchful, then he lifted one hand to touch her hair. It was a feather-light touch, but she felt it right to the soles of her feet. She shivered as he slowly slid his fingers through her hair, then clamped his hand around her head, drawing her toward him.

  If his kiss had been meant as one of thanks, it changed subtly as she returned it, roughening, though not unpleasantly, as he sought something more from her. What it was, she didn't know, and wasn't sure she was giving it, or was even capable of giving it. His lips moved over hers beseechingly, and she strained against him, stroking his tongue with her own, clinging to him as her arms went around his waist and her breasts flattened against his hard chest. Her knees grew weak, and she clutched at his shirt as her head swam with the dizziness of pleasure. Heat coursed through her, making her tremble, and again she tasted that elusive, unique flavor of him and was intrigued beyond measure.

  "Ah. B.J.," he said moments later, holding her head with both hands, pressing her forehead to his chest as if afraid to look into her eyes. "You are so the type to cast spells."

  And so was he, she thought. And so strong was the spell over both of them, they didn't move apart until the girls' voices alerted them that they wouldn't be alone much longer. Cal stepped back half a pace and bent, dropping a light kiss onto the tip of her nose. Then he let her go, trailing his hands down her arms until he touched only the fingers of one hand, staring down Into her eyes, still searching.

  B.J. was the one who looked away first. "I think we should go," she said. "It's getting chilly." How, she wondered, had she come up with that when a tingling warmth had flushed her skin from her toes up, and all because of Cal Mixall's words, and Cal Mixall's voice, and Cal Mixall's eyes?

  "Yes," he said, reluctantly allowing the tips of her fingers to slide out of his grasp as the girls' canoe poked its bow through the reeds toward his little shelter. "Can you take both the kids with you?"

  B.J. looked up at him as she crouched, holding the gunwale of the canoe. "Yes, of course."

  "I . . . think I'd better stay here for a while. And get some work done," he added almost as an afterthought.

  She stared into his expressionless eyes for another moment, then nodded and got into the stern of the canoe. Laura was in the bow with the other paddle and Kara was in the middle.

  "Hey," Cal said softly. She looked up. "I'll see you later, okay?"

  She nodded and looked away
again, gently shoving the canoe out of the blind. When she glanced back. Cal was spreading his sleeping bag open on the bunk and she wondered just how long he Intended to stay there. He didn't look at her again, but took out a sketchpad and pencil and moved toward one of the small viewports, seemingly oblivious to their departure.

  A faint sound drew B.J. from her tumbled bed to the window of her room. Her gaze swept the lake, searching for whatever it was that had disturbed her. Ah! There. Of course.

  The scene was slightly blurred because she didn't have her contacts in, but blurred or not, it was still a dreamy, romantic sight with the silver of the moon track laid out. across the lake and the black silhouette of man and canoe clearly outlined as Cal paddled homeward. She sighed and felt a deep sense of satisfaction as she watched him approach. Her sleeplessness, she admitted, had been for one reason only: she had been waiting for Cal to come home.

  He was still a long way out, but coming closer, his powerful arms and shoulders working smoothly as he drove his paddle into the water and stroked it back. The rhythm of his body in motion caught and increased the rhythm of the blood in her veins, and the restlessness within her soul translated itself to a deep and elemental longing.

  Lord, but he disturbed her, even seen dimly in moonlight. Or maybe it was because of the moonlight. Maybe it was that which had infiltrated her senses, stolen her resistance to the memory of his kisses, to the yearning for more of them. For more . . .

  All evening, it had plagued her, this new and unfamiliar restlessness that welled up within her. After the girls had gone to bed, she had paced from room to room, examining all of his paintings, remembering his passion as he spoke of his swans. She'd searched for the same element in all his paintings, and found it, feeling somehow that she was discovering the man behind the work.

  She thought back on their every conversation, reliving each word, each nuance, remembering the throb in his voice when he said he couldn't keep his hands off her. It was insane, but she felt the same way about him. Him, Calvin Mixalll The last man the world she'd have ever expected to feel this way about. This way . . .

  What, exactly, was "this way"? What was she feeling? What did it mean? Her very soul cried out for something she couldn't quite name. Now, seeing Cal out there, paddling toward her across the silver lake, she discovered she could name it with no difficulty at all.

  A mate. Someone of her very own. But. . . him? Why, of all the men she'd met, was he the first one to stir her this deeply, to make her yearn for love and marriage and a family of her own? Was it real, this enormous feeling in her heart? Was it love? Or was it simply the residue of a very brief, and very foolish, girlhood infatuation with a fascinating stranger? She gripped the curtains tightly. It had to be the latter. It simply had to be! She couldn't be so foolish as to have fallen in love—even a little way in love—with Cal Mixall.

  Yet shouldn't she forgive him that careless laughter twelve years ago? Because, hadn't she looked like a life raft? Of course she had, and her face had been pocked, scarred with acne . . . and now Cal Mixall liked her skin. He'd stroked his fingers over her cheek and said, "You have the most beautiful skin."

  He liked, too, the hair that had once been mousy brown, and the eyes that had caused so many comments as she grew up. One gray, one green, they gave a lopsided, gargoyle look, especially when teamed with that awful nose stuck in the middle of her fat face like a blob of plasticene. He had, just today, kissed her nose, never knowing that it wasn't as it had once been. She shivered, stroking her own fingers where his had moved, wondering why, with his keen artist's eye, he wasn't seeing the truth when he looked at her.

  As she watched, he stepped out of the canoe onto the wharf. Bending, he grasped the bow of the slender craft and with one heave brought it half onto the wharf. Then, taking a long pace back, he drew the canoe completely out of the water in a graceful, sweeping motion. Taking his pack from the bottom of it, he turned the boat upside down, hitched the strap of the pack over one shoulder, and strode toward the house.

  She froze. Was it her imagination, or did his face turn toward the window where she stood?

  Did he see her? If he knew she was awake, watching for him to return, would he come to her door and speak to her? Her heart hammered hard at the thought. If he did, what would he say? And if he did, what would she do?

  She remained very still, not daring to move, and when he walked on by, she could see that his head was lowered and his walk weary. He looked, she thought, totally preoccupied. No, he hadn't looked at her window. He probably wasn't even aware, at the moment, that she was in his house. When he was out of sight, she let the curtains fall back into place and returned to bed.

  But not to sleep.

  Cal looked at the darkened house, scanning the windows as he walked up the path from the float.

  Damn! She'd gone to bed. He frowned. Well, why not? After all it was late. But he'd said, "See you later," hadn't he? She should have known he hadn't meant to spend the entire night in the blind. He'd only stayed late enough for the full moon to come up—the harvest moon—so he could take some time exposures of the lake at night. If it hadn't been for Laura and Kara, he'd have invited her to join him in the blind. He grimaced. If it weren't for Laura and Kara, she'd never have come there in the first place.

  He wished she were with him now in the chilly night air, breathing in the faint scent of wood smoke from Fred's chimney, the pungency of evergreens, and the faintly musty smell of fallen leaves, gazing out over the moon-drenched lake. She would shiver at the hint of frost in the air, and he would wrap her in his arms and warm her. Ah, B.J. . . . What a woman she was! She'd cast such a spell over him that one minute he didn't think he was going to break free, and the next, didn't want to.

  He smiled to himself and looked again at her window. He nearly halted, but forced himself to keep on walking in the same slow, measured pace, not to let on that he'd seen that pale face and form and her shimmery hair bracketed by two sweeps of curtain. She was still awake! She was standing in her window watching him come home! His pleasure was a living thing within his chest. As he'd made the long trip home through the moonlight, he'd been thinking how wonderful it would be to find her waiting up for him. And she was. At least she was awake. That was something.

  Gently, he knocked on her door. There was no reply. Frowning, he knocked again. She couldn't be asleep already. It hadn't been three minutes since he'd seen her at her window, awake—thinking about him?—just as he'd thought of her all the way back down the lake.

  "B.J.?" No reply. "Could I talk to you?"

  The silence from the other side of her door was profound. At length, he sighed and turned away, returning to his own side of the house.

  He climbed into bed and stretched the aching muscles his shower hadn't eased. He was exhausted. He yearned for sleep, for the oblivion of it, but the more he sought it, the more it eluded him.

  An hour later he got up, pulled on his jeans again, and stomped into his studio. If he couldn't sleep, he might as well work—if he could. Ten minutes after arriving in his studio, he threw his brush down angrily. Just as he seldom had trouble sleeping, he seldom had trouble concentrating on work—until now. She distracted him. Bewitched him. He wished he could get her out of his mind. He wished he didn't remember her passionate kisses, her cornsilk colored hair, her satiny skin.

  He stared at the nearly finished painting on his easel for a long time, dissatisfied. He continued to consider it as he mixed paints, but even as he worked his mind was only half on it. Absently, he stroked a few flecks of dark green into the pewter sky. With his knife, he scraped it off. It was wrong. There was something . . . something he couldn't quite see, and he wished the Dutchman were there to tell him where he was going wrong.

  Cal groaned, shaking his head as he remembered what had happened at the blind. He couldn't believe he'd bared his soul like that in front of B.J. Her compassion and sympathy had been genuine. Oh. dammit, woman, get out of my mind! he said silently, sti
ll staring at the painting, but not seeing it. Concentrate, he told himself. Pay attention to your work. He stepped back another pace, as Piet would have done, tilted his head to the side. No. Nothing. No new insight.

  A new insight. . . The words echoed in his mind for a moment before he recognized them. Of course! With a sense of relief, he remembered something he had once seen his mentor do. He had asked why at the time, but the old man had just shrugged. "A different perspective can provide a new insight."

  As he'd watched Piet, Cal had seen no difference, but clearly the other man had, because he had gone on to create one of the most brilliant portraits the world had seen. And what had worked for Piet might well work for Cal, even though this wasn't a portrait. Except ... in a way, it was. It just wasn't a portrait of a human being.

  Carefully lifting the canvas from the easel, he carried it out of his studio and into his bedroom. After a moment, he realized it wasn't going to work. Someone else had to hold the canvas.

  This wasn't just an excuse, he told himself. He genuinely needed assistance. And as the only other person who might be awake, B.J. was the only one who could provide it.

  He knocked on her door again, and again got no reply. He opened the door quietly. She was sitting up, staring at him, the sheet clutched under, her chin, her eyes wide. As he flipped the switch by the door she raised a hand quickly to shield her eyes and looked at him from under its dark shadow.

  "What's wrong?" Her voice was not husky with sleep, he thought in triumph. She had been awake all this time, just as he had.

  He drew in a deep breath, conscious of the sweet smell, the warm, tantalizing woman-scent emanating from her bed, but willed himself not to be distracted now. Not to be distracted? In the same room as this woman—with a bed? Hah! ''I need . . . help."

  She frowned. Why hadn't he said so earlier, she wondered, instead of just coming to her door and saying he wanted to talk? She'd lain there, rigid, torn between wanting to get up and go to him, and wanting him to go away. She'd told herself it was relief making her shake when he'd finally done just that. "Help?" she said. "With what?"