One Man's Art, Page 3

  but he never would have believed she’d walked so far in that weather along a dark, rutted road.

  He started to form what Gennie would have been astonished to hear was an apology when she lifted her chin. “There’s my car.” Her voice was distantly polite again—master to servant this time. Grant swallowed the apology.

  He swung toward her car, jostling Gennie in her seat a bit more than was absolutely necessary. Neither of them commented as he switched off the engine and climbed out. Grant popped the hood of her car, while Gennie stood with her hands in the back pockets of her jeans.

  He talked to himself, she noticed, softly, just under his breath, as he fiddled with whatever people fiddled with under hoods of cars. She supposed it was a natural enough thing for someone who lived alone at the edge of a cliff. Then again, she thought with a grin, there were times in the thickly populated Vieux Carré when she found herself the very best person to converse with.

  Grant walked back to his truck, pulling a toolbox out of the back of the cab. He rummaged around, chose a couple of different-sized wrenches, and returned to dive under her hood again. Pursing her lips, Gennie moved behind him to peer over his shoulder. He seemed to know what he was about, she decided. And a couple of wrenches didn’t seem so complicated. If she could just … She leaned in closer, automatically resting her hand on his back to keep her balance.

  Grant didn’t straighten, but turned, his arm brushing firmly across her breast with the movement. It could easily happen to strangers in a crowded elevator and hardly be noticed. Both of them felt the power of contact, and the surge of need.

  Gennie would have backed up if she hadn’t so suddenly found herself staring into those dark, restless eyes—feeling that warm, quick breath against her lips. Another inch, she thought, just another inch and it would be his mouth on hers instead of just the hint of it. Her hand had slipped to his shoulder, and without her realizing it, her fingers had tightened there.

  Grant felt the pressure, but it was nothing compared to what had sprung up at the back of his neck, the base of his spine, the pit of his stomach. To take what was within his reach might relieve the pressure, or it might combust it. At the moment Grant wasn’t certain what result he’d prefer.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, but this time his voice wasn’t edged with anger.

  Dazed, Gennie continued to stare into his eyes. She could see herself in there, she thought numbly. When did she get lost in there? “What?”

  They were still leaning into the car, Gennie with her hand on his shoulder, Grant with one hand on a bolt, the other on a wrench. He had only to shift his weight to bring them together. He nearly did before he remembered how uncomfortably right she had looked standing on his land gazing out to sea.

  Touch this one, Campbell, and you’re in trouble, the kind of trouble a man doesn’t walk away from whistling a tune.

  “I asked what you were doing,” he said in the same quiet tone, but his gaze slid down to her mouth.

  “Doing … ?” What had she been doing? “I—ah—I wanted to see how you fixed it so …” His gaze swept up and locked on hers again, scattered every coherent thought.

  “So?” Grant repeated, enjoying the fact that he could confuse her.

  “So …” His breath whispered over her lips. She caught herself running her tongue along them to taste it. “So if it happens again I could fix it.”

  Grant smiled—slowly, deliberately. Insolently? Gennie wasn’t sure, but her heart rose to her throat and stuck there. However he smiled, whatever his intent, it added a wicked, irresistible charm to his face. She thought it was a smile a barbarian might have given his woman before he tossed her over his shoulder and took her into some dark cave. Just as slowly, he turned away to begin working with the wrench again.

  Gennie backed up and let out a long, quiet breath. That had been close—too close. To what, she wasn’t precisely sure, but to something no smart woman would consider safe. She cleared her throat. “Do you think you can fix it?”

  “Hmm.”

  Gennie took this for the affirmative, then stepped closer, this time keeping to the side of the hood. “A mechanic looked at it a couple weeks ago.”

  “Think you’re going to need new plugs soon. I’d have Buck Gates take a look if I were you.”

  “Is he a mechanic? At the service station?”

  Grant straightened. He wasn’t smiling now, but there was amusement in his eyes. “There’s no service station in Windy Point. You need gas, you go down to the docks and pump it. You got car trouble, you see Buck Gates. He repairs the lobster boats—a motor’s a motor.” The last was delivered in an easy Down East cadence, with a hint of a smile that had nothing to do with condescension. “Start her up.”

  Leaving her door open, Gennie slid behind the wheel. A turn of the key had her engine springing cheerfully to life. Even as she let out a relieved sigh, Grant slammed the hood into place. Gennie cut the engine again as he walked back to his truck to replace his tools.

  “The Lawrence cottage’s about three quarters of a mile up on the left. You can’t miss the turnoff unless you’re hiking through a storm in the middle of the night with only a flashlight.”

  Gennie swallowed a chuckle. Don’t let him have any redeeming qualities, she pleaded. Let me remember him as a rude, nasty man who just happens to be fatally sexy. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And I wouldn’t mention that you’d spent the night at Windy Point Station,” he added easily as he slipped the toolbox back into place. “I have a reputation to protect.”

  This time she bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” Grant turned back, leaning against the truck a moment as he looked at her again. “The villagers think I’m odd. I’d slip a couple notches if they found out I hadn’t just shoved you back outside and locked the door.”

  This time she did smile—but only a little. “You have my word, no one will hear from me what a Good Samaritan you are. If anyone should happen to ask, I’ll tell them you’re rude, disagreeable and generally nasty.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  When he started to climb back into the truck, Gennie reached for her wallet. “Wait, I haven’t paid you for—”

  “Forget it.”

  She hooked her hand on the door handle. “I don’t want to be obligated to you for—”

  “Tough.” Grant started the engine. “Look, move your car, I can’t turn around with you in my way.”

  Eyes narrowed, she whirled away. So much for gratitude, she told herself. So the villagers thought he was odd, she mused as she slammed the car door. Perceptive people. Gennie started down the road at a cautious speed, making it a point not to look into the rearview mirror. When she came to the turnoff, she veered left. The only sign of Grant Campbell was the steady hum of his truck as he went on. Gennie told herself she wouldn’t think of him again.

  And she didn’t as she drove down the straight little lane with black-eyed Susans springing up on either side. The sound of his truck was a distant echo, soon lost. Without any trees to block the view, Gennie saw the cottage almost immediately, and was charmed. Small certainly, but it didn’t evoke images of seven dwarfs heigh-hoing. Gennie immediately had a picture of a tidy woman in a housedress hanging out the wash, then a rough-featured fisherman whittling on the tiny porch.

  It had been painted blue but had weathered to a soft blue-gray. A one-story boxlike structure, it had a modest front porch facing the lane and, she was to discover, another screened porch looking out over the inlet. A pier that looked like it might be a bit shaky stretched out over the glassily calm water. Someone had planted a willow near the shore, but it wasn’t flourishing.

  Gennie turned off the engine and was struck with silence. Pleasant, peaceful—yes, she could live with this, work with this. Yet she discovered she preferred the thrash and boom of the sea that Grant had outside his front door.

  Oh, no, she reminded herself firmly, she vowed not to thin
k of him. And she wouldn’t. After stepping from the car, Gennie hefted the first box of groceries and climbed the plank stairs to the front door. She had to fight with the lock a moment, then it gave a mighty groan and yielded.

  The first thing Gennie noticed was tidiness. The Widow Lawrence had meant what she said when she had stated the cottage was clean. The furniture was draped in dustcovers but there was no dust. Obviously, she came in regularly and chased it away. Gennie found the idea touching and sad. The walls were painted a pale blue, and the lighter patches here and there indicated where pictures had hung for years. Carrying her box of supplies, Gennie wandered toward the back of the house and found the kitchen.

  The sense of order prevailed here as well. Formica counters were spotless, the porcelain sink gleamed. A flick of the tap proved the plumbing was indeed cooperative. Gennie set down the box and went through the back door onto the screened porch. The air was warm and moist, tasting of the sea. Someone had repaired a few holes in the screen and the paint on the floor was cracked but clean.

  Too clean, Gennie realized. There was no sign of life in the cottage, and barely any echo of the life that had once been there. She would have preferred the dusty disorder she had found in Grant’s lighthouse. Someone lived there. Someone vital. Shaking her head, she pushed him to the back of her mind. Someone lived here now—and in short order the house would know it. Quickly she went back to her car to unpack.

  Because she traveled light and was inherently organized, it took less than two hours for Gennie to distribute her things throughout the house. Both bedrooms were tiny, and only one had a bed. When Gennie made it up with the linens she had bought, she discovered it was a feather bed. Delighted, she spent some time bouncing on it and sinking into it. In the second bedroom she stowed her painting gear. With the dustcovers removed and a few of her own paintings hung on the faded spots, she began to feel a sense of home.

  Barefoot and pleased with herself, she went out to walk the length of the pier. A few boards creaked and others shook, but she decided the structure was safe enough. Perhaps she would buy a small boat and explore the inlet. She could do as she pleased now, go where she liked. Her ties in New Orleans would pull her back eventually, but the wanderlust which had driven her north six months before had yet to fade.

  Wanderlust, she repeated as her eyes clouded. No, the word was guilt—or pain. It was still following her, perhaps it always would. It’s been more than a year, Gennie thought as she closed her eyes. Seventeen months, two weeks, three days. And she could still see Angela. Perhaps she should be grateful for that—for the fact that her artist’s memory could conjure up her sister’s face exactly as it had been. Young, beautiful, vibrant. But on the other side of the coin, it was too easy to see Angela lifeless and broken—the way her sister had looked after she’d killed her.

  Not your fault. How many times had she heard that?

  It wasn’t your fault, Gennie. You can’t blame yourself.

  Oh, yes, I can, she thought with a sigh. If I hadn’t been driving … If my reflexes had been quicker … If I’d only seen that car running the red light.

  There was no going back, and Gennie knew it. The times the helpless guilt and grief flooded her were fewer now, but no less painful. She had her art, and sometimes she thought that alone had saved her sanity after her sister’s death. All in all this trip had been good for her—by taking her away from the memories that were still too close, and by letting her concentrate on painting for painting’s sake.

  Art had become too much like a business to her in the past few years. She’d nearly lost herself in the selling and showings. Now it was back to basics—she needed that. Oil, acrylic, watercolor, charcoal; and the canvases that waited to be filled.

  Perhaps the hard realism of losing her sister had influenced her to seek the same hard realism in her work. It might have been her way of forcing herself to accept life, and death. Her abstracts, the misty quality of her painting had always given the world she created a gentle hue. Not quite real but so easy to believe in. Now she was drawn to the plain, the everyday. Reality wasn’t always pretty, but there was a strength in it she was just beginning to understand.

  Gennie drew in a deep breath. Yes, she would paint this—this quiet, settled little inlet. There’d be a time for it. But first, now, she needed the challenge and power of the ocean. A glance at her watch showed her it was noon. Surely he would be out on his boat now, making up the time she had cost him that morning. She could have three or four hours to sketch the lighthouse from different angles without him even knowing. And if he did, Gennie added with a shrug, what difference would it make? One woman with a sketch pad could hardly bother him. In any case, he could just bolt himself up inside and ignore her if he didn’t like it. Just as she intended to ignore him.

  * * *

  Grant’s studio was on the third level. More precisely, Grant’s studio was the third level. What had been three cubbyhole rooms had been remodeled into one with good natural light, strongest from the north. Glass-topped cabinets, called taborets, held an assortment of tools, completely organized. Fountain pens, ballpoints, knives, sable brushes, a wide variety of pencils and erasers, bow compass, T square. An engineer or architect would have recognized several of the tools and approved the quality. Matte paper was already taped down to his drawing board.

  On the whitewashed wall he faced hung a mirror and a framed reprint of The Yellow Kid, a cartoon strip nearly a hundred years old. On the other side of the room was a sophisticated radio and a small color TV. The stack of newspapers and magazines in the corner was waist-high. The room had the sense of practical order Grant bothered with in no other aspect of his life.

  He worked without hurry this morning. There were times he worked frantically, not because of a deadline—he was always a month ahead of schedule—but because his own thoughts pushed at him. At times he would take a week or perhaps two to simply gather ideas and store them. Other times, he would work through the night as those same ideas fretted to be put down with pen and ink.

  He’d finished the project he’d been working on in the early hours of the morning. Now a new angle had been pushing at him, one he didn’t seem to be able to resist. Grant rarely resisted anything that applied to his art. Already he had scaled the paper, striking diagonal lines with the blue pencil that wouldn’t photograph. He knew what he wanted, but the preparation came first, those finite, vital details no one would ever notice in the few seconds it took to view his work.

  When the paper was set and scaled, divided into five sections double the size they would be when reproduced, he began to sketch lightly. Doodling really, he brought his main character to life with a few loops and lines. The man was quite ordinary. Grant had insisted he be when he had created what his sister called his alter ego ten years before. An ordinary man, perhaps a bit scruffy, with a few features—the nose, the puzzled eyes—a bit exaggerated. But Grant’s Macintosh was easily recognizable as someone you might pass on the street. And barely notice.

  He was always too thin so that his attempts at dressing sharply never quite came off. He carried the air of someone who knew he was going to be put upon. Grant had a certain fondness for his general ineptitude and occasional satirical remarks.

  Grant knew all of his friends—he’d created them as well. Not precisely a motley crew, but very close. Well-meaning dreamers, smart alecks. They were the shades of the people Grant had known in college—friends and acquaintances. Ordinary people doing ordinary things in an unusual way. That was the theme of his craft.

  He’d given birth to Macintosh in college, then had left him in a closet while he had pursued art in a more traditional manner for almost three years. Perhaps he would have been successful; the talent had been there. But Grant had discovered he was much happier sketching a caricature than painting a portrait. In the end Macintosh had won. Grant had hauled him back out of the closet, and at the end of seven years the slightly weary, bleary-eyed character appeared in every major newsp
aper in the country seven days a week.

  People followed his life and times over coffee, on the subway, on buses, and in bed. Over a million Americans opened their newspapers and looked to see just what he was up to that day before they had to face their own.

  As a cartoonist, Grant knew it was his responsibility to amuse, and to amuse quickly, with a few short sentences and simple drawings. The strip would be looked at for ten or twelve seconds, chuckled over, then tossed aside. Often to line a bird cage. Grant had few illusions. It was the chuckle that was important, the fact that for those few seconds, he had given people something to laugh at—something to relate to. In Macintosh, Grant looked for the common experience, then twisted it.

  What he wanted, what he insisted on having, was the right to do so, and the right to be left alone to do it. He was known to the public only by his initials. His contract with United Syndicate specifically stated his name would never be used in conjunction with the strip, nor would he grant any interviews or do any guest spots. His anonymity was as much a part of his price as his annual income.

  Still using only the pencil, he began on the second section—Macintosh mumbling as the thudding on the door interrupted his newest hobby. Stamp collecting. Grant had gotten two full weeks out of this particular angle—Macintosh’s bumbling attempts, his friends’ caustic comments about his terminal boredom. Macintosh had fussed with his stamps and wondered if he’d finally hit a gold mine as the television had droned on behind him on the latest increase in the first-class mail service.

  Here, he would open his door to be faced with a wet, bad-tempered siren. Grant didn’t have any trouble drawing Gennie. In fact, he felt making her a character would put her firmly in perspective. She’d be just as ridiculous, and as vulnerable, as the rest of the people in his world. He’d begin to think of her as a character instead of a woman—flesh, blood, soft, fragrant. He didn’t have any room for a woman, but he always had room for a character. He could tell them when to come, when to go, what to say.

  He named her Veronica, thinking the more sophisticated name suited her. Deliberately, he exaggerated the tilt of her eyes and the lush sensuality of her mouth. Since the setting was Washington, D.C., rather than coastal Maine, Grant gave her a flat tire on the way home from a White House function. Macintosh goggled at her. Grant captured this by giving himself several stunned stares in the mirror above the drawing board.

  He worked for two hours, perfecting the storyline—the situation, the setup, the punchline. After changing her tire and practicing macho lines to impress her, Macintosh ended up with five dollars, a stutter, and soaked shoes as Veronica zoomed out of his life.

  Grant felt better when the sketches were done. He’d put Gennie just where he wanted—driving away. Now he would detail his work with India ink and brush. Solid black would accent or focus, the Benday patterns—zones of dots or lines—would give the gray areas.

  Detailing Macintosh’s room was simple enough; Grant had been there a thousand times. But it still took time and precision. Balance was crucial, the angles and positioning perfect in order to draw the reader’s attention just where you wanted it for the few seconds they would look at the individual panel. His supply of patience was consumed by his work, giving him little for the other areas of his life. The strip was half finished and the afternoon waning before he stopped to rest his hand.

  Coffee, he thought, stretching his back and shoulders as he noticed the ache. And food. Breakfast had been too long ago. He’d grab something and take a walk down on the beach. He still had two papers to read and a few hours of television. Too much could happen in a day for him to ignore either form of communication. But the walk came first, Grant decided as he moved idly to the window. He needed some fresh air….

  The hand he had lifted to rub at the back of his neck dropped. Leaning closer, he narrowed his eyes and stared down. It was bad enough when he had to deal with the occasional stray tourist, he thought furiously. A few curt words sent them away and kept them away. But there was no mistaking, even at this height, that thick ebony hair.

  Veronica had yet to drive out of his life.

  Chapter 3

  It was beautiful, no matter what angle you chose or how the light shifted. Gennie had a half-dozen sketches in her pad and knew she could have a half-dozen more without catching all the aspects of that one particular jut of land. Look at the colors in the rocks! Would she ever be able to capture them? And the way the lighthouse stood there, solid, indomitable. The whitewash was faded here and there, the concrete blocks pockmarked with time and salt spray. That only added to the humanity of it. Man’s strike for safety against the mercurial sea.

  There would have been times the sea would have won, Gennie mused. Because man was fallible. There would have been times the lighthouse would have won. Because man was tenacious. Pitted together they spoke of harmony, perseverance, sweat, and strength.

  She lost track of the time she had sat there, undisturbed, disturbing no one. Yet she knew she could go on sitting as long as the sun gave enough light. There were so few places in New Orleans where she could go to paint without the distractions of curiosity seekers or art buffs. When she chose to paint in the city, she was invariably recognized, and once recognized, watched or questioned.

  Even when she went out—into the bayou, along a country road, she was often followed. She’d grown used to working around that and to saving most of her serious work for her studio. Over the years she’d nearly forgotten the simple freedom of being able to work outdoors, having the advantage of smelling and tasting what you drew while you drew it.

  The past six months had given her something she hadn’t been aware she’d looked for—a reminder of what she had been before success had put its limitations on her.

  Content, half dreaming, she sketched what she saw and felt, and needed nothing else.

  “Damn it, what do you want now?”

  To her credit, Gennie didn’t jolt or drop her sketch pad. She’d known Grant was around somewhere as his boat hadn’t been moved. And she’d already decided he wasn’t going to spoil what she’d found here. She was arrogant enough to feel it her right to be there to paint what her art demanded she paint. Thinking he was rather casual about his trade as a fisherman, she turned to him.

  He was furious, she thought mildly. But she’d hardly seen him any other way. She decided he was suited to the out-of-doors—the sun, the wind, and the sea. Perhaps she’d do a sketch or two of him before she was finished. Tilting her head back, Gennie studied him as she would any subject that interested her.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in her best plantation drawl.

  Knowing he was being measured and insulted might have amused him under different circumstances. At the moment it made him yearn to give her a hefty shove off her rock. All he wanted was for her to go away, and stay away—before he gave in to the urge to touch her.

  “I asked you what you wanted.”

  “No need for you to bother. I’m just taking some preliminary sketches.” Gennie kept her seat on the contorted rock near the verge of the cliff and shifted back to sea. “You can just go on with whatever you were doing.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. Oh, she was good at this, he thought. Dismissing underlings. “You’re on my land.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  The idea of helping her off the rock became more appealing. “You’re trespassing.”

  Gennie sent him an indulgent glance over her left shoulder. “You should try