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Calm fury filled him as he prepared himself for the unavoidable. Everything slowed until each beat of his heart seemed to take an eternity. He watched the muscles in the man’s arm bulge as he held the door open. In response, Alex’s own muscles tightened, ready to meet the threat. His mind was cocooned in silence.
Just as the passenger’s stout leg swung out the open door, flashing lights and the sudden wail of a siren made the burly man turn his attention away. A police car, tires squealing, launched across the intersection in a way that suggested the cops were angered by the truck’s stunt. The police car had been parked beside a hedge to the side of the drive into the parking lot across the street. As they had sped past, the men in the truck apparently hadn’t seen the parked police car watching traffic. Lost in his own thoughts, Alex hadn’t, either.
The loudspeaker crackled to life. “Pull it over!”
The world seemed to rush back in.
The white plumbing truck, trailing a fog of dust, slowed as it rolled off the curb up ahead, the black-and-white police car right behind it. As the truck stopped, two policemen leaped out, hands resting at the ready on their guns as they approached from both sides of the truck at the same time. They yelled orders and both men carefully emerged with their hands up. In an instant the officers had them out and leaning on the front fenders of the truck.
Alex felt the tension drain out of his muscles, leaving his knees feeling weak.
As he turned his glare from the men being frisked, he found the woman’s gaze fixed on him. Her eyes were the luscious color of his finest sable artist brushes. It was clearly evident to him that behind those sensuous brown eyes she appraised the world around her with an incisive intellect.
She glanced deliberately down at his big hand still tightly gripping her upper arm. He had intended to toss her back out of harm’s way so that the passenger couldn’t hurt her, but the police had shown up first.
She looked up at him in silent command.
“Sorry,” he said, releasing her arm. “You were about to be run down by pirates.”
She said nothing.
He had meant his comment to be lighthearted, to ease the fright of what had nearly happened, but by her calm expression she didn’t appear to be the least bit amused. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her arm. He knew that sometimes he didn’t realize his own strength.
Not knowing what to do with his hands, Alex combed his fingers back through his thick hair as he stuffed his other hand in a pocket.
He cleared his throat, changed his tone to be more serious, and started over. “I’m sorry if I hurt your arm, but that truck would have hit you if I hadn’t pulled you back out of the way.”
“It matters to you?”
Her voice was as captivating as her eyes.
“Yes,” he said, a little puzzled. “I wouldn’t like to see anyone get hurt in an accident like that.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t an accident.”
Her expression was unreadable. He could only wonder at her meaning. He was at a loss as to how to respond.
The memory of the way she’d been standing at the curb still hung in the shadows in the back of his mind. Even lost in distant, dejected thoughts at the time, he had noticed that her body language hadn’t been quite right. Because he was an artist, a person’s balance, either at rest or in motion, stood out to him. There had been something out of the ordinary about the way she had been standing.
Alex wasn’t sure if, by her answer, she was simply trying to do the same as he had been doing—trying to lighten the heart-pounding scare of what had nearly happened—or if she was dismissing his chivalry as a presumptuous line. He imagined that a woman as attractive as she was had to deal with men constantly trying clever lines in order to meet her.
The satiny black dress that hugged her curves looked to be either high fashion or oddly out of time and place—he couldn’t quite decide which—as did the long, deep green wrap draped over her shoulders. Her luxuriant fall of soft, summer-blond hair could have gone either way as well.
Alex figured that she had to be on her way to the exclusive jewelry store that was the anchor of the upscale Regent Center across the street. The slanted glass façade was just visible beyond the shade of ash and linden trees spread across the broad grounds separating the upscale shops from Regent Boulevard.
He glanced over at the plumbing truck sitting at the curb. The strobing lights from the police car made the white truck look alternately blue and red.
After getting handcuffs on the passenger, the police officer pointed at the curb and told the man to sit beside the driver. The man sat and crossed his legs. Both wore dark work clothes covered with grime. While both men quietly did as they were told, neither looked to be the least bit cowed.
One of the officers started toward Alex as the other spoke into the radio clipped to his shirt at the shoulder.
“Are you two all right?” the man asked as he approached, his voice still carrying an adrenaline edge. “They didn’t hit you, did they?”
Both of the cops were young and built like weightlifters. Both had bull necks. Black, short-sleeved shirts stretched over the swell of their arms served only to emphasize the size of their muscles.
“No,” Alex said. “We’re fine.”
“Glad to hear it. That was quick thinking. For a minute I thought you two were going to be roadkill.”
Alex gestured toward the men in handcuffs. “Are they being arrested?”
With a quick glance he took in the woman, then shook his head. “No, unless they come back with warrants. With guys like this you never know what you’ve got, so we often cuff them for our own safety until they can be checked out. When my partner is finished writing up that ticket, though, I don’t think they’ll be in the mood to pull a stunt like this again for a while.”
That two cops this powerfully built would be worried about the guys in the truck to the point of cuffing them made Alex not feel so bad for being spooked when he’d looked into the dark eyes of the passenger.
He glanced at the badge and extended his hand. “Thanks for coming along when you did, Officer Slawinski.”
“Sure thing,” the man said as he shook Alex’s hand. By the force applied to the grip Alex figured that the man was still keyed up. Officer Slawinski turned away, then, eager to get back to the pirates.
The driver, still sitting on the curb, was thinner but just as meanlooking as the burly passenger. He sat stone-faced, giving brief answers as the officer standing over him asked questions while writing the ticket.
The two officers spoke briefly, apparently about the results of the warrant check, because Officer Slawinski nodded, then uncuffed the passenger and told him to get back in the truck. After climbing back in, the passenger rested a hairy arm out the side window as the other cop started uncuffing the driver.
In the truck’s big, square side mirror, Alex saw the man’s dark eyes glaring right at him. They were the kind of eyes that seemed to be out of place in a civilized world. Alex told himself that it had to be that in such a newly built, luxurious part of town the work-worn construction vehicles, despite there being a lot of them, all seemed to be out of place. In fact, Alex recalled having seen the Jolly Roger Plumbing truck before.
Alex’s small house, not far away, had once been at the outskirts of town among a cluster of other homes built in the seclusion of wooded hills and cornfields, but they had long since been swallowed by the ever-expanding city. He now lived in a desirable area, if not exactly on a desirable street or in a desirable house.
Alex stood frozen for a moment, staring at the grubby, bearded face watching him in the truck’s mirror.
Then the man grinned at him.
It was as wicked a grin as Alex had ever seen.
As the black flag atop the truck lifted in a gust of wind, the skull also gave Alex a grim grin.
He noticed then that the woman, ignoring the activity, was watching him. As the light turned green, Alex gestured.
“Would you allow me to escort you safely across the street?” he asked in a tone of exaggerated gallantry.
For the first time she smiled. It wasn’t a broad grin, or a smile that threatened to break into laughter, but rather a simple, modest curve of her lips saying that this time she got the lighthearted nature of his words.
Still, it seemed to make the world suddenly beautiful on what was otherwise a rather depressing day for him.
2. (#ulink_774919d0-1aad-5288-bd5c-7d8d0e64fb2e)
I’D LOVE TO PAINT YOU SOMETIME—if you’d be interested, I mean,” Alex said as they made their way across the broad boulevard.
“Paint me?” she asked, her brow twitching just a little. It was an achingly feminine look that invited an explanation.
“I’m an artist.”
He glanced at the traffic stopped across the intersection to his left, making sure that no rogue construction trucks were about to make another run at them. With the lights flashing on the police car sitting at the curb, everyone was driving cautiously.
He was glad to at last be away from the pirate plumbers. They looked to have developed a grudge. Alex felt a flash of anger at the injustice of their belligerent attitude toward him.
“So you paint portraits?” she asked.
Alex shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Portraits weren’t his specialty, although they did occasionally bring him some income. He would work for free, though, just for a chance to paint this woman. In his mind he was already analyzing the curves and planes of her features, trying to imagine whether he could ever get such an enchanting face right. He would never start such a work unless he was confident that he could get it perfect. This was not a woman he would want to render in anything less than perfection. Changing her in any way would be unthinkable.
He gestured to the low, elegant structure peeking through the shimmering leaves. “I have a few pieces at the gallery.”
She glanced to where he had indicated, almost as if she expected to see the gallery itself standing there.
“I’m headed there now, as a matter of fact. If you’d like to see some of my work, the gallery is down a little ways from Regent Jewelry…”
His voice trailed off. He suddenly felt a little foolish at his presumption. He imagined that a woman like her would be interested only in the exclusive jewelry store or the boutiques. Since she wasn’t wearing any jewelry he wasn’t sure why he assumed such a thing, but he guessed he feared that she probably wasn’t interested in art—or his art, anyway.
“I’d like to see your work.”
He looked over at her. “Really?”
She nodded as she pulled a wavy lock of blond hair back off her face.
Alex felt his cell phone vibrate silently in his pocket, letting him know that another text message was being delivered. He sighed inwardly as he cut a straight line across the nearly empty parking lot. It was only midmorning; most people didn’t arrive until closer to lunchtime. A few dozen expensive cars, glittering in subdued shades of silvers, reds, and ambers, were parked in a cluster around the main entrance.
Message delivered, his phone finally stopped vibrating. Bethany, he was sure, was responsible. He hadn’t even known that his phone was capable of receiving text messages until after he’d met her several weeks back. After he’d gone out with her a second time she had started sending him text messages. They were painfully petty. He rarely read them anymore. She usually asked things like if he was thinking of her. He hardly even knew her. What was he supposed to say? That she hadn’t entered his mind?
He ignored the phone as he opened the center-pivot glass door for the woman. It wasn’t the kind of shopping area that lent itself to the financially timid. She glided through the doorway with the kind of grace and confidence born of being used to such places.
Before the door closed Alex glanced back across the lot, between the linden trees lining the edge of the street, to the white truck still sitting at the curb in front of the police car. He couldn’t make out the men inside.
As they passed into the hushed, grand seclusion inside, he was a little surprised to see the woman only glance at the alluring glimmer of Regent Jewelry. As they strolled through the halls, her cool gaze took in each exclusive shop in equal measure. The dress shop, Alex knew, didn’t sell anything, except maybe a scarf, for less than four figures. The woman scanned the outfits in the window with no more interest than she took in the shoes in the next store window, or the purses in the next.
Alex saw other women cast appraising glances her way. She looked at the other women, but in an altogether different manner. They were evaluating her socially. She was assessing them…spatially, checking their distance before briefly taking in their faces as if to see whether she recognized them.
“Down here, around the corner,” Alex said, drawing her attention.
When he spoke to her she met his gaze with a focused involvement that was respectful and interested. He couldn’t imagine this woman ever sending him a text message.
She allowed him to direct her around the curve of the corridor decorated with sweeping inlaid metal lines in the speckled pink granite floor. Cast-stone arches stood at a branch of halls. The one Alex took led into a sunlit corridor. Skylights overhead let streamers of light play across the planters overflowing with philodendron and an assortment of salmon-colored hibiscus.
Alex drew them to a halt before the gallery window surrounded with ornate gold molding. The molding, meant to resemble a picture frame, showcased some of the more expensive and sought-after works just inside.
Alex gestured through the window. “This is the place.”
A twitch of disapproval ghosted across her features. “Do you mean to say that you…painted this?”
She was looking at the large piece displayed in the center of the crowded floor just inside the window. It had been done by R. C. Dillion, a midwestern artist who was becoming a national figure. It was said of him that R. C. Dillion was at the forefront of a new reality in art.
“No, not that one,” Alex said. He leaned closer as he pointed beyond the nonobjective works crowding the window to a small landscape displayed on an easel near the back. “That’s one of mine back there. The mountain scene with the pines in the foreground to the left.”
Alex was relieved to see that Mr. Martin, the gallery owner, had at least put a small spotlight on the painting rather than setting it on the floor, leaned against a wall, as he sometimes did. The small light made the sunlit clearing, within the hushed cathedral of trees, come to life.
“See the one I mean?” he asked as he glanced over at her.
Her mouth opened a little in surprise. “Alexander, it’s beautiful.”
Alex froze.
He knew that he hadn’t yet mentioned his name. He knew because he had been waiting for the right time to do so without sounding like he was coming on to her.
It finally dawned on him that she’d probably been to Regent Center before and she must have visited the gallery. That only made sense; wealthy women knew the gallery, after all—they just didn’t tend to take note of his work. Alex’s bio, with his photo, was posted beside his paintings. He signed his name in the longer form—Alexander—and that was also the way it was shown on his biography. She must have known his name from that.
She looked up to study his face intently. “Why did you paint that?”
Alex shrugged. “I like the woods.”
Her eyes began to look a little more liquid, as if what she saw in that painting had some hallowed meaning to her. “No, I mean why did you paint that particular place in the woods?”
“I don’t know. I just made it up from my imagination.”
She looked like she wanted to say something, but she instead turned back to stare through the window, looking too taken for words.
Alex was about to ask why that particular scene seemed to matter so much to her when his cell phone rang. He didn’t want to answer it, but the woman was staring through the window, absorbed in gazing at his painting, so he turned aside and opened the phone.
“Hello?”
“Alex, it’s me,” Bethany said.
“Uh, hi,” he said quietly as he hunched over the phone.
“Didn’t you get my text messages?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t read any of them today. I told you, you should just call if you have something to say.”
“You’re so silly, Alex,” she said in a lilting voice that he found grating. “Who doesn’t use text? Don’t be so ancient. Everyone does it.”
“I don’t. So, what is it?”
“Well, if you would have read the messages that I took the time to send you, you’d know. I made plans to take you out tonight and get you good and drunk for your birthday.”
She sounded miffed. Alex didn’t really care. Nor did he care to get drunk or do anything else to celebrate such a somber day. He was even more annoyed at her presumption.
Bethany was beginning to assume that there was far more between them than was actually there. He’d taken her out a couple of times—enough to find out that they didn’t really have anything in common. The dates had been relatively short and unremarkable. He didn’t know what she saw in him, anyway. They just didn’t click. She liked expensive things and Alex wasn’t wealthy. She liked to party and Alex didn’t.
And, his art bored her.
