Trusting Again

by Peggy Bird

  What he hadn’t been able to do was cut her out of her herd of friends without being too obvious or obnoxious. So, he scribbled a note on the back of a business card and left it with the server when he had the bill for the women’s drinks charged to his room. She assured him she’d get it to the woman in the purple dress with the long braid.

  • • •

  Marius was barely out the door before Liz turned on her friend.

  “Cynthia, what the hell is wrong with you? Why didn’t you tell us about him?”

  “Why would I tell you about him? He was just another customer,” she replied. “Can I have the last bit of that cheese?” She reached for the plate. Liz pushed it out of her reach.

  “Don’t change the subject. How could you not think we’d be interested in one of the most handsome men ever put on this earth?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She tried for the cheese plate again. And failed, thanks to Liz’s determination. “I just sold him a neckpiece for his girlfriend.”

  “The girlfriend part, I grant you, is a shame. But, my God, girl, just run down the list of the other virtues: killer good-looking, charming, polite, interested in what we have to say, willing to ignore phone calls while he talked to us, the good taste and money to commission work from you and buy that suit. What’s not worth talking about on that list?”

  “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Liz snorted. “Right. You were stunned into silence just sitting across from him.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t bother, petal. No one will believe you. It was too obvious. Not that I blame you. You could drown in those eyes. And his smile gave me some idea of what it’ll feel like when I get old enough to have hot flashes.” She fanned herself to make her point more obvious.

  “Did you notice his hands?” Amanda asked. “I love the way he talks with them. They’re so big and graceful. I bet he could palm a basketball with them.”

  Cynthia’s hand was still trembling from the handshake. Oh, yeah, she’d noticed his hands all right.

  “A basketball? Honey, he could palm anything I have with them,” Liz said. As the other two women burst into giggles, she added, “Please don’t repeat that in front of Collins. He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when I make comments like that.”

  A half hour later, Liz went to pay the bill and learned that Marius had taken care of it, adding one more item to her list of reasons Marius Hernandez was God’s gift to the world. The three women parted at the parking garage across the street from the concert venue, Liz headed for Southwest Portland where the man she lived with waited; Amanda to Northeast Portland, her husband and her new baby, and Cynthia for the freeway back to Seattle.

  • • •

  The dinner hostess at the Heathman always rearranged the desk to suit the way she liked things before she started her shift. Tonight, while she was moving things around, she found a business card with a note written on the back. No one seemed to know who it was for or why it was there. She pitched it into the recycling.

  Chapter 2

  Cynthia happily pointed her car north on I-5 even though she knew she probably faced heavy traffic going home. For once, she was looking forward to dealing with it, hopeful that concentrating on the traffic would take her mind off the subject of Marius Hernandez.

  It didn’t happen. Once again, the mental tape of the day he’d come into the Erickson Gallery switched on in her head. And she was there all over again.

  • • •

  She was wire-wrapping a bead when the bell on the door rang, indicating someone had come into the gallery. Looking up, she was so distracted by the gorgeous man walking toward her that she poked herself with the silver wire she was using, drawing blood. That’s how she greeted him, sucking on her finger to make it stop bleeding.

  He removed the sunglasses she couldn’t imagine he needed in March in Seattle, took command of her gaze with his espresso brown eyes, smiled and said, “I’m looking for Cynthia Blaine. That wouldn’t be you, by any chance, would it?”

  The smile alone made her knees wobble. Add the brown eyes and handsome face and she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to speak. So she just nodded.

  “I’m Marius Hernandez.” He put out his hand to her.

  She took it after wiping her hand off on a wet rag to get rid of the blood and saliva and trying to alter what she was afraid was the expression of some teen-aged groupie who’d run into Justin Bieber. His big hand enveloped hers, making her wish the handshake could last for hours, maybe days.

  “I’m looking for a specific piece of your work. For a gift.”

  Please, God. Make it a gift for his mother, his niece, a sister. Anyone but a wife.

  “I have a friend who’s about to celebrate a significant birthday,” he continued, “and I want to give her the necklace she admired when she was in here recently.”

  Damn it, a her. Nice going, God. Technically you gave me what I asked for — he isn’t buying it for his wife. Remind me to be more specific next time when I ask you for something.

  “Tell me what the piece looks like,” she said.

  “A big necklace. It looked like a collar, she said. Four or five inches wide. Fastens in the back. Silver wire with crystals and rubies woven into it. My friend said it looked like something a princess would wear.”

  “Ah, my favorite Cleopatra collar. It just sold a couple days ago.”

  “Can you make another just like it?”

  “Actually, I don’t make duplicates. But I have one I’m working on with clear glass and pearly glass beads that’s similar. Might that work?”

  “Glass? I thought — she thought — my friend thought — they were gems.”

  “Nope, all glass. Here, let me show you the piece I’m talking about.”

  He loved the piece and didn’t argue about the price. After leaving his business card with his email and office phone number so she could call him when it was ready, he left.

  She stood staring at the card for a few minutes. The sale was great, but knowing where to contact him wasn’t going to do her much good personally. Not when he was spending serious money on a girlfriend’s birthday present. With a sigh, she went back to her wire wrapping. That old saw was right. All the good ones are taken.

  • • •

  Her mental tape of their first meeting lasted just long enough for her to miss the exit for Centralia, where she always stopped for coffee. Reluctantly, she faced reality: Marius was going to be with her every mile of the way. In the inevitable gridlock at the damned Tacoma Dome curves, he was actually helpful. She spent the time crawling through traffic trying to identify what made him smell so good. It made being stuck there almost tolerable.

  Eventually, she got to the Ballard neighborhood where she lived, but she didn’t lose him there, either. After she turned off the ignition and pulled her duffle bag from the trunk, Imaginary Marius walked with her into her apartment and watched her unpack and set up the coffee maker for the next morning. Then he followed her to her bedroom, a sexy smile on his face while he watched her undress. He even managed to crawl into her head while she slept, spending the night in her dreams where he also crawled into her bed.

  • • •

  She was more successful blocking him from her thoughts over the next month. Most of the time. Except when she was drinking coffee. Or a glass of Malbec with her dinner. It wasn’t the one he’d bought — she couldn’t afford that one. But she found the names of a couple more reasonably priced vintages online and hunted them down. He was right. She liked it.

  Fortunately, when she was in her studio he was mostly absent. So she made sure she was in her studio every hour she could be. It was easy enough to do. The half dozen galleries up and down the I-5 corridor and on the coast where her work was placed had, for the past eighteen months, been bringing her both a steady flow of sales from pieces she consigned there and from commissioned work. Her income was close to stable for the first time in her care
er as an artist.

  Ever since budget cuts had eliminated her job as a middle-school art teacher, she’d supported herself with as many as three part-time jobs at once and her art. Gradually, as she became more successful at the latter, she’d been able to quit her job at the restaurant, giving her more studio time with only three or four shifts at the Erickson Gallery and an occasional weekend day at the bookstore to supplement her income. It was a modest living, but she didn’t have particularly expensive habits.

  Her growing success had one consequence she hadn’t expected. A write-up in the newspaper about her Cleopatra collars had brought her to the attention of several non-profits in Seattle looking for a donation for their fundraising auctions. Most of them she turned down for lack of work to give them. But a couple months ago, a friend who staffed the committee for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s annual auction happened to call when she’d had a collar returned from a gallery on the coast. She agreed to donate it. In exchange, she was comped a ticket for the cocktail party and auction.

  Under most circumstances, she wouldn’t have gone. She hardly had the kind of money it took to bid on any of the items in the auction even if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t exactly run in the social circles of the people likely to be there. But three things made this event tempting. First, it was taking place at the Olympic Sculpture Park, one of her favorite places in the city, where huge pieces of work by famous sculptors sat outdoors with Elliott Bay in the background.

  Second, Liz had hinted in a recent phone conversation that she and Collins might be in Seattle for the auction. Liz loved events like that and Collins needed to be in the city to check on the progress of a piece of his work that was being installed in the park. So Cynthia RSVP’d “yes.” Even after Liz emailed that their schedule was getting crazy and they might not make it, she didn’t change her mind. By then, the auction catalog had arrived and the third reason kicked in: Marius’s company was listed as a sponsor of the fundraiser.

  In her fantasies of what his life was like, she saw him attending events like this one, wearing an Armani tux, handing a crystal flute of champagne to a stunning-looking woman who was wearing a beautiful ball gown and an only-too-familiar Cleopatra collar. Why she wanted to torture herself by seeing him like that, she couldn’t explain. But she wanted to see him again, even if he was with someone else.

  This time, on the off chance she’d run into him, she was more careful about what she chose to wear. Not that there was a huge inventory from which to select. She’d never been much of a clotheshorse and, given her limited budget, that was a good thing. There was only one thing in her closet she thought would work — her summer gallery-opening dress. It was pale green pseudo-silk and had spaghetti straps that did little more than fall off her shoulders at inopportune moments. But the dress was form-fitting and did just fine with non-functional straps. With it she always wore her favorite knock-off designer sandals with four-inch heels and only enough gold leather to keep them on her feet and anchored to her legs.

  Because she liked the way it made her neck look long and graceful, she took the time to get her hair twisted into a semi-braided up-do. To wear with her favorite gold earrings, she’d brought home from her studio a recently finished neckpiece with handmade beads in aventurine green glass decorated with gold leaf. She knew she would eventually sell it, but she loved it so much she wanted to wear it once before putting it in a gallery. Marketing, she called it.

  When she was ready, she treated herself to a cab so she wouldn’t have to hassle with parking, and she was off to the sculpture park.

  The indoor area where the auction and cocktail party were being held was jammed with people. While waiting for her nametag at the registration table, she looked around at the crowd. Other than the president of the ballet and her friend Jasmine, who was frantically dealing with both registration and the last minute details of the auction, she didn’t recognize anyone. No Liz. No Collins. No … no anyone.

  Jasmine hugged her when she got to the head of the registration line. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know you’ll have a great time. I’ve seated you over on the other side of the room with the other artists.”

  “Is there anyone here, other than you, I’ll know?”

  “You know Spence and Doug, don’t you? They’re over there. Spence donated one of his paintings. And Janet Bracken’s there, too. She has a lovely piece of pottery in the auction.”

  Jasmine handed Cynthia her nametag and directed her to the wine and her table. Jas was right, Cynthia thought, when Spence gave her a huge kiss and hug as soon as he saw her. Knowing Spence, he’ll flirt with me all evening even with his husband Doug sitting beside him. This could be fun. Even if I don’t see … him … see Liz. I meant see Liz.

  The wine was decent, the appetizers enough to count as a modest dinner. The conversation among the group of artists was fun. Eventually, the president of the ballet made a pitch for the upcoming season, introduced a brief performance by some of the company’s dancers and brought on the auctioneer for the main event of the evening.

  The auction went very well. At least, it seemed to Cynthia it did. The bidding for every item was lively; for her piece, even heated. In the end, someone she couldn’t see in the crowd bought it for three times what it would have sold for in one of her galleries. She was happy for the ballet, but wondered if this meant she should raise her prices.

  After several rounds of bidding interspersed with breaks for refills of wine and the occasional raffle, the event ended and the crowd began to thin out. She had no more reason to stay, but before she called a cab to take her home, she decided to have a quick wander around the grounds outside.

  • • •

  Marius had originally declined the invitation extended to him as a sponsor of the ballet’s fundraising event. After being out of town for weeks on business, the last thing he wanted to do was attend a charity auction. Then the auction catalog arrived. Cynthia’s name and a description of the Cleopatra collar she’d donated made him change his mind.

  She’d ignored the note he’d left for her at the Heathman and he didn’t know why. He’d been sure the right signals had been there that day in Portland. She was as aware of the attraction between them as he was. He wanted to find out why the hell she hadn’t acted on it. It bothered him not to know. Although he hadn’t seen a ring of any kind on her left hand, he supposed it was possible she was married or engaged. Maybe had a boyfriend or was living with someone. Whatever the reason, he wanted to know. Since it was possible she’d be at the auction, he retracted his “no” and accepted the invitation.

  But once he got to the event, he discovered he had a minder, a ballet board member whose job it was to make sure he had a pleasant evening at a table with the other sponsors and board members. There was no chance to wander around, to see if Cynthia was there. A few minutes before the auction began, he finally spied her across the room and was disappointed to see she seemed to be with a date. At least, the man sitting next to her acted like a date, his arm around the back of her chair, leaning in and whispering to her.

  He sat through the auction trying to come up with a way to talk to her. She didn’t look in his direction, not even when he bid on her donation. Damn it to hell, nothing was working out. And now the event was over and he’d lost his chance.

  Wait. She was leaving, going out to the sculpture garden, alone, leaving the man who looked like her date deep in conversation with another man. He made his excuses to the people at his table and headed across the room toward the same door, tracking her every step.

  Mother of God, she was beautiful. Tonight, she was dressed in something pale green that hugged her body, exactly as he wanted to. Her tawny blonde hair was twisted up on her head in an intricate-looking set of braids and knots. His fingers itched to unpin it, slowly pull the braids apart, as he kissed her neck and shoulders. He was sure her hair felt like silk, sure her skin was soft and tasted sweet.

  She was exquisite. Cool and reserved-looking
at first glance, the intensity he’d seen in her sapphire blue eyes when he’d talked to her in the gallery made him sure she would be anything but reticent for the right man. A man like him. He planned to find out as soon as possible if he was right.

  • • •

  She was standing in front of her favorite piece, the huge Oldenburg typewriter eraser, when she heard, “How many years do you think it’ll it be before they’ll have to explain what a typewriter is, much less a typewriter eraser?”

  Even if she hadn’t recognized the deep rumble of his voice, she would have known the exotic smell of his aftershave anyplace. Marius had been there after all.

  She’d gotten what she’d hoped for, but her racing heartbeat reminded her what effect he had on her. Now that it was too late, she remembered how tongue-tied he made her. A deep breath was necessary before she faced him. A couple of deep breaths, actually. Then she turned to see that amazing face and those eyes, warm with … with what?

  She stuttered out, “Oh, hello. Yeah … ah … I guess you’re right. It’ll be like … maybe like … Renaissance paintings … all the references to saints. Uneducated peasants knew the symbolism. We don’t … have to have … you know … a guidebook.”

  He pointed at the sculpture as he walked closer. “You’re not comparing those of us who know what that is to peasants, are you?” he teased.

  She could feel her face redden. “Of course not.” If she was reading him right, he was enjoying her discomfort.

  “No, I guess you weren’t because that would include you, since you recognize it. I bet you could even write the guidebook entry about it.” He was standing so close she swore she could feel the heat from his body on her bare arm. “So how would you explain it, if you had to?”