“I’ll have a cheeseburger and fries. And a Tuxedo milkshake.” Sam returned her menu to the stand without ever opening it.
“Double that,” Eli said.
After the waitress had retreated, Sam opened her bag and took out a large spiral-bound tablet. “When I was a teenager, I used to hang out here and draw while Aunt Emma was at work.” A sheepish grin settled on her lips. “I was supposed to be doing my homework. I was never much good at that.”
“You didn’t like school?”
“Wasn’t that. I didn’t have the brains for it, especially math and science.” Her lips flattened to a thin line. “My mom always said I was stupid.”
Eli’s chest constricted. “I’m sure that’s not true.” How could any parent say such a thing to their child? His mother had been mostly absent from his life, so Lizzy had raised him in a stern yet loving manner. She always told him he could do anything he set his mind to. “You know, artistic people are more right-brained. People who are good at math and the sciences are left-brained.”
The waitress dropped off their milkshakes, which were brown on one side and white on the other.
Sam pushed a straw into hers. “I doubt my mother would believe that. She just blamed my poor grades on my inferior intelligence.”
He set his hand over hers, but she immediately withdrew from his touch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was…too forward of me.” What was it about her that moved something deep inside him, a place he normally kept well-guarded? If he let Sam get under his skin, his job here would be so much more difficult. He tipped his chin at her sketch pad. “May I?”
“No.” Sam tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’ll show you a couple of my drawings.” She flipped to the middle of the tablet. “My sketch pad is a lot like a diary. It’s very personal.” Turning the paper toward him, she said, “I did this one at a park along the interstate, somewhere in South Carolina, I think.”
The charcoal drawing showed a young couple and two toddlers at a picnic table. Sam had managed to capture the warmth of the family moment.
She flipped to another page, a sketch of an elderly man walking with a child on a beach. “This is another one from my trip down here.”
The frailty of the subject was palpable. As she showed him more, he could hardly believe his eyes. They were doodles really, but incredibly well-done pictures of people, a scene from a market, another of a house and garden. Eli didn’t know much about art, but clearly, Sam had a lot of talent. “They’re very good.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Not good enough. I mean, I get by. I paint murals and portraits. It’s tough to find commissions, though. My best work is in my portfolio.” She closed the tablet. “Sometimes I redo the ones I jot down here on a larger scale, like the farmhouse. I painted a mural of that at a farmers’ market in Virginia. Earned enough from that job to pay for new tires on my car, and gas for the trip down here.”
If she was so hard up for money why didn’t she just sell the sapphire? “Is that where you’re from?” His information on her only went back two years.
Their food arrived, and she waited until the waitress left before speaking. “I’m from all over. My mom traveled with a carnival, working a few different arcade booths. I guess she still does that. Haven’t heard from her for a few years.” She ate a French fry.
He took a bite of his burger and waited for her to say more.
“Every time my mother went into rehab, I got to stay with my Aunt Emma. When I was twelve, my aunt told Mom that she was going to raise me. My mother didn’t argue. She’d never wanted me anyway.”
Eli clenched his jaw against a rush of empathy.
“I left here when I was seventeen to become a starving artist,” Sam went on.
He’d have preferred not to learn how rough Sam’s childhood had been. It only made his mission more difficult to reconcile. “I’ve lived a lot of places, too.” At least that was true. He and Lizzy had moved a dozen times, although she’d never explained why. Eli had always had his suspicions. He’d seen bruises on Lizzy more than once, figured her clients sometimes got rough with her. His appetite all but dried up. He set his burger down.
Sam twisted her napkin. “When I was growing up, all I wanted was to be from somewhere, a hometown. There were a couple places the carnival went that I liked. I’d walk around town looking through windows of the homes, and I saw families spending time together, and I’d pretend this or that house was where I lived. In my head, I’d fill in the blanks—what my room looked like, and my parents, a little brother or sister. They were so lucky to have a home that wasn’t on wheels, one that couldn’t be moved.”
Emotion thickened his throat. “So you quit school at seventeen?”
“Wasn’t as if I was passing anyway. I finally decided to drop out during my junior year. I thought Aunt Emma was going to kill me.” She shrugged. “One day, I’ll get my GED.”
“How’d you end up in Virginia?”
Squeezing ketchup over her fries, she shook her head. “I was in upstate New York over the summer, selling my paintings and sketches to tourists in an artsy little town, until the weather cooled down and the crowds shrank down to almost nothing. After that, I headed south and managed to get the mural gig in Virginia. I was only there for a month.”
Virginia was where Rodrigo had told him to find her, which meant the loan shark had had someone following her. Maybe he still did. Swallowing hard, Eli quickly scanned the restaurant. No one looked especially suspicious. If Rodrigo were that determined to get his hands on her sapphire, one way or another he would. And if Eli didn’t manage to find the jewel, the next guy Rodrigo sent might hurt her, or worse. An ache stabbed behind his eyes.
Sam took a sip of her milkshake. “What about you? Do you live here?”
He probably should’ve come up with a cover story, but he hadn’t anticipated the question. Another reason he was a lousy criminal. “Just temporarily.” Technically true. Before she started probing more, he steered the topic back to her. “Do you plan to stay in town long?”
“Not sure yet.” She reached for her burger and took a bite.
“We’re just a couple of drifters, hmm?” In his case, more like a grafter.
Drawing her out wasn’t as easy as he’d anticipated. Knowing as much as he could about his opponents had usually proved advantageous in card games. He didn’t want to regard Sam as an opponent, though. He had to do this, had to get Sam to trust him. One thing was already clear—she had a healthy appetite for someone so thin. He’d glimpsed how frugal she’d been on her trip—sleeping in her car, eating at truck stops along the way, so maybe she’d just lost weight because she was too broke to eat well.
God, he despised Rodrigo for forcing him to do this to Sam.
“Do you have family in Cat’s Paw Cove?” Sam asked.
An image of Lizzy in her wheelchair flashed in his mind—helpless, vulnerable. All because of him. “Um, no.”
“What brought you here?”
Taking a sip of his milkshake to buy himself a moment, he thought about how to answer. “Work, actually.”
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m an actor in a bad play,” he deadpanned.
Sam huffed. “Come on.”
“Okay, I’m a consultant.” When he was a kid, he’d heard Lizzy tell people that was what she did—people from whom she wanted to hide the truth, like Eli’s teachers, and social workers.
Sam narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before returning to her meal.
“How’d you learn to draw so well?” he asked.
“I’m self-taught.”
“Are other members of your family gifted, too?”
A wry grin lifted one corner of her lips. “My relatives have other gifts, but not artistic ones.”
He wondered what she’d meant by that.
“Sam Cartwright!” a woman squealed.
Sam waved to someone behind him but didn’t appear to be particular
ly excited to see the other woman. “How are you, Alison?”
An attractive blonde approached their table and gave Sam a quick hug. “It’s been ages, hasn’t it?”
Sam smiled tightly. “Sure has.”
The blonde slid her gaze to Eli and batted her eyelashes. “Well, hello there, handsome.”
Eli ignored her come-on, turning his attention to his meal instead.
The woman took Sam’s hand and wrote something on her palm. “I’ve got to run. I’m meetin’ my boyfriend in a few minutes.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I snagged myself a veterinarian.”
“Congratulations.” Sam used her napkin to wipe her skin where Alison had written. “See you.”
Eli waited until Alison had left. “Who was that?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “We went to high school together. Alison was a mean girl then. Probably still is. I was one of her favorite targets.”
Why did his mark have to be someone who’d had it rough her whole life? The half cheeseburger he’d already eaten churned in his stomach.
The waitress set their check in the middle of the table. Sam snatched it up before Eli could. “I’ll be right back.” She slid out of the booth and strode toward the cashier.
Making sure Sam had her back to him, Eli opened her sketchpad and quickly paged through it. Until he came to a rough drawing of a brooch in an open jewelry box. She’d colored the center stone blue. Had to be the piece her father left to her.
Eli snapped a photo of the drawing with his phone then quickly shut the sketchpad.
“What are you doing?”
He froze at Sam’s question. How much had she seen? He wiped the table with his napkin. “There was some condensation on the table. I think I got it up before it reached your sketchbook.”
She eyed him and then glanced down at the table as if trying to decide whether to believe him. After several beats, she squared her shoulders. “I should get back to the store.” Without sitting down, she packed up her things.
“I can go with you,” he offered. “I have time.”
“Nope.” Sam slung her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for your help earlier. I’ve got it from here.”
Damn it. He’d screwed it all up.
Chapter Three
Sam’s jaw tightened as she exited the diner and strode down Whiskers Lane back to Eye of Newt. Why had she accepted Eli’s help at the store? Yet again, she’d thrown caution to the wind and had begun trusting a man, just that quick. Would she never learn?
He’d walked into the store the very moment Sam had realized she was in over her head. It was a little weird that he’d just offered to help her. What kind of person had time to do that? Everyone had somewhere to go, something to do. But not Eli.
Her instincts about people had always been flawed, and the fact that she’d caught Eli peeking at her drawings after she’d specifically told him no…well, that confirmed that he couldn’t be trusted.
More than one of her ex-boyfriends had lied to her, said they were going to stick around and then disappeared at the first little bump in the road. How many times had her mother insisted she was clean, only to OD a week, a day, or even a few hours later? Time after time, her father had promised he was coming to visit then neglected to show.
Heck, even Aunt Emma hadn’t always been honest with her, although her aunt’s falsehoods weren’t nearly as bad as those her parents told her. Emma’s brand of dishonesty had been the protective variety—like telling Sam that her mother hadn’t stolen the money from Sam’s piggy bank, or that her father hadn’t shown up for Sam’s birthday because his flight had been canceled on account of bad weather.
Didn’t much matter why people had deceived her. Point was, too many betrayals and lies should have soured her on the whole benefit-of-the-doubt thing. Trusting that a stranger like Eli was on the up and up was just plain stupid.
“Sam!” Eli shouted from behind her.
She couldn’t just ignore him. The guy had been kind to her, up until the moment he’d peeked at her sketchpad.
When he’d touched her hand at Purry’s, she couldn’t deny that she’d felt something. Or that she’d noticed every woman in the diner checking him out. She couldn’t blame them. Not that his looks should matter. Just because he was hot didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. What law said that ax murderers couldn’t be incredibly handsome, and charming? And smell really great.
“Sam,” he said again, this time from a lot closer.
What could he want from her? She barely had a dollar to her name. Perhaps she’d overreacted. How bad could he be? She shouldn’t have bolted from the diner without any explanation. Now he probably thought she was twelve shades of crazy.
She stopped, drew a deep breath then turned to face him. “Sorry I left you there, but—”
“You don’t owe me an apology. It’s me who should be sorry.” He took off his sunglasses and leveled those amazing eyes at her—not the eyes of an ax murderer. His brows angled in an upside-down vee.
“I saw you looking at my sketchpad after I’d explicitly told you no.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The pictures you showed me were so amazing. I guess my curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to see more.”
Hardly the crime of the century. Yeah, she’d definitely overreacted. “I’m super private about my artwork.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “And you have every right to that.”
Tucking her hair behind her ear, she sighed. “When I was a kid, I had to hide my drawings from my mom. She said I was wasting my time. I had no talent, and even if I did, I’d never be able to make a living out of art.” Her old wounds were still thick with scar tissue.
Eli frowned. “You’ve got so much talent, though.”
She shrugged. “I’d be better if I’d been able to go to college to study art.”
“No reason you couldn’t do that now.”
She rolled her eyes at his naivety. “I barely made it through high school. Always being on the move—town to town, school to school, or relying on a part-time tutor who traveled with the carnival—it was impossible to learn much. Heck, a lot of the time I was supposed to be doing schoolwork, I was taking care of my mother, nursing her through a hangover or dealing with her depression. By the time Mom dumped me with Aunt Emma, I was so far behind at school.”
Muscles around his jaw ticked. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
She didn’t want his pity. “It is what it is. I’ll figure something out at the store.” She doubted that, but she couldn’t rely on the kindness of a stranger any longer.
“I don’t mind helping you out. Hanging around an attractive lady isn’t difficult. In fact, it’s one of my favorite pastimes.” He gave her that disarming grin. “Seriously, it’s no problem. I like you.”
She was definitely beginning to like him, too. Which would only make it that much harder when he inevitably left. Because everyone eventually did.
He backed away. “You know what? I’m pushing myself on you. I don’t want to do that. You don’t know me from Adam.”
The town’s Cat Officer passed them going the other way, pushing a stroller that held an orange tabby. “Afternoon.”
God, Sam had missed Cat’s Paw Cove.
“You like it here, don’t you?” Eli asked. He seemed more tuned in to her than anyone she’d met in ages.
“I do.” She’d always felt comfortable there, the one place where somebody loved her. Stopping at the entrance to Calico Court, Sam faced Eli and offered her hand. “Thanks again for all your help today.”
Wearing a puzzled expression, he stared down at her hand before shaking with her. “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“I’ll manage.” She couldn’t take up any more of his time.
He took a gum wrapper out of his pocket and wrote something on it. “Here’s my number. Would you give me a call later?”
Did he mean if she needed help, or that he wanted her to call
him for other, more personal reasons? No, she had zero interest in that. Taking the paper, she slipped it into her bag. “Um, we’ll see.”
Eli frowned. “I wish you luck, Samantha.”
She’d need it. “I’ll be fine.”
As soon as Sam made it to the door of the shop, a gray-haired woman sitting on the bench in front of the store stood up and tapped her watch. “I’ve been here for twenty minutes. Where’s the lady who runs this place? I bet she didn’t give you permission to leave in the middle of the day, did she? You just can’t count on hired help these days.”
Sam unlocked the door, ignoring the woman’s insult. “The owner is my aunt. She had to go out of town.”
The woman stood up with the help of a cane, brushed past Sam, and went inside. “I’ll be telling Emma about your long, late lunch when she returns.”
Whatever. “Yes, ma’am.” Sam went inside and stashed her bag under the counter.
The elderly woman crooked her neck to look into the back room. “I take it that you don’t do psychic readings like Emma does.”
“No, ma’am, although they have psychic readers next door at Claws-N-Coifs, or a few blocks away at the Cheshire Apothecary.”
The woman waved off Sam’s suggestions. “Emma told me that everyone in her family had that sort of gift.” She narrowed her eyes at Sam. “What do you have to say to that?”
Sam flashed back to a long-ago family Thanksgiving. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old.
Grandma was setting the table without lifting a finger since she had the power to move objects with her mind.
Uncle Henry swallowed the last of his whiskey—his third one. He crooked his finger at Sam, urging her to join him on the sofa.
Sam hurried to him, her mouth already watering at the prospect of one of those wrapped butterscotch candies he often gave her.
Henry patted the cushion for her to sit. “You sure you don’t have any magic, child? All the women and girls have got something. Emma can see into the future, and Aunt Flora can heal people with her touch. Your great granny had the power to see and hear things that were way far away, a little like your mom’s gift of hearing things from the spiritual realm.”
Gambling on the Artist Page 4