by Nora Roberts
Damned if she wanted her steps, her movements documented by some pen-and-ink artist.
“Warrior goddess,” she muttered under her breath as she cleaned out clogged and sagging gutters. “Make her a redhead and give her collagen lips and D cups. Typical.”
She climbed down the extension ladder and, since the gutters completed her last chore of the day, stretched right out on the ground.
She hurt every damn where.
She wanted to soak herself limp in a Jacuzzi, and follow it up with an hour’s massage. And top that off with a couple glasses of wine, and possibly sex with Orlando Bloom. After that, she might just feel human.
Since the only thing on that wish list at hand was the wine, she’d settle for that. When she could move again.
With a sigh, she realized the stewing portion of the program was complete, and with her mind clear and her body exhausted, she knew the core reason for her reaction to Ford’s sketches.
A decade of therapy hadn’t been wasted.
So she groaned, pushed herself up. And went inside for the wine.
WITH SPOCK and his bear snoring majestically, Ford inked the last panel. Though the final work would be in color, his technique was to approach the inking as a near completion of the final art.
He’d already inked the panel borders, and the outlines of the background objects with his 108 Hunt. After completing the light side of his foregrounds, he stepped back, squinted, studied, approved. Once again, the Seeker, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast, face half turned away, slipped back toward the shadows that haunted his existence.
Poor sap.
Ford cleaned the nib he’d used, replaced it in its section of his worktable. He chose his brush, dipped it in India ink, then began to lay in the areas of shadow on his penciling with bold lines. Every few dips he rinsed the brush. The process took time, it took patience and a steady hand. As he envisioned large areas of black for this final, somber panel, he filled them in partially, knowing too much ink too fast would buckle his page.
When the banging on the door downstairs—and Spock’s answering barks of terror—interrupted him, he did what he always did with interruptions. He cursed at them. Once the cursing was done, he grunted a series of words—his little ritual incantation. He swirled the brush in water again and took it with him as he went down to answer.
Irritation switched to curiosity when he saw Cilla standing on his veranda holding the bottle of cab.
“We’re cool, Spock,” he said, to shut up the madly barking dog trembling at the top of the stairs.
“Don’t like red?” he asked Cilla when he opened the door.
“Don’t have a corkscrew.”
This time the dog greeted her with a couple of happy leaps, and an enthusiastic rub of his body against her legs. “Nice to see you, too.”
“He’s relieved you’re not invading forces from his home planet.”
“So am I.”
The response had Ford grinning. “Okay, come on in. I’ll dig up a corkscrew.” He took a couple steps down the foyer, stopped, turned back. “Do you want to borrow a corkscrew, or do you want me to open the bottle so you can share?”
“Why don’t you open it?”
“You’d better come on back then. I have to clean my brush first.”
“You’re working. I’ll just take the corkscrew.”
“Indian giver. The work can wait. What time is it anyway?”
She noticed he wasn’t wearing a watch, then checked her own. “About seven-thirty.”
“It can definitely wait, but the brush can’t. Soap, water, corkscrew and glasses all conveniently located in the kitchen.” He took her arm in a casual grip that was firm enough to get her where he wanted her.
“I like your house.”
“Me too.” He led the way down a wide hallway with lofty ceilings framed in creamy crown molding. “I bought it pretty much as it stands. Previous owners did a good job fixing it up, so all I had to do was dump furniture in it.”
“What sold you on it? There’s usually one or two main hooks for a buyer. This,” she added as she walked into the generous kitchen with its wide granite serving bar opening into a casual family room, “would be one for me.”
“Actually, it was the view, and the light from upstairs. I work upstairs, so that was key.”
He opened a drawer, located a corkscrew in a way that told her his spaces were organized. He set the tool aside, then stepped to the sink to wash the brush.
Spock executed what looked like a bouncing, nail-tapping dance, then darted through a doorway. “Where’s he going?”
“I’m in the kitchen, which sends the food signal to his brain. That was his happy dance.”
“Is that what it was?”
“Yeah, he’s a pretty basic guy. Food makes him happy. He’s got an autofeeder in the laundry room and a dog door. Anyway, the kitchen’s pretty much wasted on me, and so was the dining area they set up over there since I don’t actually dine so much as eat. I’d be a pretty basic guy, too. But I like having space.”
He set up the cleaned brush bristles in a glass. “Have a seat,” he invited as he picked up the corkscrew.
She sat at the bar, admired the stainless steel double ovens, the cherry cabinets, the six-burner range and grill combo under the shining stainless hood. And, since she wasn’t blinded by end-of-the-day fatigue, his ass.
He took two red wineglasses from one of the cabinets with textured glass doors, poured the wine. He stepped over, offered her one, then, lifting his own, leaned on the bar toward her and said, “So.”
“So. We’re going to be across the road from each other for quite a while, most likely. It’s better to smooth things out.”
“Smooth is good.”
“It’s flattering to be seen as some mythical warrior goddess,” she began. “Odd but flattering. I might even get a kick out of it—the Xena-meets-Wonder-Woman, twenty-first-c entury style.”
“That’s good, and not entirely off the mark.”
“But I don’t like the fact that you’ve been watching me, or drawing me when I wasn’t aware of it. It’s a problem for me.”
“Because you see it as an invasion of privacy. And I see it as natural observation.”
She took a drink. “All my life, people watched me, took pictures. Observed me. Take a walk, shop for shoes, go for ice cream, it’s a photo op. Maybe it was usually set up for that precise purpose, but I didn’t have any control over that. Even though I’m not in the business, I’m still Janet Hardy’s granddaughter, so it still happens from time to time.”
“And you don’t like it.”
“Not only don’t like it, I’m done with it. I don’t want to bring that by-product of Hollywood here.”
“I can go with the second face, but I’ve got to have the eyes.”
She took another drink. “Here’s the sticky part, for me. I don’t want you to use the second face. I feel stupid about it, but I like the idea of being the inspiration for a comic book hero. And that is something I never thought I’d hear myself say.”
Inside, Ford did a little happy dance of his own. “So it’s not the results, it’s the process. You want something to eat? I want something to eat.” He turned, opened another cupboard and pulled out a bag of Doritos.
“That’s not actual food.”
“That’s what makes it good. All of my life,” he continued as he dug into the bag, “I’ve watched people. Drawn pictures—well, I drew pictures as soon as I could hold a crayon. I’ve observed—the way they move, gesture, the way their faces and bodies are put together. How they carry themselves. It’s like breathing. Something I have to do. I could promise not to watch you, but I’d be lying. I can promise to show you any sketching I do, and try to keep that promise.”
Because they were there, she ate a Dorito. “What if I hate them?”
“You won’t, if you have any taste, but if you do, that would be too bad.”
Contemplating, she ate another chip. Hi
s voice had stayed easy, she noted—over the rigid steel underlying it. “That’s a hard line.”
“I’m not what you’d call flexible about my work. I can pretzel about most anything else.”
“I know the type. What comes after the sketching?”
“You’ve got to have a story. Graphics is only half of a graphic novel. But you need to . . . Bring your wine. Come on upstairs.”
He retrieved his brush. “I was inking the last panel on Payback when you knocked,” he told her as he led her out of the kitchen and to the stairs.
“Are these stairs original?”
“I don’t know.” His forehead creased as he looked down at them. “Maybe. Why?”
“It’s beautiful work. The pickets, the banister, the finish. Someone took care of this place. It’s a major contrast with mine.”
“Well, you’re taking care now. And you hired Matt—pal of mine—to do some of the carpentry. I know he worked on this place before I bought it. And did some stuff for me after.” He turned into his studio.
Cilla saw the gorgeous wide-planked chestnut floor, the beautiful tall windows and the wide, glossy trim. “What a wonderful room.”
“Big. It was designed as the master bedroom, but I don’t need this much space to sleep.”
Cilla tuned into him again, and into the various workstations set up in the room. Five large, and very ugly, filing cabinets lined one wall. Shelves lined another with what seemed to be a ruthless organization of art supplies and tools. He’d devoted another section to action figures and accessories. She recognized a handful of the collection, and wondered why Darth Vader and Superman appeared so chummy.
A huge drawing board stood in the center of the room, currently holding what she assumed to be the panels he’d talked about. Spreading out from it on either side, counters and cubbies held a variety of tools, pencils, brushes, reams of paper. Photographs, sketches, pictures torn or cut out of magazines of people, places, buildings. Still another leg of the counter held a computer, printer, scanner—a Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figure.
Opposite that, to form a wide U, stood a full-length mirror.
“That’s a lot of stuff.”
“It takes a lot of stuff. But for the art, which is what you want to know, I’ll do a few million sketches, casting my people, costuming them, playing with background, foreground, settings—and somewhere in there I’ll write the script, breaking that into panels. Then I’ll do thumbnails—small, quick sketches to help me decide how I’m going to divide my space, how I want to compose them. Then I pencil the panels. Then I ink the art, which is exactly what it sounds like.”
She stepped over to the drawing board. “Black and white, light and shadow. But the book you gave me was done in color.”
“So will this be. I used to do the coloring and the lettering by hand. It’s fun,” he told her, leaning a hip on one leg of the U, “and really time-consuming. And if you go foreign, and I did, it’s problematic to change hand-drawn balloons to fit the translations. So I digitized there. I scan the inked panels into the computer and work with Photoshop for coloring.”
“The art’s awfully good,” Cilla stated. “It almost tells the story without the captions. That’s strong imaging.”
Ford waited a beat, then another. “I’m waiting for it.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “For what?”
“For you to ask why I’m wasting my talent with comic books instead of pursuing a legitimate career in art.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time. I don’t see waste when someone’s doing what they want to do, and something they excel at.”
“I knew I was going to like you.”
“Plus, you’re talking to someone who starred for eight seasons on a half-hour sitcom. It wasn’t Ibsen, but it sure as hell was legitimate. People will recognize me from your art. I’m not on the radar so much anymore, but I look enough like my grandmother, and she is. She always will be. People will make the connection.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You’ve got a couple days to think about it. Or . . .” He shifted, opened a drawer, drew out papers.
“You wrote up a release,” Cilla said after a glance at the papers.
“I figured you’d either come around or you wouldn’t. If you did, we’d get this out of the way.”
She stepped away, walked to the windows. The lights sparkled again, she thought. Little diamond glints in the dark. She watched them, and the dog currently chasing shadows in Ford’s backyard. She sipped her wine. Then she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “I’m not posing in a breastplate.”
Humor hit his eyes an instant before he grinned. “I can work around that.”
“No nudity.”
“Only for my personal collection.”
She let out a short laugh. “Got a pen?”
“A few hundred of them.” He chose a standard roller ball as she crossed the room.
“Here’s another condition. A personal, and petty, requirement. I want her to kick a lot more ass than Batgirl.”
“Guaranteed.”
After she’d signed the three copies, he handed her one. “For your files. How about we pour another glass of this wine, order a pizza and celebrate the deal?”
She eased back. He hadn’t stepped into her space; she’d stepped into his. But the tingle in her blood warned her to mark the distance. “No, thanks. You’ve got work and so do I.”
“Night’s young.” He walked out of the room with her. “Tomorrow’s long.”
“Not as young as it was, and tomorrow’s never long enough. Plus I need extra time to fantasize about putting in a Jacuzzi.”
“I’ve got one.”
She slid her eyes toward him as they came down the stairs. “I don’t suppose you have a massage therapist on tap, too.”
“No, but I’ve got really good hands.”
“I bet you do. Well, if you were Orlando Bloom, I’d consider this a sign from God and be sleeping with you in about ninety minutes. But since you’re not”—she opened the front door herself—“I’ll say good night.”
He stood, frowning after her, then stepped onto the veranda as she hiked toward the road. “Orlando Bloom?”
She simply lifted a hand in a kind of brushing-off wave, and kept walking.
FOUR
She had a couple of good, productive days. She’d lined up her plumber, her electrician, her head carpenter, and had the first of three projected estimates on replacement windows. But her luckiest find, to her way of thinking, had been connecting with an ancient little man named Dobby and his energetic grandson Jack, who would save and restore the original plaster walls.
“Old man McGowan hired my daddy to do these walls back around 1922,” Dobby told Cilla as he stood on his short, bowed legs in the living room of the little farm. “I was about six, came around to help him mix the plaster. Never saw such a big house before.”
“It’s good work.”
“He took pride in it, taught me the same. Miz Hardy, she hired me on to do some pointing up, and replastering where she made some changes. That’d be back around, ’sixty-five, I guess.”
Dobby’s face reminded Cilla of a piece of thin brown paper that had been balled tight, then carelessly smoothed out. The creases deepened like valleys when he smiled. “Never seen the like of her, either. Looked like an angel. Had a sweet way about her, and didn’t put on airs like you’d reckon a movie star would. Signed one of her record albums for me, too, when I got up the gumption to ask her. My wife wouldn’t let me play it after that. Had to frame it up for the wall, and buy a new one to listen to. It’s still hanging in the parlor.”
“I’m glad I found you, to keep the tradition going.”
“Not hard to find, I expect. Lot of people, in Miz Hardy’s day, and with her wherewithal, woulda put up the Sheetrock.” He turned his deep brown eyes on Cilla. “Most people’d do that now instead of preserv
ing it.”