There.
She flipped the sketch pad closed and folded up the easel, satisfied and feeling more grounded. A new path toward part of the garden she hadn’t seen on her previous visit enticed her in that direction.
She stepped around a pair of arbor vitae sandwiching a streaming statue of David, and found Clarissa, apparently untouched by the violent shower, pruning shears in hand, dealing with a dripping tangle of morning glory vines that had extended beyond their allotted place on an iron fence and were encroaching on an extensive vegetable garden.
“Hi.” May smiled at the older woman, feeling like she had a friend, even after only one encounter.
“Oh, have you been painting?”
“Just sketching.”
“I’d love to see what you’ve done.”
“Oh.” May glanced doubtfully down at her sketch pad; she was generally pretty private about her work. “None of them are finished…”
“Perhaps later, then. You’re just in time, I’m about done with these morning glories, then I’ll need help planting lettuce. You game?”
“Sure.” May beamed. Another thing she felt at home doing. A red-letter day. “How do you get your morning glories blooming so early? Are you that much ahead here? In Wisconsin it’s late July or August before they flower.”
“I start them inside. They grow so quickly.” She snipped off the tip of a vine reaching for a nearby basket of impatiens. “Did you know that sweet potatoes are the root of a certain type of morning glory?”
“No, I didn’t.” May stooped to pick up the cuttings, shook off the drips, and put them into the basket already containing an assortment of other prunings.
“Amazing little things.” Clarissa looked at a blossom admiringly. “So pretty. And only out for one day. One morning, really. They have to make the most of it.”
May caught her sidelong glance. Was that today’s lesson? “Very wise.”
“Indeed. I’m finished here. Come along, I’ve already prepared the soil.”
She swept over to a long narrow bed of freshly raked soil, glistening brown from the brief storm, and handed May a pair of rubber-dipped cotton gloves and a packet of assorted lettuce seeds, which she’d pulled from the pocket of her strawberry print apron. “I sow lettuce every two weeks so the restaurant always has a fresh supply.”
“You do this all yourself?”
“Oh, no. Usually I have Rosa to help, but she’s gone off to get married.” Clarissa gestured with her gloved hand toward half of the bed. “Here, this is your spot, I’ll do over there.”
May nodded obediently, and knelt on the dry cushion Clarissa handed her. She carefully poured the tiny seeds into her hand and began sowing them in rows eight inches apart.
“Now, May, tell me how your week is going without Mr. Little.”
May grinned at the command, issued with all the aplomb of a queen. Yet, somehow May didn’t mind opening up to this woman she’d just met. “Probably better than it would have with him.”
“I dare say.” Clarissa paused for a wink and a smile. “And dinner last night with the handsome and talented Beck Desmond.”
“Yes.” May didn’t even bother questioning how Clarissa knew. “He seems very nice.”
“He is.” Clarissa continued serenely putting out lettuce seeds. “And a hot hunk of beefcake to boot.”
May burst out laughing. “You might say that.”
And a damn good kisser. She pulled on the gloves, crumbled a layer of wet soil over the seeds and moved on to the next row, hoping her blush wasn’t too obvious.
“Are there other adventurers in your family? Or are you the first?”
“Oh, I’m not the first.” May smiled, a little relieved at the change of subject. Next she would have found herself telling Clarissa about the scene in Beck’s bedroom. “My mother left Wisconsin and came to New York in her twenties. She’d always dreamed of being a Rockette.”
“And?”
“And she became one. For a while.”
“Until…”
May smiled and patted the soil firm. “Until my father, then her ex-boyfriend, came after her. He got tickets to her show and sat in the front row. Went backstage afterwards and told her to pack her bags, that now she’d gotten adventure out of her system, they were going back to Wisconsin to get married.”
Clarissa held her seeds suspended over their intended target. “And did she?”
May nodded dreamily. She loved imagining the scene, had done so over and over from the first time she heard the story. Her father, grim, handsome, determined and uncomfortable in the theater surroundings. Her mother, young, leggy and vivacious, realizing her mistake and deciding to come home to the reality of love. “They’ve been happily married for fifty-two years.”
“That’s a lovely story.” Clarissa’s seeds sprinkled down onto the soil; she watched them fall but made no move to cover them over. “I was married for forty-one years, also very happily.”
May sat back on her heels, not sure how much she could ask, but wanting the story. “How did you meet your husband?”
“I was engaged to someone else at the time, rather late in life for back then, I was twenty-seven. But to my parents’ despair, I was in no hurry to settle down or settle at all, as I saw it then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Love seemed such an imperfect concept. All the thrills at the beginning, all the surprises, then inevitably the slow decline into predictability and disenchantment.”
Something cold and heavy landed in the pit of May’s stomach and she fought it with the heat of denial. “Does it have to be that way?”
“Of course not.” Clarissa dismissed the concept with a wave. “It’s just what I thought. So while I was engaged to this terribly respectable young attorney my parents adored, I did the unexpected, which, given who I was at the time, was actually fairly typical. I fell madly in love with their new young gardener. We eloped, everyone was scandalized, it was delightful. He went on to law school and became a fine lawyer. I adored him as much at the end as I did at the beginning. Probably more.”
“Even without the thrills and surprises?”
“Oh, there were always thrills and surprises.” The sad, faraway look in her eyes made May’s heart ache. “Just not quite as many quite so close together as there were in the beginning. But you don’t have to give those up. You shouldn’t in fact. That would be settling of the worst kind.”
May thought of Dan, of the comforting peace of their routine and how she’d cherished it. Yet…there had been moments of feeling disconnected, nagging doubts that had crept in once in a while. Was this really all there was and would be? She’d never been with anyone else, how would she know? And yet she’d loved him…so she stayed, even when it felt like a habit.
“That’s a wonderful story.”
“Yes.” Clarissa briskly got back to planting. “Jim died three years ago. I gave up the house in Connecticut and moved into our apartment in the city. You must come to tea while you’re here. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll send you the address.”
“Thank you.” May smiled warmly, telling the part of her brain that wanted as much time as possible with Beck in the next two days to shut the heck up. He was busy working, who knew how free he’d be or whether he’d even want to spend that free time with her?
“Has Beck asked you out again?”
May jerked her eyes over to Clarissa, methodically laying out seeds. How did she do that? “I haven’t heard from him today.”
“You will. He had that look about him.”
“What look?”
“The look of a man who wants a woman.” She gazed pointedly at May, who of course demonstrated her utter unflappability by dropping her eyes and blushing fiercely.
She knew the look of a man who wants a woman. She’d seen that look from Trevor, and once upon a time from Dan. That wasn’t the look she wanted from Beck. Well, okay, it was one of them. But she might as well face it, for all her attempts to distance h
erself from the longings, she wanted those kisses last night to have been inspired by May, not Veronica. And she wanted them to have meant something to him. Whereas she was pretty sure if Trevor had shown up and all had gone according to plan, she never would have cared one way or the other about his.
So now what? Torture herself by going on pretending to be Veronica when she simply wasn’t? Risking that the more she fell for Beck, the more he might fall for someone she wasn’t? That didn’t seem smart at all.
“Did I mention what I like so much about morning glories?”
May glanced at her, startled. Hadn’t they just done the morning-glory thing? “I think you might have.”
“The thing I like about morning glories is that they only bloom once.” She gazed over the lettuce bed, past the peppers and cucumbers to the vines embracing the railing, a tangle of heart-shaped leaves decorated with blue, purple and pink flowers striped with white. “Only for one morning.”
“Right.” May concentrated on her remaining lettuce seeds to avoid looking concerned. Was Clarissa not as sharp as she first seemed?
“In the jungle, they have to go after what they want, chase all the way up the trees to the sunlight, as fast as they can for their short chance.”
“Yes.” She patted the last bit of dirt in place and stayed where she was, a little embarrassed and unsure how to handle this.
“So?”
May lifted her head. Clarissa knelt on her black cushion, her floral skirt spread around her the way an artist might arrange it for a portrait. A breeze caught one of her white curls, lifted it, then dropped it gently back into place as if not daring to disturb her coiffure.
“So…I’m sorry, I’m not following.”
“It’s simple.” Clarissa gestured to the vines. “Beck wants you. It’s a place to start. Go for the sun as fast as you can in the time you have and see what kind of blooming you can do.”
“IT’S BRILLIANT.” Alex’s shout of delight through the phone line preceded even a hello.
Beck let out a long relieved breath. He’d been up a good part of the night writing the damn scene, slept for a few early hours, then was back at it again, revising chapter after chapter, possessed as he was only at his most inspired, those rare and fabulous moments when words tumbled out of his brain faster than he could keep up with them on the keyboard. Days that made up for the all-too-many others when he needed pliers to extract even a paragraph from his subconscious.
“Thanks, Alex.”
“It’s exactly what I was after. Exactly the difference I was looking for. It’s real, she’s real, the scene is hot, oh, my God, I was fanning myself reading it.”
“Thanks.” The word came out flat. He was happy with the scene himself, and pleasing his agent was always a good thing, but somehow he couldn’t get himself excited.
“You even have some tenderness there at the end, when he kissed her, I was like whoa, Mack has a heart? Women are going to fall madly in love with this guy, Beck, and men will only identify more. This is what we want.”
“I’m glad.” He went to the window, drew back the curtain and frowned at the sheets of water drenching the city. Damn. He’d planned to spend lunch and the afternoon at an outdoor café, recharging his batteries with caffeine and a different setting.
“Now…”
“Yes?” He let the curtain fall and sighed. They always wanted more.
“Now I want more. Through the rest of the book. I want him to fall in love with this woman. You’ve got a great start here, with Mack feeling these unfamiliar feelings. Now you’ve got to go the rest of the way, tie that into the plot, the danger, then into the final scene where he has to rescue her. Up the stakes at that point, make it his heart that’s at risk of being destroyed, as well as his woman. You got me?”
“Gotcha.”
She laughed, that smoky-throated guffaw that alternately amused him and grated on his nerves. “I’m just blown away by this, Beck. What did you do, hire some woman to whack off for you?”
“Jesus, Alex.”
“I’m sorry, I’m kidding. But I have to ask, why didn’t you ever show me anything like this before?”
Because I didn’t know it existed. “I didn’t think it fit the character.”
“Well it does. It fits the character the way the character should be, Beck, the way readers are going to respond to him and to her in droves. Oh, and you need to come up with a new name for this woman, I don’t like Susie after all.”
“Thank God.”
“What else were you thinking?”
“Off the top of my head?”
“Sure, gut reaction. First two female names you think of.”
“April? June?”
“Not May?”
He winced. “No, not May.”
“Hmm. I like May. But keep thinking…I’ve got to take a call, Beck. Love it, love it, love it, you’re fabulous. Talk to you later.”
Beck punched off his phone. Yeah, he was fabulous, whatever. If last night was any indication, this book was going to kill him. Yes, the words had poured out of him, yes, the adrenaline had been amazing, but afterward, he’d barely been able to sleep, his mind still going a hundred miles an hour, going over the scene, going over the evening, having a few very bizarre tricks of the mind when the two merged into one.
Of course he was writing partly from his own experience; no author could escape who he was. And the deeper you dug into a character, inevitably the deeper you found yourself digging into your own psyche.
But the section where Mack kissed—whatever her name was, not May—had been some of the toughest writing of his career, leaving him drained and feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Maybe this was where his career should go, but writing macho fantasy was a hell of a lot easier.
Now Alex wanted more. She wanted Mack to fall in love the rest of the way.
The problem? Beck wasn’t sure he’d ever been in love himself. Or was capable of it. How could he be sure the way he’d portray falling in love would be any less of a fantasy than the dildo scene he’d tried before?
Whenever he got involved with a woman, the same set of rules applied. He was attracted, turned on the confidence, the charm, the women fell, he enjoyed them, lusted, was mildly infatuated for a while and then things quieted down to a nice level of comfortable companionship that suited him fine and caused the women no end of aggravation and resentment, and eventually they broke it off.
Frankly, by that time he’d usually grown so tired of hearing how he was lacking as a romantic partner, he was glad to be free again. Until he met the next one and it all played out again. No relationship and no woman had ever consumed him the way he imagined readers wanted to read about. The way the romance novels he’d read on a girlfriend’s recommendation portrayed it.
He’d made peace with that. Until…the encounters he’d had so far with May broke all the patterns he’d gotten so used to they barely made an impression anymore. What made her so different? He enjoyed her, he lusted, same as usual, but last night he’d experienced something he’d never felt before with a woman. Vulnerability. Anxiety. Even a sense of sadness when he looked ahead to her leaving Friday.
When he’d been writing, he found himself putting into Mack’s head thoughts he was dimly aware were too terrifying to acknowledge in his own.
Now what? He’d told May he’d see her today. He wanted to see her…and he didn’t. He had an instinctive feeling that if last night was anything to go by, he would not be able to glide through a relationship with her in control of himself and his emotions. Was this what he had to do to understand what Mack would be going through? Did this mean he was going to fall in love?
He ran his hands down his face, gritty with stubble. It wasn’t like him to be so melodramatic. Lack of sleep and the passionate intensity with which he’d attacked his scene last night must have colored his view. May was a beautiful woman. One he was beginning to suspect had more to her than his original impression of a Sugar-daddy girl. Maybe it was
just the twin images of siren and sweet that had him confused and off balance.
In two days he could hardly be on the path to love that Mack was supposed to travel. He needed to separate the two in his mind. One had most likely informed the other.
His room phone rang and he lunged for it, hoping like hell it was her.
“Mr. Desmond? I’m sorry to bother you, there’s a Jeffrey Desmond here in the lobby. He says he’s your brother.”
“Yes.” He stood abruptly. What the hell was Jeffrey doing here? “Send him up.”
He changed his shirt, wishing he had time to shower, pulled the covers up and straightened a few piles of paper, not that his brother would care. But if it got back to Mom that he lived and looked like an exhausted slob, she’d worry more than she did already.
His brother knocked on the door and Beck let him in, grinning in welcome. He and Jeffrey had next to nothing in common, but what they did have was shared blood and a shared childhood, and that counted for a lot.
“Hey, Beck, you look like hell, what’s going on? You seen the sun this year at all?” Jeffrey was bursting with vitality, the tallest, darkest and handsomest of the three brothers, he was also a loyal, lovable, self-centered pain in the ass. “Whoa, nice digs.”
“I was up all night writing.”
Jeffrey frowned and shook his head. “No, you got it wrong there, guy. At your age, up all night should involve women, preferably twins.”
Beck thought of May and suppressed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’ll never be in your league, stud. What brings you? Mom send you to guilt me into going to your birthday party Thursday?”
Jeffrey laughed. “Actually, no. I wanted to tell you I’m getting engaged.”
“Wow, no kidding.” Beck extended his hand, then pulled him in for a manly backslap, trying not to show his surprise. Jeffrey was a legendary love-’em-and-leave-’em commitment phobe. “Who’s the lucky woman.”
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