Claire snapped her mouth shut. “All right. If being finished with Baker is what you need, let’s do it. He wants to meet with you next week for a progress report and delivery of the first statues, so I’ll set it up.” She reached out to squeeze Matt’s hands again. “If we have to feed you intravenously and run a catheter, I’ll get you out of here before Christmas, and that’s a promise.”
Matt smiled as he rose to his feet. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take that.” He shuddered. “Catheter? Good God.”
Matt slammed his front door when he heard Claire’s Lexus peel away from the curb. He loosened his strangling tie, tossed the jacket he’d so carefully steamed that morning in the corner, and poured himself three fingers of scotch. Tossing it back, he winced at the burn before pouring three more.
He toed off his shoes and sank down on the couch, feeling the leather cradle his body as he rolled his glass on his forehead. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
The meeting with Baker had been a complete disaster. It started to go downhill when the first statue was uncrated and Baker found fault with the terra cotta medium, then segued into snide comments about the models’ comparative endowments, and ended with Matt insinuating that Mrs. Baker would be the best judge of that. Slouching into his couch, shame at his outburst mixed with continued anger and a sense of wounded pride. Suddenly, the house he’d considered his haven was just too damned lonely.
No sound of humming from another room. No smell of paints or even the whisper of herbal scent. No firm hands on his shoulders or gentle fingers caressing his temples. No pale gold skin or laughing brown eyes to tempt and tease him.
No warmth.
Matt slumped forward, forehead resting on the heel of one hand as his elbow rested on his knee. Though he’d happily been alone for most of his adult life, it was just too hard now. He craved Abby’s companionship like he craved the sea.
His mind roiled, and his emotions crashed, and he came to a decision:
Fuck this.
Fuck Baker.
Fuck the fucking statues.
Fuck waiting.
One weekend wouldn’t make or break his ability to finish what remained of the stupid statues.
He paced his house, deep in thought. He was pretty sure Abby would be okay with having him for a weekend, and it might give him an opportunity to have a well-thought-out word or two with Sarah, who had continued to throw Abby together with that Conor guy. Maybe it was time for Pretty’s Boston to see them together, to know that a real guy was waiting for her on another coast.
Or maybe that would come off as über creepy and possessive, a tiny voice in his head suggested. Matt stopped in front of his sculpture, now cast in bronze, and caressed the facsimile of Abby’s shoulder with a gentle finger. If it’s creepy and possessive, so be it, he thought wearily. I miss her. I want to be with her. Even if it’s just for one weekend.
There was a certain relief in having a plan. Matt returned to the living room to call his mother for information on things to see in Boston. Although he’d never visited the city, his mother was a native and frequently traveled there on business. He wanted to impress Abby by showing her around the least-touristy spots of her own city.
Matt changed out of the monkey suit and plopped into his hammock before he dialed. He couldn’t stop smiling as he waited for his mother to answer the phone. Though he was sure he could happily go through the weekend without ever leaving Abby’s apartment or his hotel room, Abby deserved to be very sure that she was more than a body to him. She was everything. She’d come to his world and immersed herself, and he planned on doing the same for her.
“Is this my prodigal son? After months of silence? Be still my beating heart.” Janet Clarke’s voice was low and pleasant, her tone teasing.
Matt smiled and lay back, watching the restless movement of the tide as memories of all the times he’d heard that voice washed over him. “Ha ha, Mom. Ha ha. How’s my favorite girl?”
“Old and getting older.” Matt knew she’d be making herself comfortable, probably with her feet on her desk and hands folded at her waist in preparation for a long chat. Though she’d always been busy in her role as a financial consultant, she’d never stinted on time with him. “When is my only chick going to settle down with a good woman and put my mind at ease?”
Recognizing his mother’s standard opening lines in their ongoing tussle over his domestic situation and knowing that she expected a breezy joke in response, Matt opted to answer by staying quiet.
“You’re kidding!” Janet sounded astounded.
“You wound me.” Matt dropped one foot onto the sand to set the hammock swinging. “Am I that hideous?”
“Yes. A perfect wretch since the day you were born. I hope this isn’t a stupid girl.”
“I haven’t noticed any particular infirmity, aside from the fact that she can put up with me.” He dropped the light tone. “You’d like her, Mom. Seriously. Smart, funny, beautiful. Her name is Abby.”
“Close to your age?”
“Ouch. You really know how to hurt a guy. Yes, mother. Close to my age.”
“Good.” Matt could picture his mother running her long fingers through her short salt-and-cayenne hair. “Nothing worse than an old goat chasing after a young girl. Embarrassing. Do I get to meet her?”
“In time. She’s back in Boston tying up some loose ends with her job.” Bending the facts a little to avoid a drawn-out discussion had to be forgivable.
Janet whistled. “Long distance, huh? Tricky.” She sighed, and Matt imagined that she was thinking about her own experience with his dad. He’d never asked either of them for any details, but right now he’d give anything to know exactly what had gone wrong between them. The suspicion that his dad wasn’t enough for this woman who’d remained at the top of her field when lesser men and women were long retired had irritated him for years; now it felt vital that he know the truth. He struggled with the right way to ask, but in the end, he didn’t have the guts to pry into something so personal.
“We’ll evaluate the situation when we get together at Christmas,” he said evenly. “In the meantime, I’m thinking of surprising her for a weekend in Beantown, and I thought I’d ask the native where I can take my girl.”
“First, don’t say Beantown.” Matt could hear the shudder in his mother’s voice. “Next, I’m proud of you for giving this a chance and not being afraid of a little space. Last…is she a professional woman?”
“Yep.”
“Excellent. But forget the surprise. Schedules can be a bitch, Matt. We can’t all be beachcombers-slash-brilliant artists.”
Matt wondered if the hint of bitterness he thought he heard in her voice was real or the production of his oversensitivity. “We’re not so bad, are we, Mom?”
Janet’s voice was warm. “Of course not. You just sometimes need a hint to remember that life’s not all playtime. Ready for some ideas?”
An hour later, Matt hung up and hurried into the house to jot down everything his mother had suggested before he forgot what she’d said. It hadn’t taken her long to lay out a weekend itinerary of her favorite places. The rest of their conversation turned into a detailed debriefing about all things Abby. Matt suspected that was the real reason he’d had the impulse to call his mother.
Plans set in motion, he threw all his energy into his statue, determined to have a good start before he saw Abby again. Maybe Claire’s idea of his finishing the damn contract with Baker and getting out of California before Christmas wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
Matt dropped off to sleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He’d gone to bed without working until his hands hurt for the first time since Pretty had left for Boston. His dreams were sweet.
In the end, though, he discovered he didn’t have the balls to show up completely unannounced. His mother’s warning kept drifting through his head at odd moments, and he gave in to the urge to check his plan with Abby’s schedule.
Abby’s phone r
ang only once before she answered. She sounded both pleased and rushed. “Matt! You must have been reading my mind. I was just thinking about you.”
“Good thoughts, I hope? Full of nudity?”
Abby laughed. “Always. Perv.”
“You know it. Listen, Pretty, I have a question for you: How would you feel about a guest? I miss you. I have a good start on the fifth statue, and I thought I’d take a break this weekend.”
“Oh, Matt.” Abby’s tone was heavy. “I can’t this weekend. That’s why I was thinking about calling you. I’ll be in New York. Our sister gallery is wrapping up a display of some artifacts that we show next. I’m escorting them here on Monday. I’d invite you to meet me in New York, but I’ll be working the entire time. I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Matt closed his eyes and concentrated on the breeze that was stirring his hair away from his forehead. “We can’t seem to catch a break, can we?”
“Nope,” Abby whispered. They were quiet for a minute. “I miss you.”
“Yeah.” Doesn’t change anything, though, does it?
“I want—I really need time, even just a weekend, with you.” Abby sighed. “Can we try this again in a couple of weeks? I swear to God, no more weekend work plans after this.”
“Sure,” Matt answered, vowing to pay more attention to his mother’s advice in the future.
They talked for a few more minutes before Abby was called away by her intern. Matt was sad to hear her tone go from warm and relaxed as they chatted back to tight and harried right before she hung up.
“Well, fuck.” He tossed his phone onto the desk and crumpled up the list of activities he’d been planning. Childish? Absolutely. But the dull thump of the paper as it hit the bottom of the empty trash can echoed the feeling in his heart, so it seemed right.
When Claire entered the studio on Monday morning, she found Matt working on his sculpture with absolute concentration. Pearl Jam crashed in the background. His hair lay lankly against his head, his eyes were ringed in shadow, and five days’ growth of beard roughened his cheeks. Empty plates and glasses were stacked on his desk with one of the glasses covering his phone, and the whitish rouge of dried terra-cotta daubed his bare chest and lower legs. Evidence of a weekend spent almost solely in the company of clay. Crossing to the stereo, Claire snapped it off.
“Hey, Van Gogh! I’ve been trying to get hold of you since yesterday morning. Answer your damned phone.”
Matt never took his eyes off the shoulder muscle he was detailing.
“Don’t you mean…I don’t know—Michelangelo? Van Gogh was a painter. I’d fail you in my class for not knowing the difference.” He measured his progress with a glance at his photograph of Zoe and applied the wire loop again.
“Van Gogh was the crazy one, right? I think I made the correct comparison.” She was rewarded for her weak joke when Matt chuckled. He wiped a bit of dried clay off the side of his nose with the edge of his hand, unintentionally depositing another, bigger, clump in his eyebrow.
He dropped the loop to the table and nodded toward the statue, which was now fully roughed in. Its upper portion was beautifully finished. “Progress, right?”
“Right. But at what a price. You need a shower, mister, and something to eat. Then I have something pretty to show you.”
She refused to say another word until Matt reentered the studio a half-hour later in clean shorts and a tee, with his wet hair swept back from his forehead and a sandwich clutched in his hand.
“Much better.” She threw open the windows of the studio to a brisk breeze. Matt stared toward his statue in concern. Claire laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Taken care of. I haven’t forgotten how to cover a fresh clay.”
She tugged him toward the desk and started his computer. “I have something you’ll like to see.” She typed in a web address. After clicking through a couple of windows, she pushed away from the desk with an air of triumph. “There you go.”
Claire’s explanation of how she’d spotted the picture during her daily perusal of art news passed in one ear and out the other. It was a picture of an Abby he’d only had a small glimpse of in Santa Cruz. His eyes jumped from one detail in the picture to the next, from Abby’s perfectly fitted dress, highlighted with tiny jet beads, to her shapely legs, lengthened by high heels. Her hair was no longer in the loose waves he’d enjoyed shaping around his index finger, nor was it in the loose chignon she’d worn both times they’d gone out together. Now it was a shoulder-skimming expanse of shiny, straightened hair, smoothed back into a clip that glittered with stones. One hand balanced a wine glass and a canapé while the other rested on the forearm of an impeccably dressed, dark haired man. She was laughing up at him, leaning into his side.
Matt sank down into the chair, reading the caption below the picture: Fiona Grant Shaw curator, Abby Reynolds, celebrates her successful presentation of ancient Indian terra-cotta panels.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Matt?”
“I had no idea her position was so…” Matt’s mind was blank.
Claire opened another window. “You should look at this, then.” The site for the Fiona Grant Shaw museum popped onto the screen. “This is a fantastic museum, Matt. Didn’t you guys talk about this stuff?”
Matt shook his head. Pages of exhibits of both ancient and cutting-edge art were listed, many of them curated by Dr. Abby Reynolds. Special note was made of her curation of a display of Etruscan terra-cottas the previous March, her research for which had earned the museum a special award.
Lost in the museum’s website, Matt didn’t even notice when Claire kissed the top of his head and left.
It was dinnertime before Matt was finished tracking Abby online. He was ashamed that he’d never thought to research where she worked and how important she was there, though he’d been fine shaping their relationship around his work.
He shut the computer down and sat in the waning light, thinking about Abby and the life she’d built in Boston. Nothing he could do or give her could compare to what she already had—and what was ahead for her. Abby was worried about what Matt would give up if he skipped out on Baker for her, but that was a joke. Boston Abby was gorgeous and smart, with more to lose than she would gain by coming back to Santa Cruz to hang out with a beachcomber-slash-artist.
To come back to him.
No matter how badly he needed her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ABBY JERKED FROM SLEEP when she realized that the banging she heard was real and coming from the door across the room. She drew her hand from between her legs with a moue of disgust, and her building orgasm curdled to a sour pain in the pit of her stomach.
Another hard knock rattled the door in the frame, and Abby recognized Sarah’s anxious voice. “Abby, damn it! Open the door!”
Stumbling over the afghan that had been tossed onto the floor during her dream, Abby yanked open the door. Sarah pushed past her, looking around the room with worried curiosity.
“No one here?”
Abby closed the door. “Who would be here?”
Sarah wandered from the living room to the kitchen, peeping down the hall on the way. “How do I know? It just took you forever to answer, and it was your idea to go for coffee this morning. And the noise you were making?” She returned to the living room to collapse onto the messy sofa. Her shoulders were relaxed, and she even laughed at Abby’s horrified face. “I couldn’t decide if you were being boinked or strangled. I was going to get Mrs. Case’s passkey, but I was afraid what I’d find.” She ruffled her own hair and puffed out a breath. “Neither other people’s nudity nor death is any way to start the day.”
Abby dropped into a chair, groaning.
Giving her friend a minute to collect herself, Sarah rose and began straightening the cluttered room, tossing papers into the recycling basket and clothes toward the bathroom hamper. She stopped at Matt’s sculpture, and her eyes softened. “Good for you, Matt,” she whispered, tracing the glowing pink marble with one hand.
Sarah stepped back, drawing a slow breath. “Abby…this is—”
“Nothing.” Abby dismissed Sarah’s sentence with a wave of her hand.
“No. It’s not.” Sarah turned to face Abby, her mouth set in a firm line. “You know better, and so do I. When did you start painting again? Because I haven’t seen you touch a brush in forever.”
“Matt tricked me into starting again after you left Santa Cruz.” She smiled at the memory. “Then the other day…well, you know what a bitch work has been. I had another ‘discussion’ with Gretchen, and I had to get out of there. I got on the T, and the next thing I knew, I was at Blick’s with my arms full of painting supplies and my credit card out.” She shook her head. “Impulse buys.”
“A good impulse.” Sarah perched on the arm of Abby’s chair. Wrapping her arm around her friend’s shoulders, she squeezed. “Regardless, you need coffee and food, and I need the full story on why you were making sex and death noises on your couch, all alone on a Sunday morning.” She dodged Abby’s elbow jab.
After a shower, Abby felt as ready as she ever would be for a trip out. Residue of her dream clung to her, making her feel dirty in a way that no shower could clean. She welcomed the dash to the car through icy October rain, hoping it would refresh her soul.
Within a short while, she and Sarah were ensconced at their favorite table at Red Barn Coffee Roasters in Faneuil Hall, warm mugs of coffee cradled between their freezing palms.
The Art of Appreciation Page 28