Chesapeake Blue (Chesapeake Bay Saga 4) - Page 32

  "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 know 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."