Adversaries and Lovers

by Patricia Watters

  Kate lowered herself to the couch and looked at Linda. “Did Ben send you here to try and change my mind?”

  Linda shook her head. “He doesn’t know I’m here. And yes, he’s being thick-headed and insensitive, and... well, he’s being a man. He sees a TV commercial. I saw two people in love.”

  Hot tears of embarrassment stung behind Kate’s eyes. “How could he have shown that to you? To anyone. It’s so humiliating. I never expected things to be like that with Ben. It just... happened. And now, I’m not sure if I even want to see him again… ever." She twisted her hands in her lap. "With Ben, it’s always all about money.”

  “You’re right," Linda said. "He’s been so involved with growing and expanding his business over the past six years that he’s lost touch with what’s truly important. He also needs to readjust to having a special woman in his life again. He’ll come around, but it might take time.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I want to stay on this roller coaster with him. It was so uncomplicated when we agreed to be friends. But after what happened in the pool, it’s just not the same, at least not for me. And Ben seems totally out of touch with my feelings. All he can think about is how much money he stands to lose if I don’t sign the model release and let him have his way.”

  Linda covered Kate’s hand with hers. “The problem is, honey, with women it’s all about feelings and emotions, but with men it’s all about testosterone and being the alpha male. Ben’s no different from the rest in that respect, which is why he can look objectively at something we see as personal and intimate. But I also saw the look on his face when he was watching the two of you on the screen, and I can tell you this much, he was affected by what he saw. He loves you, Katie. He may not have told you yet, but he does.”

  Kate stared at Linda. “Did he tell you that?”

  Linda shook her head. “He didn’t have to. It’s written and all over his face and in his eyes whenever he talks about you, which is most of the time.”

  Kate gave Linda a joyless smile. “If that’s true, he may have to choose between me and his business, because if he gets his zoning change and levels the block with the Hayden building and the Corner Cafe, and all the other little nooks and crannies that Grandma and her friends have been roaming through for the past fifty years, then I don’t think he’s a man I want in my life.”

  “Trust me, Katie. I know Ben won’t disregard the old people and their needs. I don’t know how he’ll resolve it, but he will be fair.”

  Kate attempted a smile, but it shriveled. “It’s not about being fair," she said. "Ben’s means of being fair is to generously compensate everyone for whatever they stand to lose. But what he doesn’t understand is that no amount of money can compensate them for the loss of familiar surroundings and a neighborhood that grew old with them. I just need to work this out myself, if it can be worked out.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, I shouldn’t have stopped by,” Linda said. “This is between you and Ben, and I’m acting like a meddling mother.”

  Kate looked at her, anxiously. “No! Please don’t think that. I’m glad you’re here, and acting like a mother. That’s something I’ve wanted and haven’t had for years. I just need to get used to it. Grandma never filled that role very well.”

  Linda let out a little snigger. “And I’m trying to get used to having a young lady to fuss over again.” She eyed Kate with affection and said, “It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it, honey? Ben has given me someone to mother, and he's given you someone to—” she smiled, “—well... meddle in your matters of the heart.”

  Kate grinned. “Well, I like that you're meddling in matters of my heart. I just wish you could do something about Ben's heart.”

  Linda patted her hand. “Enough about Ben.” She eyed the art supplies piled near the door. “It looks like you’re ready to start painting again. I’m so pleased.”

  Kate shrugged. “I thought it would help keep my mind off... other things.”

  Linda gave her a knowing smile. “I’d love to see some of your paintings.”

  “They’re nothing special. I’m not like Ben. I have to work hard at being an artist.”

  “Still, I’d like to see what you’ve done.”

  “Okay then. Give me a few minutes.”

  While Kate was in the back bedroom retrieving a painting, Ben opened the front door, peered in, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. "I saw your car out front and knew you were here," he said to Linda.

  Linda looked at the bouquet of flowers in his hand, and smiled. “Sweetie, that’s a start. Now if you’ll remember to engage your brain before opening your mouth you might be able to patch things up.”

  He looked around. “Where’s Katie?”

  “She went to get some of her paintings. Katie!” Linda called out, “there’s someone here to see you.”

  Kate emerged from the hallway, an unframed oil painting in her hand. Seeing Ben, she rested the painting against the leg of her drafting table and waited for him to speak. He walked up to where she stood and looked at her. “Honey, I know how you feel about the swim fin commercial. You feel angry and disappointed because—“

  “Stop telling me how I feel, Ben," she snapped. "You’re living on a different cloud than I am. You have absolutely no concept of what’s going on inside me because... you’re a man, and with men it’s all about testosterone and being the alpha male.” She broke eye contact with Ben for an instant and caught Linda smiling, and when she looked at Ben again, she saw that little twitch of a smile in one corner of his mouth.

  He drew in a long breath. “Well, if it makes any difference, you’re right and I’m wrong about the swim fin piece and we won’t be using it.” He offered the flowers. “I’m sorry, honey, but I have trouble trying to figure you females out.”

  Kate studied the big hand holding the tissue-wrapped bouquet of daisies and roses and carnations and star-gazer lilies, then looked up at Ben. Tears welled.

  Linda took the flowers from Ben. “While you two make up, I’ll just put these in water.” She headed for the kitchen.

  Kate wasn’t sure who sent the first signal, but moments later, her arms were around Ben and he was holding her against him as if they'd been separated for years, and their kiss came together with all the longing they’d been holding inside. After their lips parted, Ben continued to hold Kate in his arms, his cheek against the top of her head.

  Somewhere in the darkened recesses of her mind, Kate heard Linda say, “Well, I’ll just let myself out,” but it didn’t register enough to acknowledge. All she knew was, Ben was holding her again, and for now, nothing else mattered.

  After a while he whispered against the top of her head, “Honey, we’re either going to have to get out of here now, or I’m going to carry you off to the bedroom.”

  She looked up at him. “Then take me to Cooper’s Landing.”

  His brows gathered in a frown. “Now?”

  “Yes, now. I want to paint it. I’ve wanted to paint it ever since we were last there. The image of the sunset falling on the old buildings is stuck in my head, and I want to go back and capture it on canvas. It's a perfect day, warm enough to be outside, and there's a sky filled with golden-edged clouds, and if we leave right now, the sun will be just about right.”

  Ben gave her a wry smile. “I’d kind of hoped you’d opt for me carrying you to bed, but okay, we’ll go to Cooper’s Landing if that’s what you want. The repairs to the bridge are finished so we can go in my truck.”

  “Just let me change into some painting clothes and I’ll be right back.”

  While Kate was changing, Ben leaned over the drafting table to see what she was working on. To his surprise, it appeared to be an architectural drawing of the subdivision she’d mentioned. He studied it closely, finding the concept intriguing. Then spotting the painting resting against the drafting table, he picked it up. A scrap of paper with the word, Sunrise, was taped to one corner. He scanned the bucolic scene with its evocative patterns of hig
hlights and shadows. Although he’d never studied art, he knew instinctively that Kate’s work was good. She’d used rustic farm buildings as framing elements on either side of the composition, and bands of diminishing tones lay across the landscape to create recession. To suggest hills in the distance, she’d applied thick strokes of pale yellows, which appeared to have been put down with a fine brush but with enough pressure to push the paint out to form the tiny lines and ridges that became the crest of the hills caught in the light of sunrise...

  “What do you think?” Her voice came from across the room.

  Ben looked up to find her standing in the doorway. She was wearing worn, form-fitting jeans that emphasized her small waist and tapered hips, a tan jersey that hugged her trim breasts, and a wide-brimmed felt hat that flopped at an uncertain angle. Her black hair was pulled back from her face and gathered at her nape, and her luminous eyes shone with eager anticipation. All she wanted was to paint a picture, and all he wanted was to strip everything from her shapely body and carry her off to the bedroom . Did she have any inkling how tempting she looked, or of the self-control it took on his part to honor her vow of chastity?

  Had anyone told him three months ago that in the very near future he’d fall head over heels for a twenty-four-year-old virgin, and he'd be willing to live like a monk while she held him at bay, he’d have laughed himself silly. He also knew that if she weakened in her resolve, he might not be as obliging as he’d been in the past. Her presence in his life filled him with tenderness, but it also filled him with a need that was slowly consuming him.

  “My painting, Ben,” she repeated. “What do you think of my painting?”

  He looked into her eager eyes and said, with all sincerity, “I think it belongs on the west wall of my bedroom where the morning sun will bring it to life for me to see when I wake up in my empty bed, so I can feel your presence.”

  Kate took the painting from him and set it aside, then curved her hands around his neck and kissed him. “That’s so sweet and poetic,” she said, “and yes, you can have it.”

  Ben slid his hands around her waist, slowly glided them up her back and along her arms and removed her hands from around his neck. Holding her hands in his, he said, “Honey, I’m about a heartbeat away from hauling you into the bedroom. If you expect to paint a picture this afternoon, you can’t be doing this.”

  Kate held his gaze, and in the silence that stretched between them Ben saw an image of them together in bed as clearly as if it existed. She licked her parted lips, and in her eyes he saw her resolve wavering and knew the vision of his mind was also that of hers. He touched her cheek and said, “There are no certainties right now, honey. You have no assurance that I’m the man you’ve been saving yourself for.”

  Kate gazed up at him, the longing in her eyes a mirror of his, and said, “Maybe that’s not so important anymore.”

  He looked steadily at her. “And maybe it is.”

  She inhaled deeply. “Then you’d better help me carry all this to the truck.”

  The spell broken, Ben looked around at the painting paraphernalia and sighed. “You need all this to paint a picture?”

  Kate nodded. “I won’t finish it today, so I’ll leave all this stuff there.”

  Ben shook his head in amusement and mild disbelief, and reached for her old, scuffed folded-up paint box, making a mental note to buy her a new one. Against his outstretched arms she piled a cardboard box with solvents and tubes of oil paints, a new stretched canvas, a roll of paper towels and other sundries she’d stashed in the heap by the front door, and Ben carried them out to the truck. By the time he returned, she’d propped a folding stool by the door. He grabbed the stool, along with the painting she’d promised him.

  They drove to Cooper’s Landing, Kate settled comfortably against Ben, his arm around her and her hand on his leg. For a few miles they rode in silence, savoring the wordless communication that passed between them and which was becoming familiar to both of them. After a while Kate said, “You know that subdivision I designed?”

  “Funny. I was just thinking about it,” Ben said.

  Kate looked up at him, surprised. “You were?”

  “Umm, hmm. I like what you’ve designed. It makes sense.”

  “Makes sense for where?”

  “Cooper’s Landing, of course.”

  “You’ve been thinking about putting houses there for a while, haven’t you?”

  Ben nodded. "Ever since you first mentioned your subdivision.”

  Kate cuddled up against him, and when he looked at her, she was beaming.

  “You like that idea? Your subdivision in my town?”

  She looked up at him. “I like the idea that you like the idea.”

  He kissed her lightly on the forehead and started whistling.

  By the time they arrived in Cooper’s Landing, the sun’s rays were in the last stages of their afternoon brightness and were beginning to take on the colors of sunset. Kate immediately set up her paints and easel and started working. For a while Ben stood a short distance away, watching her as she bent over her task, lips parted, paintbrush racing over the canvas as her eyes shifted between the scene and the oil sketch. The planes of her face, half in ochre light, half in shadow, the gentle curve of her neck, the angle of her body as she leaned toward the canvas, all came at him at once, and he was filled with the wonder of how it would be to fasten his soul to hers and fuse his body with hers, until their love was at last fulfilled...

  She smiled faintly at her work, then stepped away from the canvas and stood assessing it. Then in a burst of inspiration, she was sitting in front of the canvas again, nibbling absently on her lip while working with single-minded purpose, her brush constantly moving between the canvas and the dabs of paint encircling the palette she held in her left hand. After a while, he rested his hands on his hips and called out to her, “When do I get to take a look?”

  She glanced around at him. “Right now if you want.”

  He walked over and crouched beside her, and she angled the canvas so he could see it. In a few dozen strokes of her brush she’d captured the essence of the old buildings at sunset, with their worn and weathered boards and long shadows trailing over the ground, and their lopsided silhouettes against an illuminated sky filled with dark scudding clouds edged in gold. “You amaze me,” he said, staring at the painting. “This one belongs on the east wall of my bedroom where the setting sun will fall on it. Then all that will be missing from my bedroom will be you.”

  “Some artists use pale washes to establish the composition,” Kate explained, ignoring his comment, “but I like to use monochrome browns, then build up the colors on the canvas without premixing them on the palette.” She placed a circle of yellow-white on the upper portion of the canvas and added, “I also like to include a direct view of the sun occasionally. It helps portray the transitory light of a specific time of day like sunset.”

  Ben covered her hand with his. “Then I can have the painting when it’s finished?”

  Kate glanced at his hand on hers, then looked at him and said, “You really want it?”

  Ben nodded. “You told me you wanted to see Cooper’s Landing through my eyes, but until now, I haven’t really seen Cooper’s Landing at all. Looking at it through your eyes, reflected in your painting, I see things I never saw before.”

  Kate touched her hand to his face and said, “Maybe that’s because you’re finally beginning to see things through the eyes of the artist you are.”

  The touch of her hand on his cheek sent tiny hairs bristling on the back of Ben's neck. He took her palm, pressed his lips against it, and said. “And maybe it’s because I’ve at last found someone who’s captured my heart.” He gave her hand a little squeeze and let it go. “I’ll let you get back to your painting," he said, "and I’m going to check out locations for your subdivision.”

  Kate merely smiled and said nothing.

  Later, when they stopped by Ben’s house, the first thing K
ate noticed was that the furniture in Ben’s bedroom was different. The table that held the photograph of Gayle was gone, and in its place stood a whimsical bedside stand made up of an elongated monkey carved from a single piece of wood. The monkey supported a circular glass top with its front paws and the high arch of its curled tail. Kate ran her hand down a slender monkey leg and up the monkey’s long tail. When she looked up, she found Ben leaning against the doorway, smiling. “He’s wonderful,” she said, tracing a finger along the edge of the monkey’s round ear.

  “It’s a piece I’ve been working on over the years that needed to be finished,” Ben said.

  Kate ran her fingers over the small, enchanting face. “Why a monkey?”

  Ben shrugged. “He fit the piece of wood.”

  Kate also noted a new bed, one she was certain Ben crafted with his own hands. It was a masterpiece of workmanship with its misshapen legs and crooked paw-like feet and twisted-limb headboard that looked to be made from the root mass of an uprooted tree. Like the monkey table, the hand-rubbed finish invited a palm to glide over its satiny-smooth surface. “When did you start making it?” she asked, running her hand over a twisted limb on the headboard.

  Ben looked at her, eyes burning with need, and said, “About the time I knew the only woman I wanted was you. You might say it’s my virgin bed for my virgin lady.”

  “You made the bed for me?” Kate asked, surprised.

  Ben smiled ruefully. “I don’t know any other virgins.”

  The bed, the absence of the framed photograph, the fact that the whimsical monkey bed stand had replaced the table that had held Gayle’s photograph for the past six years seemed an answer to the question that had chafed inside Kate for weeks, but which she didn’t dare ask, until now. “Does this mean you’re ready to put Gayle behind and move on with your life?’

  “Honey, I don’t know how I can make it any plainer to you,” Ben said.

  As Kate stared across the bed at him, the longing she’d been trying so hard to stifle awakened. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her tight against him, to feel the power and urgency of his body. Gazing steadily at him, she said, “The night you talked about Gayle, and I suggested you needed a warm body to curl up with, you told me you wouldn’t let it happen while I was caught up feeling sorry for you. Well, I don't feel sorry for you now. All I feel is to curl up in bed with you, and if what we have doesn't go beyond tonight, then I’ll keep the memory of it in my heart and be satisfied.”